In a wonderful book, “Coders at Work”, Peter Seibel asks a bunch of well-known programmers interesting quetions. Highly recommended!

One of the questions Seibel asks is: “How do you identify talented programmers”? Here is Ken Thompson’s answer:

Seibel: How do you identify talented programmers?

Thompson: It’s just enthusiasm. You ask them what’s the most interesting program they worked on. And then you get them to describe it and its algorithms and what’s going on. If they can’t withstand my questioning on their program, then they are not good. If I can attack them or find problems with their algorithms and their solutions and they can’t defend it, being much more personally involved than I am, then no. At the same time you can get a sense of enthusiasm. It’s not something you ask directly, but in the conversation you’ll come with this enthusiasm-ometer, and that is tremendously helpful for me. That’s how I interview. I’ve been told that it’s devastating to be on the receiving side of that.

Seibel: I would imagine. It’s sort of like an oral exam. Do you suppose you’ve ever run into people who just didn’t have the personality that can deal with that, independent of their programming ability?

Thompson: No, I don’t think it’s independent of programming. It would be if I started asking them classical computer-science kind of questions, but that’s not what I’m asking them. I’m asking them to describe something they’ve done, that they’ve spent blood on. I’ve never met anybody who really did spend blood on something who wasn’t eager to describe what they’ve done and how they did it and why. I let them pick the subject. I don’t pick the subject, so I’m the amateur and they’re the professional in this subject. If they can’t stand an amateur asking them questions about their profession, then they don’t belong.