If you’ve ever worked at a tech company you know there are two kinds of people:

The kind who go to college, get their degree, apply for a job, get the job and *just* do their job. They come in at 8, go home at 5. Never buy new books to learn new languages and features. It’s just a job to them. These are career programmers.

Then there’s the guys who stay until 8, pushing hard to get their task done. Going home, writing more code. Buying new books all the time possibly to learn new languages. Just a general love for programming and the web in general. These are the passionate programmers.

A lot of companies tend to want to hire the first type of person because they feel it provides them with “security” because they will obey rules, never come in late, and can be molded to be whatever you want at a lower cost. I think that represents a problem and causes more harm than good. I personally believe one passionate programmer is worth two to three career programmers. You should always push your team to be on the cutting edge and learning. Always!

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with people who love to just write code for their job and make their company a lot of money. But at the same time, I want my fellow programmers to also push themselves to the limit. I want them to succeed in coming up with new and innovating ways to tackle a problem. As Google says, I want my fellow programmers to do the impossible. And then some. With a career programmer this is very difficult because of the lack of dedication to code as a lifestyle.

If you want a solid team that believes in your product, hire a team of passionate programmers. Let your company flourish in people who love code.

Some people have their opinions on why Fresno companies can never meet the level of atmosphere of what you get in the bay area, but I think there are a few that are common across the board.  But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.

With all of the programmers I’ve met over the past few years in the valley especially with the explosion of Twitter I find a lot of people complaining about the same thing: lame work environments, restricting internet access, more and more rules every year, bad management of teams, removing perks like sodas, etc.

I want to address some of the things I see over and over and give my two cents on some of the topics, hoping that maybe some local companies can ‘get it’ and try to create better environments for programmers.  The first one I want to start with today: Loyalty.

Loyalty, Build It

Building loyalty between management and developers is key.  You have to not assume that you are doing your employees a favor by employing them.  They are engineers.  They are architects.  The software industry is usually always booming so you should do what you can to be loyal to your employees.  If you are loyal, you will most likely gain a loyal employee base as a result.  And we respect that.

When you create an ecosystem of loyal developers, you can always know that when things take a turn for the worse for you, they will be there to stick with you through thick and thin.  There is nothing worse than a company shitting on their employees only to wonder why everyone starts jumping ship once things turn sour.

One thing to show your employees your loyalty to them could be to let them know how great of a job they are doing and how much you appreciate them and their hard work.  Just a simple thank you even can boost someones confidence and loyalty to you.  It’s the little things that count sometimes.  Or making sure you pay top notch for great talent.  Don’t lose good programmers because you didn’t want to fork out the extra $5,000 per year sometimes that talent is a lot more valuable to you than not.

When you create a loyal employee you create a happy employee.  And when you have a happy employee you get results.

A couple of months ago, after three years as a Google product manager, I decided to leave for Facebook. I am writing this note to spread Good News to all the friends I haven’t already overwhelmed with my enthusiasm: Facebook really is That company.

Which company? That one. That company that shows up once in a very long while — the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago. That company where large numbers of stunningly-brilliant people congregate and feed off each other’s genius. That company that’s doing with 60 engineers what teams of 600 can’t pull off. That company that’s on the cusp of Changing The World, that’s still small enough where each employee has a huge impact on the organization, where you think about working now and again, and where you know you’ll kick yourself in three years if you don’t jump on the bandwagon now, even after someone had told you that it was rolling toward the promised land. That company where everyone seems to be having the time of their life.

I’m serious. I have drunk from the kool-aid, and it is delicious. Facebook is hiring ambitiously across the organization. If you’re an engineer, UI designer, product manager, statistician, bizdev god, general entrepreneurial badass, whatever, and you would even consider considering Facebook as your new place for hat-hanging, please send me a Facebook message. We can have lunch, or I can give you a tour, or we can go kick it with Mark Zuckerberg — whatever it takes.

That kool-aid probably tastes pretty damn good.  I really hope more companies take them as an example of how to run successful internet businesses.