Are you looking for a great developer who can smoothly integrate with your existing team and complete complex development tasks? Before you can find him or her, keep in mind that there are some differences between good developers and great developers — the crème de la crème.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide.
If you’re a founder, CTO, manager, or anyone looking to hire a developer (especially a freelance developer), then this is for you! We’ll show you exactly how to recognize and employ amazing developers to achieve your business goals.
Looking for top talent fast? See how Arc can help you:
⚡️ Find developers, designers, marketers, and more
⚡️ Freelance or full-time remote + fully vetted
⚡️ Save up to 80% with global hires
Hire top talent with Arc risk-free →
The Good Developers
Let’s start with the good developers.
Most of the developers on your team may already fall in this category. They are passionate about their craft and are always looking to do good work. They tend to be disciplined, integrate well with existing teams, and are familiar with development practices, such as Agile development.
Good developers often have excellent technical skills and write clean, neat code. Their code is frequently well commented and can be easily understood by other team members, allowing it to be easily debugged. Good developers also show an awareness of their limitations and the technologies they haven’t yet mastered. When you task such a developer with a project, he or she is able to say in advance when help from another developer is necessary.
Good developers also typically know their value and will be looking to charge at or above market rates. They are serious about their work and look to integrate with your existing team to produce an excellent result.
How to recognize good developers?
- They will typically charge around the going market price.
- Code samples will be neatly structured and well-commented.
- They will display a solid knowledge of development technologies in their area of expertise.
- They are familiar with and actively use development methods, such as Agile development.
- They will often understand relevant programming “best practices” and when to employ them.
Read More: How to Get Developers Interested in Your Project and to Join Your Team
The Really Great Developers
Great developers are rare. They can significantly boost your team’s productivity and produce marvelous results. Don’t expect to find them easily though. You need to know what to look for as well as where you’re likely to find them.
When you hire great developers, you can get significant returns on their work, so they’ll expect to be rewarded accordingly. Don’t expect to be able to hire a great developer on the cheap. World-class developers can do everything good developers do, and much more! They live and breathe code — their extreme passion for their craft pushes them to continuously learn, at work, and outside of it.
They typically display an intuitive understanding of algorithms, technologies, and software architecture based on their extensive experience and good development sense.
Such developers are able to understand at a single glance what tools in their arsenal best fit the problem at hand. They are also capable of working both alone and in teams and need little to no supervision. Their programming aptitude allows them to work with live systems without breaking them and find innovative solutions to novel problems.
Their expertise typically extends well beyond just development and coding. This makes such developers highly capable of eloquently discussing both technical and non-technical problems with both a lay and a specialist audience. In turn, this ability makes them capable of helping and training other programmers on your team.
Great developers have an intuitive capacity to choose long-term solutions that work and will avoid patching problems through short-term “hacks” that only cause more difficulties down the road.
We can divide such developers into two types, though it is entirely possible to have programmers who display both traits:
The Visionary
The Visionary is like an artist. He or she has great intuition and is capable of designing development solutions that provide excellent functionality and user experience while allowing for simple and easy debugging.
Such a programmer can understand the more significant factors at play in software development, such as unique client needs, UI/UX design, budgeting, and more. This ensures they can make the right decisions at every step.
Visionaries also love challenges, and will often seek to break their own code (before others do) in their search for excellence. They continuously invest time to study programming and will try to leave if they feel unchallenged. You must make sure to always provide challenges for them.
The A+ Team Player
This great developer will not stand out through individual ability, but through what they do for the team. With an A+ Team Player, your team’s productivity will jump through the roof.
These developers are masters at understanding different technologies and the entire process of development, which allows them to provide guidance to the entire team. While the Visionary is capable of making better decisions on his own, which prove to be correct over time, the Team Player is capable of getting the best out of your team.
They typically undertake all of the documentation work that is required to make the team succeed. They’ll even spend time teaching other developers and guiding the entire team. Their skillset often extends beyond development to interpersonal communication, human psychology, and self-development.
How to recognize truly great developers?
Look for all the traits of good developers above, and also:
- A burning passion for development and programming.
- Great communication abilities, both technically and non-technically.
- Intuitive understanding of programming technologies based on years of experience and great development sense.
- Great vision, capable of integrating development needs with other constraints.
- Desire to help other team members become better.
Read More: 21+ Important Freelance Interview Questions to Ask Software Engineers
What This Means For You
And there we go. Now, you should have a better understanding of how to distinguish between good and great developers.
Keep in mind this is just a starting point though! Be sure to have a thorough interview with your developer candidate to evaluate his or her hard and soft skills, with consideration of the above points when crafting your interview questions and when reviewing the candidate’s portfolio.
Remember — great developers are hard to come by. If you want to hire one, be sure to start by looking in the right places. Many online freelance platforms have no vetting process in place, so it can be difficult to come upon one in such an environment. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack!
If you want to hire great freelance developers, consider using freelance platforms that help vet developers for you to help cut down your search time. Here’s a comparison of a few popular ones.
And if you prefer not to use a freelancing platform, we’ve previously covered how to find and hire the best developers in these guides: React Developer Hiring Guide, Back-End Developer Hiring Guide, Java Developer Hiring Guide, React Native Developer Hiring Guide, Salesforce Developer Hiring Guide, Python Developer Hiring Guide, WordPress Developer Hiring Guide, iOS Developer Hiring Guide, DevOps Engineer Hiring Guide, PHP Developer Hiring Guide, Ruby on Rails Developer Hiring Guide, Shopify Developer Hiring Guide, Front-End Developer Hiring Guide.
Did we miss any other important factors that differentiate good and great freelance developers? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
You can also try Arc, your shortcut to the world’s best remote talent:
⚡️ Access 450,000 top developers, designers, and marketers
⚡️ Vetted and ready to interview
⚡️ Freelance or full-time
