EP 029 Getting a Job as a Software Developer with Michal Juhas

Getting a Job as a Software Developer with Michal Juhas:

Check the Career Upgrade Tools that Michal mentioned in the show here.

Transcript:

Mike:
Welcome everybody, I am so happy to have you here listening. We have a really interesting guest here. This is a little bit outside of where we normally go, but I’m so excited to welcome Mical Juhas with us here today. He is an IT talent advisor. He’s a recruiter, a career coach and a trainer. This is the guy who helps recruiters do better at their job.
So everybody listening, everybody realizes there’s this sense that the tech industry just keeps growing, it just keeps getting bigger. And these companies out there that are innovating, they are hungry for talent and not just talent that punches the card in and punches out. That’s gone. These companies need people who are going to get in there and really just, I don’t know, be engaged in their work. Be good team members, know what they need to do.

And just to have a sense of, I don’t know, what the company is actually getting done. It’s an exciting time, I think, to be in technology. So why do we have a recruiter on the show or an IT talent advisor? What’s the deal? Well, we’re obviously not all recruiters.
Maybe we’re on the other side of that fence and we’re like, “Man, okay. I do XYZ now, but wouldn’t it be cool if maybe I could get into the tech field? What would it take to break into that? What are these recruiters looking for? Do I need to walk on water to get hired? What’s it really look for?” So that’s why I’m just so happy to have Mical here to kind of talk us through some of these things. So Mical thanks so much. And let’s just jump right into this, man. How hard is it to land a job in the tech field, if you’re kind of new to the industry?

Mical:
Thanks, Mike, for having me, and thanks for this wonderful introduction. Well, as you say, there is an abundance of opportunities when it comes to IT jobs for juniors or seniors. So I don’t know, I would probably even rephrase your question. “How hard is it?” to “how easy it is” right? Because these days it feels like anyone who can type “hello world” in JavaScript or Python can get some kind of a job.
So I don’t know, it’s not that hard. And also probably hiring managers struggle because they feel that the market is… There is definitely more demand than supply in certain areas. But still, if you look at it through other lenses, there are more IT professionals on the market than ever before in the history of mankind, right? So there has never been this many programmers, engineers, developers on the market, but also the demand increases.
So it’s a really, really interesting situation and place. But anyway, everyone who’s entering this, I’m sure they will a great job because the demand is there. Hiring managers are just looking for professionals, whether it’s software developers or engineers. So definitely not that easy, but we could definitely break it down. It just depends on what aspect are you really interested in? Shall we look at say juniors or other seniors, because obviously this is slightly different?

Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. I guess I’d be interested in kind of junior. And just so everybody listening, if they’re kind of getting into this, you’re talking about this difference between juniors and seniors. So let me just make sure I understand it.
When we’re talking junior developer, we’re talking somebody who’s not necessarily had a career as a software developer before. Is that a good distinction? Or is it somebody who’s been in the field for one to five years or is there any line to draw in the sand there between junior and senior? And what does it actually mean?

Mical:
I would say from the hiring manager’s standpoint, it is someone who already has some kind of experience. So those who are, for example, just graduating universities without any full-time work experience before, they are usually perceived as trainees or interns. So a junior would be someone who has at least a year of experience.
But then as soon as someone has, say, one and a half or two years, that’s usually the tipping point and they are like, “I’m not a junior anymore.” But it also depends on what kind of a project that the developer or an IT professional has been working on because a year in life is different based on what you actually work on. So just to give you an example, I used to be a CTO… I’m actually coming from the IT field firsthand, I used to be a developer, IT consultant, a CTO.
And while being the CTO, I was working for 12, 14 hours every day. So just me and my colleagues who were also I’m working like crazy, they also grew much faster than some of our peers who were just clocking a six and half seven hours, a lazy kind of day. Chilling out on some easy projects. So my colleagues were progressing just so much faster. So when we were having some retrospectives, some growth after a year or two years, we could see that they are much more advanced than some of their peers.

