Working With Creative and Technical People

When I joined a Web3 software consultancy, I realised very quickly that understanding people was not enough.

I came in with a strong HR and psychology foundation, but I also knew that technical environments have their own operating language: sprint planning, technical debt, architecture decisions, delivery pressure, and the deep craft behind what can look like small technical choices.

At first, I thought my role was to bring HR into the engineering world. Over time, I realised it was the opposite. My role was to understand the engineering world first, and then adapt HR to support it.

The lesson was not that HR needs to become technical. It was that HR needs enough curiosity and commercial context to design people systems that actually fit the work.

Over four years, I worked alongside software engineers, product teams, and highly specialised technical professionals. Looking back, I do not think what kept people engaged had much to do with office perks or Friday drinks. The strongest teams shared four characteristics: clarity, autonomy, high standards, and trust.

Clarity Creates Confidence

One of the biggest sources of frustration I observed was not difficult work. It was uncertainty.

• What does good performance look like?
• What am I working towards?
• How do I progress my career?
• Why has the business made this decision?

As HR professionals, we often underestimate how motivating clarity can be. During my time at Labrys, we invested in career pathways, salary frameworks, and clearer expectations around progression. Engineers did not necessarily want promotion every year. They wanted to understand what growth looked like, what strong contribution meant, and how decisions were being made.

The same applied to business decisions. Sometimes leadership needed to prioritise delivery over experimentation, or make trade-offs that were not immediately popular. Those conversations became much easier when people understood the commercial reason behind the decision.

People rarely resist honest decisions. They resist decisions they do not understand.

Autonomy Fuels Innovation

One thing I admired most about software engineers was their curiosity. The best engineers were constantly thinking: questioning assumptions, exploring new technologies, and looking for better ways of solving problems. That curiosity was not a distraction from the business. It was part of the value the business was selling.

Trying to control that curiosity through excessive process or micromanagement would have been counterproductive. The better question was how to channel it without compromising delivery.

Friday technical talks gave engineers a platform to share knowledge. Conferences exposed people to emerging ideas and external standards. Research and development initiatives created room to experiment while keeping client delivery protected. These initiatives were not perks dressed up as culture. They were business-relevant ways of keeping technical capability alive.

Autonomy is not complete freedom. It is enough ownership for talented people to solve meaningful problems, with enough direction to connect that effort to the organisation's goals.

High Standards Create Belonging

One lesson that surprised me early on was how much technical professionals value standards. Not bureaucracy. Standards.

Strong engineering cultures are not created by writing a policy. They are created through repeated rituals that show what good looks like: code reviews, sprint retrospectives, knowledge-sharing sessions, peer feedback, mentoring, and architecture discussions.

From the outside, some of these rituals can look procedural. Inside the team, they often carry a deeper cultural message: we care about the quality of the work, and we care enough to help each other improve it.

High standards do not discourage talented people. They attract them.

Trust Enables Everything Else

If there is one lesson that sits above everything else, it is trust. Without trust, autonomy becomes risk. Without trust, feedback becomes criticism. Without trust, performance management becomes compliance. Without trust, culture becomes a slogan.

Trust is not created through annual engagement surveys. It is built through consistent leadership: explaining difficult decisions, admitting mistakes, following through on commitments, and being willing to have honest conversations rather than comfortable ones.

For HR, trust also means becoming useful in the moments that matter. It means helping managers prepare for hard conversations, translating employee feedback into action, and building frameworks that create clarity without killing the autonomy that makes technical teams effective.

One of the biggest compliments I received during my time at Labrys was not about implementing a framework or solving a specific HR issue. It was when people from across the business, many who were not part of my team, began seeking my advice because they trusted my judgement. That trust was earned through consistency.

A Different Perspective on Retention

People often ask what keeps highly technical professionals engaged. In my experience, the answer is not one thing. It is the environment.

The strongest technical cultures I have worked with created environments where people understood the mission, had the freedom to solve meaningful problems, were surrounded by high standards, and trusted the people they worked alongside.

Everything else became easier: recruitment, performance, career development, and even difficult conversations. Not because those things became simple, but because they were happening inside a clearer and more trusted system.

Final Thoughts

One of the biggest lessons I took from working in technology is that HR does not need to become the technical expert. It needs to become curious enough to understand the work, the operating rhythm, the business pressures, and what motivates specialists to do their best work.

The role of HR is not to make creative and technical people fit generic organisational frameworks. It is to help build an organisation where creative and technical people can do the best work of their careers, in a way the business can sustain.