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spectrum1031.com I believe that schedules are necessary, but managers and programmers need to understand that people sometimes are failed with deadlines and there is no big tragedy. Sometimes circumstances, not people are the reason of failed deadlines. It’s useful to meet deadlines for the things you are doing, however there are some nuances in case of programming. How deadlines can be helpful Due to schedules you can plan your future work. If we plan to finish our work on the item “X” during 2 months, then we know that after 3 months we’ll be able to release a new version of software. Schedules are very helpful with rationalization and optimization: if we know that Peter will finalize the item “X” in 2 months, and Bob will make it in 2 days, then it is easier to sort out who is busier. If tomorrow we will find a bug with medium importance, so we can rationally weigh up the situation and assign this bug fix to Bob, because he’ll be free in 2 days. Schedules can also act as an additional method of task specification. Programmer can maneuver under the influence of schedules, somewhere he will be more diligent but somewhere he will not. And that is good, ‘cause the ultimate speed of software development will grow due to such maneuvers. How shedules influence on software development Unfortunately, programming is a difficult thing and even the experts sometimes cannot calculate right schedules in advance. In addition, majority of programmers estimate the duration of development in too optimistic way. So often experts don’t meet the prescribed deadlines. It turns out that programmer need to put a lot of emotions and efforts in order to complete some task on time. The programmer can designate unreasonably optimistic deadlines under managers’ pressure. Even worse, when managers are trying to set up deadlines to programmers. Deadlines are some kind of punitive, reproaches managers’ tools in the eyes of many programmers. This can be the reason of emotional discomfort. Reduced effectiveness due to low emotional level is the main problem. When the programmer realized that he cannot finish the task in time, then he’ll try to increase zeal and concentration. But however this might lead to the following: Reduced programmers’ operational agility. If he knows that he’s falling behind, than he’ll take a passive role in working process. He stops helping the beginners and choose every first decision which comes to his mind, when you need to discuss some future architecture. If there are few people are working on overdue task, it’s likely that each of them will try to decline the responsibility for project, as they will not have enough time to take the initiative and coordinate the overall interaction. The programmer, just like any other person gets tired. If on the average he writes 500 lines of code, and he creates beautiful code, then under the pressure of deadlines he begins to write 750 lines of code. But it will not last forever, as he will start to write ugly code and sooner or later returns to his 500 lines of beautiful code. And right after this overdue task he’ll rollback to negative results with 250 lines of code. In the end, the programmer will think: "What is my fault? Why must I put extra effort into work? Just because of incorrect terms estimation? ". Because of these thoughts people start to loose motivation too quickly. How to solve the situation? As usual, truth is somewhere near between manager and programmer. From managers’ side it is necessary to: Let your programmer to designate his own terms. If I see that programmer feels pressure from my side, then I’ll try to dispose this pressure, because I don’t need the programmer, who designates wrong terms when he sees me. Watch over terms validity. If programmer replies to my question: «It will be ready in 1 month», then it’s better to demonstrate plan for that, how he’s going to arrange his work into substeps, how quickly he’s going to finish each of them. Adjust understanding between programmers. If this is done then: Programmer won’t feel himself depressed if he can’t finish his task on time. He turns to his manager with the following question: «I have no time to finish … what should we do? Can we assign the additional resources to this task or just carry over?». Programmer will be more sincere with manager, as he won’t feel sense of guilt. In programmers’ eyes deadlines are stop being as punitive tool. Look after honesty and fairness in group. There are always programmers who try to gain benefits in a roundabout way. Such programmers should be excluded from team, as they undermine morality. From programmers’ side it is necessary to: Adjust understanding with manager too. Programmer doesn’t want to come to the manager and say "I have no time to ...", and to fear that manager finds him lazy. Evaluate logically the amount of work. Moral and summary There are no right or wrong in the situation. If the quality or speed of software development falls due deadline policy in company, then both are guilty. Using schedules is necessary and convenient. But it seems to me that schedules should be soft, as employees should understand that sometimes it is better not to meet deadline, rather than write low-quality code or to exhaust themselves emotionally. We are not clairvoyants and the schedules sometimes can be inaccurate, so you need to understand that sometimes schedules can be adjusted if there are good reasons for this and better to discuss such reasons long before deadlines.

