
Ask HN: Your lead developer got bored. What to do? - tablet
Imagine you have a company with 50 people and several development teams. One of the best developers get bored and want to leave a company if there will be no interesting tasks. What you will do in this case? try to retain him somehow? let him go?
======
jon-wood
Looking at your comments here it seems that you're not really that interesting
in keeping him.

Someone suggested 20% time, your response was to say that it was on hold for a
year. Someone else suggested letting him work on something he finds
interesting for a while, you say that there are a few things he'd like to do,
but they're not 100% aligned with what the company wants to do.

Ultimately, you need to decide just how much this person means to you. Do you
want their attention 4 days a week, with 1 day being spent on something they
find interesting, or do you want them 0 days a week. Either is valid, but
you're going to have to choose.

~~~
tablet
We just don't want to have special policies for special people. All developers
are equal and it will look strange to give 20% free time back for a single
developer and hold this for all other developers.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>All developers are equal

In which case let them leave and replace them with another equal developer.
Though I am confused as to why you call them one of your best and yet say all
developers are equal.

~~~
mrcold
Best when it comes to skills. Equal when it comes to pay, benefits and
professional relationship. That's how most companies see it anyway.

~~~
peri
There are lots of ways to make people feel good while keeping pay, benefits,
and professional relationships professional. Not knowing where OP is from or
where their company operates, I'd give them wide deference in terms of
ensuring they follow the law, but talking to an HR professional (who should be
involved at this point anyway if there are dozens of folks) can give a lot of
good ideas on how to make people feel special without breaching contracts.

As a practical example, Dynamighty listed every full time Dynamighty worker in
alphabetical order on CounterSpy, but then called out individuals by their
major contributions within the longer credits. It's not a perfect system, but
it provided a good balance between giving due credit to folks who worked long
hours for equity and those who were making normal salaries the whole time.

------
mrcold
I was in his shoes and decided to leave. And there were only two things I
wanted in order to stay:

1\. Skin in the game. Equity, profit sharing, guaranteed monthly bonus based
on performance. Doesn't really matter as long as we share. Because if I'm good
and work hard, I want to enjoy the results too. A fixed salary is not going to
cut it anymore.

2\. Freedom over actual implementation and veto power. You may be good at
running a company. But I'm great at building things. So when you give me a
task, don't tell me how to do it. Yes, we can talk about it and make decisions
together. But I must always have the last word. Because, more often than not,
I understand things better than everybody else. Including you.

If your lead developer does leave, expect a major slowdown, morale decrease
and even further resignations. On paper he might look like a replaceable
asset. But your development team doesn't see it that way. We're all humans.
And relationships matter.

~~~
Mandatum
I wish I read this years ago when I left a company. Being young and stupid
however, I doubt either of these things would've been afforded to me.

------
simonswords82
There's a number of ways to compensate your best developer in ways not
necessarily money orientated:

\- Give them flexi-hours. They can come and go as they please so long as
either a minimum amount of time is worked or better still they are measured on
output and not on time

\- Give them the opportunity to work on research and development (aka 20%
time)

\- Give them the opportunity to work on problems that your company has. If you
have 50 people and several development teams I'm sure there are lots of
internal problems this developer could help address

\- Give your developer people to mentor. S/he might relish the opportunity to
help others raise their game to his/her levels of awesomeness

If none of that hits the spot, find out what motivates your developer and work
out how to align his/her motivations to the output of the work they go on to
do.

 __Above average developers are not easy to find. You need to make sure that
you 've done everything in your power to keep your best developers onboard as
replacing them is not easy. __

~~~
Mandatum
For me personally I like the R&D option, however in smaller teams with
timelines it always leads to being scrapped because project X needs to be
delivered by Y.

A note to employers around this, let the developer choose the project - even
if it has to be relate-able to the company in some way. If it's a big company
I'd love to go to other areas of the company, meet people in other areas of
work and ask them about their work flow, problems they encounter day-to-day
and if it's interesting and tech-solvable - build a solution!

Or if your devs aren't as "go-get-em" as I appear to be, offer a few examples
that you've researched and offer them the opportunity to do the above.

------
colept
As a developer, the only times I am bored with the work are when there is
nothing that I feel I can contribute or there is no sense of ownership in the
work. If you are just assigning your developer tasks all the time, as a
developer it starts to feel like you're a computer mouse, being dragged from
place to place. It's kind of debilitating because there's a lot of potential
and developers have some insight on angles for creative direction that may not
be taken into consideration. If there's nothing of value we can contribute,
there's no heart in the work.

Give him some opportunities to pitch some ideas, contribute, or find ways to
let the developer be invested in the work. If that is not possible, maybe give
him some leeway to do some personal projects or side projects for the company.

