Nearly every developer is a diamond in the rough in some way; rarely is a new employee a perfect fit for the job, even when their resume says so.  I think this happens for a few reasons:

1. Resumes (and sometimes even blaring overconfidence) exaggerate most candidates' skills.  Most often, it's because they knew how to pull every handle and turn every knob at their last job, so they must be an expert... when, in fact, they were just experts at their last job.
2. Your job opening is almost never the same as their last job.  Unless you're hiring laterally from another department or absconding an employee from a direct competitor (who has the same platform and build process as you), your job will have unique requirements and being productive in that job will require implicit knowledge of how your company or department operates.
3. "Perfect" is a subjective mix of wisdom, efficiency, insight, overall productivity, communication, and socialization.  It's impossible to be Perfect on Day One, if not Year One.

Recognizing this, I try to keep an open mind when hiring new staff (which I've been doing tirelessly for the past two months).  There are really only a few traits I key-in on:

1. Appropriate level of knowledge for the platform.  I've been hiring for a .NET developer with a modest SQL background.  I don't particularly care if their experience is in C# or VB[.NET], I just care that they've had solid experience with the framework itself, which is an immense geography of 2500+ classes and tens of thousands of functions, so in particular the parts that we use most (data and IO).  I check mostly for awareness and a keen sense of what's-what (like the difference between Inherits and Implements).
2. Good programming.  Beyond linecoding, being a good programmer means that you know how to back up, consider the bigger picture, and write what needs to be written (and nothing more).  God bless those uber-efficient linecoders who can churn spec into code for months on end, but you need three architects to keep them on track (which we don't have).  This one is harder to sniff out, but not impossible.
3. Raison d'être.  Some developers only write software to cash a paycheck. Ironically, most of them don't seem to realize that they're being outmoded by newer, faster, smarter developers who are eager for their paycheck.  Continuous improvement isn't just a corporate thing, it's a career thing.  I take it as a sign that anyone who hasn't flexed themselves in the past 3 years thinks they know all they need to know, and I don't hire those people.

All of this preamble was a build-up for my soapbox on Professional Development™.  It is far too easy for developers to stagnate, and they usually don't know they're a dinosaur until they're being "let go" in favor of newer/younger blood that has three times the depth in current technology and can't find a job.  Likewise, I'm there are many companies looking to expand their Lotus Notes & CORBA integration project from 1997 and want to see more "web 2.0" in it.  The reality is that those companies are mired in the 10-year-old mentality because they didn't help (or push) their developers into staying current.

At MLSPIN, I've been instituting the best policies I've ever learned working for various software companies, large and small, or heard of through online sources:

1. Conducive environment.  This is the hardest, since it takes a lot of money and there's only so much you can do with the facility.  My developers work in a bullpen (less than ideal), but have plenty of space and new ergonomic chairs.
2. Productive equipment.  Each developer has a real HP workstation, with a quad-Xeon processor (room for a second), 4GB of RAM, 15K rpm SAS drives in RAID 5, and an ATi FireGL video card (because they're better at 2D than nVidia).  Each also has two 20" flat-panel monitors and their choice of keyboard & mouse.  We run Visual Studio 2008, and each developer has a copy of Photoshop Elements and SnagIt.  I also have a 5-seat license of MSDN, so we can tinker when we're planning new stuff.
3. Progressive training.  In addition to the modern cachet of books, we provide $2500 in tuition/certification reimbursement, pay the certification exam fee for any passing score, and offer merit bonuses for accomplishing their certification goals.  I'm also committed to having two "superstar" training weeks each year.

The first training session this year was held in January and featured the inimitable Bill Vaughn.  Aside from being one of the founding fathers of ODBC and grandfather to ADO, Bill has the most comprehensive knowledge on programming against databases in Microsoft technology that I've ever even heard of.  Buy his books, they make you smarter.  In a week's time, Bill was able to convey as many nuances to the technology as I've learned in a decade of hands-on work, and I still learned new tricks.  He's very personable, doesn't believe in stupid questions, and knows how to mentor.  We liked him so much, we've now got him on retainer.

