Ask HN: Best ways to retain qualified employees?
What are the best effective measures to retain qualified employees (in general and developers in particular)?
I'd like to read you experiences and maybe some studies or articles about the topic.
I'd like to read you experiences and maybe some studies or articles about the topic.
1.) Make goals unclear or constantly changing. Bonus points if you tie their bonus to hitting some kind of OKR even though that goal may be put on the back burner halfway into the quarter. Even more so if this includes their holiday bonus, and you have a minimum threshold of “accomplish 80% of your quarterly OKR and get 80% of your bonus. Get 79% or less accomplished and take home 0%”
2.) Make sure all managers are spineless and won’t fight for their employees. This includes managers from other teams piling work onto people who don’t report to them, but add “important to the company” work that has to be done and your own manager always going along with it.
3.) Make sure there’s a lot of good old boys club going on, especially if the “principle” engineer and the CTO go out to clubs every other night trying to wing man for each other. Also make sure there’s no accountability for these favorite engineers (or employees in general)
4.) Have a career framework that lets your employees know what they can do in order to get promoted or grow into another role (manager? senior level?). After a couple years of not promoting (most) people, then get acquired or change the entire structure so all of your employees are unsure if their work is actually going to help them get a promotion, or if that’s even an option anymore.
Finally, make sure feedback is treated like the plague. If somebody notices that the checkout page crashes every time someone uses PayPal, just ignore it. Somebody who isn’t the web dev has PR that fixes it? Let it live in limbo forever. Features require login but don’t tell customers until they get an auth error, and then have to refill out the form all over again? Not a problem. Why do you keep bringing up issues with the UX instead of rewriting our site in Angul...Reac....Vue.
I've worked in some highly political large companies and one of the best managers I had would basically say "I know this is basically BS but there is lots of visibility on this so we have to show something." He'd then work with us to find the bare minimum we needed to do to to make it seem like we did a lot more.
It's a lot easier to tolerate crap if people just admit it's crap and your job is to shovel it. It's awful when a bunch of managers hand-wave and act like you're smelling roses instead of crap. Then they make you work 10X harder then you need to just so they can show their boss you are growing roses, not shoveling crap.
I still don't like the company and work environment, but when I do leave this place, I'll genuinely miss my boss.
> If somebody notices that the checkout page crashes every time someone uses PayPal, just ignore it.
Oh my god. So much these - especially the combination of the two. It's not hard to identify with the customer when building a service (especially if you use the product yourself.) It really angers me when I encounter a customer-facing problem, try to fix it, but instead I get shut down by my manager, who explains that it's not one of the company's OKRs this quarter.
Cut total compensation without cutting salary. A favorite cut is to reduce the quality of the insurance (and the cost to the company). The unilaterally changed your compensation without telling you let alone negotiating a new contract.
Pay people the minimum instead of what they are worth. The guy who can walk to work from his house - you know he's not going to leave if you underpay him.
EDIT: One of the classic texts on this is Steve Blank's "The Elves Leave Middle Earth" [1] which describes how small seemingly innocuous benefits reductions can serve as a "wake up call" for content employees who never really thought about looking around for a new job.
1: https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
Been burned by this a couple times. Especially infuriating after all the effort that goes into crafting "acceptable" OKRs every three months. Mandatory training sessions, the stress of identifying metrics that are both measurable & meaningful, multiple one-on-ones with management to review them, acknowledging and signing copies, and then toss it all in the trash because we're changing priorities. But it's the core of your performance review and tied to compensation. The hell.
How common is this nonsense?
*raises hand
I don't know if it's common, but I've had the same experience and so have many friends.
We give out all sorts of signals and most in the tech industry are ambiguous, toxic and uncivilized.
Learn to read the signals and you'll break through to what matters most: culture.
A lot of the signals are cold, aloof, passive aggressive, disgruntled, dismissive, insincere, immodest, fake, insecure, uncultured, ignorant, insensitive, etc. That's just the human condition. Even if we don't mean them as such they can be interpreted as such by other insecure, insincere, imposter syndrome types.
Put a bunch of people in a room and the signals get amplified, it's the basis of reality television.
Combined, the signals whisper "you don't belong here."
Your manager is giving you a signal by wearing running shoes to your 1:1. What does it mean? How can you interpret it?
Your founder is giving a signal by walking in with a coffee. Again what does it mean?
