Strategies for Tech Talent Retention

I can’t stop thinking about this. If you invest in your people from day 1, they’ll invest their talents in your company tenfold. It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen firsthand how often this gets missed. I joined companies and startups with zero training: - no documentation - unclear processes - no real onboarding I was expected to figure it out as I went, and honestly, it was brutal 😭 So here’s what *actually* sets people up for success: —— 1️⃣ What does a new hire need to know but feels awkward asking? Think back to your first 30 days. ↳ How do things actually work here? ↳ Where do I go for answers? ↳ What mistakes should I avoid early on? If the answers live only in someone’s head, that’s the gap. ✅ Document anything you explain more than once. —— 2️⃣ Where are people guessing instead of being guided? When training doesn’t exist, people improvise. ↳ Clicking the wrong thing ↳ Following outdated steps ↳ Copying work that isn’t quite right That’s how errors and rework happen. Tools like Tango make this easy by turning workflows into step-by-step guides. ✅ Record one common task this week and turn it into a reusable guide. —— 3️⃣ What tribal knowledge needs to be documented? You know it’s a systems problem when there are: ↳ Constant pings ↳ Repeating the same answers ↳ Little time for deep work ✅ Have your strongest team member document one core process they own. —— 4️⃣ Are you onboarding people or overwhelming them? More information doesn’t mean better onboarding. People need: ↳ Clear priorities ↳ Time to practice ↳ Space to build confidence ✅ Use a simple 30-60-90 day framework for all new hires —— 5️⃣ Are expectations clear or just assumed? When expectations are vague: ↳ People second-guess themselves ↳ Feedback comes too late ↳ Performance feels personal instead of fixable ✅ Check in early and often and schedule 20-minute check-ins with your manager or onboarding buddy in the first 8 weeks. —— When you give people the right tools, training, and support, you get: → Faster onboarding → More consistent processes → Fewer mistakes and support tickets → Happier, more confident employees 💙 You can’t expect people to thrive without setting them up properly. Set people up to win and they will 🫶 Do you agree? #TangoPartner

Most companies frontload onboarding into the first week, then wonder why great hires quit after 2 months. Here's a framework that fixes this: THE 30/60/90 ONBOARDING PLAN Days 0-30: Orientation → Belonging Goal: Make them feel part of something - Welcome kit + preboarding touchpoints - Set clear role expectations and team charter - Buddy system + manager syncs Quick Win: Schedule a values-aligned storytelling session with a company founder Days 31-60: Integration → Clarity Goal: Understand how their work fits - Role-specific training - First project delivery - Cross-functional intros Quick Win: Create a "map of influence" showing who to talk to and when Days 61-90: Acceleration → Impact Goal: Start delivering results - Feedback loop with manager - Career path preview - Culture check-in + stay conversation Quick Win: Ask "What's one thing you'd change about our onboarding?" Why this works: - Week 1 onboarding creates anxiety relief but not engagement. - 30-day onboarding builds belonging but lacks direction. - 90-day onboarding creates clarity, confidence, and measurable impact. Most companies frontload everything into the first few days, then abandon new hires to figure it out. The result? Talented people leave because they never felt integrated or clear on their impact. TAKEAWAY: Your onboarding process is a 90-day audition. Not just for the new hire to prove themselves. For your company to prove it's worth staying. The companies with the best retention don't just hire great people. They systematically integrate them into something they want to be part of.