Victor Volkman, Senior Software Engineer at ProQuest (Ann Arbor, Michigan) Software developer with 30 years of experience, currently working in AWS cloud environment with Python, Linux, MySQL, Lucene/SOLR, and related tools. He has taught Computer Science at community college level. He is also the publisher at LHPress.com having produced more than 100 books in print in the past 13 years. “The sheer silliness of the idea that one developer is 10 times more effective than another is nothing but a gross exaggeration. That being said, the vast majority of software engineers will do no more than the strict assignment of what is given them.  The “10x” designates someone who is willing to challenge themselves to provide more value. As a full-time employee, you are responsible for more than just coding. You have to think about bigger issues such as “Where will the project end up in a year?”, “What do I have to do to get this other department to do their part of the project properly?”, “How am I managing customer expectations?”.... How fast do 10x programmers really code? ‘When you’re in the “zone”, no phone calls, meetings, or breaks, you can comfortably maybe turn out about 200 to 300 good lines of code in an 8 hour shift.’ Most of this depends on how well you understand the particular problem you are solving and the techniques you are using to get there. Python allows for an improvisational type of thinking. You can gather up information from here and there, and put it in a nested-dictionary-of-dictionaries (JSON style), and then pull it back out as needed, so I no longer obsess about whether I should have used an array, or a set, or whatever. I just take whichever feels closest to the simplest representation of what I’m working on. Also, and ONLY with practice, your skills will improve in the divide-and-conquer sense. You’ll identify isolatable parts of the problem quicker and solve specific sub-goals along the way to achieving the overall outcome. You can easily spot the programmers who can’t or are too stubborn to do this. They have functions that are hundreds of lines long and use more than 2 or 3 nested loops in any one function. Either is a sign that you are not decomposing the problem into easier and more testable units. Is there any way to prevent boring-time when coding? There are a few classic ways to alleviate boredom in doing some kind of rote coding work: Really good music will help you stay mentally motivated, make the time pass faster, and drown out the mindless chatter of your co-workers.  Turn the problem on its head. I faced with an extremely dull task of implementing 27 different database queries in Python, which were all slightly different variants of the same problem. I wrote three or four of those, which have exhaustive test cases that I had to prepare from scratch. At the end of that phase, I decided I could not survive such boredom. ‘My solution was to invent a mini-query language, which could express the key features of each query in a YAML file. Thus, I had the excitement of developing a new expressive language, which was a genuine intellectual challenge as opposed to tedious cut-and-paste mechanics. The end result was much more pleasing to myself.’ Try an unfamiliar Design Pattern. Look for an algorithm or a problem-solving technique “out of left field”, something that you have never tried before. Or a newer language feature recently introduced in the latest version of the programming language you are using. Or a third-party open source library that you can use as a “helper”. Should I quit programming as languages are going to be dead? Naive people think that programming is all about languages. Believe me it’s not. After your first 10 years of experience, you will begin to think only in terms of solving problems and the language is the expression of your pure thoughts to get the problem done. At that level, you can switch languages at any time with about two weeks notice. Here’s an example: in 2010 I was hired as a contractor at a Fortune 50 company doing smartphone development for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. However, I had done neither Java nor Objective C on a professional basis — that is, I had taken 3 courses in Java at school. ‘Within three weeks, I had learned how to write and deploy apps on all three platforms (iPhone, Android, and Blackberry).’ This kind of thing happens all the time, you completely change gears and re-learn in about two to three weeks a whole new development system. If you are not willing to suffer this amount of change, then, perhaps, you are not temperamentally suited for this type of career. What communication skills do you find to be most important as a 10x software developer? Every time I violate these rules, embarrassment or lost productivity, or both will happen: Listening. So much depends on actually hearing what people are saying. How do you do this? By not “preparing your answer” while you are listening. Let people finish what they are saying. You think you are doing them a favor by interrupting a question in the middle. In reality, you are “one-upping” them very subtlety. Did you really think that saving two seconds by cutting them off was going to help? Ask questions when you don’t understand. Especially each time a keyword or acronym goes by. The longer you wait, the dumber you will seem and it will be psychologically impossible to ask “What does HTTP mean?”, when you are 10, 20, or 30 minutes into the conversation. Put it in writing. Always document what you are about to do before you do it. This insures that