Should you hire software developers?
Are you ready to hire software developers? It might be worth more investigation.
Software development is a critical component in companies trying to innovate. Mobile apps, web apps, and other custom software is a cost-effective way to increase revenue, improve efficiency, and differentiate your company. While software developers provide a ton of benefits, hiring a software development team in-house is a challenging process and you must do it with care to avoid long-term setbacks.
Benefits of Hiring Software Developers
Bringing software developers in-house opens up a wide number of possibilities for your business. An internal developer or team of developers can bring exciting new ideas and solutions that your team has not thought of before.
Small Tasks
Companies may have several manual processes that a software developer can quickly automate. Anything from writing an Excel script to check spreadsheets to a simple document generation application can provide a massive value for any business.
Flexibility of Requirements
If a major project is on the horizon for your company, you will need to hire a team of developers to get it done quickly. Since this team is in-house, changes in requirements are easier to handle and flexibility is at its highest. Flexibility with an internal team creates a distinct advantage that outsourcing your development can’t compete with.
Long-term Cost Savings
An internal development team will provide significant cost savings when compared to outsourcing your development to a third party for a long period. When bringing a developer on, there is a high cost for tools and training. However, once a developer gets more engrained in the company and systems they’re working in, they are much cheaper than outsourcing.
Long-term Domain Knowledge
Internal developers can increase the human capital of an organization. Having people within your company who have an in-depth knowledge of your business is the highest value that software developers can provide. Having one or multiple technical-minded people with a deep knowledge of your business significantly increases the chances of a major innovation for your company.
Negatives of Hiring Software Developers
While hiring software developers opens several doors, software developers bring other sets of challenges to your organization. If you and your company aren’t prepared, hiring software developers may cause high costs and little results.
Increased Technology Costs
As with any new hire, your overhead will increase. With that in mind, software developers bring slightly more overhead than employees in other departments because of technology demands. Typically, software developers work with two or three monitors and an expensive computer. It’s hard to keep developers long-term if you skimp on their setup.
Along with new technology comes new technology costs that you may not have had before. This includes things like cloud hosting, new hardware, and additional software license costs.
Difficult Hiring Process
You may have heard, but hiring software developers is difficult. Not only are there a ton of different technologies developers may be proficient in, but analyzing past experiences and determining future success are incredibly difficult.
Hiring a developer without performing any technical interview may lead to under-qualified and over-paid employees. Having a technical interview is difficult to do correctly without experienced software developers on your staff.
Even if you have a proper technical interview in place, some great developers don’t perform well in an interview setting. The complexity of the hiring process can cause significant time delays and overhead for your business.
HR and Space Constraints
Hiring a new development staff increases your HR responsibilities and constrains the amount of space you have in your office. Developers typically perform best in quiet and focused environments. While it’s common for software development companies to have an open office layout, this quickly becomes challenging when you’re mixing software developers with other employees who make more noise performing their jobs, such as frequently talking on the phone.
High Turnover Rate
As the software development industry continues to grow, developers have more options than ever for employment. Because of the options, company culture and benefits are of constant importance to keep software developers. It’s common for a software developer to remain with a company for less than three years at a time, so you may go through the difficult hiring process more frequently than you’d like, and miss out on the benefits of long-term cost savings and long-term domain knowledge.
There has to be some middle ground…
One of the best ways to get several positives of hiring software developers without all the negatives is by involving a third-party. Several third-party options are available including but not limited to staff augmentation companies and project-based consulting companies. These companies handle all of the dirty work of the hiring process and benefits, allowing you to focus on the benefits of developers and innovating your business.
Be on the lookout for our upcoming post on staff augmentation vs project-based consulting!
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