Why They Leave: How Managers Should Handle Employee Departures

Unfortunately, sooner or later everyone leaves. I will even say more - they will definitely leave.

For various reasons. Some because of money, some because of the team or processes, and some even because of yourself.

With the average life of a developer in a company being about two years, expecting a developer to stay with you longer is naive.

And let's not deceive ourselves: money is the main factor in choosing a job for most developers. The project and the team are important, but become a little secondary, especially in our market. Yes, money doesn't always solve everything, but its absence quickly cancels out the rest. At the same time, the opportunities and ceilings set by the market are achievable, although not immediately.

I would like to highlight points that can, on the one hand, prolong an employee's life, and on the other hand, tell them when their time has come.

Developer asks for a salary increase

Overall, if this happens, it's probably too late and you're just postponing the inevitable a little. Moreover, if you don't raise the salary, then the developer will most likely leave soon, and if you raise it, it won't count towards you, because... the developer will simply get what he asked for.

To avoid such situations, it is important to make the review process as transparent and interval as possible (assessment once every n time).

It would be great to endlessly raise salaries for each request, but you need to understand that the budget for your salary is not always infinite. It is important to remember that salary growth is not only a desire, but also a company's capabilities. Sometimes it makes more sense to invest in team growth than individual promotion.

Give the developer extra tasks

I remember how surprised I was when one of my developers came to me and said that he would like to change direction, because, as it seemed to him, he had already tried everything and there was nowhere to grow further.

After more than 10 years in front-end development, I still believe that I don't know everything. In some places time did not allow it, in others the very essence of the project did not allow it. But the fact remains: modern engineering is a very broad and deep field. You can find something new every day and apply it in your work.

If the developer thinks that he has already tried everything, give him extra tasks, a challenge: extremely reduce the size of the bundle, get rid of all the errors in Sentry or Crashlytics, finally fix the unit tests, etc.

The hardest part of becoming a lead or manager is delegation. But others need to grow too, so collect the most interesting tasks and delegate them.

If a developer wants to grow, give him this opportunity

Yes, this opportunity is not always available, but you can help the employee prepare for it. Be honest: tell him how the position suits him and how far he is from it in the context of the tasks being performed. Sometimes it's enough just to tell what you do as a manager so that the developer temporarily loses interest in this role :)

And yet, they leave

Why? Because not everything is in your hands.

Over the years, the company changes, and so do the people. Often the best thing to do when an employee wants to leave is not to take it personally and give him the opportunity to leave on good terms. The market is small, and it is quite possible that your paths will cross again.