How RedGate hired 10 geeks in five weeks(blog.businessofsoftware.org)
blog.businessofsoftware.org
How RedGate hired 10 geeks in five weeks
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/08/how-redgate-hired-10-geeks-in-five-weeks.html
8 comments
I think a follow-up after 3-6 months with more details how satisified they are with their new hires would also help in evaluating their campaign.
Of course finding, interviewing and accepting the people are all important steps, but I guess you can't say it's been successful until you've had time to see how they worked out in your organization.
Let's hope for a follow-up later!
Of course finding, interviewing and accepting the people are all important steps, but I guess you can't say it's been successful until you've had time to see how they worked out in your organization.
Let's hope for a follow-up later!
I am getting a weird sense of deja vu...
http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/
We bought a Ferrari to give away to any employee who recruited 10 friends. In reality the car only cost $2,000 per month, the person who won it only got to drive it for as long as he or she was employed, and the cost of a Ferrari is much lower than 10 headhunter commissions
http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/
We bought a Ferrari to give away to any employee who recruited 10 friends. In reality the car only cost $2,000 per month, the person who won it only got to drive it for as long as he or she was employed, and the cost of a Ferrari is much lower than 10 headhunter commissions
It might be pricey, but so are recruiters. If this process cost $50k ($5k/hire) it is absolutely a win.
Recruitment fees are often (in Cambridge, UK at least) more like to 20% rather than 10%.
To employ 10 software engineers, at say £36k average salary, would have ended up costing close to £70k through traditional recruitment agencies.
To employ 10 software engineers, at say £36k average salary, would have ended up costing close to £70k through traditional recruitment agencies.
Plus the man-hours they spent doing the actual resume filtering and presumably at least a couple of rounds of interviewing. Interviewing is time consuming stuff.
So are you suggesting that for their $70k, the recruiters would have actually succeeded in screening out the idiots?
From my 15 years in IT, I highly highly doubt it. There is the occasional decent recruiter, but most of them are like realtors, only interested in commission $$$, not entirely unreasonable in itself, but unlikely to be aligned with anyone else's interests.
From my 15 years in IT, I highly highly doubt it. There is the occasional decent recruiter, but most of them are like realtors, only interested in commission $$$, not entirely unreasonable in itself, but unlikely to be aligned with anyone else's interests.
Worked for a well-funded high-profile company years ago. The HR people were constantly getting calls from recruiters who wanted to work for us.
HR person would say "Thanks for calling! We're having a really hard time finding Black Box developers. Can you get me some Black Box developers?"
The only way to be considered by the company was to answer along the lines of "Black Box? Never heard of that."
Many recruiters utterly failed to proceed any further than this point.
HR person would say "Thanks for calling! We're having a really hard time finding Black Box developers. Can you get me some Black Box developers?"
The only way to be considered by the company was to answer along the lines of "Black Box? Never heard of that."
Many recruiters utterly failed to proceed any further than this point.
For the benefit of those outside Cambridge, it's also worth knowing that Red Gate is the local rising star software business. I have now lost track of how many friends, former work colleagues and friends-of-friends have wound up working there, but it's a lot.
If I've heard about it from that many different sources, so have many other good people with relevant skills in the local area. You have to factor that word-of-mouth effect into any thinking about how successful any additional recruitment drives they've been running have been. If I hadn't gone freelance, I might have applied myself, but it wouldn't have been because of ice creams or iPads, it would have been because the company has a reputation for being a decent employer and hiring good people.
If I've heard about it from that many different sources, so have many other good people with relevant skills in the local area. You have to factor that word-of-mouth effect into any thinking about how successful any additional recruitment drives they've been running have been. If I hadn't gone freelance, I might have applied myself, but it wouldn't have been because of ice creams or iPads, it would have been because the company has a reputation for being a decent employer and hiring good people.
This is absolutely the boat I was in. I was interested in working for Red Gate before they started this campaign, because I had heard it was a good place to work.