your manager knows what you are doing and can guide you if you are heading into the weeds. This is much better than spending a day writing code that solves the wrong problem. Ask for specific examples. Never start a project without at least what is believed to be an accurate simulation of data. Ask for a simpler/simplest example. When you are faced with a complex transaction, fallback and ask for one with fewer pieces to understand or less preparation to see if you can understand how to solve the simplest case. Then increase in complexity. As a 10x programmer, do you slack at times? In order to keep your mind sharp, you have to have the ability to take breaks. Even a Forumla 1 racecar has to take a pitstop, get the tires changed and so forth before heading out at a top speed. The trick is to do things that are at least somewhat work related: Catch up on work emails; Read news about your programming language or platform. This may even trigger some fresh ideas; Ask you co-workers about their daughter’s volleyball tournament (or whatever); Ask those who said they were previously stuck whether they found a way around and if so how they did it; Do a “circuit” of the building, an entire floor or perhaps two, to get the blood moving and raise your heartrate again. At what age will a software developer not be able to get a raise? With 30 years under my belt as a professional software developer, I think it is fair to say that you’ll not get “major” raises above 10 years experience except by joining a new company.  Do you want a real raise? Start working for YOURSELF on nights and weekends. Stretch yourself into an unfamiliar area which will force you to learn a few new skills. You won’t get much more than pennies on the dollar if your wages are all tied to working for The Man. Joe Francis, Architect at Pull-A-Part (Doraville, Georgia) 56 years old in 2017, 26 years as a military officer, 25 years as a Microsoft platform software engineer for Fortune 500s, 19 of that as a manager or architect. “I am typically cranking out close to 100,000 lines of code per year, but I feel like I've paid a high price and had ideal conditions to achieve that goal. At the risk of sounding like a braggart, here are some of my stats: Worked an average of 74 hours per week with no vacations; Read over 2000 books on computers; Typically allowed to focus on the work for days at a time without interruption, often working from home; Typically had the luxury of others trying to intercept distractions before they got to me; Typically able to achieve good focus in a matter of moments after being distracted. How do you prepare yourself to work everyday? I always start the day with a plan, typically setting aside about 30 minutes to review my open tasks and prioritize them. I generally prioritize whatever my boss wanted first, then communications tasks, then start working through them in a priority order. Is eight hours too short for a 10x software engineer? If you are developing software in a focused way for 8–9 hours per day, you are offering an employer excellent value.   What distinguishes a great software engineer from a good one? A terrible software engineer leaves defects in the code that routinely have to be found by others. A good engineer can write code that is reasonably bug free and can accurately estimate how long it will take.  A great engineer can do the work of three good engineers, design the system, and work effectively with others. In software engineering, is it better to focus on one field or try to learn a handful of fields? In my experience, it is best to master a particular platform, such as .NET or Java, but master the entire stack of fundamental technologies from the user interface level to the database. Maintaining that mastery is best for the working software engineer. Understanding computer science topic in breadth and depth comes second. Mastering specialty technologies like CRM, ERP, content management systems, etc., would come last. This is because if your platform and computer science fundamentals are in a good shape, you can learn other things pretty quickly, and competent employers understand that. What should a 40-year-old software engineer do to be relevant in the high tech industry when he turns 50? I have routinely devoted an average of a couple of hours per day for over 35 years to maintaining and improving my technical skills. I typically divide my time equally between learning new things (docker right now), reviewing fundamentals (Java right now), and higher-level stuff (microservice architecture right now). If you learn all the techniques of writing quality code, learn some DBA skills, and learn some project management skills, that will benefit you later. I have never gotten tired of learning more about computer programming - for me it was simply very exciting.  