Im pissed with idiots. I need a GOOD web developer

Status
Not open for further replies.
V

vladi

New member
Jan 8, 2008
15
4
0
OK, I have interviewed (online) about a dozen web designers/developers/coders and I am getting increasingly annoyed.

I'm a partial owner in a new company that is tech based and is well funded, and up until now has been using offshore talent for web design, site scripting, and application development.

I deal with 3 or 4 main people, but the overall team overseas is double that.

It's time we brought a web designer in house (here in southern California) because there's too much time wasted to do 20 small changes to a few web when trying to communicate this to people in India or Russia. It would be far easier to walk over to a desk and say, "Bob, you see these 10 things right here, change them to this and justify that text and make that logo fit within those two points there." And then 1 hour later, its all done. As it is now, it takes me an hour to explain what i want through an email, and even then they dont get it right all the time. And because of the time difference, I sometimes have to wait a full day to have things changed that could be done in minutes.

I can't do this stuff myself for a variety of reason, the main one being a lack of time. PLus I know where my talents lie and I prefer to surround myself with guys that are far better than me at their specific craft.

That being said, where do you think I can go and post or recruit from to get a super kick ass web designer that not only knows how to code a good site, but can code good java and/or php scripts, and has a great eye for design (i.e., he is a wizard with photo shop too.)

I used to have a guy like that at my old company, and he was worth 10X the amount he was paid. I dont mind paying well for a good guy, because the cheaply paid overseas traffic is just slowing us down, even though it might be saving us money long term.

I've tried Monster and various other sites, but I seem to get people who say they are fantastic, and then when I look at their portfolio, I am like WTF?

In interviews, I have gone as far as talking to the person for 2 minutes and then putting a laptop in front of them and asking them to code a simple script to do (something simple) which should take a good guy maybe 10 minutes, and that has turned out miserable, with all but 1 person failing and even one person walking off the project after saying he was a pro at JS and then struggling for 40 minutes. He snuck out while I was outside the room on the phone.

So every college kid today seems to know HTML. There's got to be thousands of them that would kill to get hired in sunny So Cal with a good paying job doing what they love.

ANybody know anybody that is superb? And yes, they HAVE to work at our office -- that is the whole point of this.
 


Interesting post, contact info? Depends on what you really need...

I don't do 100 different things well but a few really well and your asking for a lot of talent it seems from one person so idk
 
jelf said:
Interesting post, contact info? Depends on what you really need...

I don't do 100 different things well but a few really well and your asking for a lot of talent it seems from one person so idk
Click to expand...

I wasn't trying to recruit from this site. I was merely hoping to find a place where the super geeks hang out where I might be able to hire one for the company.

If anybody here is interested though, they can PM me with details.

I don't think the skill set I am looking for is far fetched. There are probably millions of people worldwide that can create web pages, program simple scripts, and use photoshop. What I want is the guy that excels in all 3 of those, and he/she will be paid well for doing so.
 
My company, BannerBlindness.com, link below, can help you with web development, blog development, and I can provide you with daily updates to the site you own. Email or call me, contact info on the site, if you are interested. I was at CES and just inked a deal with Toshiba for some blog development.
 
No shit, man! I tried to run outsourcing in SE Asia while I'm there.
My point - you don't need super pro - have to find super manager, who can arrange the workflow right on. lets say 20average Joes in India will cost still less than one very average Jeff in CA, US. And about Russia ? If you're not there - forget it. Waste of time and money
 
If you were recruiting from Australia, there are many quality people who have got a degree from "billy blue" or worked in house at another design company for at least 4 years. Many Australians would fly to California to work as long as they got annual leave. But go through a standard recruiting site. Ask for someone with in house experience at another graphic design company. And a degree. (In australian dollars such a graphic designer would be $50K/year approx.)
 
I'm a recent university graduate with a CS degree. I have 4 years of on-campus work experience as a systems administrator, and as a programming/graphic and site design hobbyist.

These days I'm applying to jobs all over the place and I've found that everyone only wants expert coders with uber skills. They don't teach us to be expert coders with uber skills in the latest technologies at universities. Everything that I know is because I got a job on campus and I'm a hobbyist and was genuinely interested in learning how to code. That said, I still will not categorize my self as an expert.

