Your advice on employers (me) hiring coders

tomld

I am a self taught internet business owner and for the past three years have worked solo on all my projects. I have a good range of skills in pretty much everything except coding. Up until now I have worked extensively with freelancers from across the globe. As my business has grown and I am now interested in opening a local office and staffing 4-5 employees, with most being coders. Having never employed anyone before and not being a coder myself, I have some questions in regards to the expectations a coder seeks in a full time employment position. For example, I know wages vary by location and experience, but what should I expect to pay yearly for a qualified PHP coder? Also I have many questions regarding the recruitment of quality talent. Picking freelancers is easy by viewing a long track record of past job ratings and portfolio examples. In the offline world, how would I, as a non-coding employers test and recruit top coding talent? Another question I have is about re-location. Is it common to hire a coder from a different area and for him/her to relocate for the position?

A few other questions I have are...

1) Obviously office space and PC's will be provided to the employees by the company, however are software programs needed to be provided as well? For example if a coder has already purchased a suite of expensive developer programs, should he/she be expected to bring those into the workplace for their use or should the company be expected to provide them?

2) In this period of highly demanding work environments, should I expect (or be lucky enough) to have employees with more than coding skills? For example would it be realistic to find a PHP coder with good web & graphic design skills? Or a coder with good marketing sense?

As I plan for this huge step, I guess my biggest concern is how I would go about evaluating and selecting qualified staff for my business. My plan at this point is to hire a few PHP coders, one application coder, perhaps one marketer & web designer.

I'd love to hear thoughts on these topics straight from the coders.

Regards,
Tom

Frederick

I, myself would like to bring in my own software to work on because every experinced coder has their own styles to coding and some software fits them best.
I like working with Adobe GoLive 6 because of the readily tool objects available that helps to make the repetitious type of items easy to add. Good source view options, too.

You should get a coder who knows PHP, MySQL database and Access database. PHP does great work with Access. Good targets are those with an intranet environment and would like to link Office application items to their databases.

A good way to evaluate a person is to have them create items such as:
- Gallery using GDlib to create images on the fly.
- Download manager using uploaders and file download hit counts.
- Users access module designed to be able to be used with most sites and have users information encrypted.
Email confirmation to activate a membership.
With access log.
- Web site template (engine) for easy site maintenance, theme changing, easy new page addons and easy to addon modules.
- Wizard to calculate something to test their computations of math that will occur in the background of an application.

As far as having a coder, marketer and a graphics person rolled into one, it is best to at least have a person who specializes in graphics. Coders most of the time can do both but most coders imaginations are little dryer when it comes to imaging (no insult to the other coders).

Well, those are my ideas, hope it helps.

AstroTeg

Originally posted by tomld

1) Obviously office space and PC's will be provided to the employees by the company, however are software programs needed to be provided as well?

Software is provided by the company. In some situations, the coder expenses the software back to the company. If the coder is coding at home and brings their software in, they're infringing their copyrights (I DOUBT they'll buy 2 licenses for home and work nor do you want to count on them to keep their CDs at the office). Same is true if they try taking your company's software home. Businesses usually get bulk discounts on software. This may not help you out if you're a small shop. DO NOT get busted because you didn't have licenses ON SITE. If you do, you will get fined and have your business shut down for a week or so while they do an investigation (BSA in the USA).

Originally posted by tomld

2) In this period of highly demanding work environments, should I expect (or be lucky enough) to have employees with more than coding skills? For example would it be realistic to find a PHP coder with good web & graphic design skills? Or a coder with good marketing sense?

Are you looking for a "Jack of all trades" or an expert coder? You might need a "Jack of all trades" and its very possible to find one. But this person may be great at specifics. Tough call. Take me for example: I code. I am not a graphics guy. I can hold my own in Photoshop, but I couldn't put together a graphically sharp web page. I admit this to my employers. Team me up with a graphics guy and we'll make awesome web sites. So, you can get a coding expert, or a graphics expert, but to get both in one person would be kind of tough (graphics is kind of a right brain activity while coding might be left - or is that backwards?).

Originally posted by tomld

As I plan for this huge step, I guess my biggest concern is how I would go about evaluating and selecting qualified staff for my business. My plan at this point is to hire a few PHP coders, one application coder, perhaps one marketer & web designer.

This is a pretty loaded question. I'd recommend checking out some business books on hiring and interview practices. There's some legal lines that you want to make sure you don't accidentally cross. Otherwise, I'd ask to see their work and talk to them and find out how long they've been in the business and how they keep on top of the technology. If you're talking to PHP coders, you might toss out some real world coding situations and find out how they handle it (and I recommend you find out how you'd want them handled so you can compare their answers). You might even have them write a quick PHP page right there on the spot to see if they know their stuff...

AstroTeg

Originally posted by Frederick
I

You should get a coder who knows PHP, MySQL database and Access database. PHP does great work with Access.

