Gadgetopia

Joel Spolksy has a reputation for hiring great people. He made a movie about his intern program, in fact, which cultivates the best of the best.

He’s distilled all of this hard-won knowledge in a new book, which is titled for his theory of good programmers: Smart and Gets Things Done. This is a reference not to the David Allen book, but to an old essay Joel wrote in which he stated that a lot of really smart people don’t really get much done.

At Blend, our biggest problem is finding good people — it usually takes us six months to hire, from start to finish — so I’m on chapter two of Spolsky’s book now. It appears to be a collection and reinterpretation of his great essays about managing people. He goes back to his central principle: provide a great place for people to work, and great people will want to come work for you.

God willing, that’s just what we’re going to do around here.