All day at work, during commutes, at the gym, even just two minutes walking to my car - I am always reading something, listening to something, or watching something. I almost always have a set of wireless earbuds around my neck to listen to more things. Some people double or triple the speed of such media, but I typically set it at about 1.5x. For a lot of reading, I just scan a topic quickly. I’ll read enough to know where I can look up essentials later on if I need to, only reading in depth if I think I really need to. I have completed about 80 college courses, 1500 Pluralsight courses, and can easily help my two college-aged children with any subject at their university. What do 10X software engineers do in their spare time? Here is what I do in my spare time, in order: Physical Fitness. This is mainly because I am 55 years old and concerned that this should be my top priority now if I want to keep working. I use Marine Corps physical fitness test standards as my guide and typically run 3–4 miles five times a week. Time with Family. I have a wife, two elderly parents, and two college-aged children. I probably spend less time with family than others do, as I am kind of work-focused. I know where all my time is going and even keep track of it. Home Maintenance. I own a nice home (3600 square foot). A lot of this is done by others, but I do the hard things. One thing I don’t do - I don’t watch much TV. Marc Weiner (Founder at Ciro. Formerly Director of Front-End Engineering, UX at Advizr (New York, New York)) 15+ years of experience, expertise is in software architecture, full-stack development, technical strategy, R&D, process design, team building, leadership, business analysis, and UI. He has worked across medical, industrial, e-commerce, financial, and entertainment industries.  “If you want to become a great programmer, I would recommend working on your English (this applies to native English speakers as well). A great programmer communicates well with others. Great programmers thoroughly understand the problems that they are trying to solve and to do that, they ask lots of good questions. Other than lots of time, practice, reading, and experience—communication is what differentiates the junior programmers from senior programmers. So my recommendations are: Read. Fiction, non-fiction, programming books, and blogs/articles. This will help with your English and also allow you to keep growing and prevent you from hitting a plateau. Try to understand the theory and take part in the conversation. Growth ensures that you won’t become obsolete and will always have a job. Practice and stay curious. Put problems in front of you and rise to the challenge. If you don’t know how something works, you should be curious about how it works. Go find out. Try to get a job where you can have a mentor. It’s much easier to have someone help you, and they will push you forward much faster. Try to understand the business and product side of things. Why are you building what you’re building? How are people using it and why? What is their mind frame? What is the business model? Learning how to be a great programmer is a lifelong journey, and only a fraction of it is actually knowing how to write code. Knowing how to write code does not make one a software engineer—much in the same way that being able to speak English does not give one the ability to argue a point, write a novel, or compose a poem. Programming is a career in learning. Don’t worry about memorizing syntax or the latest framework fad. These things are constantly changing anyway. ‘In a year, you may be doing something entirely different.’ These days I focus on User Experience (UX for short). Much of it isn’t even really programming. It’s a mashup of complementary disciplines (psychology, art, human interaction, logic, etc). For me, programming the most sophisticated algorithm and writing esoteric code isn’t important. Quite the opposite—I want simple looking, pedestrian code that’s easy to read. The only thing that is constant in software is change. I like to think of myself as a professional student. Don’t worry about what you know today. Worry about what you’ll know tomorrow. Personally, I’d stick with PHP. It may not be the hippest, coolest language out there today, but it still runs the majority of websites and some of the largest most popular ones! It’s proven that it can scale, is flexible, and is relatively easy to learn. There is a massive community to help you out (bigger than most others combined). For the foreseeable future, you won’t have a hard time finding a job as a PHP programmer, and there is often less ‘hipster shit’ going on within the community. They focus on getting the job done and don’t care too much about what other people think. You’ll find that PHP (or any language for that matter) has its strengths and weaknesses. You’ll learn how to play to its strengths, and compensate for its problems. You’ll learn that a programming language is just a tool—it’s not what’s important. Problem solving, self-study, collaboration, and domain knowledge is more important.  ‘A great programmer, on the other hand, has the ability to write readable code. I usually spend 1/4 of my time solving a problem, and 3/4 my time making it readable to anyone not myself.’ In my opinion, if you learn how to make your code neat, clean and organized, you’ll already be ahead of 90% of the developers out there. I started programming at a very young age, and have over 15 years of professional experience. I think my abilities simply come from my experience having worked across various industries, and in many roles. I’ll tell you what worked for me (my last full-time salary and job offers reflect that): Get a job that you’re a little under-qualified for, but where you’ll be able to learn or improve at a skill that you’d like to have. This skill should be applicable to your next job. Leave as soon as you feel like you have mastered that skill, or taken as much as you can from the job. It’s probably best to stay there somewhere between 6–12 months, depending on the job. Repeat step 1. That’s what worked for me. I talked myself into a lead front-end software engineer position at Marvel, building their new “responsive” website, without any “responsive design” experience. I was able to sell myself as someone who likes to learn new things, excels at R&D, and someone who cared about costs and deadlines. Within the following months of hard work and a lot of reading/experimentation, I became a leading expert on the subject of responsive design.   