Searching for talented & passionate coders.

/* The best programmers are an order of magnitude more productive than the average, they write software that does amazing things, with less code and fewer bugs. We're passionate about finding these people. */

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.applyForJob();

foreach ([coders, web developers,
          software developers, programmers,
          software engineers, computer scientists])
  if (you're passionate about software development &&
      software development is more than 'just a job' &&
      you want to work where your talent is valued) {
    we'd like you to apply ;
    send your resume to apply for job ;
  }

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We find software developers for employers. You might call us recruiters; we prefer developers who find developers. Since 2005 we've found hundreds of new team members for employers in Melbourne.

faq: do we only find coders? answer: we specialise in finding coders. We also find great testers, project managers, systems admins, technical support people, linux engineers, network engineers, business analysts & tech writers.

// we blog & tweet on the topic of coding talent

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Stuff you must know: your tools

Fri 21 May 2010

Few programmers have in-depth knowledge of the primary development technology that they have chosen to work with. Programmers work with Java, C#, C++, VB.NET and PHP and other languages in blissful ignorance of key concepts, features and functions of the programming language, the libraries, the API’s, the object models, the frameworks and the virtual machines that they code with every day.

In five years of searching for programmers I’ve made alot of phone calls to job applicants to find out about their skills and experience. During the phone interview I ask key questions aimed at quickly identifying if someone doesn’t know key areas of their primary development technology – things that someone with in-depth knowledge would know. If they can’t adequately answer the questions then it’s fairly safe to say they don’t know their primary development technology in depth. The vast majority of programmers that I speak to do not know their primary development technology in depth.

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Stuff you must know: object-oriented fundamentals

Fri 14 May 2010

I’ve run job advertisements recently that ask for people “who visit sites like Joel On Software and Stack Overflow”. This has led to an increase in the number of job seekers who during the phone interview claim to read Joel On Software and Stack Overflow. Perhaps that’s because the job advertisements are working, and attracting the people who do read those blogs. I don’t think so however because scratch the surface and these same people don’t know much, if anything, about those sites and few of them have a Stack Overflow account that shows a history of participation. People read the job ads and craft their answers to meet the requirements. They’re telling me what I want to hear.

So I’m hesitant to blog openly about what I’m looking for in a software developer for fear that I’ll get people faking it and learning the minimum to get past the interview questions. On the other hand maybe some people will actually go and learn and fill the gaps in their knowledge, making themselves better programmers. I’m willing to risk it, in the hope that more people applying for jobs will have some grasp of the basics.

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What makes a great coder?

Fri 5 May 2010

What makes a great coder – have your say.

Everyone has a different opinion about what makes a great coder, and we’d like to hear what you think. So we’re asking visitors to the SuperCoders website to give their opinions on what makes a great coder. We’ve put a form on the front page of the site at www.supercoders.com.au - let us know what you think makes a great coder.

As a follow-up I’ll publish a blog post further down the track with my thoughts on what makes a great coder. Bonus points if you can identify the guy in the picture - one of the world’s greatest coders.

Bonus points if you can identify the guy in the picture - one of the world’s greatest coders.

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The skills matrix

Fri 30 April 2010

Morpheus: What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this (holds up a Duracell battery).
Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible.
Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
- Quote from “The Matrix”

Something unusual caught my attention while scanning through the résumé of a software engineer recently. Their technology skills matrix listed “TRS-DOS”, an ancient technology I hadn’t heard of for many years. Huh? I stopped and thought about it for a second. Is this person telling me their technology skills include TRS-DOS? On their professional résumé? What the? The only TRS-DOS I know is the operating system (if it can be called that) for the old 1977 era Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, an 8-bit Z80 based machine which was discontinued in 1981. TRS-DOS is a technology that has been dead for nearly 30 years.

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Coders who don’t read

Fri 23 April 2010

I fell in love with computers when I was about 11 years old in the dim dark days of the birth of the personal computer circa 1979. I was in 7th grade. One day the science teacher brought this strange machine into school and set it up at a desk in a dark corner of a small mezzanine floor, elevated twelve feet up above the school science room which was full of benches and cupboards containing strange, arcane scientific equipment like pipes, tubes, meters, bottles with rubber stoppers, chemicals, electronics and soldering irons. It’s impossible to describe how totally and immediately I was taken when I saw that tiny black and white screen with the text and blinking cursor. The computer was running a text adventure game and I was totally immersed and my life changed forever. Most ordinary people had not even heard of computers at this time so it was like living in science fiction. It was a rare magical moment in life. From that point on most of my free time was spent thinking about computers.

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Evidence of passion

Fri 16 April 2010

There’s no substitute for passion in a coder. All the other traits of a great coder spring from their passion – curiosity, work ethic, desire to know more, desire to do a great job. Passion drives the beginning coder through their career to become a master of the craft of software development.

The vast majority of software developers don’t convey their passion in their resume. Instead they tend to stick to the same old resume formula: name, address, university qualifications, a technology skills matrix, and a timeline of work history. Resumes that follow this formula are plain vanilla - they don’t grab the attention of the reader, and they risk being dropped into the “no thanks” pile by the whoever reads them.

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