It’s great to be in demand, and there is arguably no job that is hotter than the role of a software engineer. That’s great news, unless you happen to be in the difficult position of having to hire for this role for your company or department.

If you are in the market for software engineers, then you are probably facing a significant talent shortage, and those available engineers demand an exorbitant amount of money to come on board. Let’s examine 3 common problems that companies are facing today when it comes to hiring good IT professionals.

Software Developer Salaries are Exploding

In the Atlanta area and many other markets, we continue to hear story after story about the amount of time that is spent finding qualified engineers, and the amount of money required to bring them on board.

Just recently, a client shared how a front-end developer who was a recent college graduate was demanding $125,000 to accept a full-time position. When it comes to engineers with experience, it isn’t uncommon to hear of salaries “starting” at around $160,000.

For many companies, especially those with tight IT budgets, these types of expenditures can prove to be unmanageable, leaving them under staffed

It’s Not Just Finding Great Engineers, It’s Keeping Them

Once you have found a solid developer or engineer, the struggle may just be starting. Most developers we work with feel that 3-5 years at a company is the max they would want to spend. As a result, keeping the engineers on board can provide to be just as difficult as finding them in the first place.

Even when they are happily employed, a good software engineer’s phone or email box will frequently be inundated with offers for other opportunities, which may be offering more money, more flexibility, and a more robust package of benefits like equity ownership.

Since the software engineer is dealing from a position of strength, this may result in more money out of their current employer’s pocket to keep them on board, and may happen with repeated frequency moving forward into the future.

Is Your Subject Matter Expertise Walking out the Door?

Finally, if your engineer does receive an offer they can’t refuse and they move on to other opportunities there are some intangible costs that go above and beyond the cost of finding their replacement.

More often than not, a good software engineer is going to be intimately involved with, or may have built many of the systems or processes for your company. As such, you aren’t just losing an employee but instead losing an individual who is probably a key component of making your IT department or company run smoothly.

When you hire a new engineer to take their place, it comes with countless hours to get them up to speed and learn the systems. Situations like these incur a real cost for the company, as these are non-productive hours.

Oh, and don’t forget. While your new employee is getting up to speed on the new systems, they are probably already starting to receive new offers from other sources.

What can we do to solve these problems?

While companies have begun offering more pay, increased vacation, remote working, and equity ownership, there are others who are adopting other strategies for dealing with engineer retention.

One method that is gaining in popularity is effective outsourced relationships. In doing so, you may not have a warm body sitting in the cubicle next to you, but you can enjoy things like:

• Immediate access to on-demand and dedicated software engineer teams
• Access to additional software specialties that you may not have in-house
• Extremely low turnover rates
• Cost savings of 50% or more
• A variable workforce of on demand engineers as needed

These strategies can help companies solve many of the problems that they are facing in today’s hyper-competitive engineer marketplace, which also provides additional benefits to the company. Plus, the cost savings can be substantial, and the piece of mind that can be had is invaluable.

Is finding reliable software engineers proving to be a big challenge for your company? If so, you owe it to yourself to explore how Softensity is solving this problem in the marketplace by providing Outsourcing and Staff Augmentation services to all types of companies.

Contact us today, or call us at 800-992-SOFT to learn more.

You can also Download Our Case Study, which shows how a leading insurance company saved over $3 million dollars in 1 year by implementing a staff augmentation model.