Hiring decisions and HRM for Software Developers

           There was a time when hiring was thought to be so simple task unlike today. But actually it is really a simple thing. If you think in such simple way. When I was younger, I thought that a good guy can learn new things with his honest hard work while a person who is not honest with some thing , is not useful no matter how much he is intelligent. But with the increasing demand of variety of IT professional skills that a layman can't adopt in a day or two. So at the time when many people are looking for jobs, at the same time HR managers are also looking for human resources but it is difficult to find right person.  I am actually talking about IT industry.
     
          Due to above reasons, many of our HR managers and company owners have to take tough decisions. And I would like to mention that many of HR managers and company owners are not IT people. However it is important to note that there are still even after understanding all these things , we still faces many difficulties while finding and managing human resources specially when it comes to remotely managing your resources. Yes it is not all about just finding good people, it is also about managing them correctly. One of the problem is the fast job switching of good developers. But, good developers/employees are not only responsible for their fast job switching. There are many management's decisions that actually make their job switching happen. Due to some wrong attitude of some owners, most of employees don't trust their employers now. So overall, the work of HR managers specially in IT industry have become more tough.

         I was some time ago (not much time ago) managing remote developers, and then in some projects, I have to face really tough situation when developers were not doing their work properly. And at the end, I paid to developers for their incomplete work and due to delay in work delivery , it became also financially a bit bad time, however as I am also a developer so I quickly jumped into development of that work and solely did the rest of work to avoid losing a good client and worse situation. Overall that situation and some of solutions can be seen here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/97660/what-recommendations-can-you-give-in-managing-a-team-of-remote-software-engineers

         So the solution, I got from these replies is that every skill person who is good at work and office isn't essentially fit for remote work also because in that situation there is also a skill required that is "time management" and it is important as other skills are.

         So what about deciding if a candidate is a good match to be hired or not? If we will try to become over smart or greedy then obviously that will be bad for hiring decisions. No doubt, we all want people who can make our team better than before but at the same time never think that all other people should be best as you are, because there are many people who can perform well but can't be smarter than you. And it is because for judging this in interview, you are asking him the things that you know, may be there are also things that he know and you don't but unknown to you because you are interviewer not him.

     However as I once read from blog(s) of Joel and/or I think Jeff (both stackoverflow CEO and CTO respectively) , that you shouldn't hire the people that you say may be he is good for us. You should only hire people, about which you say yes, this is good fit for us. Because if miss some good person then may you don't go one step up but if you will hire some wrong person then most probably due to consumption of resources as well as most important thing, time of your important people can be wasted on that wrong person so in that case you can obviously go one or more step down.

     That was all about hiring decisions but if you are interested in interviewing techniques, then these some blog posts are interesting: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html
However I would also like to add some thing that I learn after reading from Joel's blog post, is that during interview you should ask him questions in normal way like you assign tasks, because if developer can't understand things easily then it can be problematic to clarify things while doing actual job.

  So these are just some of my opinions about hiring decisions and HRM for software developers on the base of some of my knowledge and experience. I would also like to hear your words, so you can tell your opinions in comments to this article.

thanks for reading and giving your time.

Core technologies and technologies like FB. apps, FBML e.t.c.

In the name of ALLAH

Salaam and hi guys,
          When I first time worked on Facebook application development in FBML and FBJS environment, I really missed JQuery effects like show, hide, toggle and other JQuery plugins. But now I was glad to know that there is FBJS animation library which helped me a lot to work on Facebook with simple FBJS.  FBJS Animation library does not give some hide, show like functions but it gives me the way to do CSS tweening. I can manipulate it to anything that I can do with CSS tweening. If I was publishing this article some months back, I was going to write a small tutorial on it.  But after some months of learning that , it is ended. I mean now no FBJS is in demand. In fact, now FBML that was hot some time a ago is now depreciated.

    There were some people who spent much of there time on learning FBML, FBJS and such things but now those skills are not required. Even now in months or weeks or may be in days, FB APIs are changing , many things are depreciating fast and many of functions don't work as they are expected to. If a developer start developing an app., he came to know that one API and working way was old so he started with new SDK e.t.c.  and with new methods. So if after a month or two, he again start another app. then while using that new SDK he came to know that , it is now old SDK and some of methods he is using are now depreciating and now for finding new methods he have to again search the whole documentation and while doing this many time  when he tried to find way to do some thing in one page of documentation, he came to another page and learn that this is again depreciated or older SDKs method while he is using newer. So a developer is so confuse in whole this badly documented APIs and SDKs of Facebook. :( .

    Overall , the agencies who work on FB. apps., some time can have a good market because it is ever changing and a sort of unique skills that not every agencies can have as it is changing so fast. But I want to raise a point here, Is this good and favorable for developers also? There were many of developers who worked for a long time on FBML and FBJS and faced the above problems. And just imagine wasn't it a bad news for them that "FBML and FBJS skills are now not in demand any more. Now iframe based apps. are required".  So should developers still work on such technologies and should rely on them? I think learning and working on such technologies are always fine but one shouldn't rely on these skills and shouldn't take it as a technology on which (s)he can rely, as these things are changing in weeks and months.

  There is also a group of people who think that nothing in IT is evergreen , even full fledged technologies  and programming languages are not permanent. Every things is being replaced. One should only know how to learn. I think learning skills are more important but if you will learn more about Core Concepts and Core Technologies then you can even learn more better.
         If you know how to write a server or client without using any  high level lib. then it will make one's concept better and after once doing that he will be able to write server in any language better and will be able to use any lib. If one can develop a CMS in simple PHP then he will be better able to understand other's CMS and other's written Frameworks also with better understanding.
         So that's why I prefer to start young developers with Core level things some times (depends upon situation and developers), as it is also good for them. There are many web developers who start working from Joomla or WP or FB. apps. or some sort of design intergration but I recommend them to also look into Core things that how these things work, because in fact (after ALLAH Almighty's will and problem solving skills e.t.c.) these will make your foundations strong. High level things like FB apps.,  WP, Drupal  and Joomla e.t.c. can increase your chance to once get a better job for you but not job safety that you can have if your foundations are strong. Strong foundations increase the chance that whether you start from a small job but you will most probably go up.

  Above is how I think , I want to know that how you guys think, so please comment.

thanks,
Hafiz