How to retain your team

@xav-b|April 11, 2017 (8y ago)4 views

The job market for software engineers is remarkable. Go ahead and Google something like "software engineers shortage" and you will find plenty of articles trying to make sense of what is going on in the tech world. This Quora thread¹ seems to agree on the lack of talented software engineers. Given the number of articles about hiring (here², here³ or here⁴), it looks like indeed that we, as an industry, did not figure out yet how to match ambitious projects with the right people.

So startup founders, HRs, agencies and the like, hunt engineers. All day long, in all timezones. And the member of your team that sit right next to you have probably receive an offer lately. You hired him, you mentored him, and he is now an important part of the implicit knowledge behind the products. So now, what can you do keep him committed to your company's goals ?

Why they leave

Exciting projects

Let's try to highlight the reasons that could make a developer to leave.

I just had a lunch with a CTO that tries to hire a senior backend engineer. He wants him to lead the scaling of the machine learning platform and the team of a project that just raised 6 millions euros. So you just read it, the first thing that comes to my mind is whoa, the market is awesome.

There are so many startups or even freelance jobs that promote great projects. Either you can find a meaningful end to your work ([boost education]⁵), something that appeal to your hobbies ([upgrade how we listen to music]⁶), an incredible challenging environment ([monitor all the things]⁷), …

Carreer growth

But your teamates might also be more pragmatic and just want to make progress in their lives. A better salary abroad, a different lifestyle, management responsibilities, … There is a reason that fit [every ambitions]⁸ and we should probably agree that it is fair game. But we will get to that later.

The problem is right here

This point is the most important to you. While any serious engineer should continuously challenge himself, this is even more important when others rely on you. One can choose to leave because he sees no future in its current position. May be he no longer find interest in his day to day tasks, or feel esteemed. Or is it the culture of the company ? Those are red flags to be addressed quickly and that's what the next section is about.

Why they stay

The culture is great

Let's state something right now so we can focus on the interesting stuff. Yes salary matters. Yes [250k earnings a year in sillicon valley]⁹ makes a difference but I fundamentally believe (from the engineers I met, not guessing) that it is just a criteria. Most of the job offers we receive allow a confortable life so at the end of the day, we crave for a great lifestyle. A place where we feel confident, that fit the life/work balance we need, where we think with comitted co-workers.

And it shows on the job boards. Startups try to attract high-performers with [human values like transparency][11], [remote friendly environment]¹⁰, [nice officies]¹¹ and anything it will take to make your magic to thrive. Of course [it can be tricky]¹². But in my humble opinion, you should try to let people get into their flow and expect the best from them.

They are challenged

Engineers like problems so give them strong ones. They also love to learn so always create challenges with different obstacles. And surround them with other brilliant minds that will bring new perspectives to their understandings. It will also help them to stay humble and improve if the job turned out to be too difficult. It takes a lot of attention to not having teamates bored by too easy tasks or feeling [like a failure]¹³ because they are stuck.

So pay attention to their struggles during your morning stand-up, and make sure their high-payed, high-trained brain gets what it deserves.

There is a mean

Finally don't blow your effort by not showing them how their solutions fit in the end product. Promote the why, the dent in the universe they made. They will feel (and be) valuable. They will also give the best of their skills when tackling the next issue. When you know you are building something customers want or people need, you commit to great work and even accept temporary compromises. Too many times I saw features that didn't make it to production because way too late the product owner came to realise it wouldn't generate any value for the end user.

As a leader make sure your team is working to grow the business, make them standout in front of your peers.

How to let it go

This is fair game

After all those efforts, all the knowledge transmitted, all the sweat put in beautiful architectures, developers leave anyway. And sometimes yes, it is just fair game. We mentionned a lot of excellent reason for an engineer to move to another adventure and your last move is: do not hold a grudge against them. A company is just a company, and you can't blame someone who put first a personal passion, his significant other, or managed to catch a wonderful opportunity.

Keep in touch

Instead, do yourself a favor and be supportive. The ecosystem of talented people and great projects is not that fat so encourage your best co-workers in their evoluton. Your future self will thank you when your solid networks of smart brains will help you in your own carreer. Open source trend shows how much we share between techies so start being someone [other people will want to help back][17].

Learn

Apologise to end with this obvious truth but I have to: learn from everything that led you here. Take a step back and ask yourself if something went wrong. Nothing ? May be you can improve anyway. The hiring process ? The on-boarding ? Carreer evolution ? 1-to-1 meetings ? Time allocated to learn ? Explore all those parameters, ask your peers, experiment. Take care of your teamates progresses, be transparent and helpful, and they will keep supporting you.