
Ask HN: How do you identify potential in a software developer? - msurekci
Is it possible to see if someone is going to be a great developer in the future? In sports it is possible so, I was just wondering if it is in the tech world.<p>What are signs to look out for?
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postblogism
While there are all kinds of tests and ways to measure a developer's ability,
most of these are outdated and were more appropriate 15 years ago prior to
mass framework adoption - developers now just aren't going to spend a lot of
time doing low level algorithms, because they don't need to.

But the best way that I've come across is to judge character traits.
Intelligent people always have listening as a core component, where as less
intelligent people will be very dismissive and constantly interrupt people.
These are traits you can definitely sift out in interviews.

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mpbm
I'd say a common framework for understanding "greatness" is to categorize it
as "good with the thing" and "good with the people who are good with the
thing." It's unusual for a profitable project to be small enough for one
person to accomplish. Normally you need a team. So the split between "officer"
and "enlisted" or "executive" and "staff" is extremely common and people
normally excel at one of them, not both.

So a great coder will have different characteristics than a great manager of
coders. The most obvious difference is probably that one has no potential for
leading until they at least acknowledge the possibility of empathy being maybe
a little bit important. If they aren't open to that, then they're in the
"coder" category by default.

So, in that "coder" category, building on your sports analogy, technical
experts first shake out unfairly based on natural talent and what resources
(human, material, etc) they happen to have. After that it's all about hard
work and creativity. If they coast on their random starting stats they go into
the "won't be a great coder" category by default.

