“Every startup struggles with being in a little bubble, and Commit can help with getting out of that bubble.”

We prefer to think of technical interviews as a chance for both startups and software engineers to get to know one another and assess whether they’d like to commit to working together.

“I find it helps me be less stressed about interpersonal conflict to become more curious about why certain behaviours make sense to people.”

There are many entryways into a fulfilling and lasting career in software engineering and development. What’s inspiring is that no two software engineering (or development) career paths are the same. For us, that means this is the kind of career that’s open for exploration, continuous learning, and that can spell success for all kinds of people with different technical skill sets, personalities, and backgrounds.

“I find that asking yourself ‘what is this person optimizing for’ is quite a useful thing, because people are almost always doing things that make sense to them at the time. You want to help them understand why the incorrect behaviour might have made sense at the time. If you don’t, they’ll do it again.”

Back in 2019, the shortage of highly skilled tech workers caused “extreme concern” for 79% of CEOs — and it’s only gotten worse. It’s now essential for startup leaders to invest in their remote developers’ experience not only to retain them, but to benefit from a higher quality of work, psychological safety, and engagement.

Commit Engineer Martin Jung joined the startup PlaceHolder in 2020 as their first engineer hire. But he didn’t go alone. Martin brought Zero, Commit’s open source tool, a DevOps resource to complement his skills in application development.

“Sometimes with primarily technical roles, there’s a lot of pressure to be heads down and coding literally all the time. But if that’s the case, when are you supposed to contribute to the important discussions the rest of the team is having?”

The US resignation rate hit an all-time high of 4M in April 2021. In July, job openings peaked at 5.8M positions, the cherry on top of hiring challenges. Unfortunately for tech startups, the Great Resignation isn’t evenly distributed across all sectors.

A career in software engineering and development doesn’t have to follow a linear path to be meaningful. Some people may enjoy the rigorous process of climbing the corporate ladder, while others may be more motivated by having a wide breadth of tactical problems to sink their teeth into.