Developer lifecycle: treat your people well and build a people-centric workplace

This is the first piece in our series on the developer lifecycle. From hiring to offboarding, we want to show you what builds a strong developer experience at every stage.

When the lifecycle works, developers get more done and feel better about their work. Turnover drops, fewer problems land on your desk, and you save real money.

Don't expect official studies here. You get our tips instead, the ones we have tested and our developers approve of.

We focus on developers, but most of this helps any role.

You have probably seen the trend: HR terms that all start with "quiet". Quiet quitting, quiet hiring, quiet firing. Where does it come from?

One study found that 57% of employees feel undervalued at work. The reasons usually repeat: poorly defined competencies, rare feedback or 1:1s with the people who matter, and not enough transparency across the company. So improving the workplace doesn't take that much, does it?

Build a place where your people are actually heard. It's not about being present, it's about a system that turns listening into action. So what can you do beyond the usual eNPS surveys?

There is nothing groundbreaking behind the buzzword. A buddy check is a regular well-being check-in with a teammate. In our HR team, every employee is paired with someone who meets them regularly over a short call, lunch, or coffee. People share how they feel, how they see the company, where they are progressing, and what would help them next.

Feedback drives growth and engagement, whether it comes from a teammate, a team lead, or a manager. The psychology behind it matters too. Carol Dweck's research shows that people with a growth mindset treat feedback as a chance to learn, while people with a fixed mindset hear it as criticism.

To make feedback land, use a structured framework like SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) or GROW (Goal-Reality-Options-Way Forward). For larger teams, a tool like Matter can collect feedback and track progress over time. Feedback isn't only about what to fix. It's about a place where people learn continuously and feel valued enough to grow.

How often it happens matters less than the fact that it happens at all. Even when you are slammed, regular 1:1s lift engagement and motivation.

Sometimes a 1:1 feels pointless, because you realize the whole hour went to small talk. To keep these meetings on track, we made a set of cards with thoughtful questions and topics worth raising. They steer the conversation toward things that count, like where someone wants to grow and what kind of feedback they want.

Find the right glue for your people. When you don't have a fixed mission statement or set of values, strong culture becomes even more important, sometimes it's the only thing holding the team together.

We won't talk about rituals like retrospectives or standups here. We mean rituals as an underrated part of team culture. Make room to give kudos, celebrate a win, or shout out a great colleague. Even a small success deserves a mention, because it shows that effort gets noticed.

Don't stop there. Set up get-togethers where people connect, swap personal and work stories, joke around, and build real friendships. That might mean an exhibition, a regular after-work beer, a shared lunch, a coffee break, or watching a favorite show together.

The next tip makes this easier.

Team spirit is a core part of any culture. It often grows out of company values, but it usually goes further and tells you more about your people than any mission or vision statement. Most of all, it lets people be themselves.

What does it look like?

How do you support it?

Just let people be themselves. Show them your company is a safe space for being different. Do that, and you build an empathetic workplace with loyal, engaged people.

It takes extra effort, but always give your people the time, space, and resources to learn and grow. One of the main reasons people feel undervalued is a lack of room to develop their careers. When that room is missing, it looks like the company doesn't see them in its future, and motivation fades.

Let your people grow in three areas:

How to design growth:

When you design growth, focus on four ideas inspired by the DX Core 4 principles, which apply to any role:

Whether you open access to learning platforms, bring in skilled mentors or outside experts, or build an internal program, the point stays the same: give people real chances to grow and learn.

The people around us work on different projects, carry different experience, and face different problems. There is hidden value in sharing what we learn. When you talk through your daily incidents, you teach others, gain new perspectives, and walk into the next challenge better prepared. Technical teams can measure the impact with SPACE metrics, other teams with engagement or knowledge-sharing scores. We run a biweekly EDU session to share lessons and run workshops.

Alongside a learning platform, add other resources that help people develop. Let people go through Gallup reviews to find their strengths and blind spots, and bring in an internal coach to build a stronger, healthier, and psychologically safe team.

What about the workplace itself? Nice offices, daily refreshments, somewhere to play or work out. All good, but none of it is the whole story.

A company with fully engaged people needs open communication that shares both good and bad news. Toxic positivity, and worse, silence, can wreck culture and grind down morale. Work to stop rumors and keep them from spreading, but not by banning them, that's a sure way to fail. Only open, clear, honest communication adds value for your people, and rumors fade on their own.

A place where people freely share ideas, ask questions, and raise concerns, where mistakes become lessons, different views are welcome, and creativity has room to grow, lifts engagement and loyalty. Over the past decade, professor Amy Edmondson has been a leading voice for this idea, though the research goes back further, for example W.A. Kahn's work in 1990.

How do you tell whether your people feel safe at work? The goal isn't a perfect score. It's a place where these conversations happen openly and problems get addressed. To really understand and improve psychological safety, measure it consistently over time. Professor Amy Edmondson suggests a seven-item survey on a 7-point scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree", which you can share anonymously:

Run the survey regularly, for example quarterly, to track how psychological safety changes and spot what needs work.

People spend more than 1,700 hours a year at work. Over a lifetime that adds up to roughly 76,600 hours, about 3,195 days. A lot, right? That's why it matters to choose the right job and to help build a friendly, safe, supportive workplace. Even you, the reader and a regular team member, shape that environment. If something bothers you or you disagree with someone, don't sit on it. Be the one who starts the change.

If you want people to improve how they think and act, show them it's safe to share their thoughts, even the negative ones, and be open to shaping the workplace around what they actually need. Only an open, unprejudiced workplace lifts engagement and productivity, and helps build the workplace of the future.

Treat your people well and build a people-centric workplace.