Developer Lifecycle: Treat your people well and build a people-centric workplace

Welcome to our article series on mastering the developer lifecycle. From recruitment to offboarding, we’ll explore how to create an exceptional developer experience at every stage.

With a well-established lifecycle, developers can become more productive and happier, reducing turnover, preventing headaches, and saving you a lot of money.

Don’t expect official studies from us — just our tips, which have been proven to work and are developer-approved.

Although we focus on developers, most of these tips will benefit any role.

Introduction

You’ve probably seen this trend before: HR terms with a common theme of “quiet”—quiet quitting, quiet hiring, quiet firing… But why is that the case?

Based on a study, 57% of employees feel undervalued at work. And the reasons behind this? It’s often due to poorly defined competencies, infrequent feedback or 1:1s with key personnel, or a lack of transparency throughout the company. It sounds like improving the workspace doesn’t require that much, does it?

The main 4 areas for a fantastic “developer experience” at your company

1. Active listening and engagement: 

Build a stable platform where your employees are actively listened to. It’s not just about being present, but having a sophisticated platform where employees are heard. So what more can you do besides regular ENPS surveys and such?

Implement “buddy checks” as a part of your company culture

What’s behind buzzwords like “buddy checks”? Nothing groundbreaking—just regular well-being check-ins with your teammates. In our HR department, employees are divided among team members who meet with them regularly through short meetings, lunches, or coffee breaks. These sessions provide employees with an opportunity to share how they’re doing, how they feel about the company, discuss their progress, and outline any action steps needed to improve their situation.

Make time for regular feedbacks

Regular feedback is crucial for growth and engagement, whether it comes from teammates, team leaders, or managers. Equally important is understanding the psychology behind feedback — Carol Dweck’s research reveals that individuals with a growth mindset see feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve, while those with a fixed mindset may perceive it as criticism.

To make feedback more effective, use structured frameworks like SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) or GROW (Goal-Reality-Options-Way Forward). For larger teams, consider leveraging automated tools like the Matter app to collect comprehensive feedback and track progress over time. Remember, feedback isn’t just about highlighting areas for improvement—it’s about fostering a continuous learning environment where people feel valued, supported, and empowered to grow.

1-to-1 meetings with key personnel

It doesn’t matter how often it happens—what matters is that it does happen. Even when you’re super busy, regular 1-on-1 meetings can significantly boost engagement and motivation.

Sometimes, these meetings might feel a bit ineffective, as you realize the entire time was spent… well, just chatting. To make these sessions more purposeful, we’ve created cards that propose thoughtful questions and highlight key areas to focus on during your conversation. They help guide discussions toward meaningful topics, such as where you’d like to grow and what kind of feedback you’re looking for.

Commercial break >> “If you are interested in the cards mentioned above, contact us!”  <<

2. Foster Team Culture and Connection

Find the right glue to connect your people. When a mission statement or company values aren’t set in stone, it becomes even more essential — sometimes the only way — to build a strong company culture.

Create space for celebrating achievements

Instead of speaking about rituals in development like retrospectives, standups, and so on, we would rather talk about rituals as an underrated part of a team culture. Create space to give kudos, celebrate achievements or shoutout to that awesome colleague. Even a small success should be mentioned, as it shows that even any effort is much appreciated.

Arrange team get-togethers and informal interactions

Don’t let your enthusiasm stop there. Make an effort to organize get-togethers where coworkers can connect, share personal or professional stories, joke around, and build bonds and friendships. These gatherings could include visiting exhibitions, scheduling regular after-work beers, sharing lunch, taking coffee breaks, or watching favorite TV shows together.

The next tip might help you make this even easier.

Encourage genuine expressions of personality and diversity

Team spirit is an essential part of any company culture. While it’s sometimes rooted in company values, it often goes beyond them, revealing more about the people than lengthy descriptions of mission, vision, or values. Most importantly, it creates an environment where employees can be their authentic selves.

How does it look?

• passion for all kinds of innovations
• similar taste in music or food
• being positive towards after-work activities
• love for dogs
• guilty pleasures, like watching reality shows

How to support it?

Just let people be their authentic, genuine selves. Show them that your company is a safe space for uniqueness and diversity. By fostering these qualities, you’ll build an empathetic workplace and cultivate loyal, engaged employees.

3. Continuous growth and development

Even though it might require extra effort, always provide time, space, and resources for your employees to learn and grow. One of the main reasons people feel undervalued at work is a lack of opportunities for career development. In such cases, it can seem as though the company doesn’t see them as part of its future, leading to feelings of demotivation and disengagement.