Mike:
I love that. It’s really not so much the time. The time is obviously a thing, but it’s how are you applying? What are you doing while you’re at that time? I love that thought, I think that’s just so important. It’s such a differentiator, what the actual experience is. So I feel as though, folks listening, I think they’re going to be more kind of breaking into this field.
So maybe they are, as a side hustle, learning software development. And a lot of the folks that are listening in right now, they’re interested in kind of the convergence of software and hardware. So some of the people might be electrical engineers perhaps, or they might kind of be studying towards that type of thing. But they also like to code, so sort of like a robotics type thing, but the types of languages they’d be working in is C, C++, that type of thing.
But I think for the majority, I’d be interested in learning more about folks that are definitely in that junior situation. And importantly, and this is where I’m interested, some of them might not have a college degree in computer science at all. They maybe… Or maybe they don’t even have a college degree period. Maybe they are… You know what I’m saying? Some might, but it just not be in that area and some might not. What are your thoughts there? Is that a no-go sign or what is that? I don’t know. Do you see where I’m going here? I’m just…

Mical:
Yeah, yeah definitely. There are two kinds of juniors. There could be a junior who is just graduating the university and is entering the job market, as a trainee slash junior. Someone who has been working while studying. And then there is another junior who has 10 years of experience, is just in another field, right?
I’ve been talking to all the people who are transitioning from non-tech fields to IT, and they may be seniors in what they have been working on before, but they are a junior Python developers, for example, or C++ in case of your listeners. So it’s not like junior, we cannot just compare the junior itself, but also the past experience. And also for example, what projects have they been working on in their free time, for example.
This is usually one of the questions hiring managers ask like, “We see you study at the university, that’s great. There are 20 other developers who also studied pretty much the same as you or some bootcamps, but what else have you contributed to some open source projects?” And I’ve been, for example, recruiting for one of our clients, a San Francisco based startup. And pretty much the whole team of a [inaudible 00:08:11] consists of senior open source contributors. So everyone who wants to join is usually joining because they want to work with these guys.
It’s just so inspiring to join such a group of developers who have experience with some side projects, they contribute to open source. So at the end of the day, it’s not just the seniority, but also how those juniors or mid-levels developers, how do they spend their free time? How can they grow just beyond their studies, whether it is some bootcamp or university and also what kind of projects do they work on?
So I was also interviewing one developer recently who was just working on some very easy project, nothing really challenging for the last two years, right? So this kind of a job where it was not a challenge too much. So we are looking at his CV. It’s one half years, two years of experience. But then you dive deeper and you quickly see that actually that experience was not the really deep, right?
He was just sort of scratching the surface with the technology, creating some websites using WordPress, which is not bad, but he’s not really any skilled developer. Even the junior developer. And then you have another developer who is also a junior, but for a year he’s been working with the latest technologies and really understands the technology on the deeper level and has worked with, I don’t know, Kubernetes and dev ops tools and whatnot.
So those two juniors are on very different levels, right? So this is everything we need to unfold during an interview, or eventually the hiring manager. I’m just a recruiter in this case, but I’m also trying to sort of pre-screen candidates. [inaudible 00:09:58]. But then that’s interesting for the candidates, right? Because they are then sending their CVs and they are wondering why we reject them. Hopefully they will see these as some kind of an advice, what kind of projects to work on or how to actually think about their career.

Mike:
It must be a tough job, recruiting. I’ve never put myself in those shoes before necessarily. But it would be a lot of work to try to figure out what skills does somebody actually have or are they going to be able to contribute effectively to the team technically, and are they going to be a good fit with the culture of the company. Those are a lot of big things to answer.
I guess it’s sometimes… I imagine it’s sometimes difficult to tell until they’re in the workspot. I don’t know. That’s interesting. So it doesn’t necessarily sound then that if you don’t have a computer science degree, that’s necessarily a full stop. It sounds like what you’re saying is the experience really matters a lot. Really matters a lot. And if you’re going to set yourself apart, then engaging yourself in some challenging project is completely worth the effort.

