As it happens, I feel that my team has hit a rough patch.
Months ago we had 2 significant team members leave us. No one planned for it to happen but both have decided to make a career change - one went to get his M.A. and the other decided that he wanted to persue a career in algorithm dev, instead of front end. Both were young developers, but bright, and made greate contribution to our team and product.
When they departed, the team was left extremely understaffed - with me and one other (very) young dev in Israel, and 3 devs in Ukraine. Luckily, we also had our Product Manager and UX person, as well as a server person that joined our team full time.
Since then it has been months and the situation didn't change, unfortunately. I'd like to take this opportunity to describe the way me and the team were handling this situation during this period. Can't say this can be used as any guidance as I'm still in the middle of the problem and it's too early to say if my doing had a positive outcome or not. Yet, perhaps other can relate to my situation and feel better as they are not the only ones facing this kind of challenges.
Challenges:
Small team (5 devs), working remotely.
Product heavily relying on legacy infrastructure we're dying to replace
Urgent need to keep providing features, as competition is fierce
Spending A LOT of time trying to recruit new team members
After fighting my urges to give up and look for a new team, I decided to stick it out. Here is what I did:
Actions:
Talk to the team about how you feel
Make the team proud at what they do
Focus
Pick up the slacks
Ask for help
Repeat.