Your VC is giving a signal by his haircut. Your project manager is giving a signal by her exposed skin. Your developers are giving signals through their man boobs.
All of these signals are wretched and don't entice quality people to stick around because they stink of belligerence.
In an honest open and transparent environment the signals align with the values and people don't need to wallow in cognitive dissonance until their minds crack under the pressure to conform, because fundamentally people will do almost anything to be accepted by a group, and when your job depends on fitting in the company has a lot of leverage over you to essentially milk you for your efforts in exchange for keeping you around.
Downvote if you are triggered by man boobs.
I'm trying to comment more substantively but you're not giving me anything to work with.
There's this myth that brilliant people are supposed to be anti social, but only to a point? Look how antisocial I am, at least on the surface.
I'm actually using this forum as a testing ground for my fevered ideations. Any substantive meaning you may extract is all in your own mind.
Obviously I threw you off the scent by triggering your sensibilities.
But I'll have you know I've worked with PM's who had very distinct physical traits that attempted to buck the conventions. One woman worked exclusively in athleisure and halter tops, even in winter. Another guy had piercings all over his face and ears. This other nitwit wore the same exact orange hoodie abomination every single day for four months. My favorite is the guy who wore tiny golf shirts so I could see his underwear on top of his jeans. This is a grown man, with a beard! He should have gone into military service to learn something about personal grooming and had no place in the organization no matter how brilliant. His very presence was a sector stating "abandon hope all ye who enter here" as in you have zero chance of seeing a real client now get back to your coerced agile workflow.
These signals are impossible to ignore and reek of bougie decadence and cause people like me who want to invest their whole lives to something more than an unfair exchange of time for money to die a little inside and seek the comfort of strangers to air our grievances only to get downvoted, therefore reinforcing the trauma.
Plus I like to disguise my modesty in an utter lack of respect because this industry is a cockroach infested nest of groupthink if you ask me with everyone copying everyone's signals until only clones remain. Then we argue about diversity and scratch our heads as to why none of the girls want to play with us.
The reference to man boobs is in relation to grown men signalling like middleschoolers wearing printed T's from guardians of the galaxy and star trek while they get progressively more corpulent on a diet of chicken wings and lunch specials and pints of shock top. Oh and pizza. Always the dry pizza left over from those two pizza meetings.
1) Pay Fair at hire and try to keep it within the market as they grow in experience/skills.
2) Give opportunities to learn and grow based on their own personal/professional goals.
3) Be Communicative and Transparent when it comes to everything.... company/leadership asks, values, deadlines, hiring, firing, promotions. Attempt to have documentation/processes for these things so theirs no question in ambiguity or favoritism.
4) Have check-in's often and Listen to the wants, needs, issues of each individual. Attempt to quickly get back to them with a solution or at least an answer/explanation.
5) Create a 'culture of winning' where wins are always celebrated and mistakes/failures are treated as actual learning opportunities to improve.
6) Ensure everyone has a voice, it is heard, and people feel safe to be critical as long as its constructive.
7) Do everything you can to eliminate toxicity... weather is from members on/under you or above you. You cant stop others from being toxic but you should be able to shield most of it from those who report under you.
8) Since you should have the authority EVERY problem you have or those under you has and its then YOUR problem and your job to fix it (or at lease respond/escalte).
9) Judge people based on objective results not on "optics". Ass-in-seat time is a lazy and pointless measurement in most cases.
10) Delegate and empower those under you as much as you can. Lack of autonomy/ownership are signs of micromanagement, over-control, and poor leadership/delegation.
11) Accept a truth... your reputation/success as a leader is a direct aggregation of the success of those under you. If in anyway this is not the case there is a problem and that problem is you.
> 9) Judge people based on objective results not on "optics". Ass-in-seat time is a lazy and pointless measurement in most cases.
I'd only point out that as a manager one also needs to be aware of the optics because those can affect other team members. "So and so is never here" kinds of murmurings need to be dealt with (and dealt with by, as you said, ensuring that the team judges based on results and celebrates winning together).
I put "optics" in quotes to use it as a pejorative as I only seen it used as a strawman. eg. "Your team is never at their desks... it creates bad optics". I prefer to file that under transparent communication between all sides of a company.
In one particular case it was a team that 19 times out of 20 hit every goal and expectation on the product roadmap on time to near 100% ask. As a snarky and sarcastic asshole my response was of course "Do you want to potentially sacrifice the fact that we nearly hit every roadmap deadline and OKR in order to make it "seem" like they are working harder?".
