“I don’t care about quality.” Is that really the signal you want to send? There are so many subtle ways you might lose your target on this.

As a developer and as ParisRB’s organiser, I often get asked

• for senior devs referrals, and then told the team is all junior coders
• if I can refer young developers ready for production code (I call them “seniors”)
• if I know someone to untangle a mess done by waves of interns

Good developers are expensive, so we devs tend to hear this as

• I want cheap coders
• I won’t train them
• I don’t really care for quality

If you’re trying to recruit a good developer, this is a red flag:

• will you pay me?
• if I need something to work, will you pay for it?
• if I need something, will I get the high-end or low-quality?

Of course, it’s perfectly fine for a company to grow and to have chosen tradeoffs in the past, that you’d like to change by now.

I’m not saying you’re doomed and there is something you can do about it: there is hope!

If you happen to raise this kind of red flag, please be clear about it, communicate the story that led there, your intent and possibly your plan to get out of this soon[1]. Or you’ll just look like so many other exploiters.

[1] it’s fine to say you need that senior dev to give you inputs, actually even if you have a plan I hope you’re ready to change it from inputs from that person you’re hiring to help.