If you read this you are probably a software developer or one of my colleagues checking, what the marketing nerd is writing in the developers blog. But try to imagine you are the one on the other side of the wall, the guy looking for people like you: the best performing… What would you do to find these rare species?
Not your business, sure, but then please don’t blame recruiting people for the uninspiring campaigns once you are looking for a job. To be open we are facing the same challenge (a marketing guy never uses the word ‘problem’) like other companies. One of the results of our thinking ‘how to find the best performing…’ is this place to be, the realdevelopers page.
Marketing thinks in terms like target group (that’s you!) and what benefit can we offer to them and which channels are the best and efficient way to reach people. So what benefit can we offer you in order to make you think ‘cool company I want to be a part of this team’? Some of you will now say, hey that’s what is all about this website and blog, you just want to catch us! Yes and so what? I think it’s much better to be open and tell people what’s the deal. If you blame us, just think about one thing: all people on the realdeveopers blog are working here and they don’t get paid for writing tech blogs. I am probably the only one 
. May be they do it, because they think, oh summer is coming up, let’s hire new staff so I can leave the office earlier to go at the lake (there are lots of them in Munich, so if you are into barbeque after a nice swim, think about it). But I don’t think so. They show passion for their job and want to do their job in a better way. And that for we need the best performing… One last fact, you can’t make your colleagues to write a regular blog or some code lines for a recruiting website if they are not really convinced. That’s good for you and bad for me: can’t buy me love. So what do you think? Is a website like realdevopers a correct and good way to find the best performing… Or are we evil people trying to catch poor innocent developers? Anyway do the assignment and send it to us now right away, so the numbers of applications is rising (remember I get paid for this kind of job).
Well, you asked for it and I have nothing to lose with conject, so…
I think writing blog entries should be part of a developers job description. A blog, combined with an (internal) wiki, can be an excellent knowledge management system. If you see it only as a marketing tool you are wasting a lot of potential gain. From the technical content perspective this blog leaves much room for improvement (agreed, mine is not better).
There are lot of excellent and even more ‘good enough’ developers out there. It can be surprisingly challenging to find an interesting job in development, so the tale of labour shortage and ‘rare species’ is just that – a fairy tale.
The following is not conject specific (you probably do better than others), but some general thoughts about the industry. Before thinking about marketing campaigns, about the presentation, one should think about the offer, the content:
First: Are you really prepared to hire? From my experience there are three kinds of companies. Those who do not need anybody, but do many job advertisements. It looks nice to the customers, shows them what a roaring success the business is. Resumes go straight to the bin, the applicant usually don’t even get an answer. Then there are companies with a big hr and recruiting team. They go to many developer events and do a lot of marketing buzz. Sometimes they even employ somebody. But if recruiting would do too well, they would be superfluous, so… And then there are companies who actually want to get some work done. They advertise for two weeks and then pick someone from the hundreds of resumes (or hire the son of a friend of the boss).
Second: Is the real job challenging enough? Some companies try to find the super genius, just because they can. Probably http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/WANTEDThe-Best-CC-Developers-in-the-World!.aspx is not typical. But how interesting or boring work is, and how far and good a developer can use and extend his/her skills is the most important aspect of a good job. And if the job can’t be improved it might be wiser to look for a ‘good enough’ for whom it is challenging than to add some perks (free lunch, video games, etc.) to hold the bored.
Third: Do you discriminate on the grounds of age? Of course, nobody would ever do this, as it’s illegal. But how many people do you know, who reached the age of retirement as a software developer? And how many people above 60 do you employ? Above 50? 40? Agreed this is a problem in other fields too, but in IT it seems very prevalent. Far sighted companies might want to change this and show that developers can have a long term perspective.
Happy whitsun!
As Peer is our marketing guy, he sees it as a marketing tool.
I disagree strongly with him on that topic. For me the blog is just as you said a knowledgebase, as well a place to write down thoughts that are worth spreading or discussing.
