
Ask HN: Evaluate a programmer’s ability as a non-developer - RyanShook
If you’re good at sales and marketing and looking for a technical cofounder or first hire, how can you evaluate the technical person’s skill without deep knowledge of the underlying technology&#x2F;languages? Are there any tests&#x2F;services out there to help?
======
hluska
First, accept that you likely can't evaluate that person's skill. Hell, highly
skilled people often have trouble evaluating someone else's skill until
they've worked together for at least several weeks or months.

Once you've got that idea out of your head, it's time to figure out ways to
get shit done while minimizing the risk to yourself/your company. One great
way is to start off with contracts, see how things work out and re-evaluate
from there. If you have the budget, do a phase two that will require the
candidate to hire/supervise another developer to get a task completed.

I'd avoid asking developer friends for help as hurt feelings will tend to
spring up out of success or failure. I've learned that when you're starting a
company, one good friend is worth one hundred good employees.

~~~
RyanShook
Great advice, thank you.

~~~
hluska
If you need any help or a sympathetic ear, I used to be obsessed with
startups, but then I had a kid. My email is on my profile - feel free to use
it as you need!

------
TheFullStack
The best way is to have a developer friend/colleague evaluate the candidate's
skill on your behalf. Preferably someone who manages other devs or has had to
hire devs previously. There is really no practical way you yourself can make
the evaluation.

~~~
afarrell
How I imagine this going is that you have a developer friend who supports what
you are doing but who isn’t at a place in her life where she can quit her job
to focus on an early-stage startup. So y’all make an arrangement where you pay
her to do interviews.

How should you structure the payment?

~~~
TheFullStack
Sounds about right. If the founder was a good friend of mine, I would just
screen devs for free. If it was a friend-of-a-friend type situation, I would
bill my normal hourly rate (I am a contractor).

------
rajacombinator
I would want to know 1) does this person have some basic competence at
building something similar to what we need and 2) more importantly, have they
shown initiative, grittiness, and quickness in creating things from scratch
before. (In the form of their own projects they have worked on.) Beyond basic
competence, those second traits are far more important for a potential
cofounder than technical rigor. And a lot of technical people do not have
those skills and cannot operate successfully in a self-directed environment.

------
paktek123
Maybe try asking a technical recruiter for help or if you know any other
experienced programmers if they can help with recruitment process. Otherwise
you'll simply have to take the persons word. There are technical challenges
websites like HackerRank etc that can give you an idea but I'd take them with
a grain of salt as a fresh graduate with no experience can ace those.

------
captain_perl
Software development for an original product is one of the highest-risk
activities that you can do in business. (It's like buying a bar without
permits and expecting to open in a month.)

The best way to reduce that risk is to ask business owners you know, "Who
wrote your prototype?"

You need 2 things:

1) Somebody who has, and can, deliver a working product.

2) Somebody you can communicate with when differences arise.

~~~
RyanShook
If it’s a first hire should I be looking for someone really good at the
specific stack/language or a generalist who can solve problems and connect
with the right talent?

~~~
afarrell
If your company focused on building a specific technology that you will then
apply to lots of industries, or on taking an existing technology and applying
it to a specific business problem?

If the former, then its unlikely you are asking this question since you should
be talking with the grad student who is already your cofounder.

So I’m going to assume you are building a startup like zipcar, taking mostly-
known technologies and applying them to solve a business problem. In this
case, you want someone who knows their particular stack very well (can debug
their own package management issues, can choose good libraries, can navigate
the docs quickly). You don’t need someone who has _contributed_ to developing
the language itself.

> and connect with the right talent

I’m not sure there is a large category of person who simultaneously doesn’t
know their tools well but is well-respected among their contacts in the way
that would draw other engineers to want to work with them. Maybe this refers
to an engineering manager who hasn’t really been doing much programming in the
past 3 years?

EDIT: actually yes, someone with engineering management experience who is a
bit rusty with programming to any particular stack is probably a good
choice—-as long as they previously have been efficient they can pick it back
up again.

------
harlanji
Pay them minimum wage and then give raises until the value they deliver to the
business is met. Modern engineering strives to make programmers cogs via
automation, doc and testing, so hire another random dev to work on your
systems sometimes to validate the work of the first.

~~~
RyanShook
I think this is sarcastic but also maybe a little bit true?

~~~
TheFullStack
There is nothing true about it. Try hiring devs at min wage and report back
what happens...