If you truly want some one perfect for the job then you need to find someone with the intrinsic skills of 1) ability to learn quickly 2) Genuine interest and 3) motivation. These types of people can learn any extrinsic skill like javascript or java or whatever and quickly start creating value for your company. So, if the candidates you are interviewing demonstrate the intrinsic skills then a small amount of nurturing can transform them into an extremely loyal long term employee.

There is no shortage of talent. There is only a shortage of companies and people willing to train and nurture that talent.

Good luck :D

(and I don't have uberleet javascript skills :( )
 
Training people makes a company lose money. They train you and then you get better skills and leave. The majority of employees have no loyalty. As soon as more money comes along, they'll jump ship.

Being an expert only comes with experience, not schooling. IMO, the best experience comes from working freelance. Learning how to do sales, the paid work and other aspects of the business will make you very valuable to an employer. It helps you be independent, self-motivated and self-managed.

No disrespect to you garg, but every CS graduate I've ever worked with is the worst at web development in the real world. Work hard to ignore a lot of the stuff they taught you in school about advanced OOP, refactoring, et al. If you want to stick to that frame of mind, push towards getting a job doing enterprise app development.
 
garg said:
They don't teach us to be expert coders with uber skills in the latest technologies at universities.

If you truly want some one perfect for the job then you need to find someone with the intrinsic skills of 1) ability to learn quickly 2) Genuine interest and 3) motivation...... nurturing can transform them into an extremely loyal long term employee.
Click to expand...
Hmmmm..... my IQ is 147 (i can almost join the triple nine, google that). I know, why don't you pay me to learn and be your awesome web developer. I will be ultra loyal, and I study logic. btw, i am joking about this (not iq). but hell i would take up the offer :) obviously you need the actual learned talent there, thats why i was talking degree + industry experience.
 
Absolutely, I fully agree. My point was a only a general statement about the current state of the industry. I don't believe that there is a talent shortage as many people say. Instead, there is a shortage of companies willing to hire people who don't exactly meet the criteria. I'm just saying that there are some things that can only be learnt on the job and companies should do their part in reseeding the knowledge at entry level. :)

Audax > I fully agree. I'm not saying that I'm very good but the average CS degree kid who graduated with me wouldn't know any thing about any practical technologies. They'll be able to draw finite automatons and rattle off about the different design patterns but if you put a computer in front of them they won't know what to type. It's not because they unable to, it's because in college, the work load can be so heavy that people don't get a chance to put in the hours required to really reach proficient levels at any current technology. It's up to an individual to learn and be truly interested in programming to be any good.

I was fortunate enough to have started programming waaay back on the ZX spectrum (though some would say that programming in BASIC has messed me up for life) and then had a full time job. With out these advantages, I'd have been absolutely clueless.
 
Isn't SoCal full of php/web developers fighting for $20/hour jobs? From what I gather, it's an employer's market down there.

Forget Monster, HotJobs and most of the sites that come to mind as the big job portals. They've all been flooded with fly-by-night employment agencies who want to match your $50/hour employer payrate with a $15/hour contractor. The agencies will lie to you, to the contractor, falsify resumes and anything else they can do to fill their quota of resumes/interviews/placements. Many qualified tech people don't even look there anymore.

It's all about networking in today's employment world...even for employers. I've found LinkedIn to be helpful. Put yourself in a headhunter mentality, targeting specific people rather than waiting for qualified people to answer your job ad. Unfortunately, you're going to have too much of your time wasted by cheap employment agencies and their garbage leads otherwise.

You mentioned a previous employee(co-worker?) who was worth 10x their salary. Where are they now? Find them, offer them a 25% salary boost and everyone wins.
Have you explored the possibilityof obtaining H1-B visas for a couple of the quality offshore freelancers you are using now?
 
It's not my job to teach people how to become experts. Matter of fact, my company isn't large enough to do that. This person would be the lead web guy, so anything they learned would be from their own mistakes and experience, and not from somebody at our company teaching them.

I just don't have time for that. I would rather pay somebody twice the salary and know that they can bang out a script that will interface with our shopping cart and aweber system in an hour, instead of somebody that has to research things, takes a couple days to finally complete the project, and even then, it's not exactly what we need.

