Retaining Talent

Once you are comfortable with the day-to-day work of leading your team, as an engineering manager, you begin to look more to the future. As you implement the strategies from this book and your leadership efforts evolve from big changes to small improvements, your focus shifts to how to retain what you have built. In Part 5 of the book, we will look at the work of engineering managers over a longer time horizon and begin by exploring long-term strategies to retain talent.

As software development is a type of knowledge work, much of the value we add to our projects stems from the collective knowledge of our team members. For that reason, as managers, our task to preserve what we build necessitates retaining these valuable individuals within our teams. Great engineering managers need to know how to retain their team’s talent. Compensation may initially hook talented engineers, but it is often not enough to retain them when other offers come along.

In this...

Why should you retain talent?

The turnover rate refers to how many positions on a team are “turned over” or vacated and then rehired. According to Linkedin.com, their data shows a turnover rate for technology teams at around 10–13% per year. When positions turn over, engineering managers have the ability to hire new team members and coach them to success, but there are many benefits to retaining the talent you already have on your team as follows:

• Cost: Hiring and onboarding new staff is expensive. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), each employee departure can cost between ⅓ to ⅔ of the employee’s annual earnings. Both in terms of resources and time, restaffing requires considerable effort. As you learned in Chapter 13, you can expect a long list of activities, ranging from writing job descriptions to scheduling interviews and wrangling interviewers. There is also a bottom line cost for job postings, recruiter...

What does it take to retain talent?

Throughout this book, you learned methods to create a desirable work experience. You have learned how to give work meaning, how to give yourself and your team a sense of purpose, and how to facilitate productive team emergent states that improve attitudes and work outcomes. In many cases, applying the techniques you learned in earlier chapters will be enough to keep your team engaged and retain them.

Beyond providing a thoughtfully curated work experience, engineering managers can increase confidence in retaining their teams by striving to increase workplace satisfaction. In addition to your work on general leadership practices, focusing on satisfaction is an opportunity to examine how your leadership is received and what might be lacking. There is no way to guarantee you retain talent in all circumstances, but working to assure satisfaction helps to avoid surprises in discovering that an engineer on your team found some aspect of their work experience...

Pitfalls of retaining talent

Retaining talent on your team is not universally desirable. While it is generally a good thing to do, there are limitations and drawbacks to keep in mind. In your efforts to retain talent on your team, take care to avoid scenarios where turnover is too low or you put too much emphasis on engineer satisfaction.

Can turnover be too low?

When the engineers on your team are happy and productive, it is a good thing. You want your engineers to grow and develop over time and make great contributions to your code bases and products. Part of growing and developing is eventually growing into new responsibilities and roles. Your team members might do so within your company or they might not, but either way, growth is important. Most (but not all) of your engineers should progress from their roles eventually. As an engineering manager, it is your goal for them to do so in a gradual way such that you hold on to the same levels of knowledge and expertise within...

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to focus on the long-term success of your team by retaining talent. In the competitive landscape of software development, retaining the talent on your team can give you an edge. Here is a recap of what we covered in this chapter:

• The turnover rate refers to the rate at which positions are vacated and rehired
• Talent retention is a useful skill to keep costs lower, keep productivity higher, retain organizational know-how, and be more competitive in hiring
• To retain talent, first use the techniques outlined throughout this book to create a desirable work experience, and then focus on increasing the satisfaction of your team members:
  • Increase satisfaction with the workplace environment by providing a work experience that incorporates Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Meet both the collective and individual needs of your team members.
  • Increase satisfaction with growth and opportunities by paying special attention to cycles of esteem...

Further reading

• To have and to hold (https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/all-things-work/pages/to-have-and-to-hold.aspx)
• It costs $50k to hire a software engineer (https://cgroom.medium.com/it-costs-50k-to-hire-a-software-engineer-d06a0d051abf)
• The cost of replacing an employee — it’s more than you think (https://resources.workable.com/stories-and-insights/the-cost-of-replacing-an-employee)
• The 4 “perks” good developers really want (https://venturebeat.com/business/the-4-perks-good-developers-really-want/)
• It’s time to reimagine employee retention (https://hbr.org/2022/07/its-time-to-reimagine-employee-retention)
• Six tips for building communities of practice (https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2021-08-03-six-tips-building-communities-practice)
• A pragmatic guide to starting communities of practice in the organization (https://dev.to/optiklab/a-pragmatic-guide-to-starting-communities-of-practice-in-the-organization-25n3)
...