Recruiting Great Developers

I still have homework to do, so I'm going to try blazing through this post. I may not be an employer trying to find top-notch employees, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't entertained or educated enough by Joel Splosky's blog post today on how to find great developers to talk about it. This guy should really get a medal for posts like this one, because he pretty much hit it right on the nose as far as I can tell. Since I only know a lot about recruiting students, I'll focus in on that. Everything he says is true: a lot of students definitely procrastinate on securing an internship, and a lot of companies are hesitant to hire students, but both things are bad. The companies that do it right do what Fog Creek does: they seek out the best rather than casting too large of a net, and they know how to wine and dine when they realize that they probably are going to want you to come on board. Appearances really are everything, and I was right about what I expected out of TI in general based on when they flew me up there to interview me. It counts for so much more than people may think. Not only that, but I definitely feel that the companies that rely on automated job posting site messages to attract students are less impressive than the ones that actually come to campus to speak to students and interview them there (although phone interviews aren't necessarily a bad thing for some of the more exclusive companies, like nVidia). I personally believe that the best way to find the really brilliant developers are to nab them straight out of college, and I think that more and more companies are starting to see that now as they start hiring older people who just suck because they've always sucked (not a jab to older people, just a jab at incompetent programmers). I've definitely met people here at UT that I feel fortunate to have met because I can't fathom what they'll be doing some day, and I think that if employers want to grab them, it's now or never! I admire companies like Microsoft that look past your GPA for qualities that would qualify you as a genius, in fact.

Bad news for Intel: Dell has decided to incorporate more AMD chips in its products without official word as to why or how big the change will be. This is really going to hurt Intel stock though, and I'm really curious as to why because AMD chips don't seem to be that much better than Core 2 chips, unless they're just cheaper? Moving on to Apple, one research firm strongly believes that Apple's iPhones will be ready very soon and are telling people to buy stock, but I'm not buying it. Maybe I'll be biting my tongue next week, but I just don't see the tell-tale signs of an iPhone quite yet. The movies leaked to be coming out on iTunes is much more plausible to me, but probably because quite a few are from Disney companies. They won't all be available at once, but at least it's a decent selection in sum. Programmers of all sorts will definitely fall in love with Quickref as it shaves precious minutes off their searches within standards APIs. Lastly, just for fun, I have to plug the bra for the iPod. How crazy is this?



I'm going to keep the movie new to a couple of key items. AICN found better pictures of Optimus Prime, and he still looks like an oversized toy action figure to me. We need to see video, not pictures like this. Christopher Nolan spoke to IESB about The Prestige and made some sides notes regarding The Dark Knight in that he claims that it'll be very different from Batman Begins, but I think he means to say that he'll keep the tone and just not focus so much on the story of Bruce Wayne. I trust his vision for the movie to be pretty awesome. Supposedly though, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Sean Penn have both turned down antagonist roles, but they didn't sound like easy decisions so I wouldn't discount the movie based on just those two guys not getting on board.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

1. List two things about yourself that people would be surprised to find out about you:
I used to be overweight (people who I've met within the last 4 years seem to be pretty shocked by this) and I can't let things not be neat for an extended period of time. It's not that I'm a neat freak, but that I'm so used to cleanliness from living at home that I can't stand seeing things in disorder.

2. List two things about yourself that you hope to change and explain why:
My cluttering, because speech disorders suck, and my interaction with girls. If I keep giving girls the incorrect vibe then I'll have like 500 friends who are girls.

3. List two things that you think make you unique and explain why:
My zeal to always do things to the best (I will think of things on a project or a site in the middle of the day just walking around and I have to go back to it and adjust it as soon as I can because I think it'll be a great change), and my need for being productive. Vacations are generally hard for me because it's weird to spend time doing something that doesn't yield some sort of positive end product.

4. List two possessions that you value the most and explain why:
My computer and my guitar, because they're the two inanimate objects that give me the most comfort and joy.

5. List two pet peeves that annoy you the most about people and explain why:
People who don't own up to their own stupidity and people who don't pay attention even after you mention something several times.