It’s hard to onboard junior developers, only to have many of them leave about the time they become productive.
Why it matters: The only way to scale your development team is to hire, train, motivate, and retain developers. And you can’t afford to hire only those with years of experience.
- Hiring junior developers may require an investment in refactoring your code base to give the developers a fighting chance to understand it.
- Existing tools, if you have them, may not be up to the task.
- Emerging team members also need to be recognized–and compensated—before someone else poaches them.
Between the lines: Baseball had its Moneyball moment, where the “eyeball test” gave way to advanced metrics. Software development is due for some of the same changes.
Delay may be costly: You can defer addressing this problem until next quarter, or next year. But will your competition?
The bottom line: Success in this area will pay off in a major way. You’ll have a better chance of hitting hiring and productivity goals, and have a happier, more engaged development team.
