Trials and tribulations of hiring in-house software engineers
What a pain in the ass.
I do not have an engineering background. I’m a front-end designer at heart turned full blown CTO tasked with hiring new tech talent to build our in-house development team.
This in it self is daunting and almost debilitating to a certain degree, but I’ve been lucky enough to have some help on the technical assesment side which has really made getting people in the door to interview possible.
We’ve had a handfull of interviews so far. Most seemed promising but wasn’t exactly what we needed here. After a couple weeks of nothing, I finally had a great interview so I offered him the job that same day. I thought for sure he was going to take the job as he seemed excited and enthused when he left. The recruiter I was working with echoed the same feelings.
Sadly, he declined saying he wanted to work in a more robust tech environment.
My heart sank a little when I heard his reasoning. We are a small tech team that manages just one website. We aren’t a development shop that works on multiple projects throughout the year where ideas can bounced off other developers at anytime. I’m only looking to hire two developers for the time being. So what now?
The real kicker is, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that my dev team is too small. Our last in-house developer left the company basically for the same reason. He wanted more interaction with other developers.
So what am I suppose to do?
- Should I keep outsourcing and pay those high hourly rates?
- Should I plan out smaller projects and have contractors just come in to do them?
Is it possible to have a successful and smart team with only two developers?
If you were a developer, what would you think?