Presentation at KL Ruby Brigade

1. How I Hire
Developers

2. Some of my entrepreneur
friends have been asking me:
how do I hire good developers?

3. Show of Hands
Students
Employed in a company / agency
Freelancing
“in between jobs” AKA bums

4. The Mindvalley Tech
Hiring Pipeline
(right side is too long to fit in this space)

5. Technical Test
Interview

6. Technical Test: Choose
Two out of Three
2048
Game of Life
URL Shortener

7. 2048
application design
code coupling
frontend skills
integration and decomposition

8. Game of Life
application design
algorithm efficiency
programming paradigms
code clarity

9. URL Shortener
application design (esp MVC)
devops (deployments with db)
working with SQL / ORM /
persistence
edge case / collision handling

10. If your tests pass, you
proceed with the interview

11. I don’t really interview for
skill inasmuch as for
attitude

12. I’m looking for
someone who
strives for excellence
is always curious
thirsts for learning

13. Questions I ask in
an interview
Do you participate in open source
projects? How about side projects? Do
you have an app on the app store? Do
you have an app on the web? Do you
blog?

14. Questions I ask in
an interview
Have you joined and won any
competitions (not necessarily
programming)? Do you play sports?
Do you run marathons / sing /
dance / paint / etc?

15. Questions I ask in
an interview
What's your favorite programming
language? What was your favorite
before that? What made you change
your favorite?

16. Questions I ask in
an interview
What do you think is the coolest
technology right now? Why do you
think it's so great?

17. Questions I ask in
an interview
What is the biggest mistake that
you've done so far, and what
happened after that?

18. Questions I ask in
an interview
What do you think makes a good
software developer?

19. I ask a few more questions
depending on the position
I’m hiring for

20. More senior developers will
get questions about their
previous work and the like

21. I’m looking for developers
who can solve problems

22. But more importantly, I’m
looking for someone I’d
love to work with everyday

23. The Mindvalley Code of Awesomeness

24. -Stephen Covey
If you can hire people whose passion
intersects with the job, they won't
require any supervision at all. They
will manage themselves better than
anyone could ever manage them.
Their fire comes from within, not
from without. Their motivation is
internal, not external.

25. How do I hire
developers?
I look for people who love what they
do and don’t mind getting paid for it