What's your Tech Stack?

We all throw around the phrase 'Tech Stack' but why is it important? What importance does it have to your company?

Your technology stack is crucial to the development aspect of your projects and it's paramount you pick the stack which not only gives the best results but in a cost and time-effective way, it's the foundations of your work. 

Now, I'm sure you're reading this and know full well of the importance of it, whichever programming languages and frameworks you use but my question is, how significant is it to you in your hiring process? Do you use this as a USP for your company? 

Many technology companies work will some of the most exciting and up to date programming languages, Scala being one of them. When I speak to candidates I make sure I sell them on the languages they get to use, what's even better? When they have the opportunity to recommend other languages for the team to consider implementing! 

Make it known

Get involved in the community

One great way to make sure developers know about the languages you use is to get involved with the programming community, whether it be Scala, Haskell or Java. There are various conferences and events which your company can sponsor, you'll have the opportunity to chat with developers whilst also expanding your knowledge on the technology. Meet-ups are an awesome tool, Signify host a monthly Scala in the City event in London and each month we have a different company hosting from Sky to Monzo. Each host is able to welcome engineers into their offices and use Scala in the City as a platform to tell the attendees about the projects and technologies they are working on. 

You may be surprised at the hiring results you can gain from this, with one of our clients' building their engineering team off the back of hosting Scala in the City.  

Let your engineering team help you

As I mentioned above, one huge incentive for a developer when looking at potential roles is the ability to have a voice and contribute within their role. If you are currently using a technology stack and your engineering team suggest other frameworks or libraries which may deliver you better results, take it into consideration, it may pay off in ways you hadn't expected. If you want to instil confidence in this before throwing all trust to your team, ask if they would be interested in conducting a project where they can implement their idea and show you the results, if you're not as tech-savvy then it will definitely benefit you also. 

This type of benefit will also make the team feel valued and anyway you can positively affect retention rates is a plus!

Are you ready to shout about your tech stack? Just give me a shout and I'll make sure it's heard!

Daniel Lawson, Manager