Takeaways are: 1) never stop learning and 2) work at many different companies, never staying long at any one place. If you do this correctly, you also get a substantial salary bump, every step of the way. You’ll almost always get more money finding a new job, than staying at your current company. Always go for salary, don’t worry about stock options. Unless you fall in love with the company you’re working for, it’s too risky staying at the same startup, hoping your stock will be worth something someday. It probably won’t—and in the meantime, you’ll be stagnating, and not learning as much as you could. Work hard and furiously at every job, take a break, and then jump into the next. Keep selling yourself, and getting in over your head. If your next job isn’t at least a little scary, then find a scarier one. You need to enjoy what you’re doing, and you’ll need to keep the rest of your life in balance. Don’t burn yourself out. ‘60 hour weeks for extended periods is NOT recommended, and is not a good long-term strategy. Also, make sure you have fun once in awhile! Go kayaking, snowboarding, whatever!’ What is one quality that separates 10x programmers from the rest? ‘If I were to choose only one, it would be the ability to predict future problems before they occur.’ This kind of developer is able to draw on a vast array of past experience, and intuitively recognize the familiarity of the problem. He/she is able to think about edge cases, both from a technical perspective and a business perspective. The problem may even be outside of his/her scope of purview. This ability allows the developer to bypass the iterative process to a degree, and save their employers potentially millions of dollars in lost time, effort, and business opportunity. Again, this kind of developer is leaning heavily on past experience, recognize familiar patterns, and the ability to take off their blinders and think of the bigger picture. This comes with age, maturity, and having worked on a variety of projects and roles. How to recover from 'programmers burnout'? It’s proven that working too hard will lower your productivity, with the end result being burnout—which means losing talent and hiring someone new. This is a massive waste, and makes no sense for a company with limited resources. Most likely, you’ll be burning yourself out for little compensation, while at the same time, not growing in your career. If you were learning new things instead of doing “gruntwork as fast as possible,” I don’t believe you would have burned out so quickly.  ‘Personally, I’ve experienced burnout severely myself. The key is to be social, get away from the computer for a while, exercise, go outside, and enjoy life. Again, programming doesn’t have to be unhealthy. It’s piss poor management who leans heavily on their subordinates to make up for their incompetence that makes it unhealthy. In a culture of one-upping and backstabbing, nobody wins. Not the company, and not the programmers. So if you see one of these…walk away. It’s just not worth it.’ Never stop learning, and never stop moving. Is it a good idea to take a break from your software job to develop your software skills? Sometimes you just need to work on something for yourself. Just imagine no deadlines, nobody telling you what to do, or how to do it. You can use any language you want, any technology you want. You can work on all of it; Front-end, Back-end, server architecture, build tools, QA, anything. The results of this can be eye-opening. Aside from possibly building something that can someday turn into a business, here are a few benefits: Since you’re doing everything, you are guaranteed to learn something new. You may learn to appreciate your co-worker's jobs, and get a better understanding of what it is that they do. This will help you communicate better with them, and will make you a better engineer, manager, or product owner. You can finally learn/test out that new language, technology, or library, without consequences. You may discover you like doing x better than y. It’s nice to take a break from your job! People work too damn much. Build your project on your own schedule, and have time to relax. You will see how fast you can work without dealing with people and documentation. Or, you’ll learn the value of people helping you and documentation.

I’ve been working in an outsourcing software development business from a vendor side for many years and on some projects, I have to be involved in the process of creating remote dedicated software development teams as an account and overall control manager. Usually, this new staff (mostly software programmers) is going to be a part of existing dedicated teams or we plan such programmers to be the core of new teams. My experience is connected with creating/augmentation small/medium sized teams (from 2 to 25 people) where direct project management and technical leads (employees of clients) are sometimes situated overseas. This peculiarity (remote and overseas manager who approves the last candidate in the team), requires a specific approach for the exact hiring process and this article is aimed at providing some tips and tricks on how to organize it effectively. If our internal personnel resources are not enough to satisfy customer’s needs, we usually hire