~~~
perdunov
That's a questionable matter. In every project, there is a little interesting
stuff, and the rest is just chores.

Even if you're doing your own project, there will be a bunch of boring
unpleasant work.

~~~
peri
Speaking only for myself, the boring parts of personal/20% work often pay huge
dividends when I go back to non-personal work.

------
this_user
Find out was his or her long-term goals are and what your developer truly
wants. Maybe you can find a way to redefine your developer's role and
responsibilities in a a sufficiently interesting fashion.

I have personally been in a situation where I quit from a company of similar
size because I got bored. First of all, the work wasn't all that challenging
on a technical level even though we got to work with the latest bleeding edge
technologies. The second reason was a lack of room for career advancement due
to a very flat hierarchy. The third reason was a lack of strategic vision for
the company itself. Essentially, I was stuck in a dead end position with
basically no input on the company's strategy. I did propose some ideas that
were later successfully implemented by other companies but ignored or delayed
by mine which was highly frustrating. So, in the end, their attempts to retain
me (and even re-hire me a year later) failed. I actually liked the team, but
the negatives outweighed the positives.

When thinking about this episode some years later, an idea came to me. What I
really wanted was to have more input, more responsibilities and a way to fix
the problems I saw on several levels of the company. What I should have asked
for was a transfer to product management or possibly a dual role in PM and
development. At the time our product managers were exclusively people with
business backgrounds who often had problems understanding the technical
details as well as possibilities and limitations. With my technical background
I would have been able to help bridge that gap. I would have also had the
management access and strategic input that I wanted and would have most likely
been a more valuable asset in that position than as a pure developer. But I
didn't think of this and neither did they.

The bottom line is that sometimes it can make sense to not only think
vertically about possible career moves but also horizontally. You may not have
a choice when it comes to losing your developer, but said developer may be
even more valuable and happier in a new role.

------
tucaz
In my personal experience this kind of boredom means that he wants to play and
not to work.

I have seen more than 10 or 15 cases of developers who were hired to develop
and evolve a product and get "bored" after they learn the new tech that
brought them to the company/project and use this as an excuse to not finish
the project or keep running the product/company.

I'm not saying that keeping working with new tech or new projects is a bad
thing, but it is usually a bad thing for companies to keep such people when
what they need is someone to help the company grows and move forward.

I would suggest you to offer him a position where he could use his
intelligence and tech skills to help solve real problems for the company and
not only program. A few examples:

* Put him in touch with your operational people - If you an e-commerce that ships physical products, let him known and learn how logistics works and what pain points they have

* Make him participate in marketing/product growing meetings and let him help bring more money in

* Enable him to help other developers or fix major problems in the product - not technical problems by themselves, but real problems that slow down the development

If he doesn't want to help maybe he is not a keeper and should be better off
doing consultancy/freelancing projects where usually there is not much
responsibility once the project is finished.

I see great value on being technically safe and capable, but most of the time
what is most valuable is people eager to work and make things go forward for
the company.

~~~
sheepmullet
It's a problem with our industry. Devs want to spend time on activities that
enhance their career. Because there is almost no internal career progression
this means focusing on transferable skills.

Without loyalty, or at the very least aligned incentives, you will never get
the most business value out of developers.

Early on in my career I was the sole dev looking after a large legacy system.
For 4 years I worked really hard and added a lot of business value. I was not
rewarded at all; No promotions, minimal pay increases, no respect etc. All the
while my tech skills were getting out of alignment with what the industry was
paying well for.

~~~
infinii
It's your problem that you couldn't convince them of your worth and get fair
compensation. And I don't mean that you hold the keys to the kingdom and ask
the king for ransom. Simply quantify the benefits that your system provides
and prove that it's in their best interests to have you working there.

~~~
sheepmullet
"It's your problem that you couldn't convince them of your worth and get fair
compensation."

If a company doesn't respect, value, and trust their developers it is very
difficult to change their minds (as a developer). I tried for over a year.

I've found it is far simpler and more profitable to focus on the skills the
market values rather than focusing on what is best for a specific business.

------
logfromblammo
As a developer, I see my boredom as a sign of gross mismanagement.

