Stature Software

Posts Tagged ‘Developers’

Keep Your Great Developers Happy

June 13th, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Developers, Small Business | 1 Comment »

I have a trick for keeping our top developers at Stature, and it’s not money or incentives (although they help, don’t get me wrong).  It goes right to the core of what every great developer wants: a challenge.

All new projects at Stature are kicked off by our best developers.  Great developers don’t want to be bogged down for 6 months writing reports, suffering through code maintenance boredom.  They want to work on the new stuff.  They want to design and be creative.  Some of them want to lead a team of developers and be in charge.

Our method of managing developers works.  Perfectly.  A new project comes in and we’ll take one of our best developers to start the design and planning.  A junior developer will move up in the existing product team to fill the void.  In time, when he or she is ready, that junior developer will become the lead developer for the existing product and possibly lead a new product in the future.

The cycle need not be long.  Sometimes we find a prodigy developer who can lead a project within months.  But more often than not, lead developers happen because of experience and maturity, not skill alone.

 Tags: Developers, retention