About hiring the super genius: We just had a discussion about this at conject a couple of days ago, and I agree that it’s not necessary to always look out or geniuises if the job doesn’t require it. But what we definitely want to have is the kind of developer who is passionate about his job (and, of course, is able to get his work done properly). Working with uninspired “just do it for the money” guys is just so frustrating. And when I look back, even in my not-so-long carreer I met so many people I never want to work with again – so the skilled and intrinsically motivated developer is from my experience really a rare species.
I am pretty sure that even you work just for the money. Ask yourself: If conject would offer me to do this job -writing real estate software- as a volunteer without payment, and you had to do something else (deliver pizza, clean houses, hard sell insurances, whatever) in your spare time to make a living, would you still come to the office every morning? (If yes, your CFO probably wants to know
Compared to e.g. law, economics or medicine, computer science is -in terms of wealth, reputation and bewitching that special someone- a poor choice. And without some interest in the field it would be very hard to survive theoretical informatics.
You seems to know different people. Most of those I had the pleasure to work with or met at community events are passionate about technology and strive to do a good job. Even under difficult working conditions. But I’ve also heard about demotivating company politics, bosses (pointy haired or not) who demand lot of red tape (do nothing without a cost centre number), show no respect for a healthy work-live balance (12th practice in XP) and generally act not very far sighted. So I don’t think it’s surprising that developers find strategies to stay sane.
I like to cite Stroustrup here: “Eine Organisation, die ihre Programmierer als Idioten behandelt, wird bald nur noch Programmierer haben, die sich wie Idioten verhalten.” And the other way round: There will be exceptions, but if a developer is treated well s/he will usually perform satisfactory.
It’s strange and interessting how we have so different experiences working in the same field… I always thought computer science had a good reputation and being a female programmer helped me find special someones.
However, at university I met people who chose computer science mainly because it’s a future-proof business and the media was yelling ‘lack of good software developers!’ – even worse in the field of website development. Thinking about it… probably my background in programming for marketing and your background in “real” programming is an explanation for the differences. (And of course, I also met some great programmers.)
I absolutely agree on wht you say about the necessity of good working conditions to do a good job and also have a citation you might like: ‘Put fences around people and you’ll get sheep’ (William McKnight, taken from Lean Software Development – An Agile Toolkit, Mary & Tom Poppendieck. Nice book, btw).
That’s why I was searching for a job for more than 3 months and in the end chose conject.
Working the main time for free plus having jobs to earn money – I did that in the past, because I was convinced that the product was good and I enjoyed working there. On top of that the employers where universities and not profit oriented. Don’t you sometimes code in your spare time, just for the fun of it? Basic income would be my preferred solution, but I guess discussing that goes beyond the scope of this blog.
Thx for your open comments and I apologize for the late answer but even marketing guys need holidays.
To your first point: believe it, we are ready to hire. Of course we cannot give 10 ten people each month a contract. But we look for the gifted and passionate developers who fit into the team and that’s what it makes a challenge to finde the right people. So for us it’s not a fairy tale although there are heaps of good developers who looks for a new job. But these guys have to learn about our vacancies and have to get convinced that conject is the right company to work for.
Second: That’s one of the reasons why we started the blog. We want to show that we have good people and that these guys have challenging projects they describe in the blog. And of course the blog is not only for recruiting. Me – the marketing guy – just use it as a perfect tool to show people what work content our company does offer to interested developers.
Third: We do discriminate. But on talent and attitude and of course not on age or religion or skin color or nationality or accent or favourite soccer team (although that could be a possible reason) or which university someone visited or whatever. That for we have the assignment, code is important in the first step. In the recruiting we check the knowledge and the attitude. In Duisburg one of our other locations some of our developers are almost sixty and older, have look here: http://www.conject.com/fileadmin/conject/redaktion/karriere/download/d_asp_lowres.pdf