Your best people are about to quit. And you don't even know it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ I've placed hundreds of professionals. Every exit interview? Same story. It's never about the money. (Well, not JUST the money.) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ High turnover isn't inevitable. It's a choice. And replacing your stars costs: → 6 months salary → Team morale   → Client trust Ping pong tables won't fix this. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Here's what actually keeps talent: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1) PAY PROPERLY Stop lowballing. Match market rates. Reward performance. Your competitor is one call away. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2) ACTUALLY SEE THEM That project they crushed? Notice it. Say it out loud. In front of others. Recognition costs nothing. Invisibility costs everything. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3) TRUST THEM LIKE ADULTS ❌ "Butts in seats by 9am" ✅ "Get the work done" They're professionals, not children. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4) TELL THE TRUTH Bad news? Share it. Future uncertain? Say so. Big decisions? Include them. Secrets kill loyalty faster than layoffs. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 5) INVEST IN THEIR GROWTH No budget for training? You'll pay for it in resignations. Stagnant people leave. Growing people stay. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 6) LISTEN, THEN ACT Collecting feedback to ignore it? That's worse than not asking. They're telling you how to keep them. Are you listening? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 7) RESPECT THEIR LIVES No boundaries = No loyalty Midnight emails = resignation letters Weekend "emergencies" = LinkedIn updates ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The brutal truth: People don't leave companies. They leave managers who: → Steal credit → Micromanage → Ignore wellbeing → Give no growth path ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ask yourself: Are you why they stay? Or why they're secretly interviewing? Your answer determines your team's future. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Which one hits closest to home? 👇 ♻️ Repost to save someone's team ➕ Follow Shulin Lee for more hiring truths P.S. That superstar who "suddenly" resigned? They've been unhappy for months. You just weren't paying attention.

The lesson I take from so many dispersed teams I’ve worked with over the years is that great collaboration is not about shrinking the distance. It is about deepening the connection. Time zones, language barriers, and cultural nuances make working together across borders uniquely challenging. I see these dynamics regularly: smart, dedicated people who care deeply about their work but struggle to truly see and understand one another. One of the tools I often use in my work with global teams is the Harvard Business School case titled Greg James at Sun Microsystems. It tells the story of a manager leading a 45-person team spread across the U.S., France, India, and the UAE. When a major client system failed, the issue turned out not to be technical but human. Each location saw the problem differently. Misunderstandings built up across time zones. Tensions grew between teams that rarely met in person. What looked like a system failure was really a connection failure. What I find powerful about this story, and what I see mirrored in so many organizations today, is that the path forward is about rethinking how we create connection, trust, and fairness across distance. It is not where many leaders go naturally: new tools or tighter control. Here are three useful practices for dispersed teams to adopt. (1) Create shared context, not just shared goals. Misalignment often comes from not understanding how others work, not what they’re working on. Try brief “work tours,” where teams explain their daily realities and constraints. Context builds empathy, and empathy builds speed. (2) Build trust through reflection, not just reliability. Trust deepens when people feel seen and understood. After cross-site collaborations, ask: “What surprised you about how others see us?” That simple reflection can transform relationships. (3) Design fairness into the system. Uneven meeting times, visibility, or opportunities quickly erode respect. Rotate schedules, celebrate behind-the-scenes work, and make sure recognition travels across time zones. Fairness is a leadership design choice, not a nice-to-have. Distance will always be part of global work, but disconnection doesn’t have to be. When leaders intentionally design for shared understanding, reflected trust, and structural fairness, I've found, distributed teams flourish. #collaboration #global #learning #leadership #connection Case here: https://lnkd.in/eZfhxnGW

We're building connection wrong. After years of forcing people back to offices for "water cooler moments," I quizzed Atlassian's Chief People Officer Avani Solanki Prabhakar on How I Work about what she discovered actually creates workplace connection – and it's not what most leaders think. They call it "Intentional Togetherness" (ITG). And this what Avani told me: sporadic office attendance doesn't build connection. You can't manufacture connection by hoping people bump into each other at the coffee machine. **What actually works** Every quarter, bring cross-functional teams together with one rule: they must solve a real strategic problem. Not your hierarchical teams. Not a fun team-building exercise. The actual humans who need to crack a specific challenge. Give them: - A meaty problem that matters - Time to work through it together - Permission to get stuck, struggle, and figure it out The magic isn't in the solution. It's in the struggle. Think about your strongest work relationships. I bet they weren't forged over casual Friday drinks. They were built when you were both knee-deep in a project that felt impossible, working late, cursing the complexity, but figuring it out together. "Remember when we were doing that project together and it was so shitty?" That's the phrase that signals real connection. Shared struggle creates stronger bonds than a thousand coffee chats. **Here's what this means for you** Stop trying to engineer serendipity. Start engineering challenges. If you're mandating office days hoping for magical collaboration, you're wasting everyone's time. Instead, identify your biggest strategic challenges and bring together the people who can solve them. Make it quarterly. Make it intentional. Make it matter. Listen to the full chat on How I Work: https://lnkd.in/gMtw_Ecp And tell me in the comments: how does your team approach building togetherness? What works? What doesn't? #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #OrganisationalPsychology #RemoteWork #FutureOfWork