programmers from our job market. To optimize the recruiting process and improve the result, I have divided it into three key parts: Pre-screening and Preparation, Interviewing, and Hiring. Preparation and screening The primary motivation behind the groundwork is to ensure that your outsourcing vendor comprehends the job vacancy clearly, as well as having the capacity to envisage the most qualified individual for the role (under skills and salary package requirements) - this will aid in finding the ideal candidate. In order to increase the number of quality candidates and decrease the number of irrelevant ones, vendor recruiters should prepare the most detailed, attractive (but, of course, honest) description of the vacancy and working conditions. At least the following information should be provided in a clear and obvious way: Information about the vendor, its location; optionally about you as a client. Project details — every project has its own history, perspectives, and advantages. It is important to mention its duration, age, and give some links if possible. Even if it is only supporting the current system (some individuals are content with this kind of work — providing aid and not being interested in more taxing endeavors). Potential candidate’s role and charge at a project – vendors should pay attention to this point. It is crucial to provide true info about the position. It's better to mention if the project assumes any career growth in perspective, business trips or other benefits. Project team – who are they? Great if a newcomer will consider them as a talented team! Benefits and Perks of vendor’s social package. Ideal and must have skills, education, level of English and required years of working experience, etc. Planned budget. If you provide detailed information on each point, you will get a lot of CVs. If you receive a little of CVs, it means that either your recruiting team is not performing well enough or there is required to be fixed in vacancy description (like in the picture below) to attract more candidates: Anyway, with the low or high number of CVs, the next step will be - SCREENING. The major goal of screening is to make sure that your outsourcing vendor doesn’t miss any potentially suitable candidates. Screening a lot of CVs looks like a very simple process, but actually, many people are making mistakes at this most important initial stage. The common mistake is in conclusion for the definition of an “ideal” and “non-perfect” CV of a candidate. "Ideal" CV means the candidate has a lot of required experience, references, text in CV is divided into logical blocks and everything looks perfect. When getting such a CV, you want to hire this person immediately. Please, keep calm, because sometimes it means that either: Candidate used someone who helped him with a fulfilling CV (real programmers care little about formatting text in CV). Or candidate has already visited many companies and is trying to create a better CV to improve his chances at the next interview. Better to double check all skills, experience and career steps mentioned in such CVs. I had an unpleasant experience with candidates with “ideal” CVs, so please pay serious attention to this point. “Non-perfect" CV means the candidate does not provide a lot of details. It is a maximum-page list with a very laconic description of their working career, skills, and experience. Sometimes these CVs do not pass the first recruiter’s filter. Not all talented programmers are good at describing their skills how recruiters like. That’s why you have to pay additional attention to such CVs and if you see the candidate is supposed to be appropriate for your project, do not hesitate to review such CVs more accurately and get more info from this candidate. Believe me, sometimes people with "non-perfect CV" surprise you with their performance. Though some CVs still should be passed on. After your outsourcing vendor has fulfilled Preparation and Screening stages, he definitely has to ask his recruiters to speak with selected candidates over phone/Skype to check: candidate’s communication skills – if required English, as well candidate’s adequateness, personal qualities and motivation candidate’s opinion on the experience of some key technologies used in the project terms of start introductory level of requested salary That is a completing process for two previous steps. All the received info will help your outsourcing vendor to create the initial profile (at least in their mind for each potential candidate and compare how it matches their expectations. According to my practice, if at this stage a candidate complements at least 50% to the "ideal" profile, he (she) can move to the next stage. You can ask "why only 50% of similarity", the answer is simple - the candidate has passed, but the screening process, and you never know how a real person will perform at the following stages and if you find better candidates. The accurate Preparation and Screening processes will definitely increase the chances of getting a lot of quality candidates. Interviewing The principal goal is to make sure that the candidate is fully suitable for your requirements for the project or at least he (she) has the good potentiality to improve required skills in the shortest period. To make the process more effective and less time consuming for our client we use 2 steps of technical interview scenario: First step - all the actions being fulfilled on the outsource Executor side (on our side), such as seeking for people, screening them, preliminary and