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by Jason Watkins.
Original Post: Did you hire a person or a product?
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Recently I was reading yet another project horror story. It’s a common tale: the customer chose technology based on fashion, then went looking for a contractor. The contractor didn’t deliver, and so the customer begins to consider different technologies. You can imagine how it goes downhill from there.
Certainly technological concerns are important to any project. But I believe it’s only sensible to place them as a 2nd priority, below finding someone you are supremely confident with.
Hire the person, then ask them what technology will fit your needs best. If you don’t trust them with that recommendation, you’ve not hired the right person.
I don’t understand why shopping by technology is so common. I assume it’s because the idea is that if you choose the right platform, developers that don’t work out are replaceable. Of course this is a fiction: partially completed code is only marginally reusable, and getting the wrong person upfront can often inflict a cost a project cannot recover from.
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