Founders complain about job-hopping, but only a few ask why their best people leave. My parents stuck with their first job for decades. My seniors changed every 5–7 years. My peers switch every 3–4 years. Now it's down to 1–2 years. Even for companies with great heritage, work culture, and thousands of employees, most with ESOPs, retention is still a big problem. This is the pattern I’ve noticed in job-switching. It's not that loyalty is dying, but the definition of loyalty is changing from generation to generation. Our first employee, Hina, who has been with us since we were operating out of a 100 sq. ft. office, now leads the purchasing team. Aslam, who started as my driver, now heads SmartGRID manufacturing with 80+ people. When there’s room to grow for every employee, retention becomes a part of the business model. Employees stay when they are given opportunities to expand their capabilities. Hina and Aslam stayed because they saw themselves becoming something more. After watching the employees who stuck with us, I’ve realised that people leave companies that don’t help them grow. So, founders should stop asking if they’re filling more roles and start asking if they’re building careers. → Have career conversations, not just performance reviews → Promote from within before hiring from outside → Let people try roles outside their job description → Make growth visible - show them what's possible in 2, 3, 5 years The best retention strategy is when the employees grow with the company. 

Your best people are slipping through your fingers. And you probably don't even know why. If you don't want to lose brilliant team members, pay attention. They aren't leaving you for more money or a better opportunity. They are leaving because you might be suffocating them. Here's the uncomfortable truth about keeping top talent: 1. Give them agency or watch them leave. Micromanagers, this one's for you. Every time you hover, every time you dictate the 'how', you're creating dependent robots instead of empowered humans. The best people don't want to check their brains at the door. They want to know their decisions matter. 2. Tie their wins to their wallets. Not always cash—sometimes it's time off, public recognition, or just a genuine "that was brilliant." Recognize your top performers or you train them to become indifferent. 3. Tell them what, never how. "I need this to convert at 20%" beats "Use this font, this color, this layout" every single time. The moment you rob them of their process, you rob them of their pride. 4. Growth or goodbye. Top talent has a ceiling allergy. Small team → bigger team → client face time → financial decisions. Show them the ladder or they'll find another building. 5. Treat them like family (the functional kind). Look out for them. Actually care. Not that "we're a family" corporate BS, but genuine "how can I help you win?" energy. Bonus: In interviews, ask: "What would make you stay somewhere for 5 years?" Take notes. And actually follow through. Already missed that chance? Sit down with your best people TODAY. "What gets you excited about coming to work? What would make you never want to leave?" 15 minutes. Could save you months of recruiting. Who's the best person you ever lost? What would you do differently now? Small Business Builders #leadership #talentretention #teambuilding

The only way many tech workers in the US can get a long break is by quitting their job. So lots of them do that every few years, which is partly why the average tenure in our industry is at an atrocious 18 months. But this terrible rate of churn is often avoidable by one simple benefit trick: Sabbaticals. We've been giving everyone at 37signals a six-week sabbatical every three years for the last fifteen years or so. It's been magical for retention because a break like that allows the mind to reset in a way a two-week vacation never could. And when employees yearn for such a reset, the typical option is usually just to quit. I know the idea of a six-week sabbatical might sound strange to many Europeans who'd be forgiven for thinking "isn't that just August"? And they're not exactly wrong. Europeans usually do enjoy more vacation time, but in the tech industry, that also comes with much lower pay. Easily half to two-thirds less. I think it's entirely possible to have it both ways: Work for an American tech company with American pay levels, but also enjoy a regular full reset, without having to quit to get it. And the argument for the boss doesn't even have to be some humanistic plea about long-term happiness. It can simply be about retention: it's very expensive to see smart, trained people walk out the door. I'd even argue that bosses — be they founders or professional executives — benefit just as much from a regular sabbatical like anyone else. Whenever Jason or I have taken one, we've always come back with fresh ideas and perspectives that invariably lead to positive changes or new ambitions that wouldn't have come otherwise. Six weeks is also just long enough to remind tired founders that selling their company isn't likely to be the bliss they imagine. That mojito island gets boring quickly. That by week five, they're probably already antsy to get back to the action. There are endless stories of founders who regret selling their business when all they needed was a six-week break from the startup sprint. Bottom line is that we all need a long break every now and then. Not just two weeks on Mallorca, but time enough to get bored. To get hungry for the intellectual stimulation of work and the social connection of colleagues. The sabbatical is a great way to deliver that and keep founders from wanting to sell and employees from wanting to quit. https://lnkd.in/ggUxJJ8t

