Where and how to open a development center?

In this article I will not touch on organizational and economic issues, such as comparing rental costs and choosing suitable areas, repairing them, buying furniture and equipment, because over the long distance these expenses become a drop in the ocean of paid salaries.

The first issue to be resolved is the city in which it makes sense to open a development center. The main “recyclable resource” of the center is smart developers and testers, if there are few of them in the city, it makes no sense to open up. No pies will not lure from other cities a sufficient number of bright goals.

Compare the cities with millionaires:

* the value is very approximate, calculated according to a rather "esoteric" metric (a relatively accurately known number of .net developers living in Ufa is taken, the proportion to those of them who posted their data in My circle is calculated and the total number of IT specialists is multiplied by this correction factor cities), but for our task is quite enough.

The second factor is the wage forks in selected cities:

We get that Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Rostov-on-Don are the best candidates for opening a development center by saturation and not overvaluation of the personnel market.

When you decide which is the smartest, look who are the competitors

* for the keyword "Programmer", status as of early April 2019

Banks mercilessly "vacuum the market" and the normal means of protection against them has not yet been invented, but for our benefit, for some developers working in a bank is not comme il faut.

What will be important for employees?

The “sanitary-hygienic" minimum for any developer when choosing a company is:

• convenient location of the office, with large parking and a stop within walking distance;
• thoughtful office with comfortable workplaces and dedicated areas for meetings and leisure;
• the presence of a nearby cafe, gym, etc.

Let's move on to the most important issue for business - wages. Here a lot depends on the interestingness of the project. To form the backbone and not miss a useful developer, you need to add 10% to the median from the salary market. This is provided that the project is large-scale and interesting. If we cannot promise such a project, the increase should be at least 20%.

It is also important to use modern Total Rewards practices to attract, retain and motivate employees in order to ensure strategy and achieve business success.

Consider each of the main factors.

Attraction:

47% salary
41% possibility of professional growth
41% self-realization and personal growth
40% educational opportunity
35% work content, projects, tasks
34% work schedule
32% comfortable office and workplace
32% career opportunities.

Retention:

45% salary
42% work schedule
41% work content, projects, tasks
39% opportunity for professional growth
38% team and colleagues
38% atmosphere and communication style in the team
38% possibility of self-realization and personal growth
33% comfortable office and workplace
31% autonomy at work and the possibility of learning
30% the possibility of learning

Motivation:

44% salary
36% work content, projects, tasks
35% team and colleagues
34 % team atmosphere and style of communication
33% recognition of achievements and contribution to work
33% understanding of their responsibility for work
33% opportunities for professional growth
33% possibility of self-realization and personal growth
31% autonomy in work and a large degree of freedom
30% comfortable office and workplace

Do not forget about the benefits that are necessary for the formation of employee loyalty: health care, support in difficult situations, corporate events, training.

How to work when no one else knows you?

The key to success of any enterprise is a strong and close-knit team. To form a solid backbone of employees who will help the project survive, you need to turn to the ideological superprofessionals of the city for help. And already according to their recommendations, recruit the first team without stinting on a high salary for them.

In the future, these key characters will become excellent mentors and will help with the selection of less experienced, but promising candidates.

How to work on HR brand company image?

Regardless of the size of the city, the development community is quite compact and news (especially negative) is spreading quite quickly. But, in order to create, whatever the image of the company, the bulk of developers, in addition to direct communication with the first hundred potential employees, will have to spend a lot of effort and time on organizing meetings and mini-conferences. You need to participate in the maximum number of significant parties and seriously engage in a useful and really popular sponsorship course at one of the popular online education sites.

The most important and difficult thing is the formation of a clear and explicit image, for example, “A company that gives 100% authority to agile teams and never breaks scrum” or “A company where you will definitely become a guru in the field of CLR and managing garbage collection in loaded projects. " Or, even "Yes, we are a small company, but with us mongo, go and k8s."

The promise can be any of the areas of interest for development. The main thing is to be able to oppose the awkward giants of the local market. And, you must always answer for the words!

Adequate developers go either to interesting projects for competencies that increase their value in the market, or to boring ones, but for a lot of money.

To summarize

Everything written here is by no means a guide to action. Do not immediately run to open an office in Rostov-on-Don. These are just vectors for exploring possible directions. In any case, the main thing that needs to be done is to find suitable “First People” and be able to captivate them with an idea, to form a “magnet of attraction”. Only after that, throw yourself headlong into an adventure.