Software developers tend to change jobs frequently in tech (the average tenure is <2 years). We have lots of reasons to leave one company for another, and most boil down to our feeling unhappy, unstimulated, or undervalued in our current roles. However, there are companies that retain their talent extremely well...
Below are the engineering teams who listed High Employee Retention as one of their key values. There are many factors that go into retention, but these teams seem to share two things in common: they thoughtfully hire value-aligned individuals, and they do a particularly good job giving their employees the room and support to grow both personally and professionally.
Feature flagging and toggle management for continuous delivery
Oakland, CA / London, UK / Remote
Alexis Georges, Engineer and Andrea Echstenkamper, Director of Marketing have been here since 2015. We hired over 50 people in 2018 with less than 2% attrition rate. LaunchDarkly is doing bold new things to ensure our employees remain happy but above all it's our high quality of life and work/life balance that makes working at LaunchDarkly so enjoyable.
Given that bitExpert has been around for 14 years, this looks like a good sign. The challenging work as well as the team spirit seem to be the main drivers why employees stay with us. Usually we recruit students for part time work while they are studying, they will write their diploma theses with us and stay with us afterwards.
Agile Product Development Consultancy
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chattanooga, and New York
All of the partners have been here for 11 or more years. People tend to stick around for a long time and those that don’t are the ones that come in and leave pretty quickly because they discover that this isn’t the right environment for them. There is big difference between having a product-type versus a consulting-type of involvement at a company. Some people want to have ownership in a product over many years, and potentially move up in title and in a hierarchy. Whereas for us on the consulting side, we are people who constantly like learning, leveling up our skills, and enjoy doing it quickly. You might go from doing data-warehousing work with Java to building a platform with Node to developing in React Native for a mobile application. People who like diving into different domains and code flourish here. If working on new things every 4-6 months with a senior team appeals to you, we’d love to hear from you. (Note: we do hire about one junior dev per year per office.)
By the end of your (typically) six-month program, you’ll know the details, from travel tips and internal tools to how we communicate in our distributed setup. More importantly, you’ll have a friend outside of your team and an understanding of what most teams do at Automattic.
Your work isn’t fully reflected in your assigned responsibilities or documented in whichever task tracker your team might use. We give you autonomy so you can make an impact beyond your role. And we believe in bringing something above and beyond your role to your team and our company.
When it’s time for a change, Automatticians are encouraged to consider switching teams. For example, our Happiness Engineers (technical support) do 3-month rotations working on new products and have transitioned to Code Wranglers, QA Engineers, and Technical Account Managers. Meanwhile, developers regularly switch teams to work on other products within Automattic. This type of change gives you a fresh perspective as you dive into different projects the company is working on and live up to our Creed: “I will never stop learning.”
16 Open Positions
While it’s true, we’ve had zero churn from the company so far, high employee retention is more about value alignment than anything else. Our goal from day one is to work with people who share our values and understand why we’re building what we’re building on a deeply personal level. We sometimes joke that we’re a home for crazies because security people tend to be disliked at companies for always saying, “No.” However, at Doppler, you are the champion! We have all been that super niche person who pushes back before, but now that we’re a part of a security company, we’re amongst similarly-minded peers.
We should let you know that we’re extremely passionate people. Our first hire, Tom, has a deep seeded passion for security and privacy. (He reads privacy policies the way most people watch Netflix, no joke.) For Tom, it is not a task, but a way of life, and we appreciate how he brings that passion to our team. Ruud joins us from Instagram, where he led their API backend infrastructure. He has built out all of our integrations and focuses on growth at Doppler. His interest and enthusiasm is contagious. As a last example, Ryan owns developer advocacy at Doppler. His excitement for building communities helps us stay connected to and inspired by our users, and we love his talent for distilling information.
We hire artists, not assassins. Assassins will only pull the trigger if they are paid, but artists will happily work for free until the day they die because they love what they do. Thankfully everyone at Doppler is very well compensated but the passion being our main driver remains the same.
2 Open Positions
We have a highly skilled team of developers that are all friendly, and many of us play computer games together over lunch and outside of work. The majority of our team has worked here for over 3 years. We have an intensive hiring process to make sure we don't hire any anyone that would make our working environment suffer as a result. The interview process is 3 phases starting with a 20 minute C# theory test, followed by a 1-hour practical test where the candidate can show off their skills, finishing with a sit down interview where we find out more about the candidate and the candidate finds out more about Atlas. We are a young company that has only been around for 10 years, but we have recently congratulated one of our first employees on his 10th year anniversary of working at Atlas.
Responsive web design tool, CMS, Ecommerce, and hosting platform
San Francisco (HQ) and Remote
Since we took a modest seed round in 2013, our revenue raced into profitability and put us in a unique position to build a sustainable company on our own terms. We've surpassed millions of users through positive word of mouth and have committed to growing deliberately rather than reactively.
We recently raised a $72 million Series A, and we leveraged our uniquely profitable position to retain our culture. As a result, we've been able to prioritize the things that matter most: building a fantastic product for our customers to use and an incredible place for our employees to work.
Given our product, mission, and culture, there are plenty of reasons that make Webflow a great place to work. We offer perks like a yearly retreat, a sabbatical after five years*, monthly stipends for remote office luxuries, and more. But don't take our word for it. Here are some random tweets of appreciation from Nathan (based in San Francisco, CA), Darin (based in Sofia, Bulgaria), and Amina (based in Atlanta, GA). If you're ever curious about what it's really like to work somewhere, ask current team members.
*Five people are currently eligible for a sabbatical as we write this!
9 Open Positions
Our regular 1-on-1 meetings are important in keeping managers understand what people’s motivations are and what opportunities there may be. There is a lot of autonomy and free to reign to work on whatever you want. If you have an idea, prove it, and then present it to the founders or make a case for why the company should invest further (via hires or more resources). In fact, we are currently working on developing an Entrepreneur in Residence role too. Perhaps someone on the team has an interest and expertise in something, but there isn’t really room for a promotion it. We’d assign them a high visibility project with the idea that if it goes well and they want to turn this into their own company in a couple of years, we can give them the connections, support, and network they need to seek investment and get it off the ground.
1 Open Positions
The most junior person has been with us for a year, but was also an intern for us for a year while she was in college. Everyone with the exception of our recent sales director hire has been with us for 3+ years. The reason our employees stay a long time is because we as a company is small and agile enough to take on work that is in alignment with our core values, and that makes everyday exciting and meaningful. As such, being part of a growing team that offers opportunity to work on the projects you want to work on feels like a new challenge every year!
1 Open Positions
We pride ourselves on working closely within the engineering and product teams to make sure everyone is working on products which are fulfilling and challenging for them. You can learn more about the members of our team here. If you are interested in opportunities within engineering or product please feel free to email our Recruiting Manager to start the process and learn more: [email protected]
This fact stands by itself and speaks volumes. It is likely a result of how much we enjoy working with one another, and our incredibly difficult hiring process. We hire very carefully and deliberately, have very high standards, and feel like a closely guarded family. But once you're in, you're in. If you’re interested to learn more about our product, our team, or how you might become a part of our team, reach out.
3 Open Positions
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