How to hire remote developers for tech projects?

Introduction

"The new normal" will remain to be in the mainstream business approach for Tech organizations. But what does that mean for hiring remote developers?

A research study by Haiilo shows that remote developers who enjoy good employee experiences are 28% more productive and 46% more engaged. There is a clear benefit for tech companies: those that give their remote workers a good experience make 25% more money and also improve retention by 37%.

The numbers look good, but they are only true if the remote developers are hired systematically in the background of ``The new normal” and they are engaged well.

Trends that is encouraging tech companies to hire remote developers

The dominance of Cloud

In technology, the Cloud will become more and more important between now and 2022. Everything that can be put in the Cloud will be put there.

Take, for example, how a company brings on a new developer. They usually spend a couple of weeks trying to get everything to work on their local machine. This takes a lot of time, not just for the new engineer but also for the more experienced engineers who need to help.

Most automated builds, staging environments, and production applications that are already up and running have already moved to the Cloud. The next step is to set up local environments for development.

Microsoft and Amazon have already started working on this, and in 2021 they will both release solutions (GitHub Codespaces by Microsoft and AWS Cloud9 by Amazon) that make development environments available in browsers in a matter of seconds.

The rise of DevOps

Google's DORA has done research that shows "top-performing tech companies are twice as likely to reach their goals and grow by 50 percent more over three years."

To speed up pipelines and get new features out quickly, teams need to make sure that their tools and processes are as good as they can be and get rid of any obstacles or bottlenecks. That's why DevOps and practices that allow constant delivery are so important. We are here to help you with your DevOps transformation if you need it.

AI-enabled Developer Environment

AI has already started to make its way into development tools by the year 2021. Some innovations that point toward AI-assisted development are GitHub Copilot, IBM AI for Code, and Oracle's new query language generator.

A study by Forrester says "expects to see AI bots in almost all development tools by 2022." These bots will be able to understand natural language and do other things.

4. Low-code Development Platforms

"Low-code application platforms are expected to remain the largest part of the low-code development technology market through 2022," says Gartner. "By 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of all application development activity."

Why Should Tech Companies Hire Remote Developers?

1. Developers prefer remote employers

Implementing remote-first policies that let remote developers work from home can help a lot with employee retention and loyalty. If one of your best developers quits, you'll have to spend a lot of time, money, and other resources to find and train a new one. The way developers act at work is changing.

A research conducted by Gallup and Owl Labs, shows that tech companies that don't meet the needs of their remote developers will find it hard to compete in the job market and it costs a lot to replace remote developers. Plus, this research also reveals that,

• 55% of remote developers who work from home would probably look for another job if they could no longer work remotely.
• 61% of remote developers who work from home would expect a pay raise if they couldn't work remotely anymore.

2. Engaged remote developer teams

According to Indeed's survey on remote work, 72 percent of companies that hire remote developers and their remote teams are more productive, 22 percent say they are just as productive, and only 3 percent say they are less productive. Even though both remote and on-site developers say they work more than 40 hours a week, the reasons are often very different. 

Owl Labs did a survey and found that people who work on-site are working longer weeks because they have to, while people who work from home do it because they love what they do. Surprisingly, 72 percent of both remote and on-site workers think they are working the right amount of hours each week.

HackerRank asked 7,000 tech companies what their biggest problem was when it came to hiring remote developers, and 41% said that there wasn't enough talent. This can make it hard to find experienced developers in your area, especially if you need developers with skills in a specific tech stack or a niche technology. When companies open up software development jobs that can be done remotely, they get access to untapped domestic markets and a never-ending supply of competent remote developers.

3. Low infrastructure costs

Workspaces that are attractive, well-designed, have the latest technology, and are in a good location can be expensive to buy and keep up. By hiring remote developers, you save a lot of money that you would have spent on setting up and keeping up technology systems and infrastructure. Remote developers can work anywhere as long as they have a reliable internet connection. 

Aside from that, you can go almost anywhere. Remote developers often set up in coworking spaces, coffee shops, restaurants, and even sometimes on a beach, if the internet connection is good enough. You save money on infrastructure and upkeep, and developers like being able to choose their own tech and work environment.

Steps to hire remote developers

Source applicants for remote developer roles

If you want to hire remote developers for your tech project, you need to get enough applicants to be able to pick the best ones. There are three ways to find people for your project:

Job Ads: You can hire software developers who work from home by posting job ads on sites like Indeed. You can also post jobs on your website in the "careers" section.

Freelance Marketplaces: If you need developers for a specific project but only for a short time, you can hire freelance developers through freelancing sites like Refrens, Upwork and Fiverr.

Social media: You can find skilled and qualified developers on social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram. You can post the job opening in a lot of job-related groups, and people who are interested can get in touch with you.

Shortlisting and screening process.

The best way to hire dedicated developers is to spend most of your time sorting through applications and interviewing candidates. You should also look at their portfolios on sites like GitHub and Stack Overflow to see if they are a good fit for your company's culture. 

This process will help you hire competent remote developers.

Assess on culture fitment of remote developers

After the screening process, you need to talk to each candidate to make a good decision. The process should be set up so that the main focus stays on whether a candidate is a good fit for your company’s culture or not. Even developers who don't work for your company should know what it's worth. This type of interview usually focuses on an employee's attitude, personality, and set of values.

Technical Assessment

The best developers will have both the culture-fitment and technical skills your project needs for a certain role. This is why it's important to do both a technical and a cultural-fit interview (although they can be combined into one interview).

Most of the time, a senior engineer, team lead, or technical architect is in charge of a technical interview. The goal is to see how a potential developer thinks, so they should give the candidate an abstract problem and ask them to break it into tasks.

Offer of Employment and Onboarding

You've already chosen who to hire at this point. Now you have to make an offer, and if the developers accept, you have to bring them on board. You may hire remote developers from any country and to onboard a developer you will have to comply with local rules and regulations regarding payroll, taxation and many other labor laws. This tedious process can be avoided through Employer of Record platforms like Skuad.