What Developers Want in an Employer

After Landing Your First Job in Tech? When Can You Start Being Choosy?

One-third of each day, 5 days a week is a significant amount of time to dedicate to work, or to dedicate to anything.

Given the time commitment, having a satisfying career that you love is a worthwhile goal.

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in 2021, the average adult American full-time worker spent 7.8 - 8.4 hours per weekday focused on work-related activities.

Getting your first software engineer job at your dream company is attainable.

Many candidates achieve this.

But when starting a new career in tech, many developers may not be as selective accepting that first job after attending a coding bootcamp.

For most programmers, who are new to the tech industry, building their skillsets may be the top priority—which makes sense.

They’ll commit to a short-term position as a necessary step to gain real-world experience to add to their resume, social media profile, and project portfolio.

There’s a lot of focus on the technical interview preparation required for entry-level developers.

How does a bootcamp graduate make the company want to hire them over another junior developer?

The common dynamic is that the developer is the one who has to impress; the employer is the one who has to be impressed.

Let’s skip ahead a couple years and focus on the goal of finding that dream job.

The dream job that will lead to a satisfying career.

The satisfying career where you’ll spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, possibly over decades.

You still have to impress the hiring manager to get the job.

But now you’re an experienced, confident, qualified developer who clearly meets the job description requirements.

The thought of the technical interview is less terrifying.

With the current high demand for software engineers, you now have the luxury to assess if they impress you.

Impress you enough to dedicate a significant amount of your time to their mission.

7 factors developers consider when accepting a job (beyond a paycheck and benefits)

1. Adequate onboarding training program to bring newly hired developers up to speed
   • A new employee may have the technical skills to do the job, but each company has their own processes and procedures.
   • No matter how skilled a software engineer may be, they still need to understand how a company wants projects executed.
   • Onboarding also ensures the developer has access to all the tools required to help them do their job more efficiently.
   • Chances are the new hire will be working on an existing application, not building a brand-new complex application. So, they need to understand what the product does and how it’s architected.
2. Exposure to new technology, and innovative projects
   • The I.T. industry is constantly changing. To stay current, developers need to be constant learners. Sure, they can do research themselves on their own time. But having an employer invest time and resources to keep employees up to date on the latest trends says a lot about how important innovation is to the company.
3. Access to technical experts they can learn from
   • In any job, it’s always helpful and reassuring to know there’s someone you can turn to for help.
   • It’s even better if there’s an expert who will mentor you.
4. Available tools to assist the development process
   • Software rarely works the first time. Okay—it never works the first time. Developers need access to debugging tools, test harnesses, and development environments to validate their code, and help them work through tracking down logic errors.
   • They’ll want to know what development environment is used, and how software is versioned and deployed.
5. A clear Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to guide the development process
   • ServiceNow defines SDLC as “helps with the measurement and improvement of a process, which allows an analysis of software development each step of the way.”
   • SDLC provides a repeatable framework for delivering software. This includes project management, requirements gathering, development, testing, and deployment. This helps to ensure a quality product is delivered.
6. How much creative input the developer has in the final solution for projects
   • Developers are scientists, but there is also an art to software development. There are many ways to deliver the same functionality.
   • Developers will have opinions on the best way to implement a new feature.
   • Knowing they’ll have a voice at the design table is enticing.
7. On-call support, and other responsibilities
   • Does the job require 24x7x365 support?
   • How often are developers in an on-call rotation to triage off-hours issues?
   • What are the expectations for how quickly problems need to be resolved?
   • These are important since, if you’re on-call, you probably need to keep your laptop close, and you can’t travel to places with sporadic (or no) connectivity.

Competitive pay, company culture, and benefits are also important when job seeking; they’re important to everyone, not just developers.

 

Key Takeaways:

Americans spend much of their time working.

And although that first job, may not be the dream job, it could be an important steppingstone to elevate your career.

Never stop looking for rewarding work, time is too valuable to spend it doing anything other than what you enjoy.

 

Nucamp’s mission

If you’ve dreamed of a career in tech, Nucamp is dedicated to making that dream come true.

Our coding bootcamps are the most affordable in the industry to learn to code.

Once you graduate, we’ll also assist you in your job search.

Our course schedules are part-time and flexible, so you don’t have to quit your job to attend.

And in some cases, your employer will pay for your bootcamp.

To start your career change, please schedule a call with a Nucamp advisor.