Happy Friday - it’s Bojan

Two important announcements for you

1) A lof of you sent me your CV and Linkedin for review

• don’t stop with that, it’s amazing, keep it coming - but 100% of you who do want CV advice should check out this post - How to use AI to make a killer CV for free

• Just reply to this email with your Linkedin, your CV or both for me to review if you haven’t already

2) Don’t be shy to ask questions

• Think you’re being underpaid? Reply to my email with your questions

• Doing interviews elsewhere and want some tips? reply to my email with your questions

• Got issues with a boss or colleague? reply to my mail ewith your questions

You get the idea - we don’t need to work together for me to help you - I want to create a helpful and valuable community - that is not going to happen if I only do it when it benefits me (makes my profit by recruiting you)

And with that - let’s get into this week’s issue Techies

JOBS

What goes Freeze 🥶 must go Melt 🔥

A lot of companies are starting the year the same way they ended it - In a hiring freeze

Some of you know what it is, or might have heard the term - i’m going to explain it in point 1 - if you already know it, skip to point 2 - to see what hiring freezes mean for you in the start of 2025

1. Here’s why it happens

• Budgets and Costs - companies either are defining and allocating budgets, or cutting costs and reducing expenses

• Restructuring - changing teams, responsibilities and outcomes that the company is focusing on

• Politics and Economics - everyone is watching Trump now and what that means for their countries, and everyone is watching inflation and unemployment to understand consumer and business spending

• Performance Evaluations - checking outputs, outcomes and skills of their employees, if they have the capacity for what they want to do, they won’t want to grow the team, or bring in talent they’re looking for

2. Here’s what it means for you

The second half of 2022 then all of 2023 and 2024 took care of a lot of the above, budgets slashed, costs cut, restructuring restructured and performance evaluations evaluated

https://layoffs.fyi/ - 4000 companies with layoffs and 600’000 developers laid off over 3 years

All that is frozen shall melt 

baring an escalation of war in Europe and The Middle East, 2025 should start a growing demand for developers.

We already have startups currently raising funding right now - and when you get money you must spend money - that’s the law of the land in Startup land

So prepare yourself, reflect on what kind of career you want, if you’re happy, carve your path in your company, if you are not, think about what you want, and go for it with confidence

The jobs are coming - Are you ready?

CAREER ADVICE

To AI or not to AI that is the question

I know I just mentioned how there will be an increase of jobs in the above section - and that is true - but that is only one part of the equation because AI will affect job demand, both on the creation and destruction side.

Thought exercise

On a scale from 1 to 10, rate how good of a developer

• you think you are

• you think your colleagues are

• you think your colleagues think you are

Now, 7 is cheating, so go back, and be honest, make it either a 6 or an 8

If these numbers aren’t high, averaging 7 and up - AI is coming for you, and in the Terminator, i-Robot kinda way

1 through 6 out of 10 people

You had better start working on your skills - Companies are already planning on NOT hiring more developers in 2025, just getting rid of low performers and replacing them with higher performers

So the pool of bad talent will grow - and you’re going to be swimming in that pool with everyone peeing it - eww…

How and where can you improve?

• Courses and training workshops

• Side projects and tinkering

• Communication skills

• Industry knowledge

Forget about AI - that’s like being a bad driver, and then asking for a faster car

i’m only half joking here, below is a list of AI tools and how to use them - but you really gotta be committing to improvement and you can definitely use AI to help you improve

7 through 8 out of 10 people

You are the good driver, that can get a faster car and you should be using AI for your code

Here’s a list of AI tools and how to use them

VS Code is a great IDE we like using and GitHub Copilot has been awesome for us too.

For the product managers and business analysts amongst us - Perplexity AI for research and Claude or ChatGPT for things like creating jira tickets, user stories and resource documents

9 through 10 out of 10 people

You should send me your CV and tell me how much you wanna get paid

INTERVIEW ADVICE

Should you lie in an interview?

Yes, yes you should

No, no you should not

Both are equally valid answers and for very different reasons - IF you are a great developer, and I assure you, it is not easy to be one, you’d probably know if you are - it’s not like love, where you just know - a lot of people know too.

But if you are this developer… 

Then to lie a little, or omit some truths, or paint a more vague picture that allows interviews to color their own picture

what does this look like?

• Maybe you were the developer who came up with the whole solution (not just part of it)

• Maybe your solution was used by more users than just 13 (eg, you created an app used by the whole company - even if that company has 13 employees, don’t say how many employees it has)

• Maybe you are interviewing at other places (even though you aren’t or you were rejected by those places already)

• Maybe you studied but did not graduate - just say you studied comp sci at university XYZ - omit the graduation part

• You are interviewing because this position pays so much more - tell me you’re leaving for the challenge, cause you’re bored, cause there is no growth - anything but the money, even though we know…

But if you are like this pale white dude below…

Don’t lie, even if you are a great developer, don’t lie about your:

• education

• tech stack

• compensation

• years of experience

These are basic things, everyone does due diligence on and easily found out.

LEGAL TIPS

How does a permanent position look?

A lot of people, when they are looking to join an international company that doesn’t have an office in South Africa, will wonder, how does a Perm contract look for me

And why does this perm contract have an end date?

First, even permanent employment is not permanent - if that company goes bust, so do you - if you mess up, you are gone - if you decide to leave, that employment is finished, etc etc.

But I get your point, you want comfort, commitment and certainty

The easiest way to get this is to leave the end date open - To not include it on your contract

You will need to put a termination clause in your employment contract - such as your notice period and the companies, as well as a disputes and resolutions clause, so they don’t just hire you and fire you as soon they feel like it

They don’t want to fire you

Hiring someone costs time, money and skills transfer, for good and great employees, companies know it’s a lot more expensive to replace them than it is to keep them

Really the contract is perm because of you, you have the power, not the company

• if you are good at what you do, startups will want to keep you

• if you are bad at what you do, startups will look for ways to get rid of you

Do your research on

• why they are hiring

• how long people stay at the company

• does the company have budget and are they profitable

The average tenure of tech talent in a company is 27 months - developers specifically is closer to 21 months! So it’s really you who has the power, that dictates the contract duration. Not the employer

Don’t worry about Perm, worry about what you want, why you want it and where you want to be - the contracts take care of themselves…

THATS A WRAP

Before you go: Here’s 3 ways I can help you

1. LinkedIn - I’m always hiring - but only 2 to 4 people a month - connect with me on and send me your CV - currently, I only hire people with 7 or more years of experience - if you have less, but are EXCEPTIONAL, i’ll make exceptions

2. Youtube - i’m always making content to help you out, subscribe and binge

3. Free Career Advice - i’m going to be giving away CV feedback for early subscribers for free, I usually charge $100 for a resume roast - i’ll make a recording and send you feedback - just reply back to this email with your CV - its totally free for first 15 people