That being said, the arrogance displayed in many of the comments on this thread and others like it is one of the things I dislike most here. There's this pervasive attitude that hackers > businesspeople, and while it's ridiculous for a business guy to think he can hire a programmer (or be of much value to one), you never see articles about how hackers are helpless without business people or how a hacker would have no idea how to hire a marketing or sales guy (and shouldn't even try).

Maybe I'm overreacting because I'm one of those who straddle the line, but this kind of arrogance serves no one.

Yes, many businesspeople hire bad hackers resulting in a bad product. But equally many hackers hire bad bussinesspeople and never get their product out the door. None of these scenarios are good.

The keypoint here is that to start a successful business you need many components, and if you fail at just one of them you're finished - A startup is never stronger than its weakest link.

The startups that achieve success acknowledge what their strengths are, are keenly aware of their weaknesses and try diligently to hire people that can fill these out. So the great hacker should not frown at businesspeople if he wants to do a succesful startup, he should acknowledge the fact that he has shortcomings, as everybody does, and try to hire people to fill out these shortcomings. The weakest point with many hackers (in my personal experience) is that they don't like political games, don't like cold-calling people, and don't think marketing should drive your sales. Exactly the things a good businessperson excels at.

So please, get along and you will make more succesful companies.

That said, there are no pointers or how-tos that will turn you into a qualified judge of a profession completely unrelated to your own and I don't at all think it's arrogant for "hackers" (or anyone else) to be somewhat offended at that idea.

Your statement reads as if to say "how arrogant of you to think a businessperson can't become a qualified judge of your work by reading a few pointers", which is itself a very arrogant statement. I don't think that's necessarily what you meant, but I think you are mistaking a little bit of offense and some defensiveness for arrogance and reacting to that misperception.

This isn't "hackers > " anyone, either, I certainly don't think I could read a few pointers and suddenly have the ability to pick a well qualified architect, urban planner or a mechanic (I know zero about cars). I could see a house and say "hey, you must be a good architect" but if I had to hire one early in their career I'd ideally go to someone in their field that I trust (as suggested in many comments here).

BTW I say this as a business guy. Granted I know how to code a little. But I still need someone to code the site up, And don't bother finding a cofounder at that stage, for that early alpha, you need to rely on freelancers to get the job done, because finding a tech cofounder is next to impossible.

Why? Because every programmer gets approached once a week with "hey, I heard you know interwebz, help me code up my site and lets make billions!".

Not true. The vast majority of reasonably to highly profitable businesses either don't have a product at all, or else have a product that involves no new technology. Businesses that require a hacker or an engineer are by far the exception. To the extent that the philosophy of Hacker News is wrong, it's mostly because it ignores that fact that for 98% of the people reading this site it would be more profitable for them to open a Korean grocery than to do a website.

What I do see, and agree with, is good business would have a ridiculously hard time finding a great programmer. I don't even think good programmers could consistently identify the great hackers with the ability to propel a startup forward. Also finding that individual is only half the battle - putting their expertise to work optimally for a startup is no easy task.

I have seen articles on how hackers cannot identify good business/marketing/sales people. I recall one article explaining quite well how a smart programmer with a good business concept was sunk by his bad selection in a sales guy.

We can just generalize this argument to 'Identifying people great at a task is difficult, even more so if you come from a disjoint background'. Perhaps adding in 'A subset of those great people will be able to leverage that skill at your startup'.

Let me summarize with an analogy.

Finding a great ship is an enormous challenge - especially for someone who is neither a ship-builder or sailer. But owning a great ship does not guarantee faster travel; the winds and currents must be harnessed.

You're best off hiring someone you can work effectively with, rather than the best programmer in the world (as for judging someone you can work with long term, that's another problem).

"Non-technical people can't judge technical people."

Once someone learns enough to judge technical skills, they are declared technical and so don't disprove the statement.

We're not trying to tell the business people that we could do their jobs better than they. That would be arrogance.

