“Hire someone with the right skills, pay the price for their immediate productivity and deal with the rest later.” It feels like Big Tech has been using that approach for years, gradually driving up wages for senior profiles in the process.

Is there even another path? Or are we doomed to pay top dollar if we want top talent in our organization? I'm happy to say that there is another approach, and I've been lucky enough to find myself in an organization that lives and breathes the exact opposite of what big tech is doing. Through hard work, experimentation and constant improvement, we have managed to create a culture where we no longer struggle to attract, grow and retain the talent we so desperately need.

A lot of this culture is being driven by regular developers. You can take away some of our learnings, and start implementing them in your company, whatever your role is. That's what makes it so powerful. Doing so can shift the mentality from "us vs. them" to "together we grow".

In this talk, I’ll talk about the journey we’ve gone through the last decade, as well as other companies in the field with similar philosophies. I’ll touch on learning culture, retention, wage policies, coaching and growth. I’ll warn you in advance: none of this is going to be easy. But at the other end of it lies a future where developers and the company grow together. And that is worth fighting for…