The person we hired has these qualities:
* Dedicated
* Honest
* Humble
* Good designer (can be useful in the future)
* Loves tech
He lack of:
* Programming skills
* Debugging skills
* Hardcore stuff skills (like UNIX-fu)
Our job requirements were:
* Extremely Liberal Sense of Humor [ GOOD ]
* Basic Understanding of Web Programming from a high level [ KINDA ]
* Basic debugging skills in JavaScript, jQuery & CSS [ KINDA ]
* Basic debugging skills in PHP OR Python [ NOPE ]
* Organizational Skills [ WE DON'T REALLY KNOW ]
* Highly effective communication skills [ HE COOL ]
* Willing & Able to learn at lightning pace [ SO FAR, YES! ]
Would you hire this person?
Many of you, would say NO! we believe in hiring the best! (e.g.: Paul Graham and Joel Spolsky), that's nonsense IMHO, because if you think about it, the crappy programmers, will be staying unemployed and you either can't find good programers (they all have jobs, our case) or the crappy (with potential) programmers can't get a job and look for jobs in other areas (we got an applicant that was working in the medical field, writing test specs).
Believe in training
We believe in training, we know that we can't find a very good programmer (or QA agent), so we knew we needed training material, we put together a good path for the QA position:
The QA person needs to be able to test Django applications:
- http://anybodycanprogram.com/ my friend's book, about learning programming
- http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index Zed Shaw's book
- http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/intro/tutorial01/#intro-tutorial01 Django tutorial
- http://diveintopython.org/ advanced level not required
- http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html by Eric S. Raymond - recommended not required
Many of you, would say NO! we believe in hiring the best! (e.g.: Paul Graham and Joel Spolsky), that's nonsense IMHO, because if you think about it, the crappy programmers, will be staying unemployed and you either can't find good programers (they all have jobs, our case) or the crappy (with potential) programmers can't get a job and look for jobs in other areas (we got an applicant that was working in the medical field, writing test specs).
Believe in training
We believe in training, we know that we can't find a very good programmer (or QA agent), so we knew we needed training material, we put together a good path for the QA position:
The QA person needs to be able to test Django applications:
- http://anybodycanprogram.com/ my friend's book, about learning programming
- http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index Zed Shaw's book
- http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/intro/tutorial01/#intro-tutorial01 Django tutorial
- http://diveintopython.org/ advanced level not required
- http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html by Eric S. Raymond - recommended not required
We believe if this new hire can get through all this material, he can be in the level we want, not only as a QA agent, also as a programmer which is in the end the final goal!
BONUS 1: QA is not an area where you want to be
After working 3 years as a QA, I realized that NOBODY who has dreams or goals in life, wants to be a QA.
QA made me want to start my own company also lead me to bad performance at work.
A young person cannot be QA for a long time, because QA is: boring, repetitive and frustrating. Why do you think software companies hire QA agents?, because programmers don't like doing boring, repetitive and frustrating tasks.
We figured out the best we can do with this young talented hire, is to train him as much as we can meanwhile he does QA stuff.
In the end is just a job, and some jobs are supposed to be like that, just do it, be professional and don't stay there for too long.
BONUS 2: Hiring is hard
Getting good people is hard, getting people that is honest is hard, most of the people are not qualified for the job, overvalue themselves, and they think we're dumb enough to believe in their bullshit (seriously guys, we're smart ;)).
Any advice? Contact me.
After working 3 years as a QA, I realized that NOBODY who has dreams or goals in life, wants to be a QA.
QA made me want to start my own company also lead me to bad performance at work.
A young person cannot be QA for a long time, because QA is: boring, repetitive and frustrating. Why do you think software companies hire QA agents?, because programmers don't like doing boring, repetitive and frustrating tasks.
We figured out the best we can do with this young talented hire, is to train him as much as we can meanwhile he does QA stuff.
In the end is just a job, and some jobs are supposed to be like that, just do it, be professional and don't stay there for too long.
BONUS 2: Hiring is hard
Getting good people is hard, getting people that is honest is hard, most of the people are not qualified for the job, overvalue themselves, and they think we're dumb enough to believe in their bullshit (seriously guys, we're smart ;)).
Any advice? Contact me.
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