I'm not altogether lazy. I can always find something to do on my own that is
at least tangentially related to the goals of the company. If nothing else
comes to mind, I try to find and retire some technical debt, because there's
always some technical debt lurking around somewhere.

So when I get bored, it is because I have been _forbidden_ to do things beyond
what I have been allowed or ordered to do. It is because I feel that any
initiative will be ignored at best, or punished at worst.

Boredom is a subset of frustration. If there are _any_ bored developers at
your company, you need to take a long, hard look at how you allocate their
time. And if the _lead_ is bored--the person who should nominally have the
most flexibility and autonomy on the dev team--I guarantee that some people
lower on the totem pole already have their resumes out there.

------
probablyfiction
I think your best bet is to part ways with the developer on good terms. The
problem you don't seem to see is your company's culture. There have been
several good suggestions in this thread (20% time, flexible hours, mentoring,
etc), but you haven't been receptive to any of them.

You want your developer to stay there, but only on your terms. Your developer
is saying that they need an interesting challenge, but you don't have any to
give, and you've taken away a significant perk for the good of "the company."
That's a big problem, and unless I miss my guess you're going to start losing
other developers as well. A company is made up of people, and if your people
aren't happy then they are going to go elsewhere.

------
stpe
I've been in a very similar situation myself. Being the lead developer from a
very early stage, working with shaping the product and the business itself as
well as actually making it happen by coding as well as heading the development
team.

However, in my case, a larger company group was the sole owner of the company
and a significant part of the vision and goal went out the window after launch
due to internal politics in the company group. This was demotivating because
frankly, a large part of my purpose of getting on board disappeared. So this
is one part to ask yourself, in terms of organisation/vision/company goals -
has anything changed?

In terms of tasks, I'm motivated by actually creating value - shipping things
that made sense business wise. During the first 1-2 years this was the case,
but when strategy was changed to cut costs (yet again due to internal company
group politics of the owner) I felt I didn't really contribute on the level I
wanted (e.g. architecting/developing large scale, heavy traffic modern web
application versus copy/paste the nth banner network JavaScript code for yet
another ad).

Also, does the person have a niche in their role they particularly excel in
and enjoy? Has it changed? In my case I very much was the bridge between
business development and technical development. Getting tech people to
understand business value of what to do, and work with business developers to
leverage technology. When the company cut down on more or less all development
and went into maintenance mode this opportunity kind of disappeared. Another
take on this is that people may enjoy and thrive during different phases of a
company.

In the end I asked myself - in the end of the year, would I feel I've made the
most out of it in terms of personal development, experience and pure happiness
if I continued with this - or would it be better to leave.

------
gamechangr
Keep him for sure. Give him some freedom to work on his side projects during
working hours.

Not only will he appreciate this, but it will send a positive message to the
other 50 who are wondering if they will have an interesting career or if they
should be passive looking for other opportunities.

~~~
tablet
Side projects are fine, we had 20% rule for own projects, but put it on hold
for 1 year to reach our product goals (product is not growing as fast as it
should). So this practice will return soon. It seems he is not ready to wait
for several more months though...

~~~
conradk
You seem to be saying that the project is not moving forward quickly enough
_because_ the developer doesn't work enough.

Are you sure the management / communication / teamwork is not the problem ?
You may be setting expectations at the level that cannot be reached with your
current team and management. Maybe you should set easier targets so that
everybody stays motivated after reaching said targets.

~~~
tablet
Problems are everywhere as in every other company. We have flat hierarchy, no
middle management and almost nobody above developers. They do all technical
decisions and decide how to implement features. Features are selected by
Product board and developers have little influence here.

~~~
legacy2013
That might be a core problem right there. There's no developer influence in
product meetings? While on the business end there might be a need for a
feature, business people are not going to understanding what complexities are
involved in a particular feature. What you might think takes a day could take
3 weeks. On the other hand, you may be passing over useful features you think
are complex but only take a day. If you trust your developers with as much as
you say you do, they should have a voice in your meetings. That may be a way
to retain this lead developers interest

------
monroepe
If you really want to keep him, I would give him free reign on a project he
wants to do. It can either be related to the company or not, but let him do a
side project for work. It can be either a week or a month or more if you are
comfortable. He is probably just burned out. Really I would just try to get to
the root of the problem and see what he wants to change and work with him to
get there.

------
issa
I'm going to go a step beyond and say that the real problem is that your
company is in trouble. You say below that you have suspended 20% time for ONE
YEAR until your product is where you want it to be.

