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That big feature you were excited about just landed with a thud. It works, technically, but it doesn’t really solve the problem, and users are already confused.
If that feeling is familiar, you don’t have a coding problem. You have a problem-solving problem. There's a huge difference between a developer who just writes code and one who solves business problems *with* code. The first one follows instructions. The second one drives your business forward. Here are the signs you need more of the latter.
You explain a task. You write a detailed ticket. The developer builds it exactly as requested. But when they hit a tiny, obvious ambiguity, they stop. Or worse, they make a bad assumption and keep going.
They wait for you to give them the next instruction instead of thinking, “What’s the goal here? What makes the most sense for the user?”
The takeaway: A problem-solver sees the mission behind the ticket. They’ll flag inconsistencies and ask clarifying questions like, “I know the ticket says to add a button here, but wouldn’t a dropdown be faster for the user in this case?” They own the outcome, not just the task.
Every new project is slower than the last. Small changes break unrelated things. Your developers constantly blame "technical debt" as a mysterious force that stops all progress, but they rarely have a plan to fix it.
This happens when developers take shortcuts to hit a deadline without communicating the long-term cost. They are building a house of cards.
The takeaway: True problem-solvers treat the codebase like a garden they tend. They balance speed with stability. They’ll tell you upfront, “We can ship this in two days with a shortcut, but it will cost us a week of cleanup next month. Or we can do it right in four days.” They give you the choice.
A developer marks a task as “done.” You open it up to test and immediately find three obvious bugs. The button doesn’t work on mobile, the text overflows, or it crashes if you enter a special character.
You’re spending your time doing basic quality assurance instead of strategic work because your team isn’t thinking about the user experience. They’re just thinking about their code.
The takeaway: Great tech talent takes pride in their craft. They test their own work, consider edge cases, and try to break it before they hand it over. They deliver solutions that are truly done, not just done on their machine.
The team is shipping things. The feature list is growing. But your key metrics, like user engagement, conversion rates, or retention, are flat.
This is the most dangerous sign. Your team is successfully building the wrong things. They are following the roadmap without ever connecting their work to the business goals it's supposed to achieve.
The takeaway: A problem-solving developer understands they are not paid to write code; they are paid to create value. They’ll ask questions like, "What metric are we trying to move with this feature?" and even suggest simpler alternatives that could achieve the same business result with less effort.
A project goes off the rails. When you ask why, the developer points fingers. “The design was unclear.” “The API was slow.” “The requirements weren’t good enough.”
While those things might be true, a team that constantly blames external factors shows a lack of ownership.
The takeaway: In a world of remote hiring and distributed teams, ownership is everything. Problem-solvers see themselves as part of a collective. They say, “The design was a bit unclear, so I mocked up two options to discuss.” They see obstacles as challenges to overcome, not as excuses for failure. These are the signs of mature tech talent.
If a few of these signs hit a little too close to home, don’t panic. The first step is recognizing that you don’t just need more hands on keyboards. You need more minds on the problem.
The challenge is that this kind of proactive talent can be hard to find, especially in global recruitment. You can’t just look at a resume; you have to see how they think. When screening candidates, ask them to solve a real-world problem, not just a coding puzzle. Finding a partner that pre-vets for these critical thinking and ownership skills, like we see on platforms such as Remote Engine, can make all the difference in your remote hiring process.
Stop hiring coders. Start hiring partners who will care about your business as much as you do.
