In late 2019, US employers had nearly 918,000 unfilled tech jobs, leading to millions of dollars in lost productivity. It’s always been hard to hire engineers. Post-pandemic, it’s even harder. Although the demand for technology has skyrocketed, in 2022, skilled IT workers will continue to be challenging to find and keep.
The impacts of this will be far-reaching as, according to a recent report from Gartner, 64% of IT executives believe talent shortages are the most significant barrier to adopting emerging technology. Your business is only as good as your engineering team, from startups with a handful of resources to large enterprises with hundreds of engineers. So, how can you hire and retain engineers successfully?
Appreciate and accept engineer subcultures
Visualizing a company culture where they belong is an important factor for all job-seekers. But CTOs and CIOs must acknowledge that engineering teams tend to create their own subcultures within companies. Engineers are wired to think and work differently. Yet, most business leaders are unaware of how engineers prefer to function: They are driven by challenges, constant learning, and cracking complex problems.
Therefore, IT executives must make sure to design a business strategy that doesn’t minimize the importance of these subcultures by offering time slots for frequent communication with the larger team and encouraging engineers to work in a unified manner with other departments.
Engineers have to see how they fit into the company strategy, and solid engineering teams are only formed when a group of driven engineers works for a mission they believe is larger than themselves – and worth toiling for.
So, while building or scaling your multi-faceted engineering teams, think: Do they know enough about the markets and end-users they are building products for, are they aware of project budgets, and is there a focus on customer experience? If the answers are no, start by having these conversations.
Keep the momentum going to retain top engineers
Another important step is to maintain momentum throughout software development lifecycles, which is defined by the noticeable impact on end customers and the speed of delivery or deployment. Tech engineering teams should ship fast to learn quickly; often, the best products are built by testing in the real world.
For example, Shopify built their app on React Native and noticed how the home page was starting to lag. They discovered the solution was adding a cache in front of those queries and ran real-world experiments to see what issues arose before rolling out caching changes fully. The software engineers worked together and quickly got results, keeping the team engaged and dedicated to the cause.
Even Adrian Otto, the Technical Director at Google, agrees. The best way to achieve more successes is through rapid iteration “than the old take-your-sweet-time way,” he said. This sense of momentum is tightly aligned with winning, one of the primary motivators for engineers as it breeds the next win alongside a high ROI for the company, which is when engineers get noticed.
But most importantly, engineering leaders must hold themselves accountable for the accomplishments of their engineers. Ultimately, they are responsible for aligning the tech strategy with the overall company strategy.
Sashank Purighalla is founder and CEO of BOS Framework a fast-growing startup based in Nashville. The company provides software frameworks as a service to help business modernize systems.