We demand more and more from our hires. Be young, be bold, be good, be cheap, be ready to go the extra mile etc. but the "cheap" and "young" set aside, do we deserve people like this? Do we strive to prepare those workers, foster the culture we'd like to see in our industry? I truly think we don't. And this has been bugging me for the past few years.
This summer, I started writing the skeleton of a "getting started" book describing what I am searching for when I interview potential candidates. That's my very own foundation project.
My idea would be to craft a book that could serve as a kind of todo list for apprentices and journeymen alike, a reminder of the most important topics they should explore sooner or later throughout their journey in the IT industry. This comprise CleanCode, design patterns and XP (extreme programming)of course, but also topics like getting your hands dirty, going for Open Source, getting things done, working remote, knowing your ideal work conditions, communication, transparency and ethics to name a few.
I still don't know if, how and when this will come out. As many blog posts? A real book? Ebook? Selfpublished?
In order to try out some ideas and expand my horizon in some areas, I will start recording interviews with various people very soon.
If you are interested to participate or know someone who might, let me know!
