1. Never fear employee churn again

Are you a little nervous about losing your most Sr. Engineers? You know who I’m talking about - the ones who know EVERYTHING about your codebase. Losing them would create a serious slowdown in new feature work and bug remediation. Add time for recruiting , interviews, onboarding, and your new hire getting familiar with the code — it’s easy to see how the cost of losing these rockstars is high.[1][2]

Seasoned engineering managers know this, and in ways they’ve come to accept it. Turnover is so frequent that it’s just become a way of life in the tech world (as high as 21.7% in some cases!)[2]. At Sourcetape we think that the pain and cost associated with employee churn can be significantly reduced. Sourcetape reduces the time needed for new engineers to get familiar with your codebase. How? Sourcetape is an extremely low friction way for your engineers to generate feature-rich screen recordings without even leaving their IDE. BUT it’s so much more than that. Sourcetape is made by software engineers and engineering managers who truly understand the problem, so it’s way more than just a screen recorder.

Some of Sourcetape's most notable features:

• Voiceover allows engineers to explain their thought process
• Easily generate workflow diagrams with a few clicks
• All of your Sourcetapes are cataloged in one easy-to-access dashboard
• You can interact with Sourcetapes - the actual code appears during playback!
• Engineers can add additional notes to any point in the recording
• It’s secure. Use our self-hosted option so your source code never leaves your network
• Git branch and commit are logged so engineers know what version of the code the recording is for

2. Reduce your "Bus Rate"

Sourcetape makes it seamless and quick for engineers to document code paths and their thought processes. When your engineers watch their teammate’s Sourcetapes they create a shared understanding of the code, which in turn reduces your bus rate.

It’s just like pulling up a chair to their colleague’s desk and getting a walkthrough of the code! This proactive knowledge sharing allows you to reduce single points of failure on your teams. Plus Sourcetapes are recorded right in the IDE, so they’re more detailed and tech-oriented than written documentation could ever be.

3. Less talking, more doing!

When we’re asking our teams to deliver new features and fix bugs, writing technical documentation is the last thing anyone wants to do. It’s a “necessary evil” and they may not even be good at it.[3] You’d rather have your engineers writing new code rather than writing documentation. Your engineers would rather be writing code too!

When a teammate asks for details about a code path or a particular file, your engineers can simply share the relevant Sourcetape. Don’t Repeat Yourself doesn’t just have to just apply to code. Sr. Engineers who really know a codebase tend to become the go-to-person and end up explaining things over and over. This is an added incentive for your engineers to record Sourcetapes. Less talking, more coding!

4. Onboard new engineers faster

Introduce playing Sourcetapes to your onboarding process and your new engineers can be walked through the code by your most senior engineer’s Sourcetapes with no added time or cost. Since Sr. Engineers are typically busy coding and solving complex problems, they can only offer so much guidance in one day. New joiners can get familiar with the code right away using Sourcetapes. No need to wait until your Sr. Engineer has availability to guide them!

5. Meet your deadlines and delight your customers!

Sourcetape at its core is a tool that Engineering Managers like yourself can use to keep your teams on track. Sourcetape reduces knowledge silos, keeps your engineers on task, and provides a solid contingency plan for employee churn. All of these are all critical to delivering on time and under budget. Let Sourcetape help you and your team shine!