Note: This is based on the startup world... Its never senior management who does things like this as often all they are about is the company they put their blood, sweat, and tears into is successful and cant afford the luxury of ideal "optics". This is an argument/toxicity that comes from less experienced "leaders" who needs to find fault to make up for their lack of success or are micromanagers themselves.
Especially when they suggest organization wide changes to improve workflow or work environment. Don't be the guy always dismissing suggestions or you can slowly but surely turn a proactive A player to someone that just do the bare minimum while seeking other opportunities.
Also, this kind of people tends to be loyal to your product success more than you.
This will seem like they are fighting against you, but train your eyes to see the difference.
Also pair this kind of people with similar one. The goal is for them to counter and correct each other. It'll give them opportunity to grow.
I've also really enjoyed Jason Fried's talks and writings about managing employees.
In short:
1. give them the ability to apply their own solutions to your problems - don't force-feed solutions as part of your problems. let dev teams use their own expertise to collaborate with the business to come up with the right answer
2. allow devs to pursue mastery of their field, give them opportunity to learn and experiment and become great at what they do
3. make sure that the thing you're building matters to your customers, so that your devs have a feeling of purpose. nobody wants to ship code that does nothing, for nobody. start measuring whether you're building the right thing (see Lean Startup)
People will say 'pay', but I think that only matters up to a certain point. I don't think anyone leaves a company offering all 3 of the above just because they aren't paid above market rate.
Best of luck!
"Type I behavior does not disdain money or recognition. Both Type X's and Type I care about money. If an employee's compensation doesn't hit the baseline that I described in Chapter 2 — if her organization doesn't pay her an adequate amount, or if her pay isn't equitable compared to others doing similar work - that person's motivation will crater, regardless of whether she leans toward X or toward I. However, once compensation meets that level, money plays a different role for Type I's than for Type X's. Type I's don't turn down raises or refuse to cash paychecks. But one reason fair and adequate pay is so essential is that it takes the issue of money off the table so they can focus on the work itself. By contrast, for many Type X's, money is the table. It's why they do what they do. Recognition is similar."
If I, as a dev, really enjoy my job and know that I might not get a better situation by switching, I will at least ask my employer for a raise before walking.
All in all, money is the easiest thing to fix of those in my opinion and it's easy to talk about it.
I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are trading time for money. Only when people have enough money to not worry do they care about other things, and unless they are were getting 300k+ in a FAANG company for the last few years and now can live ok for a few years, pay is the important factor.
If you can't save a penny, even if work conditions are great, people will change to start building their 401k or to get their kid to a better school.
Then there is also the cultural factor that if a manager asks 'what kinds of things motivate you' if you just say money, you are branded an heretic, so people say independence or agency or whatever.
I would say (assuming they have another option of course) more than 95% of the people here and everywhere would change jobs if they got a 20% payout or something, so that probably says a lot about it.
For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me, so the bigger consideration in choosing is which jobs will actually allow me to spend quality time with my family (since that's the entire reason why I go to work). No amount of additional pay could persuade me to work 60 hours a week or work in an environment that leaves me drained by the end of the day.
I don't exclusively value money, and there are trade offs that I won't make, but lets not pretend like making more money isn't very impactful for nearly everyone.
The economics are different for software developers for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that we don't have a cartel protecting our licensure, but you give me an extra $350k a year and it definitely will raise the bar on what I'm willing to put up with. But a decade in, I'd be willing to give up more than $350k for more of the intangible valuables.
Absolutely true. People don't jump ship to get a 10% increase in salary once most of their usual financial needs are met.
However, when people feel they are underpaid compared to other companies, it might seems unfair and unjust. Engineers can feel unappreciated and leave because of that.
Furthermore, many companies seem to be able to think only in terms of money: very often the employee that is paid more is also listened to, given opportunities to grow, treated with respect.
This is a strange way of thinking and an absurd baseline. Most software developers have also gone out of their way to study, keep up their skills, etc. Why would you think "making more than a live wage" is a good thing -- perhaps the comparison should be the value they are adding? If all those years studying for SATs, struggling thru tough CS courses, grad school, GREs, etc get compared to earning a living wage, why even bother?
Also, I grew up on a "living wage". Living wage means your kids dont get braces. They go to schools with gangs. It means wearing shoes with holes. It means you skip doctors appointments because your living wage does not cover the deductible or copay. It means you cant get a review book for your SAT and you need to chip in with friends to share a review book and allocate time among yourselves.
