Bo Henriksens’s Weblog

Managing the development department of a small IT company, can from time to time be a challenge.

Today I we say goodbye to one of my key programmers, who leave us to try new challenges in network security instead of SEO. This is all ok, I am a big fan af giving employees room for continuous personal growth, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The challenge lies in replacing a programmer, or any employee at the time being. There are multiple reason, that all contribute to make this a difficult task to overcome.

First of all, we are located in Copenhagen, Denmark, and for the last year, we have had the lowest unemployment rate ever in Denmark. This is not only the IT businesses, but all kinds of businesses. This supply and demand relationship between workforce and jobs has the unfortunate effect of increasing salaries for all kinds of jobs. The increased salaries and the availability of the jobs, even for jobs with no demand for an education, means that more people will take a job rigth out off highschool, instead of getting a degree, which again means that we can expect a serious lack of new programmers in 3-5 years, thus leading companies to do whatever they can to hold onto their programmers by giving benefits and increasing salaries even more.

For a small company like us, with limited budgets, this makes it extremely hard to get qualified programmers, without giving away your soul or your firstborn child.

So if anyone has any advice on alternative ways to attract programmers, I really need some helpful comments.