Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams, 2nd Edition

3. Finding and Hiring Great Programmers

There are Many Programmers. However, there are not that many great programmers.

“Exceptional engineers are more likely than non-exceptional engineers to maintain a ‘big picture,’ have a bias for action, be driven by a sense of mission, exhibit and articulate strong convictions, play a pro-active role with management, and help other engineers,” said an insightful 1993 study of software engineers.¹

1. Richard Turley and James Bieman, Competencies of Exceptional and Non-Exceptional Software Engineers (Colorado State University, 1993).

Frederick Brooks in his classic work The Mythical Man-Month² cited a study³ from 25 years earlier that showed, among programmers with two years’ experience and similar training, ...