SWEs: If you've busted your arse to get where you are and add value, dont fall for the "remember you're making more than living wage" argument.
This is brainwashing. You will spend almost all of your life working, get all that you can. Its a business transaction, dont live like a slave
It is possible to work without putting your real life on "pause" (we age every moment whether we are present with that truth or not).
The "brainwashing" is people who don't pursue or request raises because "I'm already comfortable".
Most of us look at billionaires and think "why would anybody want so much more money than they need?", identify this as the vice of "greed", and implicitly stear ourselves away from that vice. However, the quantitative disparity here makes these phenomena qualitatively different. As you said, employment is a business transaction and should be treated as such, and this attitude only becomes a vice when it dominates someone's life (as in the case of the billionaire).
The question was not "What is the way to keep software developers without paying them"
> For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me, so the bigger consideration in choosing is which jobs will actually allow me to spend quality time with my family (since that's the entire reason why I go to work). No amount of additional pay could persuade me to work 60 hours a week or work in an environment that leaves me drained by the end of the day.
Have you asked your wife if she would take a $1,000,000 a year for 2-4 years in exchange for you working 60 hour weeks? Because actual financial security as described by having extra half a million a year in a bank sounds like a boon to any family that does not already have millions of dollars in cash and cash equivalents.
I think people in general say not work 60 hours a week, or freedom, etc. Which is fine, but for me that is the starting point. Same as I don't need to say 'not be physically or sexually assaulted at work' as I expect that is the norm.
I don't think developers are more concentrated in urban centers than any other jobs are.
I've done the math but just to maintain the same standard of living I'd need to make around $400k a year cash comp in San Francisco. Doable for a very small minority, maybe, but not with my resume and experience. And that's not even counting California taxes, where the marginal tax rate is 4x my current rate (I know the math is more complicated than that which is why I called out marginal), and the increased Federal taxes if I was actually making $400k. So it's probably in the neighborhood of 10-15% higher. And there's little things like a Roth IRA, which I would become ineligible for. That's $6k a year in tax-advantaged retirement contributions, gone. Obviously a good deal for a big pay raise, but a net loss if I'm just maintaining the same savings.
I work remotely for the last 10 or so years so I understand that. But you gave a good example, if a company wants to hire good talent in SF, as you said, it will be 400k. No amount of free sushi or bean bags will change your mind. So, pay is the reason you aren't there. No amount of 'like minded individuals' or whatnot will make you move.
>For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me,
Yes, but are you thinking outside of right now? What happens if the software jobs dry up in your area, or you have something happen where you aren't as competitive at your job and need to change careers. What if the new career you land on doesn't typically offer health insurance? Do you have enough money for a change like that? Do you have 6 months to a year in expenses saved up? Money isn't money, money is freedom, and we're all trying to buy our freedom.
Companies think they can retain people out of fear, this only works on people without options. The ones without options are the lowest value slice of employee to have.
"I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are trading time for money."
Not all time is equal. Let's say you're paid $2000 and you're at a job that has no stress, feels cognitively easy and career advancement is possible. Now suppose you're being paid $4000, but you're lightly stressed all the time at baseline. In fact, the whole company is. Now you're being paid $6000 with chronic moderate stress. Or imagine being paid $8000 with heavy chronic stress and you barely have it under control.
In these scenario's I'd choose for the $2000 in most cases, unless the other cases are short-term assignments. I could do the $4000 job for perhaps 1 to 2 years, but you start playing with your health in all other cases if you do it for that long.
Now this only looked at the relationship of salary, time and stress, but I believe there are a few other variables as well, but it's a lot of typing ;-)
E.g. being able to do remote work wherever and work hours whenever, as long as you average 160 hours per month on a 3 month basis. That's completely different as well, I can imagine that you have people that take 1.5 months off and then sink in all their time in the other 1.5 months while being in Argentina, traveling with their SO.
In your example you go from x to 4x but taking a developer in London with say a new-senior salary of 70k for a standard low-medium stress role, (with a few exceptions such as working in finance) you might get up to 100k by making a change, which is ~1.4x. But that extra 30k is taxed at 40% so isn't significantly more and is irrelevant against the actual cost of housing in London.
HN is always a SV bubble but by and large jobs that allow you to triple your income are vanishingly rare for the average developer, so given you're not going to change your situation entirely with an extra 16k why trade a known quantity for more stress, longer hours and a worse quality of life.
