Employing programming staff. Oh where to start.....?

[TheExcession]

Bit of background. Company is two years old now, just myself and a mate in the UK (who currently contracts directly to the Company).

It's all pretty bespoke software development and consultancy work in the sat comms arena, 90% of our income is from a UK based Company.

I'm now at the end of my tether with 12 years of design & programming behind me (I'm completely burned out) and having now done over two years of my own contract and project management that's what I want to do from now on, i.e. doing as little coding as possible.

I need two monkeys in an office whilst I go pull in the contracts, there's a lot of work available for us this year, way too much for me and my mate, though of course we are likely still to do some coding.

Now, obviously I need an office, which aint gonna be easy to keep it near to where I live, don't forget we're in Ireland, but that aside.

I've arranged a meeting with the County Enterprise Board next week to see what is available in terms of grants etc.

I'm also thinking they should be helping me on the legal side in terms of employment contracts, acceptable usage policies for Company Internet that sort of stuff.

What other stuff should I be asking them to do for me?

Now, onto staff, we're thinking that we should approach the University of Limerick to get some Graduates from there. It's about 40minutes drive from here, so assuming I can get premisses locally, I'd be expecting them to commute to me. It'll be the end of year by the time we get this in place so should be a few kicking around.

Thoughts? Anything else I should be doing?

It's all a bit pie in the sky at the moment and we need to really get this nailed in the next few months to take advantage of the up and coming contracts.

cheers
Ex

[kiwisr]

Any reason why you wouldn't try home-workers first?

[dern]

TheExcession said:

Now, onto staff, we're thinking that we should approach the University of Limerick to get some Graduates from there. It's about 40minutes drive from here, so assuming I can get premisses locally, I'd be expecting them to commute to me. It'll be the end of year by the time we get this in place so should be a few kicking around.

How much time have you got to supervise them? Add up the cost of supervising and teach them what commercial software development is all about and would you be better off hiring someone with a few years experience and weigh up the costs.

[nrayner]

1) Never hire a programmer without a simple programming test - you'll learn gazillion times more looking at their code than interviewing them.

2) They will only be interested in pure coding. Releasability, configuration management, proper testing, continuous integration, designing for easy maintenance, debugging and testing will all be the things you'll spend your time doing or pushing them on.

3) They'll only want to do the interesting bits (which you'd probably still enjoy). The mundane coding will get left behind.

So if you don't really want to be spending your time doing the bits they leave out, or on their backs, spend >50% of your budget on decent architect or team lead, it will pay dividends.

N

[agent006]

In my experience you'll be lucky to get a graduate that can just rock up and work. They'll be very hard work and need lots of guiding.

[dilbert]

Do it clean. Do it right. Spec it out hierachically. Leave no-one in doubt as to what they are to achieve. If you're into sat comms you'll know what I'm on about.

Don't be anal about what sort of code people create, just be anal about them hitting their spec, and providing clean interfaces.

Anybody who can do it will be able to. If they don't show progress, or have a valid excuse, they're history. You know which bits of your subsystem spec are difficult, and which bits aren't. Make the architecture work, don't let it grow like topsy.

Put your best people into systems integration. Whilst they're waiting for something to integrate, they can be reviewing the development, providing detailed help and support to keep it all on track.

Edited by dilbert on Sunday 8th July 01:47

[TheExcession]

kiwisr said:

Any reason why you wouldn't try home-workers first?

I'm guessing you mean people working from their homes.

We've considered this, but my view is:
1. If I'm paying them I want them around so that I can keep an eye on them and review what they are doing.
2. I think it is easier to answer questions if you are face to face, some of our systems are quite complex.
3. If they are going to work for the Company, I want to get to know them as people and that's got to be easier if they are in the office.

We've considered just hiring Contractors for this work, and likely there will be speciailist areas of it that we will farm out, but the purpose is to build the Company.

best
Ex

[TheExcession]

dern said:

How much time have you got to supervise them? Add up the cost of supervising and teach them what commercial software development is all about and would you be better off hiring someone with a few years experience and weigh up the costs.

