Krzysztof Karczewski

📊 I analyzed 15 years of junior developer hiring data in Poland. Here's what the numbers show. From 2010 to 2015, Poland's IT sector experienced rapid growth driven by EU integration and the rise of outsourcing. Junior developers represented 20-25% of new hires during this period. The expansion continued through 2015-2020, fueled by digitization and fintech growth. Junior job postings peaked around 2018-2019 at roughly 12% of all IT advertisements. 📉 Then the trajectory changed. The pandemic year of 2020 saw junior positions drop to approximately 5% of job ads as companies shifted toward experienced hires. That decline persisted through the 2022-2024 market correction, with junior roles hovering between 4.8-6% of postings. In 2025, despite a 70% increase in overall IT job postings, junior positions remain well below their pre-2020 levels. 🎓 Meanwhile, the talent pipeline has remained consistent. Poland produces approximately 15,000 IT graduates annually, not counting bootcamp graduates and career switchers. The total IT workforce now stands at 600,000-650,000 professionals, with juniors estimated at only 15-20% of that population. If we estimate 30,000 open IT roles with 5% being junior positions, that's roughly 1,500 opportunities for 15,000+ candidates entering the market each year. 💼 The market is shifting for experienced developers too. Companies are increasingly looking toward other markets for talent, and there's a notable pivot in required skills. Traditional technology stacks are being supplemented or replaced by AI/ML and cloud infrastructure requirements. This means even senior developers are navigating a changing landscape. 🔗 This connects to the career development question I raised recently. If entry-level positions remain constrained while the graduating population stays steady, we're looking at a potential experience gap in the workforce within 5-7 years. The traditional progression path - junior to mid-level to senior - relies on consistent entry points that the current market isn't providing in the same volume. 💡 For junior developers navigating this market: Consider differentiating beyond core programming languages. Familiarity with AI tooling, cloud platforms, and modern infrastructure is increasingly valuable. Portfolio projects that demonstrate practical problem-solving often carry more weight than certifications alone. Alternative entry points through agencies, product companies in adjacent industries, or freelance work can provide the experience traditional corporate roles once offered. 🤔 The open question is whether this represents a temporary market adjustment or a structural shift. Either we're creating a future talent shortage by limiting today's entry opportunities, or the nature of software development is evolving to require fewer specialized roles with broader, AI-augmented capabilities. The data doesn't yet tell us which direction we're heading. What patterns are you observing in your market?

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Team motivation largely depends on a leader’s everyday decisions and working style. Many of these factors come down to how work is organised and communicated.   📌 A sense of purpose Engagement grows when people understand why their work matters and how it contributes to a shared outcome. A clearly communicated purpose brings structure to daily actions and strengthens motivation.   💬 Attentiveness to team signals Openness to conversation and awareness of the team’s energy make it easier to respond in real time and support a steady, healthy work rhythm.   🤲 Support instead of pressure When a leader acts as a source of support rather than control, teams find it easier to stay engaged and take responsibility for shared goals.   Motivation grows when people understand the purpose of their work, maintain strong relationships and feel supported by their leader on a daily basis. This creates a calm and stable foundation for collaboration.   #leadership #peopleandculture #employeeexperience #futureofwork

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Yesterday I spoke at Devoxx Poland in #Krakow about #GarbageCollection and it was fun 😁 As always before a session I‘ve modified my slides and I was able to make it through 188 slides in 50min…that was tight and I directly reduced the number of slides again after my session. It’s really not that easy to adapt the number of slides to the available time, esp. if you will find sessions with lengths of 20, 25, 30, 40, 45, 50 and 60 minutes. I wish conferences could stick to the 45min format 🤷🏼‍♂️ The #TrashTalk tries to cover memory management, esp. garbage collection in the #Java #Virtual #Machine (#JVM). It’s not a deep dive on this topic but more an intro and overview session that should provide everything you need to know to get a better understanding about garbage collection. Once you understand the principles and know how the collectors in #OpenJDK work, you should be able to make a more educated decision when it comes to selecting the right collector for your application. Collectors are programs that have their use case and requirements. E.g. a fully concurrent collector runs (as the name implies) concurrently to your application which means it will require CPU and memory resources that won’t be available for your application. Meaning to say, you will probably see a drop in application performance when switching from a non-concurrent to a concurrent collector on the same machine (depending on the available CPU and memory). That also means, systems and their software are different and it needs monitoring + tuning to find and configure a garbage collector for your application. So my advice is…do not simply use something because someone else is using it 😁

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What if some of the most popular “laws” of software engineering are actually myths? At the upcoming Agile Warsaw meeting, we will challenge the commonly used principles and theories that shape the way teams and systems are designed — and ask when they are helpful and when they are misleading. 🎯 Main topics 🔍 How “laws” turn into myths ⚠️ Signs of improper use of models 🧭 More conscious and responsible decision-making in complex environments 👩‍🏫 Speaker: Uladzimir Ziankevich — engineering leader and agile coach with over 15 years of experience, known for his critical thinking and product-oriented approach. 👉 Join us if you prefer to think for yourself rather than blindly follow patterns. Registration: https://lnkd.in/dD_TfJyH Special thanks to DXC Technology for their hospitality, coffee, tea, light snacks, and QAgile for recording of the session.

