How to Hire and Manage Gen Z Remote Distributed Software Engineers

At this point, you’ve probably heard about all the jokes there are about boomers, millennials, and gen-zs’ there are out there. Most of them even revolve around offices and work ethics. But, little did you know all these usually try to relate with in-house teams, as in when different generations try and work together under one roof. It’s a whole different ball game when you go online or are using offshore talent. Not only do you have to contend with generational differences, but cultural ones too. 

So, if you’re trying to hire remote distributed engineers, particularly of the Gen-Z persuasion, then there are a few things you will want to be wary of. Even though all job-interest surveys point to the fact that Gen-Zs like coding as a profession, they have very different employer expectations from their older peers. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a recruitment drive targeting Gen-Z software engineers.

Make It Easy For Them to Find You

Since Gen-Zs were born between 1996 and 2001, all of them are digital natives. Computers were ubiquitous and the internet was already a part of day-to-day lives by the time they were 10 years old. Gen-Z coders are extremely proficient at using the net to discover opportunities and find answers. They also spend around 3 hours per day on social media, more than millennials or baby boomers.

All this means is that whether they say yes or no to your offer depends heavily on what they find about you online, or not. Your social media posts, news pieces, ex-employee, and customer reviews will rank higher in their selection criteria. 

Do make sure that your brand voice, testimonials and website design and application formats are intuitive and straightforward. Also note that a lack of (or, shaky) digital presence will be disadvantageous as it’s typically interpreted as not being up to date. Consider building your presence on LinkedIn, Github, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Quora, and Glassdoor.

Answer Every “Why” You Can Think Of

Put yourself in your prospective employee’s shoes. They can work from anywhere, have a huge number of applications to fill up in a day, and have a ton of other things to do as well. If you’re going to force in-person interviews, whiteboard coding challenges, multiple trips to the office, and no work-from-home or telecommuting options, you’re not going to be able to hire remote distributed engineers effectively.

The modern worker expects a seamless interaction with their prospective employers for a good reason. Many older verification methods are not only obsolete, but very time-intensive, and pointlessly so.

There’s no information you can extract in person that you can’t from a zoom call. It’s well established that people are most productive when working in familiar surroundings. Similarly, if you create an online job application, ensure it doesn’t ask questions you can expect answers to from a resume.

Look Past University/College Names and Past Employers

Both Gen-Z and Millennials are vary of the fact that high tuition fees don’t necessarily mean high-quality education. Modern ed-tech has evolved enough to offer adequate instructions via online mediums very affordably.

Consequently, many coders today simply opt to upskill themselves. Also, the sheer speed at which technology is changing today means traditional university education has become just too expensive since workers can’t pay hundreds of thousands every time they want to learn a new skill.

However, self-taught developers are often victims of credentialism and prestige hiring practices whereby they are ignored in favor of lesser skilled options with good references and in-person networking skills. We’ve stated before that always looking for better credentials is part of the reason why we have a “talent shortage” today.

When trying to hire remote distributed engineering teams, design recruitment practices that look past brand names and can map raw potential to in-demand skills fast. The rationale here is skills and talent should be able to market themselves and shouldn’t need a big name to make their case.

Or, Let Us Do All The Heavy Lifting

There’s a lot that a recruitment drive needs to cover when targeting demographics. At Muoro, we design highly specific and tailored hiring programs that attract, convert, and retain the best talent out there. We’ve developed proprietary technologies and techniques that address the shortcomings of older recruitment methods. Try us out with our free, full-feature 2-week trial, or contact us for more information. 

For more information visit us: www.muoro.io

What Top Staff Augmentation Companies Don't Tell You About Hiring Remote Workers

Remote work has opened the door to many collaboration opportunities and business models the world over. Staff augmentation, or adding project-specific skills on demand is one of them, and for good reason. IT companies the world over are struggling to fill up vacancies owing to skill shortages.

But, while staff augmentation has grown from 4.3% to 6.3% between 2017 and 2020, companies continue to ponder over its utility. Many of the top staff augmentation companies out there rarely bother telling their customers that staff augmentation is not the plug and play solution the latter is hoping for.

