Emperor Updates for July

A month ago I announced Emperor. I’ve been quiet about it since the announcement because I started a new job at Twitter. I traveled to lovely San Francisco for about a month to learn the ropes and had limited time for extra-curricular work.

But that didn’t stop progress!

Today I tagged version 0.0.4 which includes the following features:

• Events and Timelines
• Ticketing linking (blocks, relates to, etc)
• Lots of unit tests
• Ticket advance & revert UI
• Lots of UI polish

Some highlights of features I’m working on now:

• General features
• UI improvements
• REST API

There are screenshots on the GitHub page. A lot of the core functionality is complete for version 1.0, but there is a lot of fit and finish work to come on the UI. Stay tuned for more!

Announcing Emperor

I’ve spent a lot of night and weekend time working on a bug tracker / project management application and I’ve decided to release it as Open Source.

Meet Emperor!

What

Emperor is a project management system for software development. You can also call it a bug tracker. I don’t mind.

Why

I’ve spent the last 5 years acting — in one capacity or another — as a manager of developers and of development process. I feel that I’ve learned a lot about these sorts of things. I’ve worked with both engineers and non-engineers and I feel that there can be a lot of improvements in these systems.

Also, I think the world could just use more of me.

How

Emperor is available on GitHub. It has instructions for anyone brave enough to use it at this point.

Current Status

Emperor is minimally functional at present. You can create, progress and manipulate tickets and perform many administrative functions. Unfortunately there are bugs lurking all over the place and plenty of half-completed features. For personal reasons it was convenient to release it to the world today.

Other Details

Emperor leverages my recent infatuation with Scala. It has been a learning experience and will likely undergo significant changes as I become a better Scala programmer and learn to better leverage the Play framework.

The Future

It is my intent to finish an installer over the coming weeks and to release a 1.0 version with a small but convenient number of basic features. Afterward I will begin refining and adding new features. Remember that your assistance is welcome!.

Finding A Developer To Hire

In my opinion hiring is a challenge for one reason: Good employees keep their jobs. It’s hard to find people that aren’t looking!

How and who to hire has been beaten to death. I will only touch on specific gems I’ve learned in my time.

Don’t Hire A Warm Body

“This person isn’t so bad”, you think. “They’ll do for now, we just need a warm body.” Bullshit. This has bitten me in the ass every single time I’ve done it.

Time

Hiring people is a full-time job. Writing the job up, posting it to various outlets, handling candidates, performing phone screens, conducting interviews, conducting second interviews and negotiating hiring can become a huge time sink. It is vitally important that you set aside plenty of time for this process. How can you expect to get a great hire if you don’t spend the time?

If you task someone in your organization with finding talented developers then please give them adequate time and patience.

Skill Level

Hire the best person you can find and afford. Many companies get sticker shock at developer salaries. It’s a highly skilled and high demand job. As a result they try and skimp by hiring juniors.

Juniors are junior for a reason. They still need to learn. They do this best at the hands of a more senior developer.

Hire the best developers you can find and work your way down. It’s very hard to build a solid structure on a weak foundation.

Sources

Where can you find great developers? Lots of places!

Recruiters

Recruiters, job boards, friends and peers. Your network is always a great place. Use your LinkedIn network!

Boutique Job Boards

There are lots of great job boards these days that are focused on developers. Using one of these boards helps to show that you’ve done some research and hunted for your quarry where it lives!

• Authentic Jobs
• GitHub Jobs
• Gun.io
• Stack Overflow Careers

Conclusion

Reading this should’ve helped you see the work you need to do. Hiring good folks is hard. Be prepared!

Laying A Foundation

Previously I asked if you needed developers. We'll now cover how to lay a foundation for hiring those developers.

Note: This guide is meant for hiring developers, but most of the advice is useful for hiring any position. Learning your employees and treating them properly is just a damned good idea.

Make A Plan

Read through this and all my other advice. Get a plan together that your organization can pull off.

Get Your Mind Right

Have you ever been talking to your mechanic and realized that he's asking you very specific questions all you can do is make noises at him? Talking to a specialist in any field often works this way.

We'll stick with a simple explanation for developers: Developers think in a different language.

Learning the innards of computers and the magic that drives them makes fundamental changes in your brain. Developers tend to ask hard or obtuse questions about the tasks you give them. You need to prepare for this. It's no different than talking to a doctor or mechanic.

