Keep hold of your engineers by listening to their career goals

Dave Marsland, engineering manager at Paddle, describes how to build a career path for development teams

It's a cliche but people are a business's most important asset. They're the ones who bring fresh ideas to the table, develop new products and are the lifeblood of a business. Their talent and input go far beyond any production system or code written.

For tech businesses, engineers and developers are the foundations. It is, therefore, the responsibility of these organisations to mentor, develop and support such talent. With a 20,000 a year shortfall in software engineers, competition for talent is rife and engineers are getting a lot more say in their careers. To hold onto good people means companies must look beyond the pay packet and consider ways to embrace each engineer's ambitions.

As a former engineer myself, I've spent a lot of time developing engineers rather than code, and believe you must begin with a fundamental understanding that everyone is different. Everyone thinks differently and wants different things from their jobs - not all aspire to be managers, some remain dedicated to code and creativity. It is important to look and listen to what engineering teams want and design a course for each person.

Finding the motivation and the plan will follow
Software engineers are a varied species. Some write code better, while others are constantly striving for the next step in a management career path. Whatever their motivation, it is important to define each individual journey within an organisation, as it is true recognition of the value they put into the company.

Ultimately you're managing and developing a person, not a "resource". For example, my career has taken me on a path from Junior Engineer to a non-technical Development Team Lead, only to return to Senior Engineer at a new company in order to to get back to what I missed, and consequently back to a management position. Throughout this journey, my managers have helped me decide what was right for me at that time in my life, whether that was by opening doors at the current company or supporting me in getting opportunities elsewhere.

Engineering Career Paths
It's challenging designing a career ladder that caters to every type of person. Personal skills, experience and interests can each dictate what path to take. When looking at the individual's career path, the following points should act as your foundation to development:

• Is the engineer in question people and process driven or technically passionate? This isn't an absolute, but people tend to lean one way or the other;
• Encourage them to try something they might be interested in around management (mentor a junior, run more team sessions), see if they like it;
• Remove the fear that once you've gone technical or management you can't come back, people can change at any point in their career and often do. fluidity in team structure is important. if they want to move between management and technical they must free to do so, as long as the impact on those being managed is minimised.

If you have engineers with little experience in management, you might want to consider by pairing them with one who has done it before, and let them get a taste for what well-structured 1-1s are.

1-1s are something with enough consistent structure (objectives, goals, actions) to make them useful section for getting to know the individual, which will always shape their development plans. Think of them as a collaborative interview, you always want structured sections, with space for culture and personal interaction.

An alternative career development path is taking some of the existing line management/team leading them away from someone who wants to focus on being purely technical. By doing so, it will give them the freedom to try and see if they miss the developing and mentoring once it's gone.

There is a debate between purely non-technical managers and managers who still code, however I'm of the strong belief that you want to give engineers the opportunity to try line management without going all in, so they can work out for themselves where their passion lies.

The UK has some of the world's most exciting, talented software engineers but we need to do more to keep these people engaged and entice more people to take up engineering. By guiding those already in the industry through the various career choices available means the market gets more and more people who have taken the time to experiment and decide where they want their journey to take them.

Dave Marsland is Engineering Manager at Paddle