On Developer Hiring: The Elephant In The Room

The software industry is obsessed with hiring. Every week brings new articles on how to find those mythical 10x developers.

The elephant in the room is that most developers can do most corporate jobs, so perhaps hiring is just not as important as we give it credit for.

Do not get me wrong. I appreciate what a great developer can do, and I have worked with them in the past. In certain contexts these people can do remarkable things: deliver high quality code in volume and create a great deal of value for the business.

The issue is that a lot of the work we do simply does not require superstar developers. If you are working on some CRUD application or moving messages around, then there is limited scope for a great developer to apply their talents. They are effectively operating at the same standard as their peers.

Even where innovation and high quality code can really benefit the organisation, many organisations place a limit on how far the talented developer can go. Politics and process both conspire to slow the developer down and prevent them from operating at the full capacity of their talents.

The net result is that even average developers can get by in the typical software job, and the talents of the 10x developer go to waste in the typical organisation. The range at which we all operate is normalised.

When the right developer comes together with the right organisation it can be magic, but I do think that we focus too much on hiring rather than solving some of these organisational problems. Those problems are often what stops your existing developers from reaching their full potential.

You can follow me on Twitter for more short notes like this one. If you want the longer version of this argument, read why DevOps matters to developers and what agile software development means.