The reason I hadn't applied before was because I was 'reasonably' happy where I was working but this campaign raised Red-Gate's profile in my mind again at a time when I was considering job hunting and also gave me the extra incentive to apply.
It worked, I was hired and I can say that so far it has been a great place to work. Plug for my team, check out http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Source_Control/
The reason I hadn't applied before was because I was 'reasonably' happy where I was working but this campaign raised Red-Gate's profile in my mind again at a time when I was considering job hunting and also gave me the extra incentive to apply.
It worked, I was hired and I can say that so far it has been a great place to work. Plug for my team, check out http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Source_Control/
Any idea, what is their main moneymaker product?
I'm not sure what the point of this is. I can get 1000 resumes and 10 geeks in a week advertising on hotjobs but in the end it is the quality of the person that matters. I would rather see the result of this a year from now.
I know some people who got through and some who got rejected very early on. Regardless of volume, my very limited sample tells me they were very strict in choosing.
It would be cool to try somthing like Zappos, and offer them the free iPad only if they walk away right then and there, or turn down the iPad and stay for the interview.
We've had a hard time finding quality candidates. In my experience, the Craigslist job board seems to be dying out. Is hotjobs your first stop in the hiring process?
I think savvy developers will increasingly want to dispense with the commitment that being hired entails. If there are so many companies in such dire need of talent, why can't talented developers become highly skilled migrant workers? I just think it's too difficult to keep a talented person satisfied, in one job, for years on end -- the ability to ramp-up and ramp-down without the overhead of a full-time employment relationship or sleazy middle-men, is the future of software employment, I hope.
Generally speaking, I agree with this but there's a downside too. Don't be surprised if you get tossed out on the trash heap the minute you turn 40 or 50 and are no longer perceived as a young, alpha engineer.
Things like blogs and github are great learning resources but I think they're also starting to skew people's expectations of the average programmer.
Things like blogs and github are great learning resources but I think they're also starting to skew people's expectations of the average programmer.
Things like blogs and github are great learning resources but I think they're also starting to skew people's expectations of the average programmer.
What? Care to elaborate?
What? Care to elaborate?
The demographics of the typical programmer-blogger are not representative of the typical programmer. And writing a blog is not correlated in any way with talent or productivity.
Probably the vast majority of working programmers either don't write a blog, or don't blog about programming (but about their cats, kids, and steam-engine building hobby).
Probably the vast majority of working programmers either don't write a blog, or don't blog about programming (but about their cats, kids, and steam-engine building hobby).
I'd be willing to bet that writing a blog about programming is positively correlated with programming talent and productivity, for at least one reason: it shows interest in the subject, and the extra attention compounds over time.
The typical programmer has little interest in the profession other than as a monthly salary, and spends most of their life doing copy & paste-level implementation and reimplementation of business rules into straightforward code and UI. Domain knowledge is usually (a lot) more valuable than coding ability for these people. Sure, the kernels and architectures of the systems these typical programmers work with are designed and implemented by people you would probably more recognize as hackers, but there is so much more drudgework that needs to be done to make it all a useful piece of corporate IT infrastructure. There are armies of these people doing it, and the work isn't interesting code-wise.
These typical programmers, as a rule, don't blog about their work.
The typical programmer has little interest in the profession other than as a monthly salary, and spends most of their life doing copy & paste-level implementation and reimplementation of business rules into straightforward code and UI. Domain knowledge is usually (a lot) more valuable than coding ability for these people. Sure, the kernels and architectures of the systems these typical programmers work with are designed and implemented by people you would probably more recognize as hackers, but there is so much more drudgework that needs to be done to make it all a useful piece of corporate IT infrastructure. There are armies of these people doing it, and the work isn't interesting code-wise.
These typical programmers, as a rule, don't blog about their work.
Rather than just believe in an unproven hypothesis why don't you test it out?
Find the interesting-code projects you actually use or have heard about (maybe Apache, Cassandra, Google's Bigtable, etc), find out who did the majority of the coding and then try to find their blog.
How many people work on Apache? How many of them have blogs? Do you even care that they blog? Wouldn't you hire any of them anyway?
