Evaluating and hiring developers: Our new ranking system

We are actively recruiting a few great developers to add to our growing team, which means reviewing many resumes, interviewing a few people and evaluating talent through code and conversation. We’re finding a delta between coders’ perceptions of their skill sets and their output, shown here from lowest to highest.

This list seems out of order, but it really shows a failure of expectation management and the evolution of self-awareness. Rockstar is near the bottom because, unless you are impacting the world like Linus Torvalds (Linux) and David Hansen (Ruby on Rails, 37Signals), you have misclassified yourself. “I’m OK” sets the opposite expectations, meaning someone is competent enough to downplay his/her skill sets. Average is above advanced, because deeper experience brings more perspective and humility.

Let’s see if this list skews future interviews–if we receive 100% “I’m OKs,” at least we’ll know they are doing their background research.