This month has been a particularly brutal one at Acme Ltd. We’ve had two of our longest-standing developers leave: one to follow his girlfriend to her new job in the US, and another as he’s going to help out his parent’s family business. Both were perfectly admirable reasons for leaving a job, but how does that impact the morale of the department? How can people feel secure in their jobs when even the stalwarts are leaving?

Bury your head in your cubicle.

This is an easy one to do, just put your head down and type/code/work. Leave your cubicle only to attend meetings and to leave for the day.

Avoid your boss at all costs.

Some people like to play the avoidance game, in the hopes that it will save them from being canned as well. Oops, wait a minute, this would only work if people were being laid off, not if they were leaving on their own. Never mind.

Berate the soon-to-depart staff and get them to leave earlier.

Vent your pent up frustration and anger by berating the people who are leaving. Make them feel so awful for leaving you “in the weeds” that they actually leave earlier than planned.

Laugh immediately when you read this post.

In case you didn’t figure it out, I am using the laughter defence in this post and at my workplace. Acme Ltd. was a great company to work for before these two touchstones left, and it will still be a great place to work once they leave. Sure, we’ll be a little lighter in the knowledge department, but all of my developer colleagues are good at what they do, and even better than that, they are great at rolling with the punches and making the best out of any situation. We still have fun when the release isn’t behaving, when the site is down or when SVN is won’t let anyone commit any code.

There it is, when life gives you lemons, instead of making lemonade, throw them back!