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Why startups are struggling to pay developers

zooboole

Published By zooboole

Last week, Edem Kumodzi raised an issue on the consistency of developers salary and why it's important for companies to be explicit in their job offers to reach the right skills.

On one hand, startups find it hard to hire the right developers. To them, most developers can't deliver, and most of us are expensive in our salary expectations. In the other hand, developers think salaries are not good enough to allow them to deliver what companies expect from them, like Andrew Smith made mention of what someone told him once: If you pay peanuts, you will get a monkey.

And, there is no standard set by any governmental body on how much a developer should be paid. We have to admit that this field is still young in Africa and there are few regulations on how it operates. We still work on traditional laws that are more generalist. It will be too easy to consider only certificates to define a salary range.

We all know there many cases where candidates have all sorts of qualifications listed on their CVs, but they have less experience. And experience has proven that self-thought developers are usually on top of their jobs, and they are usually passionate about what the do.

The software development field is full of such guys. It becomes hard to have an explicit law on how programmers should price their skills. We could also consider the skills set and define a salary. But this solution also poses a few issues, mainly, what if the guy can't deliver?

I also gave my opinion on this dilemma. The source of this design Salary vs Pay issue is the fact that:

  1. Tech companies don't actually make it well in Africa. Earning as a tech company is hard. Hardly people embrace your services. You can develop a great product, but the market will not welcome and patronize it. And at the same time, it's hard for our local companies to penetrate western markets.

  2. Based on the first point, business owners tend to be afraid of investing, and thus, think paying developers well might be a lost. And on this, If the business owners had a study showing them approximately how much they will make out of a product, they could pay and even know exactly how much they can pay developers. This is one of the reasons why we have a low rate of employment in the software industry. Few people actually know how to invest in tech. I worked with people who tried to invest in tech, and almost all have no idea of how to run a profitable tech business.

  3. At the same time, for a developer, work is work, no matter the context in which it's done or whatever the reason. It would be unfair to look at your(or your business') problems and price the developer. And I wrote an article on this issue some time ago: Why you can't do a favor when charging for a website development or design?. Edem gave rhetoric on that:

    It’s not like when I buy my computer, Apple tells me “oh hey, you are from Ghana, we know you don’t earn as much as devs in America so you can buy your computer for 250 USD”

  4. All this gathered to create a kind of scary atmosphere where everyone seems vigilant about everyone, and we all hunt each other. I mean disagreement of pays and salaries. Companies are afraid of engaging, and developers doubt the reliability of the companies.

My suggestions for companies:

  1. Start taking your time on your products and make sure you are doing them right.
  2. Try to target a higher standard
  3. Conduct a market analysis: know where and how much you could sell your product.
  4. Develop meticulous employment strategy which fits exactly the needs of your projects. Let candidates practice in front of you like they would once on your projects.

For developers:

  1. You need to be hardworking and keep yourselves up to date.
  2. Brand yourself and keep learning. Allow companies to have a glance at who you are before you get involved in any interview process.
  3. Be aware of the current situation of the companies mentioned above. Reality is something else. Only you know what your life is like. A job that seems useless at first can lead you to a bigger opportunity. There are some few companies out there that are aware of your value and how to recognize them. When you meet them, it's will be easy.

Bottom line

I was expecting to come out with a formula to this situation, but you and I know that we still have a lot to handle. Let's bring our efforts together and see what time has for us. Bernhard Haisch said:

Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers.

Cover image credit to Pixabay