Avinash Lakshman and Prashant Malik were the guys that wrote Cassandra when it was still an internal Facebook project. I can't find blogs for either of them. (Though they did write one blog post on the Facebook Engineering blog.)
Doug Cutting wrote a lot of great code for Hadoop. He has a blog here: http://cutting.wordpress.com/ but hasn't touched it in nearly a year.
Jeff Dean has done some amazing work at Google ( http://research.google.com/people/jeff/index.html Now THAT is one hell of a resume) and I can't find a blog for him either.
To me, it seems mostly random whether the person has a blog or not. It would be an interesting project to catalog and analyze how many do and don't. Then you'd have a real answer rather than a wild guess you believe religiously rather than scientifically.
Find the interesting-code projects you actually use or have heard about (maybe Apache, Cassandra, Google's Bigtable, etc), find out who did the majority of the coding and then try to find their blog.
How many people work on Apache? How many of them have blogs? Do you even care that they blog? Wouldn't you hire any of them anyway?
Avinash Lakshman and Prashant Malik were the guys that wrote Cassandra when it was still an internal Facebook project. I can't find blogs for either of them. (Though they did write one blog post on the Facebook Engineering blog.)
Doug Cutting wrote a lot of great code for Hadoop. He has a blog here: http://cutting.wordpress.com/ but hasn't touched it in nearly a year.
Jeff Dean has done some amazing work at Google ( http://research.google.com/people/jeff/index.html Now THAT is one hell of a resume) and I can't find a blog for him either.
To me, it seems mostly random whether the person has a blog or not. It would be an interesting project to catalog and analyze how many do and don't. Then you'd have a real answer rather than a wild guess you believe religiously rather than scientifically.
You have it backwards. You are looking at the cream of open source developers, and then asking whether they have blogs. But the question isn't whether blogging is correlated with coding excellence (i.e. whether top tier of devs blog or not); it's whether coding ability is correlated with blogging (i.e. is blogging more associated with above median devs or not).
There are over two million programmers in the US alone. My proposition would be true if more people in the top half of that distribution blogged about coding than in the bottom half, and I don't think that's an unlikely suggestion. Even if you think whether someone blogs or not is random, the subject of the blog is not. People's estimation of their ability is correlated with their ability (Dunning-Kruger effect notwithstanding, check the paper's graph - perception is compressed but not inverted), and I think it's conservative to say that people who think they know more about a subject are more likely to talk about it.
To make it clear, I'm talking about blogging as a signal of ability, not ability as a signal of propensity to blog (which is what you suggest measuring). Since there are a lot more people coding than blogging about coding, it would be unlikely in any case to find a high proportion of bloggers at any level of the ability scale.
There are over two million programmers in the US alone. My proposition would be true if more people in the top half of that distribution blogged about coding than in the bottom half, and I don't think that's an unlikely suggestion. Even if you think whether someone blogs or not is random, the subject of the blog is not. People's estimation of their ability is correlated with their ability (Dunning-Kruger effect notwithstanding, check the paper's graph - perception is compressed but not inverted), and I think it's conservative to say that people who think they know more about a subject are more likely to talk about it.
To make it clear, I'm talking about blogging as a signal of ability, not ability as a signal of propensity to blog (which is what you suggest measuring). Since there are a lot more people coding than blogging about coding, it would be unlikely in any case to find a high proportion of bloggers at any level of the ability scale.
I see where you guys are going with this, and that's a fine place to be, if you're comfortable there. But blogging and putting code up on GitHub IS directly correlated with letting people know who the heck you are, and not just sitting behind the corporate firewall, being a good little human-resource, hoping that your dedication gets noticed and yields good marks on your personnel file, so that you will continue to be employed, and be able to afford a new model steam engine.
If you don't blog or use GitHub, or do something similar, then when that mid-life layoff happens, you'll may be at the mercy of recruiters and whatnot, to spice up your resume try to sell you.
If you don't blog or use GitHub, or do something similar, then when that mid-life layoff happens, you'll may be at the mercy of recruiters and whatnot, to spice up your resume try to sell you.
