For the last six years, we’ve been working hard at connecting developers to job opportunities, each other and to the things they need to grow in their careers. We started in Cape Town, and have gradually been expanding within South Africa and the Netherlands. We’re excited to announce that we’ve just launched in Durban!
We all know that Durban is a great place to live and work if you’re into an outdoor lifestyle and warm weather all year round. Here are some things from our 2021 South Africa’s Software Developer Nation Report about the city’s developers that might not be so obvious:
There are also some pretty great companies in Durban that we’ve been learning and growing with throughout the years. We’re excited to get to know more of them and help them grow their dev teams.
Perhaps the thing that we’re most looking forward to about launching in Durban is collaborating with and learning from the local dev community. We’ll be supporting local meetups and listing them on our events page going forward.
Why now?
We think we can now scale into new cities while maintaining an epic user experience for both companies and candidates. We’ve spent the last couple of years getting our product, teams and service to a point where we believe we can expand to new regions and make our customers happy there.
Our product teams have been doing great work behind the scenes, and while we’re not yet perfect, we’re proud of how far the platform has come, also largely thanks to the help and continuous support and input by the community.
We’ve also been operating in multiple countries and cities for over a year now, and have learned some hard-fought lessons about operating our marketplace at scale. Thanks to these learnings, we think we’re now at the point where our talent and company teams are better set up to help customers from new geographies win.
Demand on our platforms is looking really robust. Despite the recent economic downturn, the global pandemic has also highlighted the potential of companies that are able to take their operations online, empower remote work and work across distributed teams - in other words: companies powered by tech. Tech companies are growing aggressively and hiring developers more than ever before, and we’re seeing record numbers of interview requests being sent on our platform.
Location seems to matter a little less. We’ve seen a sharp shift to working from home that seems here to stay, at least in some form, beyond the pandemic. Developers seem to be enjoying the increased control that remote work is giving them over their time and environment. Companies are getting more flexible and are hiring across locations to make the most of their increased talent pool. That’s why we’re expecting to see a lot more movement between tech hubs. In the new world, we believe that opening OfferZen to more and more cities increases our chances of helping us match great talent with impactful opportunities.
What does this mean for you?
👉 If you’re a developer in Durban, you can now sign up for a job in Durban. You can also indicate interest for remote or on-site jobs in the rest of South Africa or the Netherlands.
👉 If you’re hiring in Durban, you can now sign up to find the right devs for your team, from both Durban and the rest of SA.
👉 Last but not least, if you’re hosting a meetup in Durban, you can now get sponsorship support.
