Smart and Gets Things Done

Based on a series of articles originally published at Joel on Software, Smart and Gets Things Done provides a complete guide to the process of attracting, screening, recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and hiring top programmers. It provides a complete system for hiring programmers, yet is concise. And it features a humorous approach that wont be boring!

A "good" programmer can outproduce five, ten, and sometimes more run-of-the-mill programmers. The secret to success for any software company then is to hire the good programmers. But how do you do that? How do you recognize a good programmer? How do you even define "good"? These are questions the software industry has struggled with for decades. Managers and others involved in hiring programmers are constantly faced with the dilemma of trying to divine talent for programming based on their perception of a candidates talent for interviewing and socialization. The result? All too often this leads to hiring a good talker rather than a good programmer.

In Smart and Gets Things Done, Joel Spolsky draws from his experience of both working at Microsoft and running his own successful software company based in New York City. Joel writes humorously, but seriously, about his methods for sorting resumes, for finding great candidates, and for interviewingin person and by phone. Joels methods are not complex, but they do get to the heart of the matter: how to recognize a great developer when you see one.

Joel Spolsky is the #1-ranked blogger in the technical space and is widely quoted even in the mainstream media (for example, Smart Money and the Wall Street Journal). Joel is well-known in his field, notably because of his Joelonsoftware.com web site. He has a large and devoted following, and all his previous books have been best-sellers with backlist appeal.