I really, really doubt anyone's blog is ever a deciding factor in a hiring situation. Really. Maybe this is different in very web-oriented specialities.
Also I am very amused that you think anyone without a blog is a "good little human resource", as if writing a blog was some great accomplishment of individuality. People who don't do it don't do it because they're simply not interested. Doesn't mean blogs are a waste of time or anything, but they are just a hobby. Like stamp collecting.
FWIW I have my name on the cover of a book, that was in actual real bookstores, about the main technology I use. I mention it on my CV. Hasn't resulted in any more than a minute's conversation in the (admittedly very few) interview's I've done since then. And as an interviewer and hiring manager, I've never taken a blog into consideration. Apart from for the author him or herself, blogs just aren't important.
The bloke I'm thinking of with the steam engines, BTW, is pretty talented. He built his first one with electric tools and his second with tools powered by the first. And he's a great developer. Hiring some blogger over him would be a serious mistake for any organization...
Also I am very amused that you think anyone without a blog is a "good little human resource", as if writing a blog was some great accomplishment of individuality. People who don't do it don't do it because they're simply not interested. Doesn't mean blogs are a waste of time or anything, but they are just a hobby. Like stamp collecting.
FWIW I have my name on the cover of a book, that was in actual real bookstores, about the main technology I use. I mention it on my CV. Hasn't resulted in any more than a minute's conversation in the (admittedly very few) interview's I've done since then. And as an interviewer and hiring manager, I've never taken a blog into consideration. Apart from for the author him or herself, blogs just aren't important.
The bloke I'm thinking of with the steam engines, BTW, is pretty talented. He built his first one with electric tools and his second with tools powered by the first. And he's a great developer. Hiring some blogger over him would be a serious mistake for any organization...
You're absolutely right in what you say, but I think we're talking past each other. Whether a blog exists or not is meaningless. It's what's in the blog that matters. And really, in this conversation, to me, blog is synonymous with self promotion.
It's a topic I've been on the fence about for a while: how necessary, if at all, is self promotion? I think blogging and using github are just modern ways of networking and interacting with more people through technology. Writing a book is great, and so is being good at your work.
Furthermore, I think the project nature of software development, lends itself more to developers being free-agents rather than employees, which was my original motivation for commenting here. I just hear so many recruiters and hiring managers pat themselves on the back for "finding a great developer", that I wish more developers would promote themselves in order to make it less of a talent search, and so that they could showcase their knowledge, talent, and capabilities to the widest audience.
It's a topic I've been on the fence about for a while: how necessary, if at all, is self promotion? I think blogging and using github are just modern ways of networking and interacting with more people through technology. Writing a book is great, and so is being good at your work.
Furthermore, I think the project nature of software development, lends itself more to developers being free-agents rather than employees, which was my original motivation for commenting here. I just hear so many recruiters and hiring managers pat themselves on the back for "finding a great developer", that I wish more developers would promote themselves in order to make it less of a talent search, and so that they could showcase their knowledge, talent, and capabilities to the widest audience.
If you spend much time on HN or reading programmer blogs or on github you're going to be exposed to a lot of exceptionally talented and/or motivated programmers, because those are the people that take the trouble to maintain this kind of online presence. It doesn't take long for your conception of what it means to be a professional programmer to start to skew in this direction.
To put it another way, almost all the job listings I see these days ask for github account info and if you don't have a pretty impressive github portfolio you look like a scrub. There are some upsides to this but, compared to the job market of even ten years ago, it's less forgiving.
To put it another way, almost all the job listings I see these days ask for github account info and if you don't have a pretty impressive github portfolio you look like a scrub. There are some upsides to this but, compared to the job market of even ten years ago, it's less forgiving.
We realize that. I was an employee not too long ago. Every few years I would jump to a new exciting and challenging job. It allowed me to build out a solid skill set enough to start my own company.
I want to hire people that have genuine passion for what they do. If they're passionate about my company, that's just icing on the cake.
