A "good programmer" hasn't been defined, has it? Does it mean an architect, designer, tester, integrator, debugger, coder? Each of these requires a different sk

A "good programmer" hasn't been defined, has it? Does it mean an architect, designer, tester, integrator, debugger, coder? Each of these requires a different skill set. Very few have all of these skills. Some are nearly mutually exclusive. I know for instance that a good tester (worth their weight in gold) has almost completely orthogonal skills to a good developer. The tester focuses on regression, corner cases, code coverage, etc. The developer is sprinting toward a goal. I've had some limited experience hiring - 15-member teams for startups. My approach is to fill out the skill set, put them in a snug environment to promote communication and collaboration, and then monitor the heck out of the progress. My job then is to keep them on track, make sure all the holes and cracks are addressed, and mediate disagreement. I've repeatedly hired (different startups) a plodding, methodical, university-educated, by-the-book programmer to crank out database schema with its 200-plus-dialog query frontends. And an inspired, chaotic, brilliant, chronically sleep-deprived developer to write the 100,000+ lines of code a year we needed to get to the next funding stage. In the same team. In the right environment these guys even learned to respect and admire each other.