I still haven't decided who to have out for the August-ish session, so if you have any suggestions, drop me a line.

So, that's my pitch.  If you are a professional developer, do whatever you need to to stay current, and if your company doesn't support that, leave.  If you're a company who doesn't believe in training your resources, send me your developers' resumes.

-Matt

Closing on 2007 means closing a major turning point in my life.  In one short year, I've had another son, built a house, left one great job for another, gotten remarried, made new friendships, lost old ones, deepened my involvement with RETS, and set about building the best MLS in the country.  It truly has been a pivotal time in my personal history.

RETS, RETS, RETS

A good portion of my brainpower this past year has been focused on improving RETS, the Real Estate Transaction Standard(s).  It's simply fantastic to be involved in such a high-profile standard with so many great Real Estate technology professionals.  My thanks particularly go to the rest of the "core" Schema team: Paul Stusiak, Gina Accawi, Peter Spicer, Michael Wurzer, Gregg Petch, Eric Petersen, Sergio Del Rio, Chris McKeever, Joshua Vosper, and Jaison Freed.

It's also easy to overlook the wizard behind the curtain, but a great debt is due to Mark Lesswing.  In a single year, he's transformed a motley crew of interested participants into a gen-u-ine organization.  Beyond this, his grasp of the technology proposition to Real Estate is virtually unparalleled.  Regardless of his other accomplishments, it's hard not to consider him one of the great RE technology luminaries of this decade.

On a related note, Michael Wurzer (RESO Chairman and President & CEO of FBS) posted an open letter to the mass listing aggregators of the world.  Proving the value of the Web 2.0 world, enough responded that some sort of open discussion will take place at Inman's Connect NYC.  Mike's certainly shaping up to be a luminary himself.

<technical>
My consequential involvement with RETS is the Query language, dubbed RQLX (although it's a bit of a grandfathered name that lacks significant meaning).  Through numerous posts between myself and Sergio Del Rio on the RETS-DEV mailing list, I countered the necessity of a number of staid data archetypes (dictionaries and vocabulary) in RETS 2 that existed largely to resolve the problem of unique particle attribution in RETS 1.x.  The reality is that the RETS 2 Schema have evolved into a fairly monolithic namespace, which makes UPA a distinct reality without needing alternate representations of the data set.  My only wish is that I could learn ANTLR well enough to (quickly) write a functioning, provable grammar... but I'm getting there.
</technical>

How to Build a Great MLS in 10 Easy Steps

As if.  As much as my background may have prepared me for this effort, building the new, ground-up version a large-scale MLS is no small feat.  Amidst the travails of the past two months, moving 1200 miles and traveling nearly 20000 more for various professional and family events, I've also had to re-align and rebuild a development team for MLSPIN's next great release in 2008.  I have two open development positions if anyone's interested (or if you know someone) with ASP.NET and heavy MSSQL skills.

Thanks to Microsoft's [un]timely releases of VS.NET 2008 and, more significantly, LINQ, I also have about two weeks to decide whether we write against the (proven) ASP.NET 2.0 platform or the far more streamlined ASP.NET 3.5 platform.  Any insight or feedback is also welcome.

On the corporate side, I can't understate enough how valuable it is to have faith from your leadership: with Kathy Condon (my CEO) and Tony Mastroianni (my CTO) providing such solid backing, I'm confident we're going to release a monumental MLS system and make significant strides in raising the MLS bar.  To that end, I also owe a bit of thanks to Michael Wurzer (FlexMLS) and Colby Ackerfield (RealGo), both of whose candor and guidance is deeply appreciated.

Family Notes

Lucas is nearing his first birthday, growing into a character of his own by the day:  He's such a great baby.  Ben just started Montessori school and continues to amaze us with his intelligence and compassion.  Kerry is continuing to acclimate to the geography (New England's a far cry from the Southwest) and a new station in life as a stay-at-home mom.  I probably don't tell her enough, but she's held up wonderfully.  I couldn't ask for better kids or family, period.  Almost all of our Illinois houses are sold and that will be a great relief as we look to buy a house next Spring.  It's all coming together, finally!