Mical:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Definitely, definitely. So some say that the university degree is good for the first job, but then it doesn’t really matter. And that was also my experience when I was the CTO and I was interviewing candidates to join my teams. It matters for juniors because what else do you look at? There is no past experience, maybe just one company, one project for one year, but that’s not really much.
But for seniors, it doesn’t really matter what have they studied five years or 10 years ago because the universities, anyway, cannot follow the latest trends. So they cannot really learn the latest and greatest. On the other side, you have all these bootcamps and online academies like yours, right? You have a lot of courses that teach professionals how to apply those technologies at work or whatever kind of projects, which is more important for those mid-level to senior developers.
But for a junior, it could be a great starting point. But then it’s questionable if it is worth studying for five years or three at least. Three years to five years, just to get the first job. Wouldn’t it be better to spend a year just going through three boot camps, really on an intense, intense level? Go through one really challenging project, join a team of some open source contributors. And after a year you have a good project to work on or you have a great job. Hard to say, hard to say. It would definitely be cheaper, right?

Mike:
Right, right. Yeah. For time and money, I imagine. Yeah, for sure. That is so interesting. So it really sounds like, and push back on me if I’m wrong here, but it really sounds like the end game for the company is that they want somebody who’s going to be able to perform and do what they need. And the credentialing part can be something that’s worked through, you know what I mean? It can be something that’s explained or… Overlooked it isn’t the word I want, but maybe not required is maybe more where I’m going.

Mical:
Yeah. And that is one angle that I’m seeing on the market, or we can actually look at it through different lenses because it depends who are you as a company. If you are Facebook, if you are Google, then obviously you need some additional criteria, right? Because 10,000 developers apply every, I don’t know, year or month. But if you-

Mike:
Could you… I just can’t even imagine that.

Mical:
Yeah. So then you just increase the bar so high that it’s not just… You don’t require just a university degree, you require a university degree from some top school. And it’s not just that you hire anyone from that top school, you hire just top 10 percentile from that school, right? So you can increase the bar.
But if you are just the general, some average company in Europe or in the United States, then you cannot set the bar that high because you would not hire anyone. So the hiring managers we work with, they sort of just look at developers and they… Especially for these kind of easier projects, for example, web development, front and backend. It’s not really rocket science at the end of the day.
So they just look at, can you do this job or not? If you can, then I don’t really care if you have studied for five years computer science degree. But the computer science degree may be more valuable for some advanced positions, like big data or data science engineer or team lead for a data science team. Most likely that would be required for such position.
But then the question is, what you also mentioned, can you get this kind of credential through some other source for example, Udacity or Udemy or whatever other certification online that focuses on presented data science? Probably yes, right? So it’s interesting really to see the job market or how it evolves in this constant change.

Mike:
Yeah. This is just fascinating to me. I got to be honest, I didn’t realize this would be this exciting to talk about. And I don’t mean that… It’s amazing though, to think about the supply and demand. It’s just nuts how that’s going with the changing technologies. And you mentioned kind of the difference between these really big companies everybody knows the name of, hiring and they’re may be able to kind of pick the cream of the crop and stuff like that.
But I was thinking, I live in the Midwest of the United States somewhere, the boondocks. And I still find there are companies all around, even out in the boondocks that have some interesting needs, you know what I mean? For software developers. There’s some really good companies out there that aren’t making the paper and stuff like that. But they’re still doing interesting things probably right in the listeners neighborhood.
They just, they might not even realize it. You know what I mean? That’s what… I feel like tech jobs are just, they’re popping up everywhere. Somewhat unrelated here, what is your thought about where the market’s going with remote work? I know this is just… This is a little bit of a tangent here, but I’m curious what your thoughts are there, how that is developing and what it’s like for you as a recruiter and…

