Week in Review: An exciting tech stack doesn’t have to be a niche one

In this week’s roundup from OfferZen, we deep dive into our data to see what makes a tech stack exciting, look at CTO strategies for making critical hires under pressure, and what C# developers earn in South Africa.

Exclusive Dev Nation sneak peek: A tech stack that makes your offer more attractive doesn’t need to be built around niche technologies

In our previous Week in Review, we explored how your tech stack can make an offer more attractive but also reduce your talent pool at the same time. This got us thinking: Does an “exciting” tech stack mean that it is built around niche skills and the latest technology? Using incoming data from our ongoing State of the Developer Nation survey, let’s look at what technologies are popular amongst developers and how that compares t what they are currently working with.

Before deep diving into that, let’s recap why your stack is so important when scaling your team.

Firstly, your tech stack is one of the most important factors developers consider when evaluating an offer after remote work and growth opportunities:

That means an undesirable one can make it harder to make your offer attractive. The same data also shows that the opportunity to work with new languages and frameworks is a key way developers assess if they can grow at a company.

So, a cutting-edge tech stack clearly affects how developers assess your offer and if they see sufficient growth opportunities. But what exactly makes a tech stack attractive to developers? It’s tempting to think that a cutting-edge stack means one built with the newest or niche technologies.

With that in mind, let’s look at the most widely used languages and frameworks:

Developers' most used languages

If we compare it to the most wanted languages for 2024, the data suggests that an exciting tech stack can have widely used languages and frameworks (plus plenty of potential developers to choose from):

Developers' most wanted languages

Four of South Africa’s five most popular languages for 2024 are also widely used. If we include Java in that list, all five of the country’s most used languages make the list of its most popular. In fact, only fourth-placed Go can be considered a niche language in this context.

We can see a similar pattern playing out if we look at the data on 2024’s most popular frameworks:

Developers' most wanted frameworks

Again, four of the five most-wanted frameworks are also the most used. Only third-placed Flutter would present a possible challenge in finding a pool of developers experienced with the framework.

This suggests that you can have a cutting-edge stack that makes your company more appealing to developers without making scaling your team harder as a result. That’s not to say that niche technologies are a bad idea. They’re just not a necessity for making an offer stand out.

CTO strategies for making critical hires under pressure

A flood of new developers have entered the tech market over the past three years, but that hasn’t made hiring quality ones any easier. This is especially true in South Africa, where local developers are in high demand internationally.

At the same time, hiring the wrong developer for a critical role is even more expensive than it was a year ago. So, how exactly do you fill critical roles quickly and with the right people?

Ruberto Paulo, Head of Engineering at Peach Payments, joined Karin Bothma, Senior Software Engineering Manager at OfferZen, to discuss practical strategies for making these critical hires under pressure.

In this article, they unpack the five biggest challenges in the current market and four strategies you can use to hire with limited time. These include:

• Focus on creating a structured but flexible interview process
• Capitalise on your existing employees’ networks to find candidates
• Make your job offers about more than money

As a bonus, we’ve also compiled a downloadable guide to unpack the latest data on what devs want from your hiring process and actionable insights from CTOs to spend less time on hiring.

Java developer interview questions to find the perfect fit for your team

When scaling your team, finding the right Java developer can be challenging, especially if you’re looking for senior team members. A poor hiring decision can lead to setbacks, low-quality code, and wasted time.

Here, we look at Java developer interview questions you can use to find the perfect technical and cultural fit for your team, no matter what seniority level you’re hiring for.

Tweet of the week

Here’s what it costs to hire a C# developer in South Africa

Average C# Developer Salaries by Experience

Want to know what C# developers earn in South Africa? We gathered data from 1617 developers to better understand what developers can expect to earn over the course of their careers.

Job offers that will land top developers in 2024

It’s no secret that developers compare different job offers when they are on the market for a new role. That means you need the best offer on the table if you want to hire the best developers for your team. You also need to get there fast.

But how exactly do you do that?

Join us for an online conversation with Pineapple CTO Sizwe Ndlovu as we dive into:

• The latest data on what South African developers want in a job offer.
• Optimising the offer process for speed as a tech leader.
• Navigating counter offers with input from the developer community