"In practice what happens is that the business guys choose people they think are good programmers (it says here on his resume that he’s a Microsoft Certified Developer) but who aren’t. Then they’re mystified to find that their startup lumbers along like a World War II bomber while their competitors scream past like jet fighters. This kind of startup is in the same position as a big company, but without the advantages.

So how do you pick good programmers if you’re not a programmer? I don’t think there’s an answer. I was about to say you’d have to find a good programmer to help you hire people. But if you can’t recognize good programmers, how would you even do that?”

And then goes on to say he disagrees with PG and then provides some "indicators" that business guys can use to guide their search .

The thing is, a "business guy" is in no shape to judge any of these "indicators" accurately even if we grant that these are valid (which I don't).

. How would this hypothetical business guy recognize "passion for programming" (one of the "indicators" for recognizing programming excellence the author mentions)?

Let us see what he says

"Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about). Some people might see that as maladapted social skills (which it is), but if you want to recognise a good developer, this passion for what they’re doing at the expense of social smoothness is a very strong indicator. Can you get this guy to excitedly chat up a technology that he’s using, for a whole half hour, without losing steam? Then you might be onto a winner."

Yeah right!!! This reminds me of some managers I know who'd make these kinds of judgments and reward the most technically inept members of the team because they "excitedly talk your ears off". Most of the talk would be technically incoherent but how would they know? all they detect is the "passion".

The rest of the "indicators" are similarly flawed.

PS the comments are hilarious too. I particularly liked "The above list is excellent (and it describes me perfectly). " :-D

Taken altogether, they are helpful because they allow someone with little technical expertise to at least have a snowflake's chance in hell of recognising programing talent. If someone is enthusiastic, has a broad technical skill set, has been programming since before uni, loves to talk about the latest bit of technology he's picked up, is articulate, smart, learns technical stuff by himself, and has a tendency to work on side projects (rather than having all his experience on the CV), then they're far more likely to be a good programmer than not.

Remember, a business guy is effectively flying blind. I can sit with someone for 15 minutes and tell you whether they're a good hacker or not without having asked a single technical question, but someone with no technical skills cannot do that - nor can they figure out how to recognise someone like me to ask me to do it for them. They'll get fooled by certification-laden "software architects" who haven't written a line of code in years and will happily help them hire a football team's worth of mediocre programming talent.

I put together this list over a year ago to help non-technical people in this situation, and others must have found it useful, since over time it's accrued some 300'000 visitors and been linked to from pretty much everywhere.

If you feel you can come up with a better list of indicators, please do so, I'll be the first to vote you up.

In hindsight, more than a year after writing this article, I would say that this list might be most useful for the business guy to recognise someone who will help him hire good programmers, rather than as a direct hiring tool.

When 95% of the people you see coming through the door are like this I could see a non-programmer not being in a position to figure out that these people simply aren't worth hiring.... the solution I don't see addressed is more rapid and iterative trial and error in the development hiring process: bringing people on in a limited capacity or throwing them at smaller and contained technical projects before giving them responsibility for more important stuff. I'm a big fan of finding good people for part-time work and then growing them into full time positions if the business model starts supporting it and they want more work. This has worked well for non-programming stuff too.

"If you feel you can come up with a better list of indicators, please do so, I'll be the first to vote you up."

I think the counter point maybe that there may not be any valid "indicators" at all that a completely "programming blind" business guy can use. At least this is how I read PG's original essay. I agree with that viewpoint based on my experience.

Personally I found the essay (and the comments) amusing. It is just that I don't feel that this list of so called "indicators" have any practical utility, not because you didn't try your level best to come up with good indicators, but because the successful use of such indicators needs some programming experience (or trusted programmers for the business guy to delegate the decision to, who happen to be good at programming).

In other words I completely agree with your assessment that "Remember, a business guy is effectively flying blind. I can sit with someone for 15 minutes and tell you whether they're a good hacker or not without having asked a single technical question, but someone with no technical skills cannot do that - nor can they figure out how to recognise someone like me to ask me to do it for them. They'll get fooled by certification-laden "software architects" who haven't written a line of code in years and will happily help them hire a football team's worth of mediocre programming talent."