You might as well replace the numbers with letters because discussing a time-for-money exchange while ignoring the time component is pretty worthless.
At least until then, marginal utility is essentially linear with marginal gross.
Not sold? Boom, imagine that your loved ones are suddenly ill.
So if I don't need your job, you need to build a working environment where I want the job you are offering. The details of what that means will be different for each person, so managers need to talk to their people, and need to ask. There won't be one single thing to do to retain everyone - retention is a permanent ongoing negotiation.
- match (or offer, if you don't) my 401k - increase health benefits - provide a learning benefit - no strings attached. It shouldn't matter if it "benefits the company" directly - flexible hours. (I prefer a 6-2 schedule. Why do I have to be in 9-5 just because that is what most do? - etc ..
Compensate an employee well, and they will see you care about them; not just their work.
If not being paid above market value it takes away one of the big reasons to stay. And if caught at a low point it might be enough to open the door and look around.
2. Pay above market rates and promote when it's deserved.
3. Allow them to retain IP of their side projects. People who want to build startups will eventually leave, but you can delay it with this. Considering most people will never reach product market fit, it's a win win.
About (3), that just makes things worse in my opinion, people end up working for their CVs, their side projects, and their future company. You would certainly retain them, but not sure if that's the kind of people that will make your company successful.
After a given minimum figure for my salary, I personally would value more WFH, having good tools, being able to make progress and not feeling stuck because of bulls??t and a nice manager and team that focuses on getting things done and shipping. No amount of free avocado would compensate it for me.
So, to OP, (as someone commented elsewhere) just LISTEN to them and ACT to help them fix what they see wrong. That's it. I'd be surprised if the only things they want to stay is more money.
The moment someone else pays them more for a more pleasant environment you are 100% guaranteed to lose someone.
And people have an inherent bias for the status quo because of job switching costs (or if they don't, they're not long for your company anyway). If they're happy and feel fairly paid, they're not going anywhere. If they get a competing offer such that it no longer seems fair, if you've created an environment of trust, they may even tell you.
You couldn't pay me enough to work in a toxic culture. I've been there, and no amount of money is worth it to me.
Getting your just compensation isn't about "chasing money," it's about making sure you're paid what you're worth. The market largely dictates that and it's easier than ever to get a rough idea (+/- 20% is pretty easy) of where you stand based on experience, industry, location, and leverage.
> I'd be surprised if the only things they want to stay is more money.
Nobody said that.
I'm fed up of people thinking they can compensate for not paying adequately by buying a ping pong table and a vague promise of "great growth oportunities"
There are so many social dynamics in employment that are detrimental to an employee's mental health: Arbitrary/unclear goals/deadlines, management not responding to criticism/feedback, favoritism, career stagnation, overwork, etc.
The most common reaction to an employee's deteriorating mental health is for the employer to get confrontational with the employee, and demand that they fix all the side effects. This just piles an extra stressor onto the employee. Very rarely is the deteriorating mental health addressed directly.
Employees are not machines; they are humans. Machines work with very tight tolerances, but humans are better suited to diverse problems. Machines require physical maintenance, but humans require a different sort.
Vacations can help, but they cannot solve or redeem the day-to-day frustrations an employee has. Paying well can help, but that is only valuable if the employee has enough personal time to spend it.
There are external factors, too. When an employee rolls an ATV during the weekend, and needs a few weeks to physically recover, it's totally normal to give them that time off; but when an employee is going through a divorce, losing their religion, etc. it is very uncommon for their employer to even know, let alone help.
The real goal should not be to retain (hold) employees, but to cultivate a workplace where they want to attend. Don't turn your workplace into a cult that demands too much of an employee's time or focus. Instead, make it a place for people to fulfill their need to work. Make it a place where ideas are shared, and things are made.
1) to work with people just as qualified, including managers who are just as qualified at managing (a rare unicorn in the IT sector)
2) not having roadblocks for doing good work. This includes being kept in the dark, micro-management, simplistic "all employees have exactly same computer" policies, workplaces that makes concentration difficult due to e.g. noise or splatter of meetings, weird requirements which can't be discussed at all and doesn't make sense.
1. I expect to be trusted. If there is no possibility to work from a remote location and excessive time tracking (e.g. punch cards) because of a lack of trust, I realized that my work was not valuated at all.