Going by that alone, it sounds like there are serious problems. A year is a
LONG time in development world. If I knew I was going to be working on one
product for a year--and clearly that product was having problems, I'd look for
another job too.

------
Hominem
Let him go on good terms. If he stays with the understanding he can do various
side projects on company time you are both compromising. You get half a
developer and he still has to do tasks he doesn't want to do. This is a recipe
for resentment.

In my experience, every time someone leaves another person blossoms and steps
up. I've seen "irreplaceable" developers come and go, they were all replaced.

------
henrik_w
There may not be anything you can do. In order to grow, sometimes it's just
time to move on. Learn a new system and language, work with new people etc.
Basically I think it's healthy to change jobs once in a while. Personally I
have stayed between 5 and 7 years in one place before I felt that it was time
to move on (even though those places were all great).

------
Sealy
HN: Didn't Java come from bored developers at Sun Microsystems?

Also, didn't Google Maps and also Google Mail, come from a bored developers
20% time?

In line with other suggestions, if you can afford it, give him free reign to
do what he wants with a budget too. It may well be the best thing you ever do
if he really is as good as you say he is.

------
gesman
Give/boost his share of a company.

Then he'll feel that his role is more important than just do-it-all coder.

Alternatively boost his salary. Don't become the next statistical corp where
the only way to get raise is to leave.

~~~
infinii
I couldn't disagree more. Obviously it shouldn't be as drastic as having to
leave to get a raise. But paying your employees more does not guarantee they
will stay or be extra motivated.

[https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-
motiv](https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv)

"Other than its functional exchange value, pay is a psychological symbol, and
the meaning of money is largely subjective. For example, there are marked
individual differences in people’s tendency to think or worry about money, and
different people value money for different reasons (e.g., as a means to power,
freedom, security, or love). If companies want to motivate their workforce,
they need to understand what their employees really value — and the answer is
bound differ for each individual. Research shows that different values are
differentially linked to engagement. For example, income goals based on the
pursuit of power, narcissism, or overcoming self-doubt are less rewarding and
effective than income goals based on the pursuit of security, family support,
and leisure time. Perhaps it is time to compensate people not only according
to what they know or do, but also for what they want."

------
reacweb
Let him go. Tell him you would like he come back in one year or two with new
ideas.

------
pjc50
Less usual suggestion: it sounds like there's plenty going on. Have him mentor
junior developers. Ask him to go and survey the office to find out what
people's coding pain points are, then see if he can smooth them over.

(This works better if he's older, if he's in his 20s and bored then you should
already start looking for his replacement)

~~~
tablet
We don't have junior developers :) He doesn't like mentoring as well, just
hardcore development :)

~~~
AndrewDucker
If you don't have work that needs his skills (and it sounds like that's what
keeps him interested) then do you really need him?

------
scoj
I can empathize with this situation. I don't know if 'boredom' is the right
word for it, but maybe.

I would look at providing more freedom for creativity. If you know the
developer well enough, you know it what angle that creativity could take. It
could be a new language, it could be new technology challenge, or it could be
outside of tech and doing more business/marketing/sales stuff.

Dan Pink had a great talk/video where he talks about what people need:
Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose. [http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-
pink-drive-rs...](http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-pink-drive-
rsa-motivation/)

Try providing more of these things and boredom should go away.

~~~
gaius
_I don 't know if 'boredom' is the right word for it, but maybe._

The word is probably ennui.

~~~
scoj
Oooh, nice new word I've learned now. Thanks!

------
ksherlock
The problem isn't him, it's you. Do the right thing for everyone and quit.

------
Mc_Big_G
Give him 100% freedom to work on whatever he wants for 3-6 months and re-
evaluate.

~~~
tablet
Yes, we decided to do exactly that in the end. We'll see whether it will work
out.

------
LarryMade2
Ask him what would be an interesting task s/he would like to work on. Maybe it
might be interesting to the company too.

~~~
tablet
Yes, there are some tasks, but they somewhat conflicts with current company
goals and he is not sure what will come next (let's say it is clear that for
3-4 months there are some tasks, but then nothing interesting)

~~~
VLM
An excruciatingly boring task can be interesting if you mock up or demo or
test in a new lang or framework or back end or DB or ...

My first scala - play framework project, first toy that tried to do something
real, was an excruciatingly mind numbingly boring engineering raw data form
entry page (like only the C and R letters of CRUD). Playing with a new
framework for a demo/mock up was huge fun.

