If you want to steal some of the best talent in the
industry, open yourself up to the idea of letting them
telecommute or work remotely.
Offer up a 3 month introductory period to ensure there's
a mutual fit and they actually do the work as promised.
Don't make them shitty offers because they aren't on
site; there is fudge room depending on their cost of
living.
If you're in the valley, get your head out of your ass.
Talent is everywhere. We don't all need to move to the
valley to prove anything.
We likely DO love your team and product; that's why
we applied in the first place. Devs are a funny beast,
most of us apply to things that interest us.
Loving your team is not necessarily justification to
up and leave everything we've grown to know and love.
We're not all recent college graduates with no ties to a
community.
Open yourselves up to change and boundary pushing.
Consider opening satellite offices in different large
cities for your remote devs to work at, together.
Except telecommuting someone you don't know is a HUGE risk. Hiring is an expensive, activity that doesn't reward taking risks.
We have one telecommute worker and he is about 60% as effective as he was onsite. That's somebody we had onsite for six months before he started telecommute. YMMV, but that's why companies don't like telecommuting.
It isn't that we have our heads in our asses, we just know it is a poor substitute for having you onsite and we avoid it if we can.
Sounds like a poor fit to me. I really wish more companies would consider the whole concept of satellite offices though. You could force them to work somewhere, so long as relocation isn't required.
Checks and balances.
That big grey area of not being able to stand over their shoulder to check productivity is tough. The least you can do to promote good work ethic is have them in a room with another team member.
