I'm not planning on staying long anymore - how do I communicate this?

Question

I work internally as a Software Developer for a medium-sized (300+ employees), stable company. This is my first job after getting my degree, and I joined a team of 3 other developers. The reason I was recruited was because the manager wanted to rely less on external IT companies and retain knowledge inside the internal IT team. The 3 other developers never started out as developers, per say. They all sort of stumbled into it. As a result, I'm the most knowledgeable, and have, as a result, taken a role of tutor and code reviewer in addition to my own programming.

One of the other 3 developers has quit - which is fine, we can handle the workload.

However, I feel that I will soon be hitting some sort of 'knowledge' cap of what I can learn programming-wise. This scares me for the following reasons:

• I will get bored, which will mean I will be less productive.
• I don't want to stop learning. Making in-house projects start-to-finish is fun, up to the point where it gets repetitive.

We have a job opening to replace the developer who quit. However, my manager has just got a budget increase and has been noticing that we can hold the fort. He's leaning towards closing the job opening, and going back to hiring more external help. He is now asking whether we (the 3 remaining programmers) agree. Which leaves me conflicted.

I am pretty much set on not staying any longer than 2016 Q2, because of the aforementioned reasons. While the workplace is awesome, I have no desire to settle and stick to what I know.

As such, I'm all for getting a fourth developer, so my departure will go smooth because "the new guy" will be properly trained. However, none of my colleagues seem to think so. They're talking about all the upcoming "challenges" (more of the same), and don't seem to consider I won't be here for all of them.

So; how do I communicate this? I want them to strongly consider leaving the job opening open, without causing a ruckus by

Answer 1

Is it part of your role and responsibility to manage the resource levels within the department/team and the risk levels around work pipeline vs. resource pool?

If not, and it doesn't sound like it from your description, then it is not your problem. You don't need to share your plans or determine a plan to effectively cover workload after you have left a year from now- that is your manager's job.

Part of a manager's job is to balance the resource pool against the future work pipeline to ensure you always have enough of the former to cover the latter. Part of doing that is to understand the risk of absence among personnel (sick, maternity, long-term absence or departures) and plan for these eventualities.

It is admirable and understandable that you might not want to leave your colleagues exposed, but it is not your job to handle that. As is often said here- if the company suddenly decided you were surplus to requirements your manager might feel bad about letting you go, but they still would. You need to safeguard and protect your own long term interests.

Answer 2

I think you should state it to your manager along the lines of "What if myself or [other experienced dev] were promoted out of the team? Would the team have enough retained knowledge to recover?" This at least makes them consider that possibility without stating that you'd be looking to leave the company and maybe even opens the door to discussing a more interesting career path for you.