How to keep developers motivated at a service-based company?

I once heard a joke that there is no talent shortage, just a shortage of places where talent wants to work. Keeping software engineers happy at their workplace might be a daunting task. The keys to success are solid pay, good communication, and establishing trust. But one of the main factors is keeping your employees technically challenged. Here are some notes on how we do that at ENBISYS.

As a service company, we are usually working on 4 to 5 large projects from different verticals, like healthcare, education, and retail. This means a bigger pool of technologies and domain knowledge available to learn. Engineers may exchange ideas and best practices literally during their lunch breaks and implement the new knowledge in their current work right away. We encourage our developers to be more active in teaching others.

We’ve created our Corporate University with this idea in mind. First of all, it lets us keep the knowledge and grow expertise within the Company. It also helps junior and middle developers master new skills, and involve seniors in teaching and learning from each other.

It’s true that product teams might be closer to end-users, and they might be more passionate about the product. However, working in service companies makes it easier for developers to focus on their technical growth. To enrich their skill set, they don’t necessarily have to leave their current employer. When engineers grow out of their current projects, they can always move to another one fitting their current career development goals. This means no stress associated with changing jobs, going to 100 interviews, or moving to another city. Sometimes it takes just moving to another desk at the office and instantly gaining access to totally new technologies and domain knowledge.

Actually, if an engineer wants to be a part of a product team, we have this option as well. With all our service expertise under our belts, we’ve recently developed our own products Ocuscreen and Plario for healthcare and education. They add up to the range of career choices for developers to pick an area of interest and uncover their potentials.

Such rotation in the company is beneficial not only to employees’ career growth but also to our clients and to our business as a whole. Having worked with several projects, an engineer gets familiar with various approaches and management systems. This way they can navigate any new project with confidence. They grow into experts who are very well suited to give professional advice on which technologies and approaches to use in each specific case. They can hand-pick the best tools and methods to apply for each customer.

A service-oriented company will always have more competencies than a product-oriented one. We consider it a solid advantage that helps us deliver projects using the latest technologies and also keep our engineers satisfied at their workplace.