2. I expect to be able to use my own workflow. If I get micromanaged and am forced to use buggy toolchains and processes with lots of dependencies, my productivity will suffer and so will my passion. Define the inputs and outputs of my work, but not anything in between.
3. Growth is more important than high pay. I am not talking about a 2% raise every year. There really needs to be a difference based on performance. I throw myself into something and get the same pay rise as if I had been slacking the whole year. This will not lower my performance, it will make me leave.
A few weeks ago I interviewed for a job with a 50% salary increase compared to the current company I work for. All went well until I had an interview with the manager. He was the kind of guy I would not want to work with. He gave me the micro-manager vibe and mentioned a few things that made me turn down the job.
I'd rather work with a good and nice manager than have a 50% salary increase.
But as soon as you find a good job with a decent manager that pays 50% more, you are going to leave.
Actually the moment that you've received that offer with 50% salary increase you already lost some of your motivations even though you may not notice it immediately. And you are going to continue lose more of your motivations because you know that you can earn more.
I think Money is equally important to many other things mentioned here. But the thing about money is that it isn't the only thing that matters. If you don't fix other problems, money can only keep your employees as long as they can't find a replacement with similar pay scale. And even until then they are going to under-perform.
So Money is important. You can't keep good, motivated, high performing employees only with a good pay check. But you can't keep them without a good pay check either.
Well yes, I would. But that doesn't mean it's only about money.
> And you are going to continue lose more of your motivations because you know that you can earn more.
Partly agree. I know I can do more and be in a role with more responsibility. If I find a new job as a manager/team lead which pays same or 10% less, I would actually go for it. Because in the long run I may move up to director/VP level. So maybe money is important as I mentioned, but it's not the only thing.
> So Money is important. You can't keep good, motivated, high performing employees only with a good pay check. But you can't keep them without a good pay check either.
Totally agree.
And if you worth +50% on the market you should really re-evaluate how nice is your manager not paying you that much. It is all 3-5%/year {raises|insults} until you show them a competitive offer, then the parent question gets asked.
Not necesseraly. If I had the chance to move up in my current role and keep the same salary I would stay.
I did apply for a job that actually paid less, but had more responsibility. I guess it's part of planning your career rather than tactically deciding based on money.
So, I'm not done looking, but money is not the only deciding factor.
* Pay them their market rate. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THEY ARE ASKING FOR RAISES. Nothing makes you feel unappreciated like not being fairly compensated. If I have to ask you not to rip me off, the relationship is already on very rocky ground.
* Give them interesting things to work on them and empower them to solve them creatively. Do not micromanage competent people.
* Let them have skin in the game by giving them a non-trivial stake of ownership. Nothing makes you go the extra mile like knowing that doing so is furthering your own success.
This really annoyed me with a previous employer. They gave me every raise I ever asked, but they always made me ask, and they never gave me more than I asked. It took all of the goodwill out of the raise.
Often times development teams are applying all kind of processes and reporting are taken accountable for the bug they make, and are overall held to a high standard of quality. All the company is able to consult the backlog, ask questions, whatever, it seems good, and they're ok with it in general.
But then, the dev team may very well fell like all the other team are basically doing the exact opposite. Maybe the sales team will never admit a single failure to close on its team side, the product one will never admit its specs were flawed, the marketing will never admit its creatives where delivered too late, etc...
And that perceived unfairness may be a deal breaker for engineers in my experience. They don't care for example (or even know) if the sales guys have to go to nightclubs until 1am to land a deal while they clock out a 6.30pm, they value visible equality of treatment.
So to retain certains developers, company wide "fairness" may go a long way. (I use quotes because I'm not 100% sure this is the correct english term).
Some want money. Some want flexibility. Some want to work on groundbreaking projects. Some want a mixture.
You can keep the un-/underqualified by improving their skillset, I've not seen the lazy improved, but maybe that's possible as well.
So yes, be clear about what the exact responsibilities everyone has and build up a solid team where everyone fits in.
2. Be honest regarding company state and finances. The worst thing is that you tell everything is OK, the company is doing well, and suddenly you have to lay off half of your staff.
3. Flexible hours and projects. Development (and solving problems) is an art, not cranking something like in a factory.
People don't quit jobs, they quit a boss.
Since I have had the opportunity to raise my kids, I have grown tremendously as a manager: I have learned to forgive and to stand fast. To allow for slack and to demand relentlessness. To treat people as individuals (you might have guessed I work in IT where rather exquisite characters seem to flourish) and learn them to enjoy the results of our efforts as a team.