We disagree on what (if anything) can be done without a competent programmer in the loop somewhere, by a business guy with no programming experience using these(and possibly other) "indicators".

peace,

Well, I'll be sure to make the next version better. :-) This was posted 18 months ago (and it's the third time it makes the front page of HN).

We disagree on what (if anything) can be done without a competent programmer in the loop somewhere

I think these indicators can at least be used to whittle down the technical people that a business person knows down to a shortlist that is more likely to be good (rather than just have fancy titles). I'll grant you that the list can be improved, but I can't agree that the list is useless.

Fair Enough :-). As I said earlier, I think your intent (of finding these or potentially better indicators) is a noble one. I am not convinced of the efficiacy of such indicators in practice, when weilded by a business guy with no programming experience. But hey, I could be wrong and you could be right ! I'll be glad to change my viewpoint if I see this approach work in a consistent fashion!

I think phrased as "has released things publicly", it's a bit too restrictive, because some people will be excellent programmers but just not have gotten into the whole open source community thing.

That said, from the point of view of helping narrow it down for someone who doesn't know programming much, then yes - if a programmer has released public libraries/applications that are in use, that's a great form of "extra-curricular" not-so-hidden project, so it could well be used as an additional indicator.

"Formal Qualifications This is more a of non-indicator than a counter-indicator. The key point to outline here is that formal qualifications don’t mean squat when you’re trying to recognise a good programmer."

Qualifications is an effective way to limit at least some of the people. Most 4 year university degrees require at least a basic level of intelligence and commitment. It is true that there are a lot of professional Comp. Science bullshitters out there with degrees (I know quite a few) but on the average you will be luckier with a university guy. This does not just mean that you should look for Computer Science – applied mathematicians are also a good bet (based on other qualifications). (Of course there are also excellent programmers without degrees – but it is extremely difficult to find).

Another thing – something as simple as a typing test may help you. There are people out there that claim to be programmers (esp. freshly out of college) but do not really program (further than the task at hand). People who programs a lot for a long time will generally type faster than people who do not really program.

Also I think that to hire someone is fairly expensive (at least $50,000 a year in the states). If you make a bad decision it is a lot of money down the drain and one bad guy can ruin the atmosphere of a whole company. Why not hire a programmer (that you know to be competent) to help you with the interview? I am sure that a $1000 expense is less than the risk of wasting $50,000.

You'd seriously give a someway qualified programmer a typing test?

I don't think qualifications are a great hurdle requirement, but they are one of the indicators that are useful. Pretty much the best indication of how someone will do is past performance - and a degree contributes to that.

As for trade qualifications - e.g. Certified CompanyXYZ Professional. I've often found them to be neutral or counter-indicators -- quite often they are (1) even though you know this stuff inside out to do this work we mandate this qualification or (2) I heard XYZ professionals get paid a lot so I'll buy a "get your XYZ professional cert in 15 days" book and qualify.

In my experience anyway -- I've not done a massive amount of hiring really, but the # of positions would be in the 30's or 40's.

I suspect people with a degree in computer science or applied mathematics tend to be on average better programmers than people who claim to be programmers who don't have those degrees. But the bar set by simply having a degree is so incredibly far from the level that you'd want out of your technical lead that it's not much of a useful metric.

Typing seems even odder. Doubly so where I live as they don't teach folks in school here to touch-type. These days I'd suspect that typing speed is probably more correlated to the speed with which one sends IMs than how fast they code.

Really, if your hiring requirements are "a guy with a degree that types quickly" you're going to find yourself pretty quickly up shit creek.

I doubt that. Further more a person with a degree has on the average a higher intelligence than a person without. Also, most degrees have language requirements and subjects that at least ensures that the person has a basic grasp of grammar and spelling.

> Typing seems even odder. Doubly so where I live as they don't teach folks in school here to touch-type.

You should at least check if a person can type. There are a lot of so called "programmers" that can not even type properly.

