

Ask YC: Where have all the good hackers gone? - icey

My company has been trying to locate a really solid developer for a few weeks now, but the quality of developer that we've been seeing has been terribly disheartening.<p>Being in Phoenix, I <i>know</i> that there is some very good talent here. The tough part is that the market here is very, very heavily tilted towards Microsoft development. While there is nothing wrong with that (as it stands today, we're a Microsoft shop, but we're evaluating other options right now), we'd really like to find a developer who is interested in using the best tool for the job more than a developer who just wants to use the hammer they have.<p>So far, we've got postings up on all the major boards, and have been able to search resumes on all the sites that provide it. We're just not seeing the caliber of people that we used to be find on say, a Dice.com.<p>So, do you guys have any suggestions of a place that has worked well for you guys - either when you were looking for a job or looking for employees?
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lacker
Hmm, if your best resumes are from dice.com you are in trouble ;-)

A lot of techy news sites have job boards too. Joel On Software is a good
example, I think Techcrunch has one, dailywtf, there's Startuply if you
consider yourself a startup, Slashdot, 37signals. There are probably more
examples that I'm missing.

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icey
Our best responses have actually come from a Craiglist posting.

Years ago, dice did very well for us; not so much these days.

I'm somewhat aware of a lot of the job boards out there, but I didn't know if
people had any good response from them. It sounds like jobs.joelonsoftware.com
is probably going to be our next stop; but I'd like to spread out anywhere
we're likely to get decent results.

I'd forgotten that 37signals has a board now, so I'm off to check that one as
well.

Thanks a ton!

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prakash
jobs.joelonsoftware.com

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icey
Weird, I'm not sure who would have downvoted you for this suggestion. It was
exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

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alnayyir
Well, as a multi-tool/platform/language programmer having problems finding a
job, I guess I'm seeing the flip-side now.

Not that I believed it didn't exist, I'm painfully aware of the multitudes of
"I'm a java guy" and "I'm a .NET guy" one-hammer-coders.

 _shrugs_ What can you say? I'm just kind of in a doldrum floating from
contract to contract of random dev work. If you're super-crunched for time you
could maybe do the parallel of what I've been doing lately and hire a
contractor to do the work. If not, I don't know what to tell you. Hire off of
here or joelonsoftware like prakash said.

Too bad you're not in Columbus.

