The essays and followers surely helped, but there are lots of basic pragmatic things you can do to make yourself a desirable employer even if you aren't a great essayist. Just some obvious ones off the top of my head:
- Have sensible working hours (30 to 40 hours a week is optimal).
- Either let people work from home, or give them private offices.
- Don't have idiotic hiring criteria like buzzword matching or college degrees. (Meta: don't have the personnel department doing the hiring.)
- Get at least the basics of tools and process right. You don't have to let people code in Lisp or Haskell, but when a candidate asks you about version control, the answer better hadn't be "oh we don't have time for that here".
- If you are requiring people to work in the office, don't quibble about things like high-spec machines and good chairs that cost a small fraction of the cost of hiring people.
Hit everything on that checklist and even if you're still not quite as sought after as Fog Creek, you'll be well out in front of most of your competitors at little cost in either time or money (and infinitely far in front of Fog Creek for any candidates who won't or can't live in New York).
- Have sensible working hours (30 to 40 hours a week is optimal).
- Either let people work from home, or give them private offices.
- Don't have idiotic hiring criteria like buzzword matching or college degrees. (Meta: don't have the personnel department doing the hiring.)
- Get at least the basics of tools and process right. You don't have to let people code in Lisp or Haskell, but when a candidate asks you about version control, the answer better hadn't be "oh we don't have time for that here".
- If you are requiring people to work in the office, don't quibble about things like high-spec machines and good chairs that cost a small fraction of the cost of hiring people.
Hit everything on that checklist and even if you're still not quite as sought after as Fog Creek, you'll be well out in front of most of your competitors at little cost in either time or money (and infinitely far in front of Fog Creek for any candidates who won't or can't live in New York).