Who works instead of the hired developer?

In this rapidly developing direction, such as IT, the most difficult thing is to find a skilled developer. Today’s reality is a high staff turnover of trainees and junior developers. No one is surprised anymore by healthcare insurance or the huge number of events and the convenience of the office. Everyone jumps from an offer to a more attractive one. This trend is seen today not only in skilled developers but also in trainees. But what shall we do if the developer on the project is not the one who passed an interview?

Shadow system: two employees in one person

Every project starts with the requirements for the developers. They can be location, hard skills, language knowledge, or even age. Due to this rigorous selection, the necessity of a «hidden» system arises. IT outsourcing companies can send one person for an interview, but the real work will be performed by another developer that didn’t meet the requirements. The one who passes the interview attends meetings and shows himself to prove his identity. And the «hidden» developer performs all tasks such as development and support and receives the full salary as he has a full-length project. The representative on the project gets a bonus, and both company and the client are satisfied with the result. The most common cause to put this type of work into practice is location or strict client requirements that sometimes are not relevant. It is important to emphasize that the quality of development performance doesn’t suffer in this type of working process as it’s the company’s decision in order to please both sides and increase its income.

Reverse situation: hiring one, getting another developer

A trend of unfair IT loopholes

The number of IT specialists grew by 50.5 % from 2012 to 2021, almost 8 times as high as the increase (6.3 %) for total employment. With the growing number of employees, requirements for candidates are also growing. Today the importance of soft skills is rising: a skilled developer may not be considered without management skills. Every person dreams of a high salary in IT and wants to join big companies such as Google or Microsoft and sometimes forgets about the fact that the IT sphere is not a light way to receive the desirable. Many candidates ignore the strict requirements and believe it is easy to get a dream position. It’s no longer a secret that IT specialists help each other during the interview. For example: when it is hard to pass a tech interview, someone’s friend hastens to rescue in answering questions. Then the company gets a low-skilled developer and instantly looks for another one to replace the hired one. Or another funny example: if to run a search of someone’s CV, you can discover that his CV already exists and not in a single copy. In this IT reality the system, where behind the hired developer stands another one, has a place to be.

Imagine the situation: you hire a skilled developer with excellent language knowledge. He gets a project soon, and his processes leave no doubt. Then you ask him by some fluke to turn on the camera, but there is another person. On the one hand, his work doesn’t give cause for doubt. On the other hand, no one can guarantee that he does his job himself. Then why did another person pass the interview if this other developer is skilled enough to get a project? It’s a case when no one won’t assure the proper quality of development performance.

One CV can ruin the entire ecosystem

Here is one example or rather a warning for companies that value their reputation. Someday we got just a perfect CV of Ismayil Rzali with almost five years of experience in the IT sphere. He has excellent education with a Master’s degree from Birmingham City University. Moreover, we could see a rich history of previous positions and a wide range of technologies he used to work with. Every part of the CV encouraged us to give him a great offer not to lose this IT treasure. Predictably Ismayil Rzali successfully passed an interview and joined the ranks of our tech talents. It was not the case mentioned above: the developer performed well in all tasks. No one even had thought of another developer behind Ismayil.

Every company, which is constantly developing and has a clear structure and organizational processes, carefully examines every employee and may notice something wrong. But there is also a human factor. For example, the developer said that he was sick and, for that reason, he wouldn’t turn on the camera. Let’s be honest it may take a lot of time before someone notices, or we may never know who works instead of the hired one. Some people might think, what is the problem if the developer wants to «run his own business» and increase his income. Furthermore, he helps young talents to get a dream job position. Let us consider this situation in more detail: the hiring company can have no idea of another developer with weaker skills, so it can’t have complete control over the processes and finally can’t give the client a guarantee of a well-developed product. In a single word, low performance and unfair profits from others appear in this case. Just imagine how many interviews can pass a single developer and how many companies can suffer the consequences of low performance, overdue tasks, and client complaints.

So with our situation: Ismayil had a chance to work a bit before we asked him to turn on his camera. The result was obvious: instead of Rzali, we could see a random developer. The conclusion of this situation: if the trend of strict requirements exists, the terms to get a job must be the same for everyone. One of such developers won’t disrupt the company’s work system, but more would ultimately lead to its decline. Consider for a moment the processes in your company and ask yourself if you know every employee in person. Maybe it’s the right time to ask someone to turn on his camera?