Author: dojo.live

If you are easily disturbed by pure technical gore, don’t read this.

But if you’re not… read on! When it comes to software outsourcing, not everything is milk and honey. It’s only fair to highlight some grim facts, too. Horror stories do happen. Particularly if things like language barriers, communication styles cultural fit are factored out to add to the coding challenges themselves. CTOs or VPs of Engineering that need to add software developers at a “low rate” sometimes fall into the trap of not even checking in the code to make sure it works, either because of an excess of trust… or just plain stupidity.

Probably the biggest mistake many companies – SaaS, software product or even brick and mortar that need devs – make is to treat the offshore team as “the others”, or “them”, instead of “us” and “we”. They would have never fallen prey of the the monster they themselves helped create in the first place, had integrated everybody as one, coherent, well-aligned team that can be trusted. Quality is a function of personal relationships within the team, the company, and even its customers.

What has your own experience in software development outsourcing been like? 

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Good, Great and Zen Developers

What makes a great software developer? One that writes good code, one that writes no code, or one who deletes code?Many CTOs, VPs of Engineering and VPs of Product will most likely align with the notion that good software developers are those who understand what makes users tick, even beyond the scoped requirements. Good devs know how to follow specs, code proactively, and are aware of the intricacies of the language or environment that they use. They abide by best practices to create robust, secure code and can explain and defend those practices. They are disciplined and play along as a team, even on something as mundane as code formatting or commenting standards even if this does not match their personal preferences.

Great devs are those who read reference manuals and the literature before embarking on futile quests to rediscover hot water. They are devs who know how to communicate effectively with their teammates and are not afraid of receiving well-meaning criticism or to respectfully offer it when the situation calls for it. Great devs take pride in the quality of their work and don’t hesitate to ask questions as needed. They are engineers who take ownership of problems and solve them instead of passing the buck.Some people say that good programmers write good code, great programmers write no code, and Zen programmers delete code.

What do you think the difference between good and great development is?

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Shooing recruiters away

To reel in great software engineering talent, you recruiting team needs to spend time  looking only for truly compelling resumes. These not only narrate the work and education story of the devs but also allows them to know that candidates have the necessary skills, education and experience to perform a good – even outstanding – job.

You will most likely want your applicants to stay away from resume points that only show what they were assigned to do and what they did in the role – usually referred to as ‘grunt’. This is not a good description of how they spent their time in any past professional scenario. Instead, look for impact statements that focus on what was accomplished, what the outcome was and what impact they made, like “developed X to accomplish Y, resulting in Z”.

Should you look – or worse, ask – for a pic on a resume? Not really (in LATAM, you’d be surprised how many recruiters and HR managers make this mistake) Look for links to their GitHub, StackOverflow, or LinkedIn profiles, each of which may or may not have a profile picture.

Is your recruiting team being shooed away – and wasting time – thanks in part to an influx of poorly crafted resumes? If such is the case, let us help you find out what works best for you. 

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Sometimes, we just don’t function.

As a CTO, you probably know that functions are a good alternative to having repeating blocks of code in a program while also increasing the reusability of code. Values can be passed to a function using variables called parameters or arguments. They can also return values and do many other nice, cool things with software that’ll make you look good, even if your devs didn’t have coffee that day.

But we’re all human after all, aren’t we? Sometimes even the highest coveted software engineers might simply have had a bad day at home and not call their functions. Should this be the case, if you want to reduce a complicated program into smaller, more manageable chunks and avoid unnecessary complexity in a program to ease your day (and your output)…have your dev team remember to create – and call – their functions.

But just in case…make sure they are wearing spandex pants or stretch jeans.

And if your development team could use some overhaul to function properly…

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