Simple advice: Spend extra time with your developers. Learn how they think, talk and act. As with any relationship it pays to invest in it. Expect that they will do the same for you. Teach your developers about your business so that they can help you with better solutions.

Space

I have scaled advice for making space for developers. I will present the options from best to worst. Choose the best you can manage:

• Give every developer an office. Folks smarter than me have been saying this for years.

• Let developers share offices. Be careful who you pair. Encourage open, honest communication and basic neighborly behavior.

• Isolate developers. Give your developers quiet space to work so they can focus. Show me a noisy, distracting environment and I'll show you unproductive and unhappy developers.

• Create cubicles with some privacy. High walls, sound dampening, etc.

• Basic human decency: Enforce headphones, ban speakerphone, discourage phone calls.

I also highly encourage you create some common space for your developers to meet, hack as a group or just to hang out in. Fill it with whiteboards, some Nerf guns and some Red Bull. Use this space for everyone, not just your developers. Encourage this space to be used for hallway meetings, impromptu discussions or phone calls. This will keep your working area quiet.

Telecommuting

It's never been easier to telecommute. Combinations of Skype, IM, group chat (Basecamp, HipChat, Flowdock) and cloud-based systems mean that folks can work together from anywhere in the world.

That being said telecommuting has it's own problems. It's definitely not for everyone. Employees need a quiet, dedicated work space and a close attention to how they spend their time. If you can overcome these challenges then you open yourself to a huge number of talented developers and cost savings. I'm planning to write an entire article on telecommuting in the future.

Gear

Developers don't use computers the way normal people do. Imagine a race car driver hopping into your car and taking it onto a track. The driver would not have the equipment they need.

Developers need to perform tasks with their computers that are very intense. They need powerful processors with lots of cores, lots of RAM and big hard drives. They also need to install and fiddle with lots of software. Your current purchasing and IT policies may not fit. They may also need to be mobile. The best advice I can give is to give your developers a short list of approved hardware and let them choose. Pick a powerful desktop and a powerful laptop.

Big ass monitors. The biggest you can afford and as many as you can plug in. This is pretty much universal.

Policies

A lot of your policies will depend on your business. Many organizations have to worry about compliance with various regulations. You should already know how this works, so I won't help. Start with this advice and prune it back: Give your developers freedom. Teach your developers about the policies your company or industry must adhere to. Developers want to know why they must do things.

Developers can usually fix their own machines and they are little risk for viruses or malware. They often need to install crazy software that requires total access to their machines.

Conclusion

Don't stress getting everything in this list perfect. Getting even a few of these criteria in place makes you very attractive to developers.

If you think all of this is crazy then I suggest you go back and determine if you really need to hire developers.

Do You Need Developers?

Hiring any employee is a big deal. Most of us spend more time working than any other activity. We are around our co-workers more than our families. Developers require special infrastructure and maintenance just like any other employee.

Why Are You Hiring Developers?

What are you looking to accomplish by hiring developers? Are you really a technology company? Will you be able to properly care for and nurture a group of developers?

Hiring developers brings a whole new angle into your company. These people think, act and work differently. If your entire company is currently marketing or sales then you may be in for a real culture shock.

Outsourcing?

You should almost certainly outsource.

There are lots of consultancies and outsourcing shops that would love to have your business. These organizations make it their business to hire and care for developers. They save you the hassle! If you are really a marketing company or a manufacturing company you might save yourself a lot of headaches by outsourcing.

This is good advice for any person you are looking to hire. Do you have enough demand and enough desire to hire a full-time person or group to do a job? It's especially important when you are looking into a discipline that isn't your core business.

Another problem: Are you qualified to interview and evaluate developers? Most people in the technology business aren't. It's daunting.

A Note On Outsourcing

Your problems aren't likely that unique. There is almost certainly something out there that can do what you want. Would you build your own car? Your commute isn't that special. Neither is your problem.

If you need a simple website then use Squarespace and get your social on with Twitter. It's never been easier to have a web and social media presence without a CompSci degree. Very, very few companies need a custom solution. This is usually what gets them into trouble!

Use a consultancy to help you find something that fits. They might try to steer you the custom route for more billings. Keep an eye out for that.

If You Do Need Developers

You still want to hire developers, eh?

Fine. Maybe you do need developers. That's great! Tune in next time and we'll cover how to go about hiring what you need!