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60% of developers quit because their DevEx sucks. Let that sink in. 🤯 Poor workflows and inefficiencies are driving your best talent out the door. But it doesn’t have to be this way. AI-powered DevEx is the game-changer you need to keep your developers happy, productive, and sticking around. 👥 Our VP, Product Engineering Services, Andy Dennis breaks it all down in his blog. From cutting out workflow friction to supercharging productivity, here are best practices to improve the developer experience. Read the blog 👇 https://lnkd.in/em2jWb3e #DeveloperExperience

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Jacek Marmuszewski is presenting "From Tables to Relationships: Mastering Relational Databases" next Friday at Devoxx Poland. It is easy to think that #databases are solved problems until we hit production scale. Indexes, partitions, and vacuuming (I’m not talking about cleaning your carpet!) are pretty complex. It may not sound exciting, but there are many gotchas with relational databases in modern applications, and solving them is not as simple as adding more RAM or CPU power - not all problems can be solved with money. "From Tables to Relationships" is perfect for anyone starting their database optimization journey or who wants to understand how this can be done properly. Working with Jacek at Let's Go DevOps means seeing this expertise applied daily. A quick fact for today: do you know that from PostgreSQL v18, you don’t need to run table analysis after a major version upgrade to refresh query planner statistics? Source: https://lnkd.in/ddE2xF3R Reach out to Jacek Marmuszewski to learn more about his presentation and database optimization strategies. #DevoxxKrakow #LetsGoDevOps

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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹: 32 releases, zero major incidents in 2+ years since the team's inception. We engineer with intention—the right amount of rigor for each problem, no over-engineering, no shortcuts. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Our team was entrusted with six mission-critical initiatives that would directly impact how thousands of clients manage their workforce data. From integrating Airbase acquisitions to building sophisticated security group assignments driven by position data, each feature required deep technical expertise and cross-functional collaboration. What stands out most isn't just what we built, but how we built it – with attention to quality, security, and scalability. Features like Employee Position Data Inheritance and Multiple Positions fundamentally change how our platform handles complex organizational structures. 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗖𝗥𝗨𝗗 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: Real distributed systems. Acquisition integrations. Architecture decisions with business impact. 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: Blame-free (incidents → learning docs), evidence-based decisions, sustainable pace. Engineers promoted through real mentorship, zero regrettable attrition. 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱: Someone excited by complex distributed systems, real trade-offs, and owning your domain end-to-end. Questions welcome. 🚀

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The pace of change in banking keeps accelerating 🫨 💳 New apps, stricter regulations, growing customer expectations. How do you make sure your digital platforms keep up? At Sii Poland, we help top financial institutions stay compliant, resilient, and future-ready through our partnership with Tricentis and deep industry know-how. From automation and performance testing to data integrity – our experts help banks deliver faster, safer, and with confidence. 🎬 Watch the video to see how we transform testing in financial services. Learn more about our offer at:  🔗 https://lnkd.in/daawwQeq

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We often talk about "instant" performance, but the numbers tell a different story. I spent yesterday evening at the Node.js Warsaw XXIII meetup. Great vibes (and snacks!) 🍕 , but the standout was the talk by Mattias Hansson on system latency. He used a brilliant visualization: if a CPU cycle is as fast as a blink of an eye, the difference between reading data from a local SSD versus fetching it from the Cloud is staggering. It’s easy to forget the sheer scale of that gap when you're just looking at lines of code. The key takeaway? During work with high level IT technologies, we’re used to everything feeling "instant." But true optimization happens when you respect the physical reality of hardware. Sending a single bit to the Cloud involves a relatively astronomical delay when compared to a local database read—to say nothing of the CPU-Memory cycle. It was a solid reality check on why smart caching and minimizing external round-trips are still the kings of performance. Great talk, and see you on next MeetUps! 👏 #NodeJS #WarsawNodeJS

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How #Frontend Roles Drive Product Success in Poland’s Tech Market? ➡️ Front-end vacancies have evolved into must-have positions. Employers now expect front-end developers to deliver both functional code and great design. ➡️ “Front-end engineers are currently among the most sought-after professionals in Poland because they are the ones who shape how users feel a product. In the era of digital transformation, every company – regardless of industry – needs an intuitive, well-crafted interface,” says Emilia Szczepańska, HR Projects Coordinator at Verita HR Group. “It’s the front end that defines the first impression and, ultimately, the product’s success in the market. Companies fully understand this.” #ITinPoland #React #Angular #PolishITMarket https://lnkd.in/dWm7ZKi2