technical interviewing. Second and final step is done by our client, who receives just A FEW best candidates from tens screened and who can carry out full technical (based on results of the first step) or just general interview (checking some critical things like a degree of matching with the team on client’s side, communication abilities, level of English etc.). Usually, I start the first step after I’ve completed building a candidate’s profile and got all the needed clarifications from recruiters and clients. Time is really important and your vendor shouldn’t wait for CV’s of different candidates. They should work with CVs one by one as they come from recruiters. Before I arrange a technical interview, I call each candidate via Skype or phone to have an “overall discussion”. The main goal of this action is to communicate with a particular candidate, present a company and project to him (her), arouse additional interest and check his (her) adequateness, personal qualities etc. In any case, it is really a friendly gesture when someone from team management (but not recruiters) takes an initiative to talk directly with a candidate informally and candidates appreciate it certainly. Note: ‘It takes some time, but it’s just 15-20 minutes via Skype or phone and the eventual result has a huge effect - it intrigues the candidate much more than from conversations with recruiters and awaits the following steps.’ Next step is the technical interview. Mostly, I prefer to do that in live mode - we invite a candidate to our office, meet and greet him/her with our technical interviewers (they could work together in the future) and examine him/her technically. This approach works perfectly but has an issue negative moment – it takes a lot of time since tens of candidates can be interviewed before we will find one rock star. Note: ‘In order to save time of valuable tech specialists it might be a good idea to arrange a preliminary technical interview (10-15 min) via Skype/phone when we determine if this candidate is worthy of being invited to the office and spend 1 - 2 hours of tech-related talk. If this concern is explained properly, candidates will fully agree with it, because this procedure saves their time also and technical interviewer’s time is really expensive nowadays.’ Keep in mind we hire programmers into your team (as a part of your dedicated team) and a friendly gesture from your outsourcing vendor is to inform you on time about updates on the results achieved. I email to my client presenting only 3 CVs of candidates interviewed and selected by our tech team + brief comments on each candidate. If there are over 3 CVs I prepare an Excel list with pros and cons of the candidates. This informative and clear email will make the choice of who your team interviews, eventually. This meeting will be conducted using Skype, Google Hangout or any other service for voice conferences. Note: ‘It will be a good idea if your overseas technical team will be informed by your vendor what questions (in one page list) the vendor has already asked the candidate and what were the answers (pass or no pass). That will really help you not to check additionally.’ Hiring The main goal here is to make sure that all of the previous efforts lead to the positive final result and you will not lose your “ideal” candidates, otherwise it will take time/effort to find new ones. In case you see that one or a few candidates are suitable for the project, you can ask your vendor to prepare a personal Job Offer. The most important thing is describing calendar terms of Job Offer acceptance (usually it is about 2-3 business days). This moment will discipline candidates on fast responding to Job Offer acceptance or decline. You can ask why the terms of accepting or disclaiming are so short? I insist that in case the candidate you’ve chosen has passed so many steps and he/she is still available, it will be easy for him/her to make the final decision. Also, making a Job offer is significant. It can be a final personal meeting in a relaxing and friendly atmosphere in the vendor’s office where a person who is in charge of this exact position will present the Offer accompanying it with some inspiring message. We send the Offer via email, but you or your vendor should inform your candidate via phone and explain to him/her that he/she was chosen as the best candidate and so on and so forth. Sometimes you like a candidate but you feel that for some reasons he/she will not accept your offer (for example a project is not so suitable for him/her, or proposed salary package is not fully suitable to the candidate’s expectations). Here, you can make a Job offer to several candidates simultaneously and just wait to see who will accept it first - in this case, you need to clarify to the candidates that the offer was made to several people and the best candidate will be selected from those who agree. I can mention that you/your vendor can combine the approaches described according to your wishes. The most important thing here is to have a fast and effective process to hire proper and qualified programmers. And hope your vendor won’t forget to inform the candidates who will not have passed your selection steps. Who knows, probably a couple of weeks/months later, you will interview them for a different project and they will fully suit it. As last words, I wish you all the best when working with outsourcing vendors as like in any business. It is a partnership of 2 companies where both depend on one another in order to achieve their business results goals.