My journey to becoming a Mendix developer and how you can too 

Mendix developers, there seems to be a chronic shortage of them. Each year Mendix does a survey with their customers to determine their biggest challenges. And for the last couple of years the developer shortage has made the top 3. There are quite probably several reasons for this shortage. But for this blog I want to address just one of them: people may think, unjustly, that becoming a Mendix developer is probably not for them because they haven’t done the correct studies or aren’t any good at Maths. For this blog I want to dive into what I think are the ingredients that make up a good Mendix developer (candidate).  

My Journey

Before we start, who am I and why do I think I have the credentials to have an opinion about this? I’m Yves Rocourt and I was one of those people that thought a career in IT wasn’t for them. Exactly for the reasons described above. But before we get too much into that, let me first introduce myself and explain what I do right now. I’m the Learning & Development manager at The Orange Force. That means that I train our new Mendix developers (we refer to them as consultants), and make sure that our more experienced Mendix consultants also keep learning new things (I’m a very strong believer in the idea of Continuous Learning, read my blogpost on this topic), provide Mendix training to Mendix developers from other companies, create new learning materials, and many more things all related to learning Mendix. How did I get here if I thought a career in IT wasn’t for me? Well, let’s go back a couple of years. 

In 2014, I completed my Master in Medieval History at Leiden University (NL). Yes, you read it correctly… Medieval History. I’ll just let it sink in a bit more. Yeah, processed it? Alright. It is quite challenging to find a job with that background, let me tell you that. I did some recruiting until I per chance met a film maker who was working on a historical documentary about Mata Hari. For those of you who don’t know who that is (I don’t blame you), she was a famous (or rather infamous) Dutch exotic dancer who may or may not have spied for the Germans in France during the First World War. In any case, the French thought she did and executed her. The research for that documentary resulted in a position as guest curator at the Museum of Friesland in Leeuwarden (NL), the birthplace of Mata Hari, where I had the opportunity (and dare I say, the honor) of creating the blockbuster exhibition “Mata Hari: the myth and the maiden”

But the work at the museum had an end date. What to do after? On multiple occasions after graduating, I had contemplated a career in IT, but most of the times dismissed it almost immediately. One time, this was before my stint at the museum, I decided to give it a serious try. During the interview process I had to complete an assessment. The type where you must solve maths problems and the like. Under pressure of course. Not exactly my forte. This confirmed to me that IT was not for me. Then, some years later, while I was working at the museum, a good friend of mine introduced me to this company that trained people like me as Java developers. No Maths assessment needed.  

While training as a Java developer, I encountered Mendix. That was it. That was what I was looking for! The visual way of working suited my way of working and thinking perfectly. Starting my first job as a Mendix developer and a bit later moving to TimeSeries, I learned a lot from some of the best and most experienced Mendix developers in the Ecosystem. I started coaching other developers, internally and from our customers, and gradually moved more to a Learning & Development role. Resulting in leading the Mendix’ Learning Programs team, which included the Mendix Academy, after Mendix’ acquisition of TimeSeries. Which brings us back to where I started my story and where I now am, at The Orange Force. 

What makes a good Mendix developer candidate? 

In my career so far, I have found that there are basically two types of backgrounds you see most in Mendix developers. They have either a background in IT, Maths, Physics, or similar technical studies. Or they tend to have a more business studies background. Sometimes combined with an IT component. If you think about it and Mendix’ vision and mission, this makes of course perfect sense. People with these backgrounds tend to be ideally suited for bringing business and IT closer together while also being able to build technically complex and sound solutions. On the other hand, there’s a lot of competition over this group of people. There is also plenty of work for them in any high-code or business role. Should we perhaps look further than a candidate’s background and instead focus more on their skills? First, let’s investigate the candidate’s skills. What could, or perhaps should, the ‘core’ skills be?  

To begin, you may argue that it is not really a skill, but I still find it important to include it, is an interest in IT or more generally, tech. Without that, it will of course be a very difficult conversation from the start. But I noticed that people who have an interest and a strong will to learn but have no background in IT, may still become excellent developers. Purely because they seem to have a certain drive to get somewhere. Of course, not saying that this drive will not be present in people who do have that background in IT.  

Once the interest is there, the next important skills that must be present would be critical thinking and problem-solving. These two go together. Developing new applications or features almost never happens without having to solve some issues along the way. Let alone the issues that will arise once an app is live. There will, for example, always be edge cases that haven’t been considered during development that cause issues later. As a developer, you will need to be able to investigate and solve these. This is typically a skill that you will keep developing during your entire career, but it is hugely important that a proper base level is present. Someone who doesn’t like to solve problems will have a very hard time as a developer.  

The ability to think critically will aid you enormously during the challenge of solving all the issues your apps may throw in your face. But it is not only an important skill when it comes to problem-solving. It is also relevant in other stages of app development, for example at the very start, even before you start building. Your customer has formulated a problem and has approached you or your employer with the app they want to have built or the feature they want to have added. But is that app or feature truly the solution to the problem they’re experiencing?  

As applications and especially databases or not literal but rather abstract representations of reality it is of paramount importance that one can think in an abstract way. So often you will need to create a far more abstract representation of reality to build an optimal performing app. Take for example the example below, which is a (simplified) domain model representation of a web shop purchase, including the address it needs to be delivered to and the address the bill needs to be sent to.  

Lastly, it may absolutely be beneficial to have a feeling for the business side of things. After all, Mendix is created with the intention of closing the gap between business and IT.  

The ideal Mendix developer “of course” has all these qualities in abundance. That of course is not realistic. Some may be more focused on the tech side of development whereas others will be more focused on the business side of things. In the end, we should be aiming for well-balanced teams where everyone can bring their talents and skill set and collaborate with others, bringing out the best in everyone.  

Conclusion 

Typically, a lot of the skills and interests we discussed can be found in either the studies on the technical side of the spectrum or on the business side. There are some studies that combine business and IT. These are usually the sweet spot for potential Mendix talents. But skills and talents do not necessarily have to be linked to certain fields of study. Or be detected by a Maths assessment. I may be an example of this. And there are more people who just like me have completely unrelated studies, but still show the combination of skills and interests as discussed above.  

Call to action! 

So, for all the hiring managers and the recruiters who hopefully read this blog post, don’t focus completely on study backgrounds or Maths assessments. Try to find ways that test for these skills and interests in a more inclusive way. For I assure you, there is so much talent out there that is currently not being used. And for all the potential Mendix developers out there: don’t think “I can’t do Maths, so IT is not for me” or “I haven’t got the right studies”. If you feel you have the right skills, you have the right mindset, and you have the drive: go for it!