Reading Between the Lines of Your Staff Augmentation Agreement

Staff augmentation may seem like the perfect solution to any IT problem at the face of it. But, it’s rarely as easy or even simple as it looks. The following issues inevitably creep up and can throw your project timeline of the track if you’re not prepared.

Your Staff Augmentation Company is Probably Charging You Differently

The IT services sector is no stranger to differential pricing. Two companies with the same project requirements may get quoted very different prices, usually under the banter of flexibility.

If you’re not careful, you may overspend on certain resources, so it’s always a good idea to run a price benchmark before getting on the phone with a staff augmentation agency.

Operating Risks are Your Problem

Unlike managed service models, a staff augmentation service provider only commits to providing resources at fixed hourly rates and is not responsible for any deliverables.

In other words, all operating risks are yours to bear and you will need to figure out how to fit the provided staff in your company. Cost overruns are also more common in augmented teams partly because paid-by-the-hour workers have a vested interest in increasing their logged time so that they can maximize their income from a project, and also because making a disparate group of people work together takes time to figure out. Left unchecked, things here can quickly spiral out of control.

You Probably Don’t Need Staff Augmentation

If you’re new to remote working, any top staff augmentation company will educate you on which operating model (in their opinion) will work best for you. You might in fact be better off with a managed team instead of having your existing one augmented with remote staff. 

In a nutshell, staff augmentation is best suited for companies looking to rapidly scale an operation up or down. Managed services on the other hand are better suited for long-term projects where the service provider agrees to take full control of staffing and project execution.

Let Us Help You Get Your Best Team Yet

At Muoro, we get that remotely operating staff augmentation or managed service models are uncharted territory for most companies. This is why we have a Three-Week Trial to let you test the waters so that you can decide with complete confidence.

Our industry leading Engineer-as-a-Service model ensures your interests are kept paramount. Feel free to call or email us if you’d like to discuss a project with us. 

Our List of the Best, Most Secure Remote Software Development Tools for .NET Work

Despite being one of the oldest development frameworks out there, .NET continues to thrive with companies old and new using it to build a variety of applications. The toolset has only become more robust. Its third party library support continues to expand and with companies like Microsoft and Amazon making massive investments into .NET, its future is secure.

But, creating a tech stack of remote collaboration and development tools can be hard. Since your organization’s overall productivity and running costs depend heavily on which services and tools you go with, selecting the right tools is of paramount importance before you hire remote .NET developers.

Here’s a list of tools that we work with.

VSCode

VSCode is the most popular IDE out there, period. Since you can code in any popular language via readily available extensions, you needn’t download specific IDEs for every language you want your remote teams to work with. A quick look at Microsoft’s VSCode’s account on Github reveals just how fast the platform is evolving.

VSCode is also a relatively lightweight editor as a fresh install, but even after you have added a dozen or so plugins, the tool continues to run lightning fast. We use VSCode for all our development work and have found it to be an ideal fit for .NET powered projects. It also simplifies our recruiting and onboarding process since we only hire remote .NET developers who are familiar with VSCode. 

Jira

Jira is a project management tool which is ideal for agile work. While SaaS productivity tools abound today, Jira was one of the firsts being launched in 2002. And, it has only gotten better with time.

Jira offers both a cloud and server option. You can install it on your inhouse server if you wanted to, or, go with a pay-as-you-go model with their cloud version which only costs $10 per month for 10 users. The software comes with Scrum and Kanban boards out of the box, making your project management more visual.

We love Jira for its robustness and the fact that it can integrate with thousands of SaaS tools and plugins out there. Project managers have a very easy time getting a bird’s eye view of their team’s progress from the customizable dashboards.

Given its vast feature set, we use it for everything from bug reporting and fixing, workflow tracking, and test case management. Most of the .NET developers we hire swear by Jira and its incredibly intuitive interface.

Evernote

Writing down issues, ideas, and questions to discuss on paper is so 2010. Even though you can always save them into your smartphone, Evernote takes note taking to the next level. You can create notebooks, which are essentially categories in which you can save ideas specific to them. All notes and notebooks can be shared with other people as well.

