How do you propose to hire somebody you don't understand? It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know.
If you believe X is important for programming, why on earth would you hire somebody who doesn't like/know about X?
It's possible that you are mistaken about X being important. But then you are screwed anyway. But if you start hiring based on things you don't know, you are also screwed.
At the end of the day everything you do is based on your beliefs. Maybe you started an IT consulting company because you believe Rails is the best thing ever. Then why should you hire somebody who doesn't believe that? If you think about it, the whole premise of the article is completely ridiculous.
It seems to make a lot more sense to judge people based on the things you know.
So do that. Stop pretending you are a psychologist, and capable of figuring out what kind of personality is good at this job, because those are things you don't know.
Instead, give work-sample tests. Those are something you can know. You can look at the results the person emits. Then hire based on that. Personality only needs basic things like "doesn't spit on other people" and "doesn't say racial/sexual slurs to coworkers/clients."
There's no reason to think that a psychological test designed by non-psychologists is even as good as random guessing. On the other hand, work-sample tests have been studied and are a very good guide. Commenter 'tokenadult has FAQd this up for us: http://www.focus.vc/tokenadult-recruiting-faq/
So you would also say that it is best to leave all hiring to a computer, as I suggested in another comment (to summarize all comments I received)? After all, human perceptions seems to be too flawed?
A computer can administer a psychological test, and it can administer a programming test. Problem solved?
Other than that, again: you can only act based on the things you know. So the conclusion is nobody is qualified to hire (since the article talks to everybody)? Of course it is possible that there are some clueless people in the business of hiring. But people can only do what they can do. I don't see any practical advice in that article.
"I only know how to do ad-hoc personality tests, so ad-hoc personality tests must be how I can hire."
The very practical advise is to deliver a work-sample test. Tell the person exactly what you are looking for up-front("we want this code to run as fast as possible" versus "we want this code to be very readable") and then measure on what you said you looking for.
If you do a lot of code maintenance, pull up a piece of your code with a bug and have the candidate hind it. If you do a lot of OOP, describe a recent problem and have him design the class.
I think you're missing the premise of the article. It doesn't say don't hire qualified people based on a set of characteristics. The article brings up various examples where people are totally confused about what those signals and characteristics of qualification actually are. Dress code, common taste in music, beer, literature, etc. are definitely not those characteristics.
The article also doesn't say don't hire people you will get along with. You should try to hire such people but a workplace is a professional environment and not an extended family like some places like to paint themselves. First of all such places should be avoided because no workplace is an extended family and second because they are being unprofessional and exploitative if they pain themselves that way. The recent github fiasco is a good examples of what happens when people forget that workplaces are professional environments and github is actually one of the better places where work and life balance is highly valued. So yes if you're hiring a Rails developer then you should look for someone that understands Ruby and Rails but you shouldn't really care if they are a devout follower of the church of DHH because that has no bearing on their ability to do the job.
The "GitHub fiasco" would not have happened if they had only hired people who are like them. Bad example :-)
I personally don't think there is much to be learned from it. It was just a normal situation where employee and employer don't get along anymore - it happens thousands of times every day. I don't think because of that people should now shut down all emotions at their workplace and only focus on their work and never talk to each other.
You can not really demand that every employee has to be happy at every company and vice versa.
2. Just-so story about how X is essential for good programmers (which, by definition, I am.)
3. "Therefore I interview for developers who do/are X."