Beware of the danger of the well known business anti-pattern where the "mock
up" "demo" magically gets promoted to "production" when things spiral out of
control and then things really hit the fan when it breaks or the requirements
expand beyond all imagination. "This temporary mock up will be deleted on June
1st" or whatever probably needs to be on every page and in every header.

------
ianbicking
It's unlikely there are no interesting tasks. It's always possible to go meta
– to solve the problem of solving problems. If the developer is bored, then
there's probably something structural keeping that person from doing that.
Figure it out, clear the way, and it might get better.

------
natch
Have you considered letting him have input into what interesting-to-work-on
technologies get added to upcoming products? I'm not saying that's the best
way to decide what product to make, but you could consider it at least as a
source of ideas.

------
perdunov
How is it possible to be bored in software development - an area that is a
fractal of unsolved problems? The only normal state of a software developer is
"too many things to do", otherwise it is a burn out, or a pathological lack of
creativity.

~~~
agonzalezro
Well, there are business constraints that doesn't allow you to investigate
those fractal of unsolved problems.

Imagine that your work 9 to 5 is creating some CRUD forms, and your company
gets payed because you create those forms so, start investigating by your own
is not a chance anyhow -> YOU GET BORED and you can not change the situation
just by yourself.

~~~
danuker
As others have said, you can go 'meta' and create a script that creates those
forms. Boom! you're being paid to watch a computer do everything for you.

~~~
sheepmullet
A lot of more traditional places will fire you for trying to automate a task
unless you do it on the sly or can do it quickly within a day or two.

~~~
perdunov
True that, but even if I didn't get to implement my ideas, at least my boss
had always been aware of them. There wasn't ever a situation when he'd thought
that I was simply 'bored'.

------
cwt
If you're not completely willing to care about his happiness at the company,
please, don't try and retain him half-heartedly. If he's really great then he
will find something else.

------
chuhnk
How about asking them what they want to do? Ask them what motivates them? What
they want to work on? Making assumptions based on what you think or what other
people want is a mistake.

------
bcg1
If you are in such a spot that you had to cancel 20% time already, and this
person doesn't get it that it is time to buckle down and get to work, best to
let him go before he can do any real damage to your goals.

There's more to being a lead developer than just having coding skills and
technical knowledge. If he is immature enough that getting bored gets in the
way of his work ethic, he has no business being a lead developer at all.

