>I've known perfectly intelligent and productive coders who took months to build a really complex well architected system that didn't solve the business problem and hence were a bad hire.
That's an interesting statement. Isn't it usually the job of product managers (or someone in management) to determine whether or not what's being done is actually wanted? It is not typical for developers to be brought on under the broad banner of "make us money please" and then set loose to email users and determine 100% of their own direction. Wouldn't the fact that the wrong program was being built have been caught in an informal "let me see how it's going" sort of status update?
That's an interesting statement. Isn't it usually the job of product managers (or someone in management) to determine whether or not what's being done is actually wanted? It is not typical for developers to be brought on under the broad banner of "make us money please" and then set loose to email users and determine 100% of their own direction. Wouldn't the fact that the wrong program was being built have been caught in an informal "let me see how it's going" sort of status update?