Ask HN: Hiring Dilemma

If the amount of training they will both need and their intelligence is relatively equal, I would go for the one who found me and is interested. Passion goes along way in making up for talent. If he is smart and passionate, chances are he is going to be a good employee. Passion cannot be taught, if someone is just not interest or mildly interested, there is not much you (an external force) can do about it. They can if they chose to, become interested and passionate, but that takes internal action on their part. Again, others factors short of experience being equal, I would go for the guy that already shows the interest, because it is an indicator of possible passion for the subject domain.

Having no experience is definitely detrimental to the candidate, but I would say, if the undergrad is extremely excited about what you are building and the challenges they will be working on then the experience can be overlooked. You can gauge motivation of the undergrad through side projects, its hard to be a student (at least from my experience) without being exposed to subjects that are so interesting that you simply can't resist building stuff.

Like many people I was very fast to pick up programming, but it still took a couple of years of programming full time before I made the transition to being a very productive programmer. As a programmer who hired other programmers, I was concerned about the skill level of programmers who had just graduated college. As a rule the most productive people I hired had a few years of full time experience.

all else equal, the fresh undergrad is a tabula rasa, generally untainted by the habits from working for another employer. You have a real opportunity to train them and instill good practices.

in my experience, its very difficult to correct certain really nasty habits (e.g. style) but its easy to train new people in how to do things the right way.

though it should be said that it requires much more day-to-day intervention to deal with the kid, so its an investment

I don't know that 1-2 years experience is that big a deal. I would probably go with the kid...