This one caught my eye tonight and I wanted to capture it for posterity if nothing else.

No, I Wouldn’t Hire a Programmer That Has No Interest in Programming Outside of Business Hours

I read this on proggit:

A while ago my company interviewed someone who, in the course of some standard question, said that after the 5 o’clock whistle blows, they avoid computers totally. They don’t have any hobbies involving their PC and often don’t turn it on unless they are expecting an important email or need to look up directions. I followed up to ask how they got into programming and they said they took the right courses in college and now has had a few jobs doing it.

Would you hire a software engineer who isn’t a hobbyist programmer? What if they avoid computers totally at home? Does it matter if a candidate has strictly a professional interest in software and just pretends it doesn’t exist outside the office?

Here’s another way to frame this question: Would I even interview a programmer who only works their programming job from 9-5? If not, why not?

The answer is remarkably simple. No, I would not interview them, for the simple reason that I don’t know who they are and they don’t know who I am. When I am hiring, my first and best source of prospective colleagues is my network. Industry people I know. Where do I get to know people? Conferences. Open source. Blogging. Twitter. I don’t advertise my job openings on monster.com. So how did this person come to sit in front of me to tell me he(?) pretends software doesn’t exist outside of the office?

I think you have to align your values with your complete hiring process, not just with your interview questions. If you value people who are passionate about their craft, you have to use a different means of selecting prospects than if you value having warm bodies sitting in chairs. If you want a warm body with a certain minimal competence in a chair, you use monster.com and recruiters to find people. if you value community and craft, you use your network and your community.

Done this way, questions like the above tend to take care of themselves.

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