Troy Hunt’s Ghost Who Codes ignited something inside me. Initially I was a little insulted because I don’t have much of an online presence apart from my blog and my Twitter account. There are many reasons for this but in the end it doesn’t matter.
You see, as much as I respect Troy, I think he’s missing the point.
The best developers rarely apply for advertised jobs. They’re hired through their network and are never on the market. They’re members of The Guild; they’re the fat guys who know C++.
An online paper trail in GitHub, StackOverflow, LinkedIn etc might help an employer distinguish the Average from the Below Average, but unfortunately the Best didn’t even apply for the job. They got headhunted.
To hire the best developers you have to go out of your way to seek them out, and posting a job ad on StackOverflow Careers or LinkedIn isn’t going to cut it because these guys are hard to find. They’re busy building systems, not talking about it.
If you are an employer then you need to talk to people in the industry and find out who made their last project a success, and then relentlessly pursue the potential candidates because these guys know all the right people that make projects successful.