Besides recording ideas, Evernote has basic project management capability too. You can assign tasks and track them through the inbuilt checklists. These are ideal for small, off the record office work that aren’t part of any project.

Slack

Think of Slack as a Whatsapp for teamwork and office communications. The message board interface is instantly recognizable. Slack’s workspace is divided into 3 groups - channels, private channels and direct messages.

Channels are topical message boards where you can share your messages and ideas with all your team members. Private channels can be opened up between a select group of people. Direct messages are one-to-one boards that you can use to communicate privately with individuals.

Slack also integrates with hundreds of other apps and platforms including Jira, Evernote and VSCode, so we can share files between all our workspaces seamlessly. Given its features, Slack is also by far the most cost-effective solution with the basic version being free, while the paid version starting at $6.67 per user per month.

Hire Remote .NET Engineers Securely With Our EaaS Model

 EaaS or Engineer-as-a-Service is a recruitment and service delivery model exclusively developed by Muoro to address key industry challenges like difficulty finding required skill sets in time, poor deliverable quality, high team attrition rates, and difficulty managing teams.

All our developers are carefully vetted for not only experience and skills, but whether they can acclimatize to the new normal as well. With us as your recruitment and team management partner, you can hire remote .NET developers with complete peace of mind. Send us a message or call us to learn more about our services. 

Five Ways to Become a Successful Dedicated Remote Software Engineer

You have been working in a traditional office setting for a long time and do not think working in remote software engineer teams would do any good. You are confused; why is everyone around you so excited to jump on the remote working bandwagon? You have been out of work since last year during the pandemic and are waiting for a company to hire you that can provide you with the same benefits the earlier employer provided you. But, what if your dream company comes with an offer for you to work remotely? What would you do then? Now is the time to adapt to the current trend or, you will be left behind. 

You can be successful in your career as a dedicated remote software engineer in these five ways:

1. Keep your profile updated on professional platforms: 

Nowadays, employers contact candidates through professional platforms like LinkedIn. So, see that you are active on it now and then so that employers see you in a good light.

Mention all your projects if you have some solid previous experience. Modesty will do you no good, so if you have achieved something, make sure it reflects on your profile. As per a study, employees hired through LinkedIn are 40 percent less likely to leave the company.

2. Willingness to learn: 

While you can find talent easily, a candidate with the right attitude to work is hard to find. Show curiosity to learn about their company, core values, and culture. Make sure that all the core attributes of the company align with your beliefs. In this era, a fast learner is more appreciated than a talented learner. As technologies change every instant, you have got to be fast to pick up the latest ones. Especially as a dedicated remote software engineer, you should have this quality in you.

3. Keep your work and personal life separate: 

It is easier said than done, but you should keep your work and personal lives separate when working from home. Merging both might result in a chaotic situation where you might feel frustrated. You might also realize that you end up working all day long and feel overworked. At this moment, when the pandemic is already a worry, keep yourself stress-free to function smoothly as a dedicated remote software engineer. At Muoro, we encourage our engineers to have a healthy work-life balance.

4. Handle issues with clients better: 

If you have taken up freelancing projects, you need to deal better with your client. Build your brand by staying consistent in your work. However, when you join Muoro, you can concentrate only on your core responsibilities and leave everything to us. From when you get projects to your payment, we will help you with everything. We even manage remote software engineer teams end-to-end, and you do not have to worry about a thing while you work under our partner companies.

5. Personal Networking: 

Contact other fellow developers and network with them on social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. When fellow developers trust your skills, they are more likely to refer you to other employers. According to a Jobvite report, 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to hire candidates. So, if you want to be a part of successful remote software engineer teams, you have to keep in touch with your network of dedicated remote software engineers. You should regularly update your LinkedIn profile so that others know that you are on the lookout for a job.

You can ace your role as a dedicated remote software engineer if you follow the above pointers.

