Work as if your team is quitting

Nobody stays at a job for ever. Be prepared for your colleages to leave.

Long gone are the days of 30-year careers. The average job tenure according to a 2020 survey was 4.2 years.

This means if you have a team of 8, you can expect someone to leave every 6 and a half months, on average. Anecdotal evidence suggests it may be even more frequent for many IT-related roles.

Despite this, I frequently see managers, and even individual contributors, go into a panic when a colleague announces their plans to leave the company for greener pastures elsewhere.

Prepare yourself for the inevitable. Be constantly documenting any special knowledge, so knowledge doesn’t leave with your teammates. Increase your bus factor with cross-training. And just be emotionally prepared for employee churn!

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