Developer Hiring Trends in South Africa

Hiring across the globe has slowed from its historic highs, but South Africa seems to have avoided the brunt of layoffs that followed Silicon Valley's sharp U-turn, at least in 2022:

In South Africa, we saw growing salaries, a number of local developers looking to move jobs within the next year and a lack of retrenchments. 30% of developers are either already searching, or planning to move jobs this year.

Juniors are the largest group looking to move jobs and also saw the biggest real rise in salary in 2022. This could be explained by juniors tending to ask for bigger increases in order to quickly grow in their careers. If employers meet them close to their asking salary, that still means a big increase over current earnings.

The number of junior developers job searching, coupled with a positive growth in average salaries, suggests that companies might be warming to the idea of hiring junior talent.

On the other hand, 35% of tech leads and managers say they'd still like to work for the same company in 5 years' time. Now is a good time to reassess how compelling your developer job package and work environment are – will it keep your best talent around?

Want to improve retention? Keep a close eye on your developer team’s salary progression:

While salaries have risen across the board, inflation has curbed actual buying power. South Africa's annual inflation rate ticked up to 7.6% in October of 2022, surpassing the upper limit of the South African Reserve Bank’s target range of 3%-6%. Developers have chosen better salary as the number one reason to leave a job in 2023 which is perhaps indicative that they are feeling the bite of the rising cost of living.

Another way to improve retention is to prioritise general work environment and your team's well-being. Three results in the top 10 suggest that developers are prioritising a holistic work environment: Poor work-life balance, lack of flexible hours, and lack of remote opportunities.

Work-life balance is especially important for seniors and leads. Interestingly, for developers in fully remote set-ups with no offices, poor work-life balance is a more prominent factor for leaving a job than for those in other set-ups.

Given that most developers are leaving their jobs for a better salary: When have you last checked your compensation plans?

While most developers report a 6-10% increase in their latest salary review, 1 in 5 received over 16%! This excludes those developers who have been in their roles for less than a year. This says volumes about software as a dominant force for company growth, and is an indicator that demand for excellent talent continues to outstrip supply.

Junior developers were the most likely to receive no increase, likely because of a lack of experience under their belts. With many juniors’ appetite for new job opportunities having grown, offering a reward to great performers could be an easy way to retain them.

The importance of work-life balance shows in developers' top reasons to stay in a role. This is unsurprising: Since the pandemic, developers have spent more time with their families in remote work set-ups, and also experienced the blurring of work and personal boundaries.

Work-life-balance has grown in importance by 13% year on year since our 2021 report, overtaking growth and learning opportunities as the most important factor driving retention.

For seniors, work-life balance is even more critical, with 61.5% choosing this as their number one reason for remaining in a job. This means that putting work-life balance at the forefront of your work culture is a winning recipe to retain your developers – and gain new team members.

The focus on a holistic work environment also shows in developers' work-set-up preferences:

Hybrid and fully remote are equally popular amongst software engineers, with only 3% preferring to be office-based full-time. Seniors prefer fully remote work the most, which perhaps indicates a higher capability of working independently than one would expect of graduates and juniors.

On the other hand, developers with less experience seem to have a lower preference to work fully remote. If you're operating a fully remote work set-up, it would be worthwhile to invest in your support and mentorship to juniors.

At the same time, opting for a hybrid policy that requires office visits may limit your available talent pool. Our interactions with companies on OfferZen have shown that many South African companies still exclusively hire in their local cities to accomodate for occassional office visits from hybrid team members.

But this policy drastically limits your available talent pool. As an example, OfferZen platform data shows that 25% of all South African developers on OfferZen are based in Cape Town, and 26% in Johannesburg in 2022. By our estimation, if you confined your hiring to one of these cities, it means you'd lose out on more than 70% of available developers from the rest of South Africa.

A good balance might be to have an office or co-working space available for those who want to work in a hybrid model, but not make it required for all developers to be in the office. This gives you the freedom to hire more broadly, while still giving developers the chance to connect in person — which we'll explore next.

Travelling to the office makes up a large part of many developers' routines – even those in fully remote set-ups. The majority of developers in a fully remote set-up prefer heading into the office at least once a month, with almost 12% going in once a week.

From this, we gather that it's valuable to have an office or co-working space available for developers. Connecting with team members in this way can act as a counter for some of the challenges that developers encounter when working remotely. We'll now unpack what these challenges involve.

Despite the global cooldown since the pandemic, software remains one of the biggest drivers for business growth. When hiring developers in this climate, it's important to know that all your decisions are either broadening or limiting your available pool of tech talent. Demand for excellent software engineering talent still outstrips supply. If you're struggling to find the right talent, you should be doing everything in your power to widen the net.

Besides your choice of remote policy, as we've discussed in this report, there's another choice that could restrict the size of your developer talent pool: Hiding salary information.