> Really, if your hiring requirements are "a guy with a degree that types quickly" you're going to find yourself pretty quickly up shit creek.

You constructed a straw man – no where did I suggest you should only use these metrics – my suggestion was that it made sense to hire/contract a programmer to help you make the hiring decision.

Maybe I should write an updated version of it...

On the other hand, I'd like to add a disclaimer for those reading this article for the first time:

I wrote this a year and a half ago. My ideas on the topic are clearer and can probably be better explained now. So it's worth considering that when you say "this blogger believes blah blah blah", "this blogger" does not exist anymore. I've moved on and if I write this article again (which I may well do), I'll be sure to make it far more convincing than I was able to 18 months ago.

Btw: My new blog, which you've probably seen recently, is http://danieltenner.com . If I post an updated version of this article, it will appear on my new blog, not on inter-sections.

My boss is a pure business guy. He didn't rise up from the ranks to become the boss; he's run multiple startups, and each time he's served as a "business guy," not a hacker.

Yet despite this he knows enough about every facet of his business that you can explain to him a subtle bug in our software or an algorithm involving frequency transforms--and he'll understand you. The power of this is incredible; while it takes a good amount of effort to be familiar with the technical aspects of the business, it gives so many benefits--from the obvious (the hackers trust you more and are more likely to give you the accurate lowdown on any situation or proposal) to the less obvious (you can recognize good hackers better).

Recently, he wrote a very complex threading patch that dealt with all sorts of race conditions for a program that, while part of our business, he had never touched before.

Being a "business type" does not justify being clueless about the technical aspects of your business.

Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. When did he learn about multithreaded programming? You don't just pick that up along the way anyhow.

Honestly your story sounds more like a Hacker who turned business-guy a while ago than a business-guy who magically accumulated hacker skills.

First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people.

As for multi-threaded programming-- that is one skill that universities generally teach well as a part of undergraduate computer science programs (although I can only speak for mine). It's also generally about recognizing patterns (consumer/producer problem, dining philosopher problems) and being able to see them irrespective of the implementation (I first began playing with POSIX threads before college, learned the formal concepts in a class which used Solaris threads and am now working through Doug Lea's book about concurrency in Java: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/).

There are many people who go into MBA and JD programs with CS and EE undergraduate degrees (it's excellent preparation in the sense that it's a lot of brain gymnastic; statistics also show many undergraduate engineer majors also go on to medical school as well). So one may not necessarily be a hacker (they don't code for fun) but have a CS education -- or they may even be a hacker (they do code for fun) without being a professional developer (they've never worked in a software engineering organization).

Incidentally, I can describe people that fit all of those molds (many CEOs of big companies generally fit the "has a technical undergraduate background, climbed the technical ladder at big-co, got an MBA and switched to management or sales" pattern; start-up founders frequently fit the "worked on Wall-Street by day, coded for fun by night" pattern).

I didn't say all his startups were successful ;)

His third (I think) startup, the current one, is quite successful though, and he hopes to be able to sell it for at least a billion eventually. Current estimated valuation is a quarter of a billion with at least 50m in VC (don't know the exact numbers). About ~60 employees.

On the topic of the GP post: you talk about a "businessperson who magically acquired hacker skills"--but is it somehow more likely to have a "hacker who magically acquires businessperson skills"?

I think business is very simple. Profit. Loss. Take the sales, subtract the costs, you get this big positive number. The math is quite straightforward. - Bill Gates

Then there's negotiation/persuasion/deal-making/people skills. Most people engage in activities involving variations of those everyday. You'd almost have to be a hermit to avoid picking up some people skills. While some hackers may halfway fit that description, I doubt that most do.

Acquiring hacker skills, OTOH, involves rather more specialized effort.

You can also intuit something about someone's technical skills by looking at the types of places they've worked for. Some guy who has hacked together fifty is likely not as technically skilled as someone who worked at Google and Facebook. That's not a full-proof test, obviously, but there isn't a full-proof test here, even if you are a programmer.