Five Mistakes Companies Make While Hiring an Offshore Team

 

If you ever dreamt of hiring a team across countries and leveraging international talent for your IT project, this is just the right time to take the first step to achieve it. Hiring an offshore development team has never been this easy. Now, this is your chance to hire talent at the lowest rates. In a 2021 survey, India was among the top destinations for offshore business services due to financial ease and the availability of talent. Your company will only forge ahead after you hire offshore development teams for your clients.  Ensure you stay aware of the challenges you might face in making dedicated offshore engineering teams successful. So, be careful of these five mistakes companies make while hiring an offshore team:

1. Not giving importance to an offshore development partner: 

Do not just select any offshore development company for the sake of it. Give serious thought to choosing an offshore development partner because expanding your company to another country needs expertise. If you think you can handle it all alone without the strong support of a partner, you might fail in the first instance. Come on, think about it! You might be confident of working out all the kinks, but do you need to do that? You only have these many hours in a day! So, research about the offshoring partner, check reviews and decide to build dedicated offshore engineering teams.

2.  Choosing the wrong location for offshoring: 

Anyone’s first instinct at having to choose a country for offshoring would be to look nearby. Remember that it would have only worked out if you were looking for talent locally, and that is where proximity matters. Instead, draw up the details of different countries to know and compare their offshoring rates and talent. You should first lookout for emerging economies where you can hire offshore development teams at the lowest rates.

3.  Judging your offshoring partner based on payment: 

It is understandable why you want to base your decision of hiring dedicated offshore engineering teams on its costs, but that is not always the wisest decision. Do not forget about the cost-effectiveness it may bring to your company in overall spending instead of only focusing the budget for partnering with an offshore development company. You can cut down overall costs as you hire offshore development teams for an IT project.

4.  Communicate your business goals to your partner: 

Take your offshoring partner as an extension to your company and not an adversary. You should discuss business goals with your partner and create a plan as per your goals. Whether you hire offshore development teams to fulfill your short-term or long-term goals, make sure that you communicate them to your offshoring partner with an open mind. The dedicated offshore engineering teams you hire should align with your business goals.

5.  Make the best use of technology: 

Although knowing about technology was not important earlier, it has become necessary now. From communicating with your team members to managing them, there is a tool for everything you need. If you want to keep a check on your offshore team members, you can use tools like Asana. You can use Skype for communicating or holding virtual meetings. Using technology can make it easier to handle remote workers when you hire offshore development teams.

Keep a check on all the above pointers, and you can implement the dedicated team model successfully with your remote development team.

 

Know About the Dedicated Team Model in Five Steps

 You have only 21 days to find the perfect team for the upcoming project, and you are in a hurry. With your internal HR team in shambles, you need external help to assemble a dedicated software development team as soon as possible. Hiring a dedicated team is one of the popular options that top companies are using right now. As reported by Technavio, the IT outsourcing market size has grown by $98 billion from 2020 to 2024. The lack of talented professionals with the right skills in the job market has made it difficult for HRs to hire dedicated remote engineers. Thus, Engineer-as-a-Service (EaaS) providers, staff augmentation companies, and other outsourcing companies have become indispensable when hiring IT professionals. However, it is not wise to hire a dedicated team without knowing about its process and challenges. You can learn about it all in these five steps:

1.  What is a dedicated development team?

The dedicated software development team is a team model which has lately emerged in the IT industry. In this model, when there is a sudden need for software developers for a specific project, a team of dedicated developers is brought in to fill that gap. You can hire dedicated remote engineers who handle the whole software development lifecycle and keep you in the loop about every update on the project.

2.  No need to pay a fixed amount:

Unlike the fixed price model, where you agree on a specific amount, in this model, you can experiment with space for development without overpaying. As per the Harvard Business Review, an average dedicated software development team can increase productivity by 10%. If your project is relatively new with no specific workflow yet and you have not yet scaled up, you should hire dedicated remote engineers at no extra cost. As per this report, you can easily save up to 60% of operational costs.