Mical:
Well, it’s just golden. It’s just the golden opportunity now for us in recruitment. I mean, I focus on international IT recruitment. So it’s just a golden opportunity because these days, especially in Europe say two years ago, three years ago, so pre-COVID. And if I take a step back, people always desire something, right? You might have a great job, but you always desire something better, right? The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
So even developers who have a great job in Romania, in Eastern Europe, they desire something else. We were talking to other developers and realize that they, for example, desire to work for companies from the Western Europe. And then you talk to someone in the Western Europe, people who have a great job, and they say they want to work for companies from the US, because it’s just more prestigious.
So everyone wants something. They always shift their focus to the west. And pre-COVID, it was quite difficult because they had to relocate. And we were also relocating several people, but this is just such a mess, such a hassle. So now it’s just so much easier because they can start working remotely for any company, right?
Even in the Western Europe or in the United States, remotely. It doesn’t matter if they are working remotely for some company across the street from home. Because anyway, due to COVID, they work from home. Or they work remotely across three time zones. So really interesting changes now happening on the job market because developers sort of wake up these days and they start thinking like, “Hey, I wanted to work for these companies from Germany or the UK. So why don’t I now look for another job?”
Which eventually causes quite the friction in their local country because the salaries increase. I mentioned the client, for example, from San Francisco, they were annoyed of the salaries that people in San Francisco asked for. We are talking about 200k plus and they are like, “Oh my God, these people anyway, don’t come to the office. Why don’t I hire three people from Europe who will be excited?”
And then we talked to these people in Europe and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is the best opportunity ever. Now I can tell everyone I work for a San Francisco-based startup. And I’m still based here in Romania on the other side of the world.” So for us in recruitment is really great because we don’t even have to meet people in person. We just interview people across the globe. But really, really interesting changes happening on the market that they could talk about for another, I don’t know, half an hour, just because it’s so exciting to observe for me firsthand. But it also depends what your listeners are really interested in at the end of it.

Mike:
Right. No, no, it’s all really fascinating. I’m sure everybody out there is thinking about, at least it’s come across their mind, the idea of remote work. And I’m sure some people who just, whatever their line of work is, they can’t do it. But it sure seems like software development might be one of those great kind of career paths where you could do some of that or even have some mixed. It seems like a lot of jobs are like that anymore.
All right. So Mical, I want you to give us the secret weapon, all right? Let’s say somebody out there listening, they just want to break into this industry. They want to get a job they’ve been doing maybe some of the stuff you mentioned, like working on a hard project and getting some experience in that type of thing. So they want to break into this field. What can they do?
I don’t know… What would be the golden nuggets that you could hand them to say like, “Hey, say this sentence and a recruiter’s going to… Recruiters are going to take you in, or a company is going to take you in.” Or I don’t know, I’m being silly there. But what do you think an applicant should focus on, going into it? And let me step back a little bit here. Should somebody breaking into this, do you think that they should hire somebody to help them find a job or… I mean, what are your thoughts on that? I don’t know. I’m curious what… Just to pick your mind on this.

Mical:
So I would say it depends who is asking. Just for example, if you look at a few typical roles, for example, software developer using Java script, right? There is a huge demand for these developers. So they certainly don’t need any help. Or I know Python developers, they can get a job within, I don’t know, within a week or a month. It depends how picky they are, but… Or overnight on Upwork, right?
It’s not that difficult at the end of the day. And then you have another group of IT professionals who are much more senior. We are talking about VP of engineering or a CTO. And these people don’t have as many opportunities. And it’s much harder to become a CTO in some established company because of the competition. That’s why we actually help some of these senior professionals also rebrand.
It’s quite common they forget about their branding and online credibility. They don’t have even their LinkedIn profiles up to date. And then they start looking for a job and they are like, “Oh my God, what do I do? How do I actually become a CTO in another company? How do I find the company?” Because the best opportunities are not even advertised for these senior level positions.
So then we have actually one of these business lines, it’s called Career Upgrade Tools where we help these senior IT executives, reposition, rebrand, improve their profiles, create some marketing assets to boost their credibility and eventually to introduce them to some hiring managers. So if we are talking about a junior developer, then no need to go that far because they can just open up any job board and there are thousands and thousands of open positions.
But then coming back to your first question, or first part of the question, how to stand out. Because on the other hand, a lot of developers apply for those junior positions. So I would say it’s not that difficult to stand out within IT, just because it feels like the bar is just so low when it comes to some communication skills or the desire to impress, right?
Just because IT professionals are not used to writing motivation letters or not even to be able to describe their core competencies. What can they do? What can they bring on board? So now when we are introducing some candidate to a hiring manager for an interview, we brief them what to ask the hiring manager. We give them a list. Ask a hiring manager about their project, ask them why have they chosen a particular technology, because they come for an interview and they don’t ask a question.
And then the hiring manager is, after an interview asking me like, “Hey, Mical, it’s so weird. This developer was for an interview for 45 minutes and he hasn’t asked anything.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s how it is with developers.” He’s like, “Yeah, but it’s just not good.” So the point is, it’s not that difficult to stand out just by writing one paragraph motivational letter or asking a few good questions about the job or about the project, about the team, about the particle opportunity. And that developer will definitely stand out.