I agree completely.

" Programming is a deep technical skill, just like many others, and the way you hire for those types of positions if you don't understand them is to rely on the judgment of others who do."

Exactly! This is the central point. This is how I (as a programmer) would find a good lawyer or doctor or helicopter pilot from large numbes of doctors or lawyers or pilots with similair sounding degrees and other "indicators", for example.

I am just not convinced of the whole idea of using "indicators" as a substitute for the above. It is not so much that any indicators are wrong in themselves , but that unless I have someone who knows how to use those indicators correctly.

Now I don't know anyone who can help me with the judging , I could go with a list of "common sense" indicators and take my chances. I have serious doubts on how much this will succeed in picking an exceptional doctor/lawyer/pilot etc.

1) Does the programmer _complete_ interesting programming projects in their spare time?

2) Can the programmer explain something mildly technical such that you, the business guy, can understand?

3) A test: push the programmer a bit. Act as if you don't understand something and be a bit rude. If the programmer does anything except listen to you and patiently try to help you then he/she is no-hire.

Explanations:

If the programmer doesn't complete interesting projects in their spare time they don't have enough passion for programming.

If he/she can't explain something clearly it's highly likely they can't communicate with business folks effectively in general hence they're not going to be effective at the job.

There's a lot of angry programmers. If the programmer becomes visibly annoyed or angry during an interview you've found yourself a no-hire. Angry programmers destroy morale very quickly.

That's my opinion on how to find "good" programmers. Keep in mind the percentage of "good" programmers who will be a good fit for your business is small. This is where respectful drilling of technical matters is appropriate. This part of the interview is completed by a _technical_ employee. Remember that lots of good programmers can fail technical interviews because they just don't know the particular technology.

2) Good point.

3) If someone pushes me rudely then I am going to get mad at them and they will know it because I am human and I have every right to get angry. I don't like to put up a front. This is why I'm a programmer and not a salesperson, executive, or someone who's job it is to be two-faced. Does that mean I won't continue to try to help a rude person that genuinely needs help and that is not just trying to manipulate me? No, but that's a different situation.

4) If they become angry or annoyed because you were deliberately rude like you suggested above, then it doesn't make sense to eliminate them for that reason. If you were polite and human and ordinary conversation angered them, then that is a red flag that no one needs you to point out.

5) I have a feeling if I interviewed with you for more than thirty seconds I would come off as another one of your angry programmers, because I would be at that point.

6) Respectful drilling of technical matters: i.e. programming languages and API pop-quizzes? "Respectful" drilling? What does a verbal pop-quiz have to do with programming? What about this part: do your existing programmers and managers like the person?

What is your name so I can avoid ever working for you?

For example, I once started a bittorrent client in C just to learn how to use sockets and pthreads in C as well as understand the bittorrent protocol. While I never completed it (what would have been the point? there are already way too many out there and I did not have a unique take on the idea), I did accomplish what I set out to do.

I start with the usual "reverse a linked list" stuff or easier, go through education and work experience, play the whole game, but the thing that really does it for me is that he learns erlang in his free time, or has a self-made javascript game on his home page (if he's a web developer) or whatever. It only has to be completely non-paid non-contracted work. Then of course I look at the source code, but the decision is already half made.

There is a much longer list of things that disqualify a candidate. Anything Entreprise, any formal certifications outside college, personality (yes, I discriminate. I like working with people I like working with, apparently). But a checklist for a good programmer, I doubt it can be applied successfully.

edit: * entreprise = using oracle for mom&pop shops, not working in big companies. Sounds obvious, but it's sadly too common mindset to use the most expensive/complicated solution instead of the cheapes/simplest, to the point that just hearing "entreprise" turns me off.

I've been helping screen technical people for friend's companies for a while now. My friends trust me to determine if someone is the right fit for the role, technically. I'm too busy on my own projects to work for/with my friends full time, but I can spend an hour or two doing phone screens, interviews, reading resumes, etc... Some of them even pay me for it:)

There's no magic formula that lets you (a business guy) figure out who's great, who's really green, who's full of crap, etc... It can't be done. You have to rely on a web of trust, using your friends.

