--- title: "Yes, You Still Need to Hire Dev Talent in a Downturn. But You’ve Got to Get Better at It. | CoderPad" description: "What's the best way to organize and engage a dev team in a downturn? Contractors or full-time employees? Agencies or individual freelancers?" canonical: "https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/you-still-need-to-hire-dev-talent-in-a-downturn/" last_modified: "2026-04-15 16:20:56" --- [Back to blog](https://coderpad.io/blog/) # Yes, You Still Need to Hire Dev Talent in a Downturn. But You’ve Got to Get Better at It. February 15, 2023 5 Minute Read By Amanda Richardson [Hiring Developers](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/) Yes, yes, the economic news is looking… not great. Tech darlings are laying off people at an astounding clip; more than 100K workers have been laid off to date this year (and it’s only mid February)! And there’s been a 63 percent drop in startup funding raised in the final quarter of 2022 compared to the same period a year earlier, according to [Crunchbase](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/north-american-startup-funding-q4-2022/). And yet (you knew this was coming, right?), 💩 still has to get done. There may be fewer jobs for awhile but for technical experts, there will always be jobs, period. That’s good news for technical employees. Employers, however, may wonder what the best way to organize and engage a dev team in a downturn would be. A mix of contractors and full time employees? What’s the best balance? Or is it one or the other? Agencies or individual freelancers? > “As the headlines continue to be fraught with layoff news and the first few months of 2023 aren’t looking so rosy, this is the perfect time to think about dev teams in the context of uncertainty, tight budgets, and the unrelenting, omnipresent need to make progress.” The good news? You can get the dev team you want – and the results you need – if you’re deliberate and clear-eyed about the configuration that makes the most sense for your projects and priorities. ## Long-term hiring There are two general ways to think about the roles you might need to staff: ### The full-time generalist These are the devs who can work in multiple languages, can be flexible with tasks, and willing to jump into new areas and learn new things. Full-time generalists are a great option when you need to maintain flexibility in your projects and frameworks. These capable pinch-hitters can join a team and get the job done – but their utility doesn’t end there. New strategy or focus change come down from on high? Not a problem. Unlike specialists, a generalist can be transitioned to another team or project when needs and requirements of the business change. ### The full-time specialist If you’re sure there is a long-term direction or technology firmly in place, full-time specialists can be really valuable assets with little need for massive ramp-up. They can make a huge impact because of their expertise – often in very short order. They deliver very high quality work quickly – which can be what you need to get a project out the door. The challenge can be if and when the direction changes, which can happen in response to hyper-dynamic market conditions or economic uncertainty. We’re seeing that now with machine learning experts getting laid off. Why? Machine learning and artificial intelligence is considered a bet on the future – but when times are tough, companies often forgo these risky big swings in favor of the sure(er) thing. ## Hiring for new initiatives There are two ways to think about how to staff the new initiatives – in addition to hiring full-time employees: ### Individual contractors These staff members can be specialists or generalists but either way, they’re probably best deployed to work on the more peripheral projects that truly need to get done but never seem to be completed. Need to stand up Salesforce? Rolling out a new integration? They’re the right team members – proficient, hardworking, short term – for the programs and projects that simply need to be checked off a department’s to-do list. And if you like what you see in terms of talent, fit, results, and work ethic, you can always extend an offer to convert to full-time once budgets shake loose again. (Just remember that working for you is also a “try before you buy” situation for them as well – so try to make the experience a good one by being considerate, respectful and, dare I say, fun). > 🔖 Related read: [8 Best Sites to Hire Freelance Developers in 2023](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/top-platforms-find-hire-freelance-developers/) ### Agencies Sometimes it makes sense to bring in an agency, even though it is often more expensive. You do get what you pay for – agencies are a perfect option when you need to get a set of contractors and get a project or initiative done with multiple team members, which is one reason why IT staffing agencies are doing incredibly brisk business at the moment. And unlike an individual contractor, there’s a bench to pull from if one of these team members needs to take leave or quits. What’s more: these teams have typically worked together in the past and have a solid rhythm down so your capacity for impact improves exponentially. Their established dynamic works in your favor. On the flip side, unlike an individual freelancer, agencies often come with their own culture, way of working, and preferred tool set, forcing clients to conform a bit more than they would otherwise. Maybe, for instance, an agency team doesn’t typically use Slack or perhaps they’re used to delivering a completed project a couple weeks after receiving an assignment (when your dev team works more iteratively). That’s less than ideal. And it highlights a positive of choosing an individual contractor who, in addition to costing less, will probably be more motivated and amenable to learning something new to stay in the game. ## Plan now, benefit later No one knows for sure what the future of the economy holds – but the signals are increasingly volatile. If you plan astutely now, you can determine what makes the best sense for your business, spend wisely and maintain flexibility. Sometimes full-time positions make sense – especially when there’s a committed strategy and projects are forthcoming. But if the business is evaluating its options, markets, customers and/or solutions, exploring contractors – either agencies or individuals – is an option that gives flexibility, capacity, and impact in one fell swoop. Taking a beat (or two or three) to think your hiring plan through now will pay off consistently down the line. ## Subscribe for more CoderPad insights ## Trending Articles Previous slide Next slide [Hiring