Finding talent…

The members of a good team, the search for greatness…

This is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. How do you know from a resume if this person has what it takes to join your team? As “Daniel” admits, this isn’t fool-proof, and you shouldn’t be looking for 100% coverage here, but he makes a lot of good points.

So too do the people who are commenting. And there is definitely a contingent of people who DON’T like this list. In fact, I even read a comment by someone arguing AGAINST passion. I’ve worked with those people though. And I’ve worked on those teams.

Uhhhhh… Yeah… Not for very long. These are the same teams who spend a year on a release and have 6 months into their spec. Imagination is key to problem solving, but some people don’t believe in problems. TRULY. And in many cases I agree with them. When you are writing an application to handle welfare checks, or water bills for a major city, OK. In that case I want a complete spec. I want waterfall methodology. I want big iron. I WANT BORING.

BUT, when I’m trying to build something NEW! Now I want everyone who left that other team. Oh, yeah, don’t forget that the other team needs at least one guy from this team to help with security. I’m not kidding about that.

I’m also not kidding when I say that I’m not the guy to go to when it is a billing application running on SAP. I’m the guy to go to when you need to take your cool idea and transform it into a viral web application. And I want a bunch of bright, twisted, articulate, interesting, misfits. Now that is a group that I can build into a team!