Give a small practical problem to solve and see what the other person comes up with. For instance you could ask prospective employee to hack together a small app or a script to do something or anything you can understand and think is solvable with technology.

The great part of this test is that most of the time slackers just don't even attempt it. For those who give a shot, you can look at certain behavioral patterns using your softskills. For a non-techie judge, you won't be able to analyze the quality of design but the end result also says a lot.

For every good programmer I know, I know many more who are total bozos who claim to be great and are thought by some to be great.

Aside from that just being a very dishonest way to conduct business, you'd spend all your time organizing people who are working together who don't know they are working together. Even if you could manage that, you'd have no way of assembling the finished components into a working application, and there is just no way you could find someone capable of handling that task that was also foolish enough to think such a complex operation would be part of a job screening process conducted by a person incapable of knowing if it's done well or not. In fact, it's very unlikely you'd fool any experienced developers they'd quickly deduce that you don't know enough about the code to judge it's quality.

The end result would be a pile of code that wouldn't work and you'd have no way of fixing it without hiring an even more exceptional programmer, who would probably tell you to throw out 90% of the work and start over.

And even if you could do all these things without technical knowledge at best you'll be able to weed out the mediocre, never find the best.

Is there any such thing as a headhunter who is also a hacker? That would probably be the best solution for the MBA-types, short of taking a few years to learn to hack themselves.

I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a programmer, and one about what to do if you're not. And the second could probably be condensed into two words: give up.

I call bullshit. There are many, many examples of successful technical teams organized by people without deep relevant technical expertise.

All this PHB stereotyping around here is just arrogant vanity.

Which ones were you thinking of when you wrote this?

WTF. Is this some sort of playground?

> There are many, many examples of successful technical teams organized by people without deep relevant technical expertise.

And there are many many more that are complete disasters. As they say, a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn.

> All this PHB stereotyping around here is just arrogant vanity.

Actually, it's experience.

The interesting difference is that technical folk don't claim any particular skill in the domain of PHBs but the PHBs claim incredible skill in technical domains.

If both are correct, there's something interesting going on, but let's see some evidence.

> WTF. Is this some sort of playground?

Calling people out is an important part of a healthy, critical discussion focused on the exchange of ideas. I might not share someone's opionion, but I aplaud fighting against groupthink.

>> All this PHB stereotyping around here is just arrogant vanity.

> Actually, it's experience.

Both sides of this discussion have pointed to ethereal "examples", "experience" without giving any meat. Show the evidence - empirical or anecdotal - to support your opinion.

> Let's see some evidence.

Let's see some evidence from your side too.

>> WTF. Is this some sort of playground?

>Calling people out ,

Now you're escalating to a physical challenge. Like I said, playground.

> is an important part of a healthy, critical discussion

Actually, it isn't. In fact, calling someone out is one of the best indicators that "healty, critical discussion" isn't anywhere near.

>>> All this PHB stereotyping around here is just arrogant vanity.

>> Actually, it's experience.

>Show the evidence - empirical or anecdotal - to support your opinion.

If you haven't read the other posts, citing them won't make any difference. If you have and still think that there's no evidence, citing them won't make any difference.

>> Let's see some evidence.

>Let's see some evidence from your side too.

For what? I wrote that technical people don't believe that they're good at evaluating biz people. Which part of that is under dispute?

You seem to believe that biz people are good at evaluating technical people. The sole piece of evidence is that there are successful teams "led" by biz people, but that doesn't imply that said biz people evaluated the technical people.

EA - Trip Hawkins was a business guy, but somehow they dominate software.

eHarmony - A good sized web based business with a doc at the helm.

McDonalds - Everytime you order a big mac anywhere in the world a bun, patty, slice of cheese, two pickles and a squirt of ketchup come out of inventory.

All of the airlines - May not lead to great business results, but they certainly know software.