On top of that, if in your entire 50 person company there is not even 1 task
that interests him, might not be such a good fit in general.

~~~
sheepmullet
It sounds like the lead developer has no influence on the overall direction of
the product and no influence over any management related decisions. Even worse
it sounds like the feature set is being handed down on high by a panel.

So the dev is in a dead end role, "forced" to spend his days working on
pointless/less important features. It's no surprise that he is
bored/frustrated.

------
marktangotango
Throw money at him/her. If this doesn't work, they need to go, imo.

------
DwayneSamuels
How is this affecting team morale?

------
floppydisk
You have two problems, a personal motivation problem that will eventually
affect every employee in your organization at some point, and a corporate
problem regarding HR strategy. __Standard IANL /HR professional disclaimers,
no guarantee these will work in this situation/don't know the people or
specifics disclaimers apply __

TL;DR:

1) Boredom is a sign of little intrinsic motivation to continue working.

2) Simply throwing cash at people isn't enough, in fact, it can be counter
productive to think tossing cash is the only solution.

3) People need to feel a sense of autonomy and ownership to value their work.
Find ways to grant it.

4) Don't be arbitrary and capricious with your benefits. Simply yanking
something is a really good way to breed resentment and cause you to lose even
more talent.

5) Consider how you're communicating with your teams. Are you issuing edicts
or asking for help solving problems?

6) Think about how you consider developers: Are they valued contributors whom
you've hired because they bring something to the table you or others don't, or
are they 21st century factory workers who crank out pieces based on edicts
from someone else? How you view them subconsciously determines how you treat
them and as a result, how they will respond to you. It will also determine the
kind of talent you're able to find, hire, and keep long(ish) term.

7) Cultural knowledge and team cohesion matter, you can't simply put a $$$ on
it. High profile developers leaving because of semi-public conflict with the
company will have a ripple effect and you will probably lose several more
lower rung developers who look up to the lead guy because of it. People matter
and don't always act simply because $$$ are on the table.

============================================================

Boredom is a sign of lack of motivation and purpose. The individual in
question does not see their interests and corporate interests being aligned
and thus has little intrinsic motivation to continue working beyond the bare
minimum. As your lead developer, this should worry you significantly because
their attitude will trickle down to the rest of the development team. Simply
firing them sends the message dissent in the ranks isn't tolerated and people
who don't keep with the party line get canned, it's a fast way to lose talent
and the fallout won't be insignificant. In one of your comments you argued
that all great developers need is a high salary, that's patently false--as the
comments here indicate. In psychology speak, this is what's happening.

Only providing a high salary--and removing things like 20% time--are creating
an environment where the only motivation to do work is extrinsic (the
paycheck) and the loss of autonomy (no say in
features/implementation/direction) means employees start believing they are
losing their locus of control over even small things. Over time, this erodes
their intrinsic motivation and interest in doing the work because they
perceive the company views them simply as drones who do nothing except what
the people "in the know" say. Is this correctable? The answer is yes,
providing the company makes some substantial effort to address matters both
immediately and long term for all the developers. First, simply throwing cash
and trying to extrinsically motivate people to like things isn't enough, if
you want truly excited workers you need to work on aligning corporate and
personal objectives. You do this by giving them a sense of autonomy and
control where they feel they have a say in how things are going and get some
skin in the game. You can start simply enough by soliciting your lead
developer's feedback and getting them involved in production meetings where
feature sets are being decided. Lean on their expertise and seriously consider
what they say and solicit their suggestions for features or improvements.
Second, consider setting higher level objectives for development and letting
developers/designers come up with the plan to meet them. You still get your
business objectives accomplished, but the developers and designers feel like
they're contributing something more substantial than punching someone else's
schedule. Third, come up with a way to reward service and talent that allows
people to explore and get a sense of autonomy. Many have mentioned 20% time
where the developer works on other projects. that's one aspect. The other
might be to ask the developer to undertake a solo R&D project where they flesh
out a new system the business has been planning on or version 2.0 of the
product. Anything that gives them a sense of autonomy and ownership. It'll go
a long ways toward helping cure the problem. Perhaps also create a sabbatical
program. After 1 year of "work", employees get a month of R&D time to explore
new technologies and projects on the company dime after they reach "lead" rank
or something like that. There's a reward for longevity and experience.

Corporately, what the heck are you doing? Simply throwing cash at people
doesn't get them to stay for the long term. They need to buy into a vision and
believe you want them to succeed. It's a reciprocal relationship. The few
comments you've posted in some of the comment threads here leads me to think--
and I freely admit I could be wrong--you see developers more as Pavlovian
conditioned cogs who exist fulfill some greater business destiny and happen to
reside in human form rather than people capable of contributing to the
organization. For instance, yanking things away because "business objectives
aren't being met" (paraphrase). Hiring someone with the promise of benefit X
(20% time in this case) and then yanking it will lead to resentment and
boredom. If your lead developer is saying he's bored, it's a guarantee others
are thinking it but not saying it out loud or voting with their feet--yet.
Promising to reinstate the benefit, possibly maybe at some near future point,
only makes thing worse because it makes you look arbitrary and capricious as
well as reactive. You took it away, might reinstate it, and might yank it
again in the future. If you're doing it with 20% time, what else might you do
it with?

In light of this, my question is how did you communicate with developers about
the 20% time and how are you communicating with them now? Did you talk to them
and say "guys, we have a problem we need to solve together. We need to up
product performance by X and right now we're at Y. Y'all are in the trenches
and building this thing, how can we work together to get there?" Or did the
conversation go "Guys, product performance is at Y and we need to get to X.
Blah blah blah sacrifice for the team blah blah blah, cutting 20% time to free
up more time to focus on product blah blah blah together we can achieve this.
End Transmission."? The reason is that perceptions matter. One method of
communicating tells the development team you view them as a stakeholder who
has insights you do not and might have solutions to the problem you hadn't
thought of. "Geeze boss, we're blowing a lot of man hours on a couple cosmetic
features not related to the current problem. If we suspend that work, we can
reorient the teams like so, get so many more people involved and chunk up the
workload more efficiently." Then you can have a dialogue about the importance
of the features, business objectives and such so that everyone reaches happy
conclusion. Conversely, sending the message about pulling benefits--that were
probably advertised when you hired--sends the message you see the developers
as a machine you reward or punish for effort and nothing more. Over time, this
mentality results in people being ground down and believing they aren't
valued. As soon as they reach that realization they'll quit and move somewhere
else meaning you'll have major turn over in your development department and
lose a massive amount of corporate knowledge in the process.

Edit: Formatting

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Pizzalover
Stripclubs!

