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

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.