Struggling to Build a Great Internal Software Engineering Team? Here Are 5 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Tech Talent

If you're an early stage company, building a technology team can be a real challenge. Here are five things you can do to make it easier.

Most businesses rely on technology. But for some companies, technology is the lifeblood of the organization. If you're building a software product or using data analytics or data science to create value for your customers, you don't just rely on these skills, you completely depend on them.

In these cases, creating a top?quality engineering team ?is critical to success. But if you're an early stage or even mid-market company, attracting and?retaining ?the engineering skills you need to be successful can be extremely difficult. Companies like?Facebook , Twitter, Amazon, and Google are offering unmatched compensation, benefits, and opportunities, leaving the remaining market extremely tight.

However, not all is lost. With some smart strategies and a clear set of priorities, you can attract the right talent you need. Here are five things you can do to increase your chances of getting the best people for a price you can afford.

1. Represent technology on your leadership team.

Before you starting hiring technical staff, make sure you have someone on your leadership team with credibility and reputation in the industry. Most technologist want to be surrounded by other smart technologists. They want to learn and share ideas and improve on their skills.

This doesn't need to be a CTO who is a coding guru or a Chief Scientist with a double Ph.D. Find a COO with significant technical experience, or a CFO who has run a technology business previously, or one or two members on your advisory board who have strong technical backgrounds.

2. Build a culture of quality.

Every engineer I know wants to build a quality product they are proud of. Nothing frustrates a developer more than not having the time or resources to create something that is well constructed. Technology is as much a craft as a science and pride is a key reason people go above and beyond to create superior results.?

Make sure your internal culture embraces the pursuit of quality, even under the pressure of deadlines and budget restrictions. Quality doesn't'?mean you need to gold-plate everything. Instead, make sure you have a process for investing in the organization and maintainability of your systems;?don't just pump out new features.

3. Select innovative and appealing technologies.

You won't attract the best talent if you're using technology that's ten years old. Most top technologist want to be working with the newest and best tools and systems available. Further, expect that systems and frameworks will need to be replaced on a regular basis as new and better tools are developed and adopted by the industry. Allocate a reasonable amount of time and budget to investigating and upgrading your platforms and infrastructure as you go.

4. Provide high-quality, focused time.

More technical work is extremely complex and requires highly focused time. Nothing bothers a technology team more than when it's frequently interrupted by questions or changes when they are deep in thought. While it can appear that technologist are aloof and don't care about the immediate business needs, this observation is not actually the case. My suggestion is to appreciate the work they do and the problems they need to solve are complex. These teams need large chunks of uninterrupted time to really wrap their heads around the challenge.

Commit to a process for planning and estimating the work based on defined iterations and a daily work cycle. Then make sure everyone in the business knows not to tamper with the plan or interrupt the daily flow between these sessions. Companies who offer a structure that has large blocks of focused time carved out for their engineers will be highly desirable to the best people who want to work on the hardest problems.

5. Foster a sense of community.

One of the biggest challenges for smaller companies is that they can't offer an internal culture fueled by dozens of technologists. Instead, focus on providing time and resources for your people to connect with, or even build, their local communities.

This could be as simple as providing time and budget for people to go to conferences or meetups. You could actively promote and support industry groups through partnerships and affiliations, or even better would be to organize and host a regular event in your local community to promote ideas, share information, and build social connections.

While the war for talent is not an easy one to win, following these suggestions will greatly increase the odds that you'll attract and keep the best talent you need to be successful.

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