The fortune 500 one I qualified (as I mentioned to a couple other people who objected to this.) I understand why it's disconcerting, but in my position (small s

The fortune 500 one I qualified (as I mentioned to a couple other people who objected to this.) I understand why it's disconcerting, but in my position (small startup, small team, need to not waste 3-6 months on a bad hire) I need to increase my chances for a successful hire. Lots of bigcorp devs are used to having everything laid out for them. Early stage startups are unlikely to give the same structure. Passion for tech - you are right that this is hard to boil down to a formula. I'm looking for people who exhibit signals like (for example) they read HN, have interests in learning languages beyond the ones they're comfortable in, have maybe messed around a little with hardware, were in technology clubs in high school or college, learned programming as a kid, have a hobby project, etc. It's not so much about the hours that people will put in, but rather their engagement / pride-in-work / creativity / ability to propose alternate-solutions, all of which are good things to have, and are easy to qualify for with "enjoys technology."