Not including a salary in your job adverts could cost you more than 40% of potential applicants. It's even worse news if you're trying to attract senior talent: 52.7% and 55.9% of seniors and tech leads wouldn't apply without salary information, respectively.

In previous reports, we've seen that the majority of developers will drop out of a hiring process after a negative experience. Your interview process emerges as one of the top ways that developers assess your culture, as well as speaking to existing employees.

Remember that interviewing is a two-way street. Developers are interviewing you as a potential employer too. Your interview process helps them decide if they want to work at your company, and everything you do in your process is a window into how you might treat people should they join.

Providing a great hiring experience will help you reach more developers by default through another fact: Developers talk to each other and trust other developers. We saw this in the importance that word of mouth plays in the assessment of your culture, and it’s also evident in other ways:

More than 77% of developers have said that they share their experiences with their peers. Always think of the audience you could be reaching — or turning off — through your interview process. It can have a lasting effect long after an interview is concluded.

While word of mouth is the most common way to share hiring experiences, nearly 1 in 3 developers share their hiring experiences on public platforms and social media.

It's crucial that you use every opportunity to ensure candidates have the best possible experience and invest time in understanding where you can improve your process. One way to do this is to ask candidates for feedback on your process, which can either help you course-correct to attract more talent, or keep improving on what you do best.

A bad reputation doesn't just make it harder to bring great people into your talent pool, it can lead to current candidates in your pipeline to turn down your offers. In fact, two of developers' top five reasons for turning down a role are due to a company's reputation: They've come across poor employee reviews, or the company has a bad reputation in the market.

So, what can you do to make sure developers walk away with only great stories to tell their peers? Caring about what matters to developers in the interview process — and avoiding their pet peeves — is a good place to start.

First and foremost, what will send developers running for the hills and cause your hiring pool to shrink?

Since 2022, having too many steps in your process, as well as long delays in the interview process, have risen in importance for developers as signs of a bad interview process. Time is of the essence: Remember that many developers will be juggling multiple interview processes at the same time.

Overall, being lowballed on salary is their top pet peeve, especially for seniors.

You need to stay in communication with developers in your pipeline: Not receiving any feedback is in the top 3 pet peeves, and stands out as the top disliked factor for both juniors and female developers.

On the other hand, here's what to do to ensure a great response to your hiring process:

Transparency on role and interview process, as well as upfront salary information, have grown as the top factors that developers appreciate in an interview process in 2023. Transparency is even more important when it comes to attracting seniors and female developers.

Hiring teams that communicate poorly about these details risk shrinking their talent pool by causing developers to drop off throughout the process.

What else should you get right about the interview process? Let's look at this next: The all-important technical interview.

Assessing a candidate's technical skills is a crucial part of any hiring process but the method you use impacts candidate experience. Choosing an assessment that developers consider effective can go a long way.

While developers think online coding challenges are the least effective way to test their skills, it's what most companies use to assess technical skill.

Companies must be willing to try different methods of assessment if they experience drop-off due to ineffective methods of assessment. Remember that developers are likely juggling multiple interview processes, and will prioritise tech assessments they find most appealing or effective.

Providing a standout compensation package can go a long way in helping developers choose your offer over another.

So what monetary benefits do software engineers care about? Bonuses and medical aid, followed by retirement contributions, top the list of desired monetary benefits for developers.

Are all companies attracting developers with great benefits, though? Not quite – let’s unpack this next.

1 in 5 developers still don't receive any type of benefit in their job. It's vital for companies to pay attention to what developers want in order to attract more talent, not to mention retain existing team members.

Small companies of less than 50 employees are most likely not to offer any benefits. If you can't offer major attractions such as medical aid, balancing this out with benefits such as shares could be a way of competing against bigger companies. This will also give you an edge over many competitor startups, so make sure to highlight it in your outreach.

If you see a 0% in the data, it is due to no respondents choosing that option as a benefit at their current company.

Given developers' preference for remote work, a logical next step would be to invest in their remote set-ups as part of the benefits you provide.

More than 1 in 5 developers consider a remote setup budget an important factor when assessing a new role. But what does a good set-up mean to them?

Turns out, developers are really just asking for the basics: Dual monitors, a UPS for loadshedding and a dedicated desk make up the top three essentials they care about. Helping your developer team with a productive work set-up in their homes ultimately benefits your business and should come as a no-brainer.

If you can't offer all the bells and whistles with monetary benefits, you need to pay close attention to the other factors developers use to assess an opportunity so you can still stand out.

It should come as no surprise that work-life balance plays a role here. Number of leave days has risen in importance by 6% since 2022, and options to work remotely remain the second most important factor overall – narrowly beaten by growth opportunities.

However, if you'd like to attract more experienced talent, remote options are by far the most important factor for seniors and team leads, at 61%. If you don't offer flexibility, you're closing the door on some of the most important talent on the market.