For a while now, my employer has maintained an opening for a talented software developer. They have not advertised the position very heavily because (a) we live in an area that is not rich with developers and (b) our small, Agile team has chugged along fairly well without this extra person.
That all changed today when a colleague – and friend – opted for greener pastures. He’s returning to the company where he started his career as an intern, a place he is particularly fond of, and I cannot blame him for taking a job that more closely fulfills his professional and personal desires. I wish him all the best.
Still, our small team of developers just shrunk by one, and we need to fill the gap.
In a larger city this would not be a problem. We’d just advertise the position and the resumes would pour in. But our location is our biggest hurdle when it comes to attracting talented developers. We simply can’t pull from as large a pool as a city like Austin, Texas can.
So where do I work? Nez Perce County, a small county government in north-central Idaho. As one might imagine, it is not exactly a mecca for software development talent. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying. People we talk to are always surprised to learn that our tiny little IT shop in Idaho is practicing Agile techniques. Yet that is exactly what we’re doing.
We subscribe to Agile practices, Extreme Programming in particular, and we drink from the TDD fountain. We use Continuous Integration, unit tests, acceptance tests, and frequent customer feedback along with short iterations to write quality, maintainable code and deliver business value to our customers (which, incidentally, includes us, since we are also taxpayers; we’re our own bosses in manner of speaking).
We work in an open environment and every developer has two monitors at their workstation. We work closely together as a team and have an on-site customer to help provide rapid feedback.
What We’re Looking For
We realize that we’re a bit handicapped by our geography. We’re not going to see a lot of great resumes. So it’s important for us to identify candidates that have the capacity to learn and possess a passion for software development. Ideally, candidates for our shop would have the following qualifications:
- Knowledge of Object Oriented design and principles
- Knowledge/Experience with C# .Net, or a similar object-oriented language (Java, C++)
- Database experience
- Willingness to learn
Bonus points for knowledge/experience with any of the following: Gang of Four design patterns, Unit Testing, IoC, CAB and/or SQL Server.
More information about the position, including benefits and pay, can be gathered by contacting my boss, Randy Buttenhoff, via the Nez Perce County IT web page.