Do you feel part of a real team? Or are there moments when you feel isolated, uncertain, and disconnected, even though you're surrounded by colleagues? In the early stages of my career, I had the simplistic view that bringing together a bunch of high achievers would naturally create an outstanding team. However, the reality was quite different. Instead of creating synergy, there was noticeable discord. The team didn't seem to gel; it was akin to cogs not aligning in a machine. Every top performer, exceptional in their own right, appeared to follow their own path, often pulling in different directions. The amount of energy and time lost to internal strife was significant, and the expected outcomes? They remained just that – expected. This experience was a clear lesson that the success of a team isn't merely based on individual talent; it's about harmony, alignment, and collaboration. With today’s workplaces being more diverse, widespread, digitized, and ever-changing, achieving this is certainly challenging. So, in my quest to understand the nuances of high-performing teams, I reached out to my friend Hari Haralambiev. As a coach of dev teams who care about people, Hari has worked with numerous tech organizations, guiding them to unlock their teams’ potential. Here are his top 5 tips for developing high performing teams: 1. Be Inclusive ↳Put a structure in place so that the most vocal people don’t suffocate the silent voices. Great teams make sure minority views are heard and taken into account. They make it safe for people to speak up. 2. Leverage Conflict ↳Disagreements should be encouraged and how you handle them is what makes your team poor or great. Great teams mine for conflict - they cherish disagreements. To handle disagreements properly make sure to separate discussion from decision. 3. Decision Making Process ↳Have a clear team decision-making method to resolve conflicts quickly. The most important decision a team should make is how to make decisions. Don’t look for 100% agreement. Look for 100% commitment. 4. Care and Connect ↳This is by far the most important tip. Teams who are oriented only on results are not high-performing. You need to create psychological safety and build trust between people. To do that - focus on actually knowing the other people and to make it safe to be vulnerable in front of others. Say these 4 phrases more often: ‘I don’t know’, ‘I made a mistake’, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I need help’. 5. Reward experimentation and risk taking ↳No solution is 100% certain. People should feel safe to take risks and make mistakes. Reward smart failure. Over-communicate that it’s better to take action and take accountability than play it safe. Remember, 'team' isn't just a noun—it's a verb. It requires ongoing effort and commitment to work at it, refine it, and nurture it. Do give Hari a follow and join over 6K+ professionals who receive his leadership comics in his newsletter A Leader’s Tale.

Building stronger workplace relationships is easier than you think. Here's what actually works (after 10+ years in team management): 1️⃣ Start with genuine curiosity - Ask about their projects - Listen more than you speak - Remember personal details they share 2️⃣ Create connection points - Schedule regular coffee chats - Join or start team activities - Offer help before they ask 3️⃣ Practice professional empathy - Acknowledge their challenges - Celebrate their wins (big and small) - Be reliable with commitment 4️⃣ Foster open communication - Share knowledge freely - Give credit where it's due - Address issues directly, but kindly 5️⃣ Respect boundaries - Keep work conversations professional - Don't force social interactions - Honor their time and space The key? Consistency in these actions. These aren't just "nice to have" practices. They're essential for creating a workplace where everyone thrives. Remember: Strong workplace relationships aren't built overnight. But small, daily actions make a huge difference. Try these today. Your future self (and team) will thank you. 📌 Share if you know someone who could use these tips P.S. Which of these will you try first? Drop a comment below. #employees #workplace #team