Loads of seemingly contradictional qualities that are required from parents and very easily translate to people management.
Basically I see my role as a temporary one: you are here with me since we need each other to reach some goal, and then we will both move on. This might be short-term or long, but we will separate and I will do my utmost best to become a better person / employee / employer over time, as I will do my utmost best to let you grow and fore fill yourself.
Oh and I will try to be having a good time while doing that, since I have ran out of time to suffer for no reason but suffering.
If they're qualified, they know how to use Jenkins and Jira, when to script and whether to automate. If you start regulating Jira with excessive rules (classifying as epic or story, team, feature, sprint, component, DOD, estimate, only work from top of backlog, etc.) then a dev is is really going to be disincentivised from using it.
And in my experience, most developers (myself included) will just not use those tools if they're not required to. And if you have no idea what level of information you're going to get from an epic, story, bug, task, or subtask until you know who wrote it, the tool is largely worthless.
There is an army out there of intelligent, qualified individuals ho just don’t care that much about work. You likely won’t be able to keep people who are highly ambitious long term without constantly sweetening the pot which usually isn’t tenable.
Find the right people, treat them with respect and allow work to not be the most important thing in their lives and they will be with you for a very long time.
2. Reward good performance
3. Give opportunities for internal growth.
4. Support their other goals (startups, health, lifestyle).
5. Appreciate them and don't be afraid to show it.
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#3 on this list is under-rated, in my opinion.
I think this is a big one, at least from my 40yo pov.
Getting a boss to tell the client "we will add that feature to our list" vs telling me "we really like this client, how fast can you crank out this feature for this stupid deadline"
I value my personal time/health more than salary.
Point 4 for example ("Support their other goals (startups, health, lifestyle)"), is basically the same as what the current top comment states as "1. Give them flexibility eg- work timings, wfh."
Point 1 is again another one of the top comment's point.
Either way I strongly feel that giving people a way to move on to the next big important mission as they progress is the real secret. Humans get bored and all the bonuses and free lunches in the world won't keep highly motivated talent from seeking out something they consider 'worthy' of their time.
1. Fair compensation, meaning don’t make people feel like they’re suckers for sticking around.
2. Team quality, since any move to a new job means you might have to work with bad people, so if you currently work with good people that’s a huge hurdle, especially for engineers.
3. Useful work, i.e. useful for keeping interested, useful for advancing careers, useful for making the company successful (in that order).
4. Work environment, so your valued Employees don’t think they’re just expensive meat on a stick. That probably means less open plan, not more free food.
5. Flexibility, because not everyone wants or needs the same thing.
2. Foster their career growth.
3. Pay them above market if you can or give them a part of the company in equity or options.
4. Generally be a place that people want to work at.
Being paid less than the market and not receiving raises in line with my growth. I got a 50+% raise by jumping ship. If you don’t pay well, people will jump ship unless there is something very attractive intrinsic to the job (like working on a niche loved technology). If you don’t offer raises in line with growth, leaving is the only way for an employee to earn their worth.
Having no vision for the tech org and letting flashy tech-debt laden projects get the most recognition. There is a tricky balance between fostering bottom-up innovation and letting “get recognition quick” projects get the focus. Good engineers who really care about your product and maintenance will be turned off.
Poor dev tooling. Locked down PCs where devs can’t install the tooling they like. Centrally controlling the libraries devs can use. Paranoid security that gets in the way, leading people to give up or build hacky workarounds.
Focusing too much on new features and building up a backlog of bugfixes and reliability improvements.Not realizing the cost of tech debt.
Allowing nontechnical management to drive technical decisions. Not listening to those of us in the trenches, who see how things are day to day.
If those who are open to staying see people rewarded, in futile efforts to retain them, for being almost gone, they will eventually start leaving as well.
Intrinsically motivated are usually the most cost effective, and don't fight for recognition, and happy to R&D at night and document their findings. Extrinsically motivated people are happy to do the dirty, boring work or even sit in a role where no work is necessary, which would drive the intrinsically motivated people crazy.
Extrinsically motivated people will leave you for a job at a FAANG. Intrinsically motivated ones will leave you to do their own startup. You can't stop it from happening, but just maintain good enough conditions to keep the medium skilled ones.
Good luck!
How, depends on different factors. Without trust on the company, their manager and their peers and employee will be likely to quit.
