What to do when a developer resigns
Dane EldridgeFounder & Chairman
Passionate about helping people and companies achieve their potential using technology, Dane started 4mation in 2001 while completing his Computer Science degree at UTS.
In growing 4mation Dane has looked after clients as a developer, designer, project manager and in sales, marketing, management and strategy, empowering the team to take over each step of the way.
Pragmatic, growth-oriented, and a lifelong learner, Dane has delivered success for some of Australia’s best-known brands and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
When one of your developers resigns, how do you handle it? Are you reactive, scrambling to write job ads, screen candidates, and interview, hoping that you find someone in time?
And in the meantime, missing deadlines which puts even more pressure on your team that can often result in… you guessed it, more resignations!
There is a better way.
By taking simple steps now (that’s right – today!), you can set your team up for seamless delivery with far less stress, and minimise the impact of the dreaded developer resignation.
To accelerate hiring
- Prepare job descriptions and job ads for each role within your business.
- Prepare a proactive pipeline of candidates (if you don’t have one, speak to our Team Augmentation team).
- Plan resourcing well in advance based on your roadmap – if you’re hiring reactively, chances are you’re missing opportunities (both for quality candidates AND ensuring you have enough of the right people at the right time).
To minimise the impact of resignations
The speed and effectiveness with which you can onboard a new starter is another way to reduce the impact of a resignation.
- Maintain thorough documentation. Effective technical and procedural documentation reduces dependence on any one individual, and enables faster onboarding for new developers.
- Have a trained 2IC for every role. This means you have someone who can step in (at least temporarily), and this is enormously valuable not only when someone resigns, but when they’re off sick or on leave as well.
- Have your system architecture and code quality independently audited. This ensures the quality of your underlying code is high, and you can be confident your new developer won’t be inheriting a flaming pile of spaghetti code! (Speak to our team about booking an independent system audit).
To avoid the resignation in the first place
Helpful and empowering management check-ins, building an award-winning culture and learning and development plans significantly reduce developer resignations, but are topics for another day.
To succeed during resourcing gaps, or when you’re struggling to hire
Given the fierce competition for talent, and as one of the AFR’s Top 10 Places To Work in Technology we help our clients deal with developer resignations proactively in two ways:
- We provide cross-functional teams of specialists who know your setup, and can deliver whole projects or support existing projects.
- We provide individual specialists – what we call Team Augmentation – enabling you to fill any full-time requirement for 3 months or more, faster than going through a traditional hiring process.
These are great options to have in your toolkit – talent on tap that you can scale up and down as your needs evolve.
Check out the video below with our CEO Dane Eldridge to learn more about how we can help.
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