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At the Zephyr Project Meetup in Prague 🇨🇿 Marek Maškarinec, Firmware Engineer at HARDWARIO, presented: “In-source tests with Ztest.” Ztest is Zephyr’s own framework for writing unit and integration tests. Usually, Ztest tests are written as a separate application, meaning they can only access publicly available APIs. That makes them unusable for static functions and application code which can be solved by putting the tests directly inside the relevant source files. A simple yet powerful approach to make testing more practical and closer to the code under test! Watch the session now: https://hubs.ly/Q03NdCzl0 #opensource #ZephyrRTOS

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Fellow devs, I'm running a workshop this Saturday in Warsaw on fundamentals of ai-assisted development. We will cover: - specs-driven development: quickly turning any idea into manageable project plan - intro Task Master: probably the best tool for ai-native project management (using it via command line and MCP) - surviving vibe-drifts and avoiding vibe-bankruptcy (thinking like product managers, understanding tasks complexity, dependencies) - ai-native TDD: making coding agents write good tests, not asserts that always pass :) No slides this time, all coding: the kata format is great as all participants learn by doing and build the muscles, not an illusion of knowledge. Who is in?

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One of the biggest career limiters for Polish developers isn't about technical skills, but language skills 💬 The truth is that having at least a proficient English level is a must-have for software developers. All the technical documentations, code reviews, commit messages, and variable names are in English. Your technical skills might be excellent, but if you can't explain your code during reviews, participate in daily standups, write clear commit messages, or debug issues using English resources, you're limiting yourself. The good news? You don't need to be Shakespeare to work in IT. You need functional English for technical communication. If your English is holding back your career, invest in it now.  It's the highest return of investment (ROI) skill you can develop as a developer. #SoftwareDeveloper #SoftwareDevelopment #Programmer #ITjobs

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This Thursday at 3:00 PM, I’ll be joining Krystian Sperka on stage at ACCELER8IT in Gdańsk, representing Infogain Poland Our talk - “From Chaos to Control: How Multi-Agent AI Systems Reinvent IT Operations” - looks at a shift that’s already redefining how technology organizations operate. We’ll explore how multi-agent AI systems can move IT operations from reactive firefighting to proactive, autonomous control - where AI agents detect errors, analyze logs, validate databases and code, and report incidents automatically. It’s not a concept piece - we’ll share a real-world implementation, the results, and the lessons learned on the path to AI-first operations. As AI becomes a core part of engineering and operations, leaders face a new challenge: how to architect human-AI collaboration that scales reliability, speed, and trust. That’s the conversation we want to open at ACCELER8IT. #ACCELER8IT #AIOps #EngineeringLeadership #Automation #AI #ITOperations #FutureOfWork

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🌀 What’s really happening in .NET today? We’re not talking hype. This is hands-on insight from someone who just migrated a production project to .NET 8. We spoke with Yahor Halubchyk, a senior .NET engineer at Vention, to get a grounded take on current trends, migrations, and what’s worth paying attention to. ⚙️ .NET 8 has become the default. It’s stable, fast, and LTS-backed. Upgrading from earlier versions is usually a matter of days. As for .NET 9 — most teams are skipping it and waiting for 10, which promises smart memory handling and auto-optimizations for collections and performance. 🧱 Still on .NET Framework? Brace yourself. If your project’s on modern .NET (formerly Core), migration is straightforward. But if you're stuck on .NET Framework 4.8, you're likely looking at a full rewrite. The architecture is different, and most libraries just won’t work out of the box. 🧩 Third-party libraries are the real bottleneck. Yahor put it simply: “If you're on the standard Microsoft stack, migration is smooth. But if you’re using MongoDB, niche ORMs, or older open-source packages, expect to dig through source code and open GitHub issues.” 📉 Blazor and Razor? Still niche. They’re rarely used in production. React and Angular dominate the frontend. Blazor might work in edge cases, like when sensitive business logic has to stay server-side, but it’s not the go-to. 🤖 AI + .NET: not just buzz — it’s useful. GitHub Copilot struggles with complex logic. But GPT-4? Surprisingly solid. Yahor’s team uses it to generate SQL queries, unit tests, and advanced search logic, especially when given proper context. 🧠 .NET itself? It’s more than a language — it’s an engineering mindset. Think architecture, optimization, concurrency. The learning curve is steep, but so are the opportunities. As Yahor puts it: “If you have real experience, you can jump straight into a project and deliver. For juniors, we offer solid growth.” 📌 We're hiring: 🔹 Senior .NET Developer — https://lnkd.in/digGyN3s 🔹 Intern .NET — https://lnkd.in/dqAM8NPQ

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