Ouch. Access is NOT web friendly. Period. MySQL is very very very borderline web friendly (use MySQL if you can't figure out PostgreSQL or can't afford to play with the big boys like MS SQL, Oracle, DB2).

More more more importantly: find someone who knows YOUR environment. If you run a MySQL shop, then get someone who knows PHP and MySQL. If you're a MS SQL shop, a MySQL guy is not going to be of much help (it is possible to train, but you may not want to pay for training or mistakes).

tomld

Thanks guys, great advice. Being that coding might as well be chinese to me, I almost need to hire an expert hardcore coder who would in a sense be my right hand man in recruiting a quality team.

Is it common to have a sort of trial period for a new employee, in which time they in a sense prove themselves before being hired permanently?

AstroTeg

Originally posted by tomld
Being that coding might as well be chinese to me, I almost need to hire an expert hardcore coder who would in a sense be my right hand man in recruiting a quality team.

How will you know you have a hardcore coder? It seems kinda like a recursive loop.

I'd say just cut to the chase and listen to the coders. Are they BS-ing you? Can they or can't they show previous work they've done? Does their personality and work ethic match what you're looking for?

Originally posted by tomld
Is it common to have a sort of trial period for a new employee, in which time they in a sense prove themselves before being hired permanently?

With a question like this, you're bordering on asking for legal advice. You won't find that here, but you will find it with a lawyer who specializes in this stuff. I HIGHLY recommend you find a lawyer to craft up some hiring rules and employee rules/regulations.

In the US, its possible to be on a 90 day "probation" where the employee works for 90 days with the option to walk out the door at any time. Also, it means the employer can let that employee go if it doesn't work out. This usually is at a reduced wage and benefits agreed upon by both the employer and employee. You will want to check with a lawyer to find out if you can do this in your area and what traps you need to watch out for.

Elizabeth

Tom,
Before you go and hire your staff, you may wish to do as AstroTeg suggested and enlist the help of an HR consultant or lawyer. If you're contracting work out then there are many issues you don't have to deal with. But once you make someone an employee, you will need to think about:
Health insurance for your employees
Workman's comp insurance for your company
Payroll and tax issues
Employee regulations and policies (such as termination policies or vacation time; all that stuff has to be in writing, and someone has to keep track of it all)

I'm sure there are other issues that I can't think of at the moment... it's been a long time since I took a human resources class. Hope that helps...

pohopo

my advice is do not believe most of what you read on resumes, do a phone interview before you spend the time to meet anyone, if using an agency change your questions around for each person as they will prep the person so say what you want to hear.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by AstroTeg
Can they or can't they show previous work they've done?

For the most part I can't: I don't own the code I write for other clients and I generally don't have the contractual freedom to show it to other potential clients. I could point them to the site, of course, but what would that prove? If I did my work properly there'd be nothing to see. Instead I end up writing stuff intended for my portfolio - which gives me something to show them, but it's not quite what a portfolio is about.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by pohopo
my advice is do not believe most of what you read on resumes.

Of course (modulo local legislation), if you hire someone on the basis of information in the resume that later turns out to be deliberately bogus, then that's grounds for an instant dismissal. Of course, then you'd suddenly be down one developer. So doing spot checks on its claims beforehand would be a good idea. Catch them lying, don't hire them. (Catch them lying, but hire them anyway, and you can't sack them for it later).

pohopo

Also, right before you hire a person verify the persons education, gpa, and certificates. They have companies that will also do this for you. It will be well worth the investment.

tomld

More great info, thanks. I think my best bet, would be to bring some sort of HR consulting firm aboard to guide my company in it's early stages of staffing.

Are coders usually paid hourly or a set yearly wage?

Weedpacket

I've generally been salaried; though the client gets charged by the hour (which is also how I get paid when freelancing).

onion2k

Originally posted by tomld
Is it common to hire a coder from a different area and for him/her to relocate for the position?

The chances of finding good PHP talent locally depends on where you are. If you're in a decent sized city (London, NY, etc) then you have a fair chance. Anywhere else and you'll be needing people to relocate.

onion2k

Something else..

Before any of your coders start writing anything, make them stick to a coding standard such as PEAR. Seriously. This will save you a fortune in the long run in maintainance..

Bunkermaster

PEAR is not a coding standard, it's a set of libraries. When I hire a developer, I look at the structure of his code and ask him to explain me how he designed his systems (I tend to love tiered OO architecture since I use that method myself to enhance readability and maintainability). I also generally try to see if they are fluent with their documentation (knowing how to find info fast beats knowing it all in the long run).

You wouldn't believe how ugly some people's code is when you look at it and yet it works (so far).

onion2k

Originally posted by Bunkermaster
PEAR is not a coding standard, it's a set of libraries.

http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.php

PEAR has a coding standard. Thats what I meant.