The main 3 areas where you have to let your people grow are:

1. Hard skills area: for a better orientation, build a structure of competency models that people and their leaders should follow. While developers might track their growth through DORA metrics, sales teams might focus on conversion rates, and designers on user satisfaction scores, the key is having clear, role-specific indicators of improvement.
2. Soft skills area: based on company and culture values and other skills necessary for the specific role (e.g., empathy, communication, responsibility, problem-solving, and so on). Use frameworks like SPACE to measure improvements in collaboration and communication, adaptable to any department's needs.
3. Leadership track: not everyone would have the tag “leader” in his CV, but almost everyone should take leadership responsibilities as their own. Practices like problem-solving, the ability to give feedback, project management, or organizational skills may be helpful in every role's daily agenda. Track leadership growth through metrics like team engagement scores and successful project completions.

Growth initiatives: 

When designing your growth initiatives, focus on four core elements inspired by the DX Core 4 principles, applicable to any role:

• Regular feedback loops for continuous improvement (e.g., sprint retrospectives for developers, weekly check-ins for sales teams)
• Protected time for focused, deep work (crucial for developers coding, but equally important for writers creating content or analysts preparing reports)
• Manageable learning curves and workload (measured through employee satisfaction surveys and burnout indicators)

Strong team dynamics and support systems (tracked via collaboration metrics and team health checks).

Offer mentorship opportunities

Whether you provide access to professional learning platforms, bring in skilled mentors or industry experts, or create an internal educational program, the most important thing is to offer opportunities for growth and learning.

Implement regular EDU sessions for knowledge sharing

Because people around us work on different projects, have unique experiences, and face different challenges, there’s a hidden treasure in sharing our insights. By discussing your daily incidents, you can teach others, gain diverse perspectives, and be better prepared for the next challenge. While technical teams might measure the impact of these sessions using SPACE metrics, other departments might rely on engagement scores or knowledge-sharing metrics. We’ve scheduled regular biweekly EDU sessions to share lessons learned and participate in workshops.

Use tools like Gallup reviews and identify individual strengths

In addition to an educational platform, try to implement other resources helpful in personal development. Let your employees go through the Gallup reviews and find their strengths and blind spots, and introduce the capacity of an internal coach, with whom you can build a stronger, healthier, and psychologically safe space.

4. Transparency and psychological safety

What about the workspace itself? Yes, nice facilities, daily refreshments, a space where you can play or do some workout… It’s all nice, but it’s not the end-all-be-all. 

Be transparent as much as possible

A company with fully engaged employees must have transparent communication, sharing both good and bad news openly. Toxic positivity, and even worse, silence, can destroy company culture and erode employee morale. Strive to eliminate rumors and prevent their spread, but not by prohibiting them—that’s a sure path to failure. Only open, clear, and sincere communication adds value for your employees and naturally reduces rumors.

Build a space where mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities

An environment where employees are free to express ideas, ask questions, and voice concerns openly—where mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning, diverse perspectives are valued, and innovation and creativity flourish—has a positive impact on engagement and loyalty. Over the past decade, Professor Amy Edmondson has been a key advocate for this approach, although research in this area dates back even earlier, such as W.A. Kahn’s work in 1990.

How can you determine if your employees feel safe at work? The goal isn’t to achieve perfect scores but to foster an environment where these conversations can take place openly and issues are addressed constructively. To genuinely understand and improve psychological safety in your workplace, it’s important to measure it consistently and over time. Professor Amy Edmondson recommends using a seven-item survey with a 7-point scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” with statements that can be distributed anonymously to team members:

1. If I make a mistake in this team, it is often held against me.

2. Our team is able to solve difficult problems and disagreements.

3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.

4. It is safe to take risks within our team.

5. It is difficult to ask other team members for help.

6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.

7. When working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

Regularly conducting this survey (e.g., quarterly) can help you track changes in psychological safety over time and identify areas that need improvement. 

💡Our Tip: Try MatterApp for implementation of this survey, and measure responds continuously or ad hoc with every crucial change in your company.

Conclusion 

People spend more than 1,700 hours per year at work. That adds up to around 76,600 hours or 3,195 days over a lifetime. Sounds like a lot, right? That’s why it’s important to choose the right job and help build a friendly, safe, and supportive workplace. Even you —the reader, a regular team member — are a significant part of this environment. If you dislike something or don’t agree with someone, don’t keep it to yourself. Be the one who initiates change.

To inspire improvement in people’s ideas and actions, show them that it’s safe to share their thoughts—even the “negative” ones—and be open to shaping the work environment to meet their actual needs. Only an open-minded and unprejudiced workspace can boost people’s engagement and productivity, ultimately helping to create the workplace of the future.