Good management is motivating and helping people. Bad management is hindering, getting in the way and annoying people.

Managers, directors, leaders are complaining about developers leaving jobs and there is nothing they can do about it. Other companies are offering them more money and they are helpless to stop them.

What if it was those managers who were pushing developers away by the way they treated those developers?

Managers are not incentivised to help developers progress their careers. In many ways, there are incentivised to stop developers progressing and hoard the good developers for themselves.

Career progressing, training, keeping a developer happy don’t have short-term benefits for managers. Progression is good for the developer and the company, but not for the manager. Career progression is a disadvantage for managers because they often lose their better developers.

Management problem

Frustration felt by developers is caused by how managers manage developers. Some is the incentives for managers and some of their behaviour is caused by being poor managers.

Why do developers leave a company

• Career stalled
• Boredom
• Burnout

Many problems of developers are caused by poor management/project management. Instead of protecting developers from meetings, estimates, etc the managers sacrifice them.

Many managers view developers as interchangeable technical resources. Developers are a commodity, and developers are the same. They put developers without the required skills on a project, where the developers create software slower, make more mistakes and are under pressure from the start.

Skills matter, experience is important and individual developers are different. There is an enormous difference between good developers and bad developers, not all developers are created equal.

Give the customer what they want

Many (not all) managers like to give the customer want they want. The customer is paying the bills and they are calling the shots. Expect this isn’t how software development works because customers don’t know how to create software.

Giving the customer what they want isn’t what they need to create the software they require.

Changing requirements might create the software you need, but it won’t do it to the timeline originally planned.

Managers question estimates to lower them, Developers have less time to do the development. The common short-term solution is for the developer to work longer.

Instead of protecting developers' time, managers sacrifice developers' time by sending them to meetings they don’t need to be in. The more meetings developers attend, the less time they have to create software.

Deadlines are not extended because of the additional meetings attending or other non development activities. The result is developers have less time, are more stressed and have fewer hours outside of work.

Career stalled

There isn’t much benefit for a manager if a developer is promoted. Managers are assessed on how well the project they are running does and the happiness of developers, but not the progression of developers.

When developers gets promoted, they move from a job they have the skills for and good at. A job where they have to learn new skills and might not be good at, e.g. the Peter principle, where developers get promoted to their level of incompetence.

From a managers point of view it’s better for developers to stick in a role they are comfortable doing. Its better for developers to stay on the same project, which they are familiar with.

Getting developers promoted brings risk of poor performance.

Developers like to learn new skills, knowledge, but this means they need to take time away from the project and potential for promotion.

Burnout

Developers are burning out in bigger numbers than ever, what are management doing about it? 83% of Developers Suffer From Burnout and 81% Said It’s Gotten Worse During Covid

Software developers need to understand burnout so they can prevent it and because managers are neglecting to help and protect them from burnout. Burnout is not a priority for companies and developers are not good at spotting burnout in themselves or other developers.

Why Is No One Talking About the Need to Reduce Developer Burnout?

Burnout comes from more capable developers taking on more work and responsibilities to meet deadlines. This is a short-term solution of out working a poor plan.

The long-term problem is a system problem, where the plan is underestimated, resources are doing their jobs or another reason the development team cannot create software fast enough to meet the deadlines.

Individuals working harder they are doing their job. The downside only occurs if the individual burns out or leaves. At which point the manager has lost one of their better developers, but they will have had many months of over performance from that developer.

Boredom

Boredom is another reason developers leave and it’s bed fellow frustration. Developers need coaching and guidance to progress their careers and many companies don’t give them that. They just focus on using developers to full capacity.

If they aren’t making progress, learning new skills, working on different projects, then they are open to better offers.

Companies and managers push developers away without realising it

Conclusion

Incentives for managers don’t align with progressing developers careers or keeping them at the company.

Developers progressing is a long-term benefit to the company but not to the manager. When a good developer gets promoted, a manager loses one of his better resources.

When developers leave a project, the project suffers as it loses an experienced developer. The developer joins a new project and takes a month to get up to speed.

Burnout is a growing problem and it will become more important as Keeping Developers Will Be the Priority in Great Developer Resignation Next Stage