Mike:
Oh wow, that is fantastic. That is great advice. All right. So I got another question here and maybe we can finish this up because I really appreciate your time here. This is so fantastic. When somebody is out there looking for a job… I mean, obviously you work with like tons of different companies, right? And you’re helping them fill all these different positions.
And I don’t know if you get into this much or not, but from the perspective of the person who’s getting hired, is there something at a company that seems to you to make employees happy? I know that’s a really weird question, but I’m saying are there some companies that you’re excited to hire for and others where you’re like, “Oh, well, we got to get them some jobs, but…” You know what I’m saying?
Is there something maybe an applicant can look out for or maybe read between the lines when they’re looking at these different positions? Because that’s a big change. If somebody is going out and applying for a job and they get a job and then they realize like, “Wait a second, something doesn’t seem lined up here” or “I’m just getting people’s coffee” or whatever. I don’t know. Any thoughts on that or?

Mical:
Yeah, definitely. And I’m really glad that you are asking about this because it comes back to also why we have started this recruitment agency and the training academy. Just because we wanted to work with these companies, with these really cool, inspiring, impactful companies and help them eventually make the world a better place at the end of the day. Because if you look at the market, there are a few types of companies.
For example, I don’t know, agencies. Nothing wrong about agencies, but then you have some companies where they just develop some, I don’t know, boring project. Something super boring and they just do it for money. They do it to cash out with some web application that they sell some tickets, right? Nothing wrong about it, again. But if you look at the developers career, to spend two years working on some ticketing API. It’s not bad, but how do you make the world a better place by just working on some ticketing app, as an example?
And then you have the third segment of companies or applications where they work on some really impactful and challenging projects where they really push the boundaries when it comes to solving some of those global challenges. For example, the United nations, they defined those sustainable development goals, about 16 goals. And then thousands and thousands of companies are working towards achieving those goals and targets.
And then it’s just so inspiring to work with some of these companies. And they all use technology, obviously, because technology enables all these new innovative solutions. So whether we are talking about, I don’t know, clean water, or for example, to prevent deforestation. There are companies that are using technology to fight some of these global challenges.
And then my best advice is for developers to find these companies because it will be so much more rewarding for them to work on something that is meaningful instead of just some boring project where they do some API and they move on after two years. And it will be just two years wasted because you will anyway, just work for 10 hours a day, for example. And after a year you can work on something super cool, it will be much more rewarding versus some boring software development where you just move on to some other project after a year.

Mike:
Oh man, that’s great. Yeah, no, I hear you. I hear you. Having meaning in work is just so important and it kind of gives you a reason to show up. So that is cool. Awesome, Mical, thank you so much for your time. So let’s say somebody who’s listening to this job, I know… Or are listening to this… Listening to this job. Let’s say somebody who is listening in right now, they want to learn more about what you guys do.
Is there anything you have in particular that might help our audience? Again, these are folks who were kind of breaking into or might be breaking into the tech industry in the software side. Or maybe they’re, like I said, electrical engineers or kind of on that side. But I don’t know, maybe interested, potentially interested in this kind of thing, where they flirted with the idea. Is there any resources that you could point them to?

Mical:
Yeah, just to follow up on what I just mentioned a while ago, or even with regards to the Career Upgrades, right? How to reposition yourself as a credible professional that’s what we actually do as a part of the Career Upgrade Tools. And we have some free tools online available.
So the listeners can just go to carrierupgradetools.com and in the free sections, or we have from a few tools, some eBooks they can download. One of them is for example, how to rebrand or reposition on LinkedIn to be perceived as a credible professional with a few examples and screenshots of before and after. So they can see what is possible and they can use this free tool.

Mike:
Okay, fantastic. Yeah, we’ll make sure to link that in the show notes and everything. So, all right, man, this has just been so much fun. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for your time Mical.

Mical:
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Mike:
Great.