Developers ## How to Hire for AI Fluency Now That It’s a Critical Skill Based on the CoderPad webinar featuring Bayo Ojuri (CoderPad), Bonnie Dilber (Zapier), and Melany Austin (GoDaddy). “AI fluency” has quietly become a line item in nearly every technical job description. The problem: most teams added the requirement long before they had a reliable way to assess it. You can ask a candidate whether they use […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/how-to-hire-for-ai-fluency-now-that-its-a-critical-skill/) [Hiring Developers ## Hot Takes on Hiring: “AI Fluency” Is a Myth Our CEO, Amanda Richardson, and our Head of Product, Frank Hauben, can’t agree on anything else. We put Amanda and Frank on camera, handed them five spicy hot takes about AI in hiring, and told them not to sit on the fence. They sat on the fence anyway. Here’s what they actually fought about. Amanda […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/hot-takes-on-hiring-ai-fluency-is-a-myth/) [Hiring Developers ## 5 Unfiltered Takes on AI That Engineering Leaders Actually Believe We put a room full of senior engineering leaders together, took away the slides, added beer, and asked them to say the thing they’d never put in a LinkedIn post. No PR-approved talking points, no vendor gloss, just people who ship for a living telling the truth about what AI is doing inside their orgs […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/5-unfiltered-takes-on-ai-that-engineering-leaders-actually-believe/) [Hiring Developers ## Your Developer Interview Loop Is a Year Old. Is It Still Finding Your Best Candidates? A YC-backed founder called me last week with some good questions. His 20-person startup hadn’t hired an engineer in over a year. Now they’re opening reqs again, and instead of just dusting off the old loop, he wanted to understand how interviews had changed and if candidates were ready for AI interviews. His process — […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/your-developer-interview-loop-is-a-year-old-is-it-still-finding-your-best-candidates/) [Hiring Developers ## AI Fluency Is the New Technical Skill. Is Your Hiring Process Ready? Artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed software development. Developers are no longer working in isolation, writing every line of code from memory. AI has become part of the engineering workflow, helping developers brainstorm approaches, generate boilerplate code, and debug complex issues. The question isn’t whether engineers are using AI. It’s how effectively they’re using it. Hiring […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/ai-fluency-is-the-new-technical-skill-is-your-hiring-process-ready/) [Hiring Developers ## AI Didn’t Kill Entry Level Hiring. Bad Screening Did. For the last two years, the narrative has been loud, confident, and mostly wrong: AI is coming for entry level engineering jobs. The story goes something like this: If AI can write code, summarize docs, generate tests, and debug basic issues, why would companies still hire junior engineers? It sounds logical. It is also incomplete. […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/ai-didnt-kill-entry-level-hiring-bad-screening-did/) [Hiring Developers ## The Resume Is Dead. Most Teams Just Haven’t Admitted It Yet. Resumes made sense when applying for a job took real effort. That era is over. AI lets candidates apply to hundreds of roles in the time it once took to write a single cover letter. Employer-side AI systems process the flood. The result is a hiring funnel built almost entirely on artificial signals, where the […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/the-resume-is-dead-most-teams-just-havent-admitted-it-yet/) [Hiring Developers ## Is Your Technical Hiring Process Screening Out Great Engineers? The short answer: Many technical hiring processes are doing the latter. High-friction interview loops, live coding under observation, and AI-restrictive assessments are measuring interview performance, not job performance. The fix isn’t rebuilding from scratch — it’s auditing whether your process measures engineering capability or something else entirely. If you attended our recent webinar with CoderPad […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/is-your-technical-hiring-process-screening-out-great-engineers/) [Hiring Developers ## Junior Developers Are Your Strategic Advantage—If You Can Actually Evaluate Them Campus recruiting season arrives the same way every year: hundreds of applications, a narrow window, and a process that was never designed for this much volume or this much pressure. Meanwhile, the definition of “technical skill” is actively shifting—AI-polished resumes have made traditional screening nearly meaningless, and the skills that predict junior developer success look […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/junior-developers-are-your-strategic-advantage-if-you-can-actually-evaluate-them/) [Hiring Developers ## Your Hiring Process Is Losing You Top Talent. Before They Ever Interview! Here’s a hard truth most TA leaders don’t want to admit: your hiring process is screening for the wrong thing. Not skills. Not judgment. Not potential. It’s screening for the ability to interview well. And those two things have almost nothing to do with each other. We sat down with recruiting experts Cammas Freeman, Phil […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/your-hiring-process-is-losing-you-top-talent-before-they-ever-interview/) [Hiring Developers ## CoderPad Uses CoderPad to Hire Engineers. Here’s How. When we opened our latest software engineer role, we had 100 applications within 24 hours. By the end of the first week, without running a single ad, we had 160 candidates in the pipeline. That’s a lot of signal to sort through. And it forced us to be honest about something every engineering leader eventually […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/coderpad-uses-coderpad-to-hire-engineers-heres-how/) [Hiring Developers ## Is Your Technical Hiring Process Built for the AI Era? Find Out With a New Quiz. AI didn’t just change how engineers build software. It changed what it means to hire one. The tools engineers use every day — AI coding assistants, prompt-driven debugging, multi-model workflows — are now fundamental to how modern development teams operate. According to our State of Tech Hiring 2026 Report, 82% of developers find generative AI […] Read the post](https://coderpad.io/blog/hiring-developers/is-your-technical-hiring-process-built-for-the-ai-era-find-out-with-a-new-quiz/) ## Hire with confidence. See why engineering teams trust CoderPad to evaluate developers with realistic, AI-ready hiring workflows. [Request a demo](https://coderpad.io/sales/)