Over the years, I observe trust being in direct correlation with 5 kpis:
* How often the word "politics" is being used in a daily base.
* Miss delivery (delivery something that don't fulfill the goal, in features or time).
* Miscommunication/misunderstanding. (The need of repeating the same message more than once).
* How often the word meeting is being used negatively.
* Times conflict was avoided.
Improving this kpis, by techniques mentioned in other comments, in my experience, will improve trust and employee retention.
Autonomy and Impact- people need to feel like they own their work and that it matters to someone. Meaningful (subjectively defined) work is an important motivator in my experience. Creeping nihilism erodes morale and motivation.
I’ve found that nihilism is often caused by broken processes that fail to fix obvious deficiencies, especially in large corporations. This ranges from pointless hoop-jumping to get simple software packages to the lack of accountability/oversight for low-performers and everything in between.
if someone comes to you with a competing offer, you should be open to negotiation (provided they have done well in their recent perf reviews)
This bare minimum will keep you from coming across as super-cheap and out of touch / unconcerned with their compensation. Remember most employees can get a bigger raise by switching jobs; your salary increases shouldn't make a point of making that obvious.
This is on top of all the other sensible advice here such as pay them well, give them flexibility etc.
Some people live for that, and there must be a path out of engineering into management or PM-type requirements gathering. But if your programmers just want to be programmers, let them. Hire the boss an assistant, hire more PMs, whatever.
Also don't try to control this centrally. Once developers have proven themselves to be competent at operating a computer, they shouldn't be forced to use a locked-down corporate machine.
Pay them more money.
1. As many people have mentioned, pay. Don't invent "noble" excuses, e.g. 'you must want to be here because we innovate so much' to avoid a pay discussion - those things work, but to a point. Pay matters. You don't have to pay the highest in the market, although that obviously works. But it has to be competitive, and hikes/increments should be regular to reward good work. This also has to be proactive: if someone has already begun to look outside, its probably too late for retention.
2. Peers. Smart people hang with smart people. If you staff team A with qualified folks, but team B has people not as qualified to the point that collaboration exercises are frustrating, either people from team A leave (they feel team B gets nothing done) or from team B leave (because they feel they're being lorded over, or feel team A is working on abstract pointless things).
In general, impedance mismatch at the level of skills or intellect is something to be wary of.
3. Bad apples. During hiring you need someone with fresh perspectives, but still aligned with the culture at some deep level. Its a bit like the superficial adage we hear about in dating: "opposites attract" - except they don't when you start living together. You are on your way to build a meritocracy, and then accidentally hire this person who wants to "play the game" to rise up the ranks, ruining it for everyone. Competent, hard working people don't want to spend time playing politics, and at some point they're going to reach out to their network to look for better teams.
4. Be transparent. You don't have the budget to hire the top talent in all depts? Be honest about it. Don't give out vibes like "we hired X anyway because we think he's good irrespective of what the interview panel felt" - people would eventually figure out that you don't think X is that great either, esp over candidate Y who got top scores from the panel but you glossed over, and you're just hiding budget decisions. Welcome, erosion of trust begins here.
5. Don't micromanage and stay away from pushing biased agenda down the chute. I think these are fairly well known. If you hire people qualified to do a certain job, let them do that job. Don't prescribe minutiae because you found them hyped up in a blog post. If you want a discussion, set up brainstorming sessions where you make it clear that you're probably going to come in with silly ideas to discuss.
One of the best managers I have worked with knew very little about my area, but one-on-ones were a delight with him because he would have many questions/thoughts about the project from the perspective of an inquisitive layperson. It made me want to improve.
6. Small acts of trust. Instead of conveying what you learned from speaking to a customer to distilling it to "code features X, Y, Z", expand the involvement of your team by actually talking about the discussion you've had. Invite perspectives and suggestions. It tells people that you think of them as more than just cogs in the system.
7. Hire empathetic people in the mix. Ego clashes do happen despite best efforts, and you want people who can diffuse tensions and mediate discussions between warring sides. I have personally seen the presence of such people help immensely in standoffs where I believed the only outcome might be a bunch of people walking out saying "I don't need this st in my life".
Ask them.
1) superstar centered
2) technology centered
3) community centered
Of these most companies adhere to 1) or 2) and a lot of the suggestions in this thread reflect that
Nobody has really tried 3) that I know of but it's the best way to get people to want to stay, duh
This is straight out of "the culture code" by Daniel Coyle