A Software Engineer Leaves The Team - What To Do
As a Tech Lead, what immediate actions should you take when a member of your team leaves the company?
Many studies show that the total cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5-2X annual salary. Also, based on the research from Herman Aguinis, Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, we can extract that a high-performer employee can deliver 400% more productivity than the average performer.
In a previous issue, I already talked about the impossibility of a dream team. It’s a law, like the laws of physics.
The impossibility of a Dream Team
There, I already mentioned that such impossibility is caused by several situations, and, one of those is that a team member leaves the company. As Tech Lead, what you should do?
In today’s issue, I cover:
How to handle the notice
The immediate actions you should take
How to handle the days until the departure
The call will come when you least expect it. Maybe you are in the office, and your team member asks you for some minutes in private, or maybe you are in PTO walking around in a forest, and you get a message asking if you have 5 minutes for a short call.
Be nice. The person on the other side is passing through a difficult moment, in any case. You have spent a lot of time together and it’s not easy to say “Hey, I’m leaving the company and my last day will be <X> of <month>”. Most likely you will hear some “you know…”, “mmm…”, “I don’t know how to say this straight but…”.
Let the person talk. Do not anticipate the sentences or the speech. The person prepared this call and it’s difficult to orchestrate all the sentences to say, ensuring your message is not misunderstood in a moment like this.
Try to understand the reasons for the departure. The person usually provides this information but, if not, you make plain, short, and simple questions using “what” or “how” instead of “why”. Asking “why” could be seen as “an attack” on the decision, but questions like “What are the reasons for this decision?” or “How do you feel?” will help the speaker in the conversation.
Force your brain to have active listening. Your mind will start thinking, trying to put in place an immediate plan. Stop it, and ensure you get all the details from the conversation. It’s important and you will get some meaningful insights.
If the resignation call got you on PTO in the middle of the forest, do nothing, and continue with your PTO as much as you can. Continue with the disconnection, this will be a problem for your future self.
Back in the office, what I recommend to do:
Review the latest topics the person living was working on, and ensure you get all the context. You are the Tech Lead, you are accountable for all technical aspects; you have to ensure you miss nothing. My recommendation for this is to have a technical 1-on-1 session.
Document the “one-person” knows things. If the person leaving is the go-to person for some algorithms or similar, ask to explain it into accessible documentation for the rest of the team.
Liberate this person from support duties. Even though the person could collaborate, you want the rest of the team to take over whatever was on the shoulders of the person leaving.
Define and schedule a transfer knowledge plan. If you suspect that the knowledge is not properly balanced across the team, and the departure of this person will make a knowledge hole in your team, do not hesitate to do this. Organize multiple technical sessions, no more than 1 hour per session, with the whole team to ensure that the person leaving pulls over everything.
Do all this (ideally) before the last week before the departure 😅.
From now on, until the person’s departure, just focus on reducing its exposure. The person leaving will continue working, of course, but you want the rest of the team to do the heavy lifting.
Make the situation natural and focus on the action plan you put in place. Usually, the daily work helps with this, keeping you focused on the work, not realizing (often) is someone is leaving in 2 weeks.
If you find something missing in your original plan, adapt it as soon as possible, you don’t want to leave things for the very last day, hour, or minute.
Also, I think it’s a great opportunity for you to get good feedback. Sometimes, people tend to be “nice with the Tech Lead” and not give constructive feedback for you to improve. This person is leaving so, that bias will not happen, and you will get useful feedback.
Last but not least, be nice (again). Organize, together with the rest of the team, some kind of gift that the person leaving will make to remember her/his time on the team when the time passes. We are people at the end, not machines.
No more than this is what I do when a team member leaves the company. I’ve shared with you my direct action items, hoping you find them useful, and help you when have to face the same situation.
Best wishes,
Marcos.