Today there was a topic posted on slashdot about how a company would go about finding top shelf programming talent. This seems to come up on slashdot a lot (we can only guess as to why).
Anyway, I came across this comment which I think really spells out the qualities of great software engineers that you would *want* to hire:
"Second, they can almost never identify themselves. Lots of people THINK they are the superstar. But then they get very little actually accomplished. These are the people I’ve lost to Google. But the superstar does much more than just know the tech details. They actually get stuff done. And their code really really works. And it is highly reusable. And they change others around them. The always make sure the best tools are in place, and they get others to use those tools, not just themselves. In this sense, they are also quite good leaders, although most do not want to manage large teams (and you’d be wise not to have them do so)."
I couldn’t agree more, and I found that comment to be incredibly apt.