I expect that they'll move on. I want it to be on good terms.
True engineers will always want to learn more. My goal is to provide an environment for a massive amount of learning.
I want to hire people that have genuine passion for what they do. If they're passionate about my company, that's just icing on the cake.
I expect that they'll move on. I want it to be on good terms.
True engineers will always want to learn more. My goal is to provide an environment for a massive amount of learning.
My goal is to provide an environment for a massive amount of learning.
It seems that the only way you can do that is to solve really hard problems, otherwise learning just becomes some academic exercise, unrelated to your core mission.
It seems that the only way you can do that is to solve really hard problems, otherwise learning just becomes some academic exercise, unrelated to your core mission.
I don't agree. Not every developer is an super genius who only solves problems using incredible feats of intelligence.
I learn something new everyday. For a learning experience we launched a new site using only HTML5. That was a fun learning experience, but it wasn't a really hard problem. And yes, it is part of our core mission.
Another example is how our company is always looking at new technologies. The concepts can be challenging and fun to learn for a developer. A couple of the more recent ones we've used are MongoDB, Node.js, PhoneGap... I'm sure there's more. Oh, right... we're building our first Rails 3 site. Now that's fun!
I learn something new everyday. For a learning experience we launched a new site using only HTML5. That was a fun learning experience, but it wasn't a really hard problem. And yes, it is part of our core mission.
Another example is how our company is always looking at new technologies. The concepts can be challenging and fun to learn for a developer. A couple of the more recent ones we've used are MongoDB, Node.js, PhoneGap... I'm sure there's more. Oh, right... we're building our first Rails 3 site. Now that's fun!
Not to mention I think this sort of scheme would go a long way towards correcting a lot of the excesses with regard to how developers are treated in a lot of places. Boss is a total douche? Move on...
Agree.
I was expecting to see a mixergy-style talent story where they got 10 geeks with intuition and little spending. I don't see the intuition or talent here.
Likewise - I actually think they were very unimaginative. All of that stuff is expensive and obvious. I was thinking we'd see some scoured GitHub/SourceForge/etc. type of stuff or a programming competition, maybe even a super-poach of a good team.
Karma ++ to whoever put up a "hire geeks on the cheap" post.
Karma ++ to whoever put up a "hire geeks on the cheap" post.
It's really difficult (and really, really expensive) to recruit developers in Cambridge (even for Red Gate, which has a fantastic and very friendly company culture). We're talking upwards of £10-20k PER developer...so the innovation is finding and hiring 10 developers for a fraction of the normal cost (they interviewed hundreds of applicants and were still very picky about who they hired).
Is it okay if I love computer science and programming but don't like being called a geek? My activities and interests bridge several cultural divides. I don't like being simplified.
Are they that desperate for developers in the UK? If so, how does a Canadian get a work permit!?
Cambridge is a nice town, but their "desperation" will be that most developers in the UK will head straight for London.
It's pretty easy, apply for a tier-1 visa which is a points based system (the main factors they take into account are education level, age, previous earnings and english language ability), if you get enough points and don't have a criminal record you can normally get a visa. Most software developers can easily qualify.
Once you have that visa you can work for any UK company (there's a minimum earning requirement but most software development roles pay comfortably more than that).
Although if you want to do it, sooner is better than later as the current government is thinking about sticking a quota on the number of Tier-1 visas that are issued in a year.
Once you have that visa you can work for any UK company (there's a minimum earning requirement but most software development roles pay comfortably more than that).
Although if you want to do it, sooner is better than later as the current government is thinking about sticking a quota on the number of Tier-1 visas that are issued in a year.
What type of work/salary are you looking for hunterjrj? I know several companies in the Toronto area looking for devs.
Does anyone know if RedGate will sponsor a visa for foreign candidates?
They normally don't, but if you're a smart, hard-working developer, then I'm sure they'd consider it (even if your programming expertise is in a field that doesn't match what they do).
Probably these guys: [email protected]
[deleted]
What's missing: they don't say how much they spent on the advertising and freebies.