How do I find a good software developer?

Question

VX-N · Accepted Answer

Ask to see something they built that is still running in production, and talk to the person who will actually write your code rather than an account manager. The strongest signal is whether they ask about your process before quoting; anyone who quotes without questions is guessing. Practical filters that work: ask what they would refuse to build and why, ask who owns the code and accounts when the project ends, and ask what happens if an integration breaks six months later. Vague answers to any of those are the whole answer. A developer with real production experience has refused work before and can tell you the story; a developer who says yes to everything has either never shipped anything that had to survive contact with users, or is planning to learn on your budget. Portfolio screenshots prove design, not durability. A system that has survived two years of real use tells you more than ten polished mockups — so ask the survival questions directly: is it still running, who maintains it now, can I speak to that client, and what broke in the first year. The last one is the best interview question in the trade. Everything breaks in year one; a builder who can name what broke and what they changed because of it has the scar tissue you are actually hiring. 'Nothing really' is not experience talking. Non-technical buyers can still evaluate the working relationship, which predicts outcomes better than any technical assessment they could run. Watch for: explanations in plain language rather than jargon deployed as authority; pushback when you ask for something they think is wrong — agreement with everything is a billing strategy, not a service; and a proposed first milestone that is small, concrete, and cheap to judge them on. Then structure the engagement to match: a paid first step — a plan, a mock, a working slice of the riskiest part — caps your exposure and tells you more than any number of reference calls. The AI era has changed what to screen for. The mechanical production of code is no longer the scarce skill — a strong developer building with AI ships in days what took weeks, and if a candidate is not working that way, you are paying pre-AI prices for pre-AI speed. What remains scarce is judgment: the data model, the permission design, what not to build, and the questions they ask about your process before writing anything. Which closes the loop on the first signal — the discovery questions were always the tell, and AI has only made them more of one, because generation is cheap now and deciding what to generate is the job.