If I didn't have an IT company, the title would be different too. Say, the electrician, store manager, or chef I would hire, or something like that.
Does the profession, the professional experience, really matter that much, or are there things that matter far more?
My career has unfolded in such a way that I've had relatively few interviews where I was the one applying for a job. Even those applications didn't go particularly well, however much I wanted a good job, so I became an entrepreneur relatively quickly.
Then, after many years, interviews started again, but now I was the one sitting on the other side of the table. A difficult position.
Many people apply for a job, with completely varying ages, backgrounds, pasts, presents, and visions for the future. Somewhere along the way, everyone has their own value, their own set of values, everyone wants to work, but where and doing what they'd like, there's no demand for it. It's a difficult situation, because I know the feeling.
But I still can't hire just anyone, I can't hire everyone, so who is it that I would hire?
This is a very strange world we live in now. On the one hand, a year of experience is expected almost everywhere. But where can you get that if it's expected everywhere? Fine, have a degree too, but then why is experience also expected? Because a degree doesn't mean all that much, only a little. Education is outdated, slow, and poor.
Then there are the "pay a whole lot of money" and "become a programmer in a few months" courses. You still won't have that year of experience, and you paid a lot of money, and in exchange you didn't work in the meantime either.
Finally, there are those who already have x years of experience, so we assume they understand the profession, and they ask for a lot of money. Would the employer's risk really be much lower here? I don't think so. The learning curve costs much more, and the acquired routine and knowledge can not only speed things up but can just as easily hinder the already established work routine and collaboration.
The programmer I would hire has decided which train to board in that huge universe we call IT or programming. They didn't make this decision based on the exotic offers of a travel agency, but by asking several people who have already been where that train is going.
The programmer I would hire is aware that IT tries to solve the real problems of real, existing people, and that this isn't paid for in bitcoin. Accordingly, they want to and are able to communicate with people, they have empathy, they're able to understand problems and events and offer a solution for them. For this, you wouldn't even need to know how to code.
The programmer I would hire is able to understand everything they learn, organize it within themselves, and store it in a system, so they can later build on it. As their knowledge grows within this system, so does their ability to offer solutions, among which customers can then choose.
The programmer I would hire is humble. They're aware of the extent of their problem-solving ability and of the fact that they, too, once had no year of experience. That's why they help everyone with everything they can, and they don't jump off the train they boarded, but keep moving steadily toward an ever more distant goal.
So the programmer I would hire is a humane person with good communication skills, who sees the solution, not the excuse, in an emerging problem. They are humble and respectful in their work and toward others. Their work ethic is characterized by perseverance, and they willingly offer help wherever they can.