Believe me, I have hired and worked with both types. I had one guy that was amazing. He would type and flip through screens, and use short cuts and do things so fast that I couldn't believe it. I would need a script for Adwords that would allow me to do this or that, and he would have it done the next morning, and it didn't seem to interrupt his other tasks for the day. His one drawback was that he was not a graphics designer, but luckily we had a guy specifically for that.

I dont think I have enough need for a graphics guy on his own, so this would be one area I would concede on, since that is something that could be farmed out -- or one of the bazillion templates available could be used and modified.

Isotropic, I remember my brother, father and myself taking an IQ test together about 12 years ago. We all were within a few points of one another -- I edged them out -- I think I had 151 orr 153. I dont recall at this point. Perhaps if my IQ were 160 I would have remembered ;-)

I'm one of those guys that's very creative businesswise and always has a 1,000 ideas but only has time for 3, but then my life is a mess (I have to have a house cleaning lady come twice per week or the house looks like it's been bombed), I have gardneners, and people that come over to wash my cars, and pretty much everything is done for me, otherwise I lose it. Sometimes I feel that those with higher IQ's start to lose other aspects of humanity. The smartest guy I ever hired (a programmer) was insane. He actually programmed some well known applications on the market and could code anything and was... well, he was amazing at what he did. However, his social skills were gone. It's like he didnt have any. He was so smart that he didn't know how to function around people once outside the office. Pretty strange guy. I always thought he looked and sounded like Dracula.

OK, so anyway, back to the topic. If I can find the super duper designer and coder, I would consider hiring a graphics guy part time for the web sites. There... now I only need 2 of the 3 items in a guy :)


IsotropicSpin said:
Hmmmm..... my IQ is 147 (i can almost join the triple nine, google that). I know, why don't you pay me to learn and be your awesome web developer. I will be ultra loyal, and I study logic. btw, i am joking about this (not iq). but hell i would take up the offer :) obviously you need the actual learned talent there, thats why i was talking degree + industry experience.
Click to expand...
 
I believe that the often mentioned "lack of loyalty" of the average modern employee is directly linked to "lack of loyalty" by the average modern company.

::emp::
 
audax said:
Training people makes a company lose money. They train you and then you get better skills and leave. The majority of employees have no loyalty. As soon as more money comes along, they'll jump ship.

Being an expert only comes with experience, not schooling. IMO, the best experience comes from working freelance. Learning how to do sales, the paid work and other aspects of the business will make you very valuable to an employer. It helps you be independent, self-motivated and self-managed.

No disrespect to you garg, but every CS graduate I've ever worked with is the worst at web development in the real world. Work hard to ignore a lot of the stuff they taught you in school about advanced OOP, refactoring, et al. If you want to stick to that frame of mind, push towards getting a job doing enterprise app development.
Click to expand...

Audax,

I couldn't agree with you more. I'm not saying I wont hire a college kid, but people today aren;'t like they were 20 years ago. Back then, people wanted a solid company they could work at for 20 years and retire. Now day, it seems like people hop jobs every few years. I read a statistic about this some time back -- it might have been during the dot bubble era, so the numbers may have been skewed, but it was something like 3.4 years or so was the avarage lifespan of a worker in the tech industry before they moved on to another firm.

That has probably stabilized a lot after the dot com bubble burst 7 years ago, but i would prefer to get somebody that has gone through all of that, knows what they are worth, and is ready to be a part of building a new company.

Have any of you had luck with Craigslist?
 
emp said:
I believe that the often mentioned "lack of loyalty" of the average modern employee is directly linked to "lack of loyalty" by the average modern company.

::emp::
Click to expand...

Very, very true.
 
20$/hr ? I can hire real guru for quarter of it!
Teach how to program ? What for ? Just get a good contractor, or project manager. Suddenly everybody became business yoda, but cannot even find one of the 100.000s programmers :) Ambitions are outrageous.
 
You should definitely try Craigslist, its way better than all theese job sites

For successful outsourcing you need to hire not developers but good manager there - its the only way to go
 
You really do need a good manager. Without someone that can manage workflow and a timeline you will be fucked. India is # 1. My company, below, can outsource your entire project in India with some of the best providers.
 
I can dig it. trying to type something in an email is just the pits. Maybe i need to start using skype more for these offshore jobs.

The problem is this...

Most of the really good web guys i know are swamped with freelance work. It makes no sense for them to work for someone else.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back