3.  No extra cost for changing requirements:  

If your project requirements change frequently, you might end up losing more money than anticipated. And if you do not have much of a budget to invest in usual outsourcing companies, you would be well off with a dedicated software development team. Just hire dedicated remote engineers from an EaaS (Engineer-as-a-Service) like Muoro, and your project will be in good hands. Muoro also has a 2-week risk-free trial where you pay nothing if you do not like the software engineers provided to you. You can also avail yourself of our end-to-end management service after hiring so that your peace of mind is intact.

4.  Direct monitoring of the team: 

In many situations, when an outsourcing company provides a team, the client cannot directly monitor the team’s progress. But, when you hire dedicated remote engineers, you can manage and closely monitor the dedicated software development team at will. You will receive regular reports and updates on each task related to the project at every phase of the project. However, ensure that you trust the third-party provider to supply you with software engineers who have the needed work experience.

5.  Reducing the communication gap: 

One of the challenges that clients mostly face while hiring dedicated software development teams is the communication gap. Like other remote work models, a lack of communication can deter you from achieving your project goals and aspirations. Choose the right staff augmentation solution or third-party provider like Muoro, and ensure that you hire dedicated remote engineers with excellent communication skills. So, look for candidates who have both technical as well as soft skills. As per Statistica, 16% of respondents had difficulties with communication in 2021.

With the above pointers in mind, get ready to scale your project with a dedicated software development team.

Five Ways in which Front-End Developers Differ From Back-End Developers

 

If you are new to the world of programming and are looking to learn to increase your skills, you have come to the right place. Not only can you get top vetted remote developers with us at Muoro, but you can also increase your knowledge if you are just a beginner. With the increasing demand for front-end developers, you may be confused about its popularity. As customer-facing applications become common, many companies hire remote front-end developers for software development projects. And, if you are an HR looking to hire a front-end or back-end developer, you need to know the difference between both. Let us see how a front-end developer differs from a back-end developer in these five ways:

1.  Definition: 

A front-end developer deals with the front-end elements in a website directly accessed by the end-users and customers alike. IT companies hire remote front-end developers to create a flawless experience for customers and further their brand. While a back-end developer deals with the other end of the website, they are just as indispensable as a front-end developer. Everything that is not visible to a customer that is server-side web application logic and integration falls under the role of a back-end developer. Typically, a back-end developer establishes the link between a database and its application.

2.  Features both developers deal with:

An efficient front-end developer should know front-end programming languages and have a knack for creating a responsive web design for the end customer. Muoro, an Engineer as a Service (EaaS), has top vetted remote developers that you can hire at any time. When it comes to a back-end developer, you should make sure that you hire professionals who know how to work with frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Java. They should be able to manage the back-end database and security compliance. Whether it is a front-end developer or a back-end developer you need, Muoro has a large talent pool of engineers from which you can hire.

3.  Languages learned by both: 

As front-end developers deal with the grid systems and the layout of a website, they must know development languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. As per Statistica, JavaScript, CSS, and Python are the three most used programming languages among developers in 2021. So, see to it that it is a criterion when you hire remote front-end developers. You should ensure that the developer can deliver error-free results so that the website can run smoothly with a minimal number of bugs. In comparison, back-end developers deal with coding languages like Java, PHP, and Python.

4.  Back-end as a service: 

One difference that separates a front-end and back-end developer is how it can be delivered. A front-end development entails many things, and one individual cannot handle all its functions. So, when you hire remote front-end developers, you have to hire a whole team and not just an individual. But when it comes to back-end development, it can be offered as a service independently. Although, in both cases, you can hire top vetted remote developers from Muoro as per your requirements.

5.  Soft skills:  

Front-end developers need to be well-versed with soft skills like empathy as they are the face of the website. To be efficient as a front-end developer, one has to put themselves into the shoes of the website user. When you hire remote front-end developers, you should take note of their soft skills like communication, too. What use is a front-end developer if he cannot coordinate with the client due to a lack of communication skills? However, developers working on the back end do not need empathy as it is not that important in their line of work. They only need to communicate with their database.

While both developers are different in how they function, a website can only be successful if both work in tandem.