HOW TO SPEND IT — PART 13
A Special Case: Developers
Badly Needed, Hard to Find
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Almost every company needs software engineers and developers these days. Unfortunately, they are scarce, especially the good ones.
This article will answer the following questions:
- Who do we need?
- Where to find them?
- How to motivate them?
- What needs to be checked?
- How to lead and retain them?
A Stack Overflow survey from 2023 reveals that less than 3% of professional developers are not employed and looking for work. Certainly, some of the 75% who are employed full or part-time would be willing to change positions if an offer is attractive enough. But even then, this species is hard to find.
Who Do We Need?
Under these circumstances, perhaps it is best to reframe the question as, “What do we need?” Yeah, that’s right. Perhaps the solution is not to hire someone.
First, it is advisable to define what you need. From that, determine what type of development support is most appropriate.
Warning: Without a minimum understanding of how modern software is developed, it will be impossible to hire the right people.
Define the Project Structure and — based on it — the Profiles
The first step is to define the project itself. What will it be about? Building an entire software system? Updating an existing? Will it be cloud-based? If so, which environment will be chosen? What kind of hardware and software stack will be used in what kind of architecture? Which business requirements need to be met?
As you can see, there are numerous questions to answer. Saying “we just want an app” is not enough to define the job profiles.
Hiring Professionals
The first thing you may think of is hiring a software engineer or other software development professional. As…
