On the very last day of hiring I got a job application from someone who claimed to be a lead at nVidia. The interview went well and while he was a little hard to understand, I was really impressed by his motivation and his resume. So I gave it a shot, even though he was 3X more expensive than my other programmers.
It turns out this was the best decision I’ve made so far for the company. He is professional, knowledgeable, and incredibly helpful. I now have a resource to turn to ask about about India and Indian resumes and have a good feeling that even though I am not working, progress is still being made on the game.
I can see now that my previous attempts to save money by hiring juniors may have been a mistake. 3X the cost but 10X the productivity is a good deal as far as I’m concerned. If I could do it again I would have skipped hiring juniors and had gotten 2 people with experience instead.
I may have to restart the hiring process, which will delay the game by a month, but it’s better that than failing entirely. I asked the lead programmer if he knew anyone else as good as him looking for a job but unfortunately he didn’t.