With the growth of the employee market, IT offers can be selected for a long time – salaries do not decrease, and there are more and more positions for programmers. However, when we observe the flow of CVs, it is not as big as it might seem – and we were sure that our offer was extremely competitive. So what aspects of work have become crucial for developers? And what are companies doing differently to encourage as many candidates as possible to work for them? What benefits in IT work are on top now?
What attracts programmers?
Contrary to the popular and somewhat harsh opinion, attractive remuneration for programmers is not everything. For most developers, it is extremely important to work on creating new applications and functionalities from scratch. This is due to the fact that such work is simply more interesting and does not require “digging” in the code written by others.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to find such offers. The vast majority of companies (except startups) are already in the process of developing existing software. Work focused on maintaining or supporting the product will therefore in most cases be the dominant scope of the programmer’s tasks. Of course, the more time a developer can devote to creative work on creating new functionalities, the more attractive the job offer will become. Being able to take responsibility for product development is a huge benefit as it makes your work much more interesting. However, sometimes it comes with supporting an on-call product that many developers sincerely hate. In my experience, offers that were frequently on-calls were even rejected by candidates! But what if we are looking for developers for an existing product? What factors will make more developers interested in considering our attractive IT job offers ?
It is important where and more importantly when?
The teamwork aspect is more intriguing than you might suspect. Cross-functional teams are highly rated by programmers because they provide greater opportunities for development and learning thanks to the cooperation of people specializing in other areas or technologies. The labor market consists mainly of foreign corporations and startups – as a result, programmers often work in disparate teams, i.e. teams that work in different locations. Such cooperation often gives great results, but it also has its weaknesses – in the case of a large difference in time zones, working hours may be unattractive for some developers. It may also reduce the pace of cooperation and implementation of e.g. new functionalities.
When a developer working from one hemisphere goes to sleep when the next one is just starting its day, it is difficult to act quickly – in the end, communication delays can be up to a day. Not every candidate will be willing to participate in virtual meetings that take place “after hours” programmers. And distributed teams often work in large companies with branches around the world.
Technologies and frameworks in attractive IT job offers
In addition to the team structure, the way you work is important. Although I have personally encountered cases where programmers did not want to join such teams, such people can be counted on the fingers of one hand. A flexible approach becomes a business necessity and programmers appreciate agile work organization and the possibility of quick implementation.
The question asked by the candidates during most of the initial recruitment interviews concerns technologies and frameworks. Nobody wants to work with, for example, Java 6. What information should be included in attractive job offers in IT? Still the most popular are Spring and Hibernate on the backend, and React.js and the latest versions of Angular on the frontend. Of course, each area has its own rules and, as with web applications, frameworks are very important for programmers, for example in the mobile area they will be native technologies such as Swift or Kotlin. Developers want to work on projects that are written in the latest generation technologies in order to stay up to date with news.
Employee benefits in IT, which employees did not dream of a few years ago
Private healthcare or the Multisport package can be considered a standard today. What then? Offers without additional life insurance for employees or training budget are becoming rarer. In recent years, such amenities have become a standard not only among programmers. Sometimes I smile under my breath listening to the representatives of companies who plan to open IT offices in Krakow and mention the above benefits as elements affecting the competitiveness of offers. What about flexible working hours and the possibility of remote work? You can expect candidates not to ask if, but how many days per month they can work outside the office.
So what to do to create a truly competitive offer for developers? What benefits in IT work are attractive now? An increasingly popular move is the introduction of the possibility of accounting for copyright costs, which in fact directly affects the amount of net remuneration (in the case of employment in the form of an employment contract). Such a benefit is very well perceived by employees, but can be a “headache” for the employer. The formalities needed to introduce copyright costs are quite complicated and not every company decides to take such a step. It is also caused by the instability of legal regulations. After all, copyright costs are slowly becoming a standard on the Krakow labor market.
Additional benefits such as longer leaves or lunches for employees are less frequent. Some companies will pay for food in full, while others will partially finance it. Polish law provides for a relatively large amount of paid leave for employees if you compare us to other countries, but companies sometimes increase this pool. Programmers are very pleased with this benefit. Another convenience may be the organization of the office – massage chairs, height-adjustable desks, exercise equipment, gaming machines, billiards, etc. During the recruitment interviews, candidates also ask about the equipment – they would most like to be able to choose the computer model, monitors and other accessories. What sometimes convinces to accept offers, especially among younger and less experienced developers, are business travel opportunities and even the possibility of moving permanently to work in a different location.
When the company belongs to you
Another interesting solution is to allow employees to buy shares or share options at preferential prices. The one with benefits in IT work appears in the case of companies that already have a strong market position and are listed on the stock exchange, not in the case of start-ups. New companies entering the Krakow market sometimes offer candidates the so-called RSU (restricted stock units), i.e. a promise to grant shares to employees of a company that has not yet entered the stock exchange. However, I have doubts whether Krakow is already mature enough in terms of understanding the meaning of such benefits. Many candidates cannot calculate the value of shares and do not see the long-term effects of such investments. When I submitted two-component offers, in which one part was the company’s shares, I met with a skeptical reception. The candidates were guided by the argument “if I do not have it, I will not believe it”.
I hope that the awareness of the candidates in this aspect will grow over time. The largest companies, e.g. in the USA, very often offer their employees shares, and the candidates, aware of how much they can earn from them, increasingly ask about this possibility. Of financial benefits, offers very often include bonuses based on the company’s financial results or periodic evaluations, while in the scale of profit they are still small compared to the benefits that can be achieved through shares.
Summary
Do programmers have a privileged position in the labor market? Standards related to benefits and numerous amenities show that employers actually fight for good programmers using many new tools. This situation will surely persist for a long time because the IT market is and will be the candidate’s market. From the recruiters’ perspective, it is important to understand the factors that convince developers to change jobs – good research on the topic allows you to start valuable recruitment interviews. I will watch with interest how the offers and working conditions for programmers on the labor market in Krakow are changing. With the opening of new Silicon Valley companies in our city, it will certainly be more than interesting.
