The One Question to Ask Developers Before You Make a Hire Decision

The author says hiring developers is difficult and that the strongest interview signal is asking what they have built without being paid to build it. He prefers this over asking about open source contributions, because it can reveal passion, a real problem they tried to solve, the quality of their reasoning, whether the work is live, whether it uses relevant skills, and whether they recruited others.

Reading notes

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• The key interview question is: “What have you built that you were not paid to build”
• The answer is judged by whether the person built something at all, and preferably several things
• The response should show passion for the project
• The project should address a real problem
• The solution should show quality in its logic
• A live application matters because it can be tried out
• The project should use skills relevant to the role being hired for
• It helps if the candidate recruited other people to help with the project
• The question is meant to replace several separate interview prompts about self-starting, teamwork, problem solving, asking for help, interests, work quality, and explaining complex ideas
• The author says masters of any craft practice even when nobody is watching
• Follow-up questions include blogs or podcasts they follow, favorite recent blog posts, meetups they attend or host, and whether they have a blog or Twitter account
• After the interview, the author recommends checking their live project, Twitter, blogs, and meetup activity to look for quality and participation