EVERY COMPANY I KNOW is hiring like crazy. Like it’s 1999. Not just Google or Yahoo. If you are a great programmer and you don’t yet have a job, let me know. I know lots of people who are struggling to find great programmers.

But, I think the future of hiring isn’t going to be hiring people for jobs. It’s going to be hiring people for building huge expansive visions of where this industry should go. You think that Gabe Rivera of Memeorandum is capable of working “a job?” I don’t. Neither is someone like David Heinemeier Hansson or Blake Ross or Mena Trott or Matt Mullenweg or Kevin Burton.

Those folks don’t want to work for “the man.” They wanna improve the world. And, in many ways, those guys already have, so what can a big company offer them?

Actually, quite a lot. For one, you hang around people who are at the top of their fields. Hanging around smart people who’ve done something interesting in the past all day does make you think different (in just the group I’m in I work with former executives and developers of NeXT and Napster and IBM among many other companies).  Plus, all these famous authors, speakers, politicians, experts, come on campus and visit. Some even say that you should be fired. Ahh, the fun. There are many other perks too. I’ve seen geeks get wooed by Bill Gates’ staff. Ahh, that’s always fun! (If you’re ever in that position, ask for a Bungie-like operation and see if they go for it!) If you don’t get that, at least ask for a data center like what they have over in building 25 so that you can scale your dream out to hundreds of millions of people. Oh, wait, that dream is pretty small. You wanted to develop a Hotmail killer, right? Heck, why don’t you come help the Hotmail team? They are developing a Hotmail killer themselves (it’s pretty cool, actually, I’m alpha testing it). Or is that a killer Hotmail? I get so confused at 3:45 a.m.

Oh, I’m a devious mofo. 🙂 I better get some sleep. Big day ahead.