While that quote should understandably give anyone pause, I don't think it's nearly as damning as you seem to think, nor single-handedly enough to advocate agai

While that quote should understandably give anyone pause, I don't think it's nearly as damning as you seem to think, nor single-handedly enough to advocate against hiring him. As you say, he's probably quite intelligent, and his solve-problems-damn-the-consequences approach can actually be a crucial piece of a development team. Some developers will like nothing better than to take one of his quick and dirty "it just works" PHP algorithms and fine-tune it until it is more reliable than the server software hosting it. Plus, of course, when you desperately need something done or fixed YESTERDAY, memory leaks are indeed the last thing on your mind. In the world of rapid developments and instant news spread that is online commerce, fixing a crucial 0-day issue at the cost of 3-5 minutes of downtime per hour until a better fix is implemented? No-brainer.