When your direct report wants to leave

How to retain or finalize a teammate’s departure

Published in

Practical Engineering Management

5 min readNov 22, 2023

One of the challenging situations for an engineering leader is facing the departure of a direct report. We often believe that our team will remain constant, so when we receive such news, it usually hits hard.

In reality, employee turnover is quite common. Research indicates that the average tenure for software engineers at a single company is approximately two years.

Here’s some data:

Zippia’s analysis of ~103K software developers found that 45% have an average tenure of 1 to 2 years, with a whopping 69% having a tenure of less than two years.
Hackerlife’s analysis of over ten thousand software engineers who live in San Francisco found that the median tenure of a programmer in some tech giants is around 1.5 to 2.3 years.
LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2023 report found that the average employee tenure for tech companies is 1.9 years.

These reports are based on data from the United States, so treat them as a general overview of the trends in software engineer retention.

As an engineering leader, you typically encounter two scenarios:

They inform you of their decision to leave but haven’t mentally checked out yet. Even if a termination letter has been sent, many things can still happen.
They tell you they are leaving, and mentally, they’ve done it already. Only formalities left. At this point, the outcome is unlikely to change.

Subscribers of Practical Engineering Management got some practical hints for handling each of these situations. Take a look at the cheat sheets:

Links to full articles are posted at the bottom of this post.

You’ve just got the news

It’s not about you or the company. It’s them — they need to take a breath or got a better offer somewhere else. Their notice period is one or three months, and they assure you they’ll do their best until the last day of their work. And hopefully, they will, yet your job is to reduce all possible risks in this period.

The reality is that the most challenging step for them — informing you of their departure — has been completed. From this point on, they are likely to be mentally disengaged from the company. Sure, many people will do their best until the very last day. Most are obligated by the law to do so. However, deadlines, priority changes, and external factors are no longer their concern.

Each day of critical dependency on them is the real risk you must assess and mitigate as soon as possible.

General Recommendation

No matter how much you trust them, I recommend putting some buffer time into the last weeks of their work. With a one-month notice period, aim to complete or transfer all critical projects within the first two weeks. For the remaining time, you can schedule knowledge transfer, consultancy, non-critical improvements to the code, and other secondary tasks.

What if you want to fight for them? Before preparing for the departure, you may consider building a plan to convince them to stay at the company.

Assessing the worth of retention

Before planning your retention strategy, ask yourself if it’s worth it. When new leaders face such situations, they often think, “What am I going to do now?” It’s a normal reaction to a crisis, but taking a step back and assessing the situation calmly is crucial.

Consider this: there are only two ways you part ways with an employee — they leave, or you fire them. Seeing an employee’s departure as an opportunity can be a catalyst for positive change, such as refreshing the team’s dynamics or bringing in new talent.

Here are potential opportunities:

Revising team priorities: The departure is an excellent time to evaluate and prioritize commitments.
Chance for growth: Redistributing responsibilities is also a chance for other team members to develop new skills and take on fresh responsibilities.
Refreshing the team: Whether hiring a new person or adapting to the departure, the team’s dynamic will inevitably evolve.

This may seem harsh, but such assessment is common in high-performing engineering teams. Netflix, for example, uses the “keeper test” to determine if an employee’s departure would be a loss to the team.

To strengthen our dream team, our managers use a “keeper test” for each of their people: if a team member was leaving for a similar role at another company, would the manager try to keep them? Those who do not pass the keeper test (i.e. their manager would not fight to keep them) are given a generous severance package so we can find someone even better for that position — making an even better dream team. Being on a dream team is the thrill of a professional lifetime, and team members are incredibly supportive of each other. This is why “You make time to help colleagues across Netflix succeed” is a valued behavior.
Source: Netflix Culture

Is this only about money?

Compensation is a complex issue. If a team member receives a significantly higher offer elsewhere, it doesn’t automatically mean your pay is unfair. Salary depends on many factors, including the organization’s performance or how much a company is willing to pay for talent.

As a first-level manager, you are only a messenger between your teammates and upper management. You can either recommend matching the offer or highlight the risks of not doing so.

Before making a counteroffer, reassess if the employee is someone you’d fight to keep based on the “keeper test.” Be cautious about retention negotiations based solely on salary, especially if the employee is demotivated or has a negative attitude toward the company. Money alone won’t resolve underlying issues.

Ensure that negotiations lead to a win-win situation where the employee is willing to engage and grow.

How to handle departure or retention

Brace yourself. Your next few weeks will differ from business as usual. This time may be challenging and bumpy, but it’s also the opportunity to change things. No matter if they decided to leave for good or you both agreed to fight to retain them, Practical Engineering Management has some actionable hints for you to make the following weeks of your work as smooth and fruitful as possible.

Check them here:

Let’s stay in touch

I hope this article is valuable to you. My mission is to help engineering leaders make great ideas happen.

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If you would like to discuss any challenges related to employee retention and departure, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at mirek@practicalengineering.management. I’m happy to share my experiences or discuss your feedback and ideas.