And of course these from my earlier comment:

Walmart

FedEx

Disney

Bank of America

For all the people who think it is impossible for non-hackers to hire a hacker, why don't you comb through the Fortune 500 and prove your point, or write a program to do so.

What's silly is the strawmen that are being thrown around. No one is arguing that biz types can't start/lead tech biz.

The claim is that the vast majority of non-tech people can't usefully evaluate tech people in time to do any good.

It's not unlike the complementary situation, technical people evaluating non-technical people.

As I pointed out, if tech people can't evaluate non-tech and non-tech can evaluate tech, something interesting is going on.

But, let's ask the question - do non-tech people think that tech people can evaluate non-tech people? If so, why do tech people think otherwise? If not, but non-tech can evaluate tech people, why the difference?

> EA - Trip Hawkins was a business guy, but somehow they dominate software.

Hawkins also always has a tech partner.

The same can be said for every other company on the list.

For example, you could be primarily business with a little hacking, and that would make you qualified enough to hire good hackers.

On the other side, I'd love to see an article about hackers hiring salespeople. I somehow doubt most hackers would see themselves as absolute idiots at finding a good salesperson, they would just be new to it the first couple times.

Its not how you categorize yourself, its how you approach the problem, and your ability to research/network/analyze. This should be true REGARDLESS of what you are hiring for.

- You would ideally have at least one person who you trust who is a coder who you can show source code samples, previous work, etc., for a quality assessment.

- Previous business references are valuable, as only so much of the overall usefulness of the person comes from raw coding ability -- there may be other habits, personality characteristics, etc., that (good or bad) might influence the decision.

- I highly recommend starting out a new coder with a simple contract project so that you can assess her ability to communicate, work toward a goal, etc. You should probably pay whatever the coder thinks is fair, b/c this is not a bidding war exercise. You mainly want to see about work habits, style, compatibility with the existing team, productivity, etc. By doing this you are giving both parties (yourself and the programmer) a chance to feel each other out and determine if it's a good fit. This can even be done as a part-time project while the programmer is still employed elsewhere, reducing risk for everyone involved.

- Things like blogs, open source contributions, etc., are nice, but I think of them as a hobby and unless you're thinking of hiring one of the few very well known luminaries in a software community, the fact that your prospective hire has a blog is probably not all that indicative of superstar qualities.

- Character traits like tinkering are great too, but just because someone is focused on a main task and doesn't tinker with each new thing that comes along doesn't mean she's somehow a worse programmer than the tinkerer who writes something in every new framework, etc. I have known great coders with both characteristics and I think the bottom line is that good coders know what's out there and can easily help you evaluate it for your business, even if they didn't spend the past 5 weekends hacking out a side project in erlang -- unless of course you truly end up wanting to use erlang, at which point their side project was a great investment that cost you nothing. However, most skilled coders could read up on erlang and catch up in about a week, so we're not talking about all that much overall productivity.

- I'd beware of coders who prefer highly complex solutions to problems -- in a business scenario sometimes a less elegant, easily understood solution is ideal.

- I'd beware of coders who are unwilling to adapt to your demand for quality. Perhaps you don't need 3000 lines of test code for an internal whiteboard app. It's good to find a coder you can trust to make the right call, but some are very unconcerned with your budget and timeline and may not realize where the rubber meets the road from a business perspective.

Any hire is going to be a relationship and hiring a coder is not too different from hiring a business person. You need to establish trust and confidence. Frank and clear communication is key to this. The coder should not think of you as a "suit" and you should not think of her as a geek. Ultimately the reason anyone is getting paid is because it's a business and that requires judicious use of tradeoffs.

Simple. Ask someone who knows. If you don't know anyone who knows, you might want to reevaluate whether you should be getting into the tech industry.

As for the arrogance thing - look at Brin/Page, Ellison and Gates, etc. - all hackers. When a "business" guy's achievements in the hacker space outdo these hackers' achievements in the business world, be sure to let me know.

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As your mother should have told you, if you don't have a substantive argument to make, don't try to make one at all.