Whats motivating software developers in 2022? Some things to think about to retain your tech teams.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately on how exactly do companies attract software engineering talent and what’s making developers attracted to certain roles.

Clients of mine have been making offers to engineers, continually losing them to counter offers or to the tech giants of Sydney.

No one can compete with the Atlassians & Canvas of Sydney anymore. They’ve so much money, clout & flexibility. If you’re offering people and losing them to those businesses – don’t think you have to re-evaluate your EVP!

Here's my opinion on what’s important to software developers, post covid, in 2022 & how to retain them. Needless to say, selling your ping-pong table as a great culture that ‘every unicorn & rockstar is going to love’, wont cut it.

Developers empowered to own decision making;

Lets talk autonomy. This is a big topic at the moment. According to a number of clients i've been speaking with, greater autonomy in teams may well be the future of software development.

This means?more freedom to decide which tools developers use, how the work gets done and what they work on. I would say most developers I speak with that work for your typical bank or telco, don’t get the autonomy that they feel is needed for their teams to really thrive.

Autonomy and software teams are closely linked when it comes to getting the most out of a project. Devs and product owners enjoy the self-directing freedom of execution?and feel they do their best work this way.

Here are some of the benefits of giving autonomy in engineering;

·?????enables everyone to make decisions

·?????prepares everyone to become future leaders

·?????moves away from a hierarchical model where the boss makes all of the decisions

·?????team can still function well when the boss or anyone else is away

This is a huge topic that theres still room for improvement on. Im keen to hear peoples thoughts in the comments on how their teams are giving autonomy in the workplace?

Heres a great blog I also found on the topic, on the Atlassian website.

A product with meaning;

I feel nowadays with such a war for talent, that companies are losing sight of their actual selling points on what they do, their product range and how that helps people. Instead they’re trying to entice developers and product owners with the best EVP/perks list out there, rather than focussing on selling what they’re building, how they’re building it and how they help people.

What’s important to technical folk is that your companies tech team are building something that they think is interesting, maybe because it has meaning, is something that helps people, is in an ethical space or is being built in a way that’s not been done before.

So really have a think about;

?·?????When someone goes onto your website, is it actually clear what your company does, how it makes money & what the product range is?

·?????Are you getting your message across on your website well enough from a marketing perspective?

·?????Are you explaining the features & benefits of your product range properly?

·?????Does it give an insight into how the technology teams work together?

·?????Are your development teams actually building something that helps people, adds value, maybe has an impact on the environment, or in in an ethical space?

Now, if you work for a company that sells alcohol or is in the gambling sector, theres obviously not a lot you can do about that and unfortunately, developers would probably choose a sector like sustainable tech, clean energy or aged care, over those sectors. But that’s not to say you cant give an insight into how your tech teams work and whether they have autonomy.

Flexible working;

Often the 1st question I’m asked when speaking to candidates. Although in 2022 the WFH debate is about as old as ‘what’s the best coding challenge’ but alas its an important topic.

I would say the average business right now in Sydney is expecting developers to come into the office once a fortnight at a minimum, more so for a sense of connection with the project team and colleagues over anything else. When large projects are kicking off or there’s a large update/release happening, again, people are asked to come in.

Some companies are asking for more but not enforcing it, provided the teams are delivering.

A lot of companies are happy with 100% remote and to have developers working in other states, whereas companies where cyber-security or risk issues may arise (banking, finance), remote workers do need to be in the state.

For WFH and flexible working to really work, I think companies really need to communicate with empathy across other teams in the business, on how software engineers work and that you simply don’t need to have developers in the office, as they’ll likely have their headphones in coding anyway.

I'm aware of some cases where other business units like marketing or HR have said 'that’s not fair' and it should be 1 rule for everyone. The reality is though, that’s not the case when different teams are working on different projects, so, leadership teams need to really try and get everyone on board with how developers work.

Greenfield tech;

A fairly obvious one, but developers generally like to work on the latest technology or at least work on a programme that involves heavy lifting work, to a newer stack.

I’ve seen a few developers quit their new jobs recently because they were told they’d be working on the latest tech throughout their interview, to then start their role and find they’ve been placed on a legacy project.

Remember, a lot of developers wont come to you and raise this is an issue. They’ll just move on, considering they’re getting 15 messages a week from recruiters, selling roles that are suited to them.

Make sure if you’re a hiring manager or recruiter and you’re telling people they’ll be in a certain team, that that’s the team they’ll be in from day 1.

Career Paths / learning;

Saying people can get promoted and grow their career paths is great but how are you actually measuring that? OKRs are a great way for a manager to sit down with a developer, map out both personal and business objectives that they want to achieve in a quarter and track against them.

Some CRMs have tools like these set up already and particularly if your business has a bonus scheme, this can be a great way to be held accountable.

Funding towards achieving a certification can be a great incentive for a developer. Paying for an online course to be done at home (AWS cert) can be really beneficial to them personally and also you as a business.

Lunch / learning sessions on a Friday

Brown bag lunches, learning sessions and hackathons were very popular pre-covid with people in the office. Now we're hearing that businesses have given up on these with the shift to WFH. This is something that needs to be addressed.

Friday afternoons are fairly un-productive at work, so wrangling the tech team together either online or in person, grabbing a beer and having a brain storming session around what technology people are learning about at home and what could potentially be brought into the stack is a great team-bonding exercise.

What is your business doing from a fun/learning perspective? Did you once carry out learning sessions and have these have stopped with everyone wfh? Id love to hear! Comment down below..

Salary and Stock options

Post covid, we saw a really huge hike up in salaries being offered, as companies tried to return to their numbers pre-covid. The average salary for a senior developer moved from $140k base to $170k base in most cases.

In mid 2022 we're now starting to see salaries & perks return to normal and even redundancies in some cases. This certainly isn’t common, but more so with US based companies that have set up operations in Sydney and were paying big salaries to developers.

For more information on salaries, perks and employer value propositions, please ask me for the tekfinder salary guide.

If you'd like to chat to me about any of these topics, please reach out! [email protected]