Good point.

My problem is that I never went to University, so really have little idea of what level graduates come out at. If they are not suitable then yes we will need to look for someone with more experience.

I think the 'my time' factor really depends on these aspects, we're prepared to spend the time 'investing in people'

[TheExcession]

nrayner said:

1) Never hire a programmer without a simple programming test - you'll learn gazillion times more looking at their code than interviewing them.

Completely agree!

nrayner said:

2) They will only be interested in pure coding. Releasability, configuration management, proper testing, continuous integration, designing for easy maintenance, debugging and testing will all be the things you'll spend your time doing or pushing them on.

I think we can live with that at the moment, certainly with our systems I'd expect it to take them several months to come upto speed whilst we take care of the other stuff, bringing them along as we go.

nrayner said:

3) They'll only want to do the interesting bits (which you'd probably still enjoy). The mundane coding will get left behind.

Surely we just make sure the interesting bits get left till last? (I know what you mean)

nrayner said:

So if you don't really want to be spending your time doing the bits they leave out, or on their backs, spend >50% of your budget on decent architect or team lead, it will pay dividends.

I was kind of expecting the existing people to do the architecture work and act as a team lead.

[TheExcession]

agent006 said:

In my experience you'll be lucky to get a graduate that can just rock up and work. They'll be very hard work and need lots of guiding.

This is interesting, as mentioned I never went to University, so have little idea of what they come out like.

I was hoping they were all going to be eager little beavers... do they arrive all burnt out from their finals? Perhpas we'd be better finding someone who'd already worked for a year or two elsewhere?

In fact the more I think about it now, having someone who's been in the industry for a year or so is more likely to bring some experience to the Company. Hmmm......

[TheExcession]

dilbert said:

Do it clean. Do it right. Spec it out hierachically. Leave no-one in doubt as to what they are to achieve. If you're into sat comms you'll know what I'm on about.

Don't be anal about what sort of code people create, just be anal about them hitting their spec, and providing clean interfaces.

Anybody who can do it will be able to. If they don't show progress, or have a valid excuse, they're history. You know which bits of your subsystem spec are difficult, and which bits aren't. Make the architecture work, don't let it grow like topsy.

Put your best people into systems integration. Whilst they're waiting for something to integrate, they can be reviewing the development, providing detailed help and support to keep it all on track.

Edited by dilbert on Sunday 8th July 01:47

This is the sort of post that leaves me believeing that we can achieve this with graduates.

It can be a very interesting field to work in, lots of opportunity to travel, meetings with some very interesting and exciting people.

To me it's motivation that gets you forward, and we need motivated people. My biggest problem was never being motivated by money. (That's changing now!), I was always in it for the satisfication of the job and got royally screwed working for the last Company, hence setup my own and took the Clients with me.

Cheers Dilbert, a very motivating post!

[rebelstar]

TheExcession said:

I was hoping they were all going to be eager little beavers... do they arrive all burnt out from their finals? Perhpas we'd be better finding someone who'd already worked for a year or two elsewhere?

In fact the more I think about it now, having someone who's been in the industry for a year or so is more likely to bring some experience to the Company. Hmmm......

If you're looking for someone to do pure coding it may not matter that they have experience in your industry. Real world experience counts higher than qualifications in my book.

[dern]

rebelstar said:

If you're looking for someone to do pure coding it may not matter that they have experience in your industry. Real world experience counts higher than qualifications in my book.

It comes down to the person. My belief is that someone who has done a software engineering degree is at least going to be in the mind set of doing it properly and I've been doing it long enough to know that there are plenty of ways to it up. However you can get someone without a dev oriented degree who can be just as good by reading around the subject. I would tend to reject anyone who doesn't read around the subject and can't offer any kind of opinion on the recent stuff they've read. If I could get someone with a dev degree, a couple of years experience, can describe something like a cricket/football match in OO modelling terms, reads around the subject and understands the basics of commercial development and why sometimes you have to do shit stuff without getting in a strop I'd hire them