My first few hires were three students from Indian Institute of Science who had no experience in programming. With a bit of guidance from me, they built an SQL database engine prototype in less than 6 months. That was in mid 80s. One of them later joined Microsoft (in the first batch of hires from India), and another went and built an EJB Server from scratch. Others went to work for companies like Cisco, Oracle, Intuit and Microsoft in product engineering positions.
Since then, I have been mostly hiring fresh, promising students, right out of the colleges and investing a few months guiding them, personally. The results have been amazing.
So if you are part of the software industry, look for promising people with the following attributes:
- Curiosity – Always questioning everything and never stop wondering, what if…
- Ability to learn fast
- An attitude of “Can Do”.
- Ability to persist undaunted in the face of failure.
- An urge to create – make something, small or big.
- A certain intelligence about everything around them (not just the subjects they are studying)
- A healthy relationship of people and things
Once a friend asked me why I don’t like aptitude tests. The main reason is that these tests can not find people with any mix of these skills. They are more like filters than tools for discovering amazing people to work with.
2 thoughts on “Seven Attributes of Software Developers”
The other thing about fresh and promising students is that they are undaunted by the complexities of their projects because their lack of experience and knowledge renders them fearless in tackling new problems. This acts as a positive.
Very true.
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