Poor management is the top reason developers leave a role after a better salary. It’s also contributing to developers feeling less confident in their career growth. Companies need to get their management quality right to land and retain their best developers.
In this article, we’ll explore two of the biggest good management green flags developers are looking for.
Low trust in management undermines developers’ career growth confidence
A lack of growth and career opportunities are significant reasons for developers leaving their roles, after a better salary and poor management. With developers' confidence in their career growth at a three-year low, companies must ensure their growth opportunities stand out.
However, It’s easy to think of growth and management as separate issues but the reality is that your growth opportunities are only as good as your ability to help your team navigate them.
We see this play out in the data: We asked the dev community what’s been contributing to their decreasing confidence in their career growth and 53% said it’s a lack of trust in leadership.
A lack of trust in leadership is one consequence of poor management. That means you risk losing your best people even if you offer standout growth opportunities on paper.
As a result, companies need to focus on building and maintaining trust to show developers that they’re in the right place for them to continue growing as coders.
Good management rebuilds trust and shows developers they’re in the right place to grow
Developers see coding as more than a job: it’s a craft they take seriously. Like other craftspeople, honing their skills is an inherently rewarding and important pursuit.
However, honing a craft requires an environment that allows you to test your existing skills and gain support in learning new ones. That’s where management quality comes in.
Bad managers make it harder for devs to work effectively and focus on software development. As a result, they don’t complete the challenging projects or gain the technical experience they need to grow.
Good managers, on the other hand, empower their developers to focus on what they love to do and get better at it.
Let’s look at two green flags that help you gain and maintain the trust your team needs for a growth-focused environment.
1. Clear communication helps developers focus on what matters most –building great software
Clear communication is by far the most important factor to get right for good management, as it helps developers be productive and build trust across the team.
Communicating project requirements clearly and giving their team members proper context help reduce delays and maximise productivity. This empowers teams to know exactly what they need to do and prevents them from wasting precious time building solutions that don’t address the right problems.
2. Autonomy reduces unnecessary distractions and promotes greater ownership
No one likes to be micromanaged and developers are no exception. Micromanagement makes it harder to focus on coding, but the opposite is true when managers give and encourage autonomy.
Encouraging autonomy also creates transparent communication that builds trust with your team, making it easier for them to flag issues early and seek support to address them.
Lastly, developers want managers who ensure they have enough freedom to decide how they tackle technical problems. This gives developers a greater sense of ownership over their code and more investment in its quality.
If you’re looking for more actionable ways to bridge the gap between job-search expectations and a successful hire, download the Developer Expectations Report with data from 1293 actively job-searching devs.
In this guide, you'll get a data-backed mental model that helps you:
- Explore developer job search expectations from actively searching devs
- Understand the reality they face in the current hiring market
- Bridge the gap between developer expectations and the current reality developers face
Further reading:
- State of South Africa’s Software Developer Nation
- 2024 Software Developer Salary Benchmarking Report
- Decoding the 2024 tech job market
- Report: South African Computer Science Graduates
- The data-driven approach to building diverse tech teams
- Management red flags that kill retention
- 3 tips for bridging the gap between remote work and an office set-up that works for devs