Attraction, Retention and the Succession Problem Nobody is Planning For

One of the biggest stories in the industry recently was Meta's move into the cloud market, recruiting a leader who spent nearly two decades helping AWS scale its platform. It is a reminder of something we are seeing play out across the market right now.

Hyperscalers, neocloud companies, developers, operators, and contractors are all pursuing the same experienced people. The pool has not grown at the same pace as the demand. And the challenge is not just finding the right people anymore. It starts well before that.

Attraction is harder than it looks

Getting the right person through the door requires companies to move quickly, pay above market, and make a genuinely compelling case. But compensation is only part of it. The fundamentals of the business have to be credible too. Candidates at senior level are doing their own due diligence. They want to see a clear pipeline of projects, secured power, a strong leadership team, and a vision they can believe in.

Getting all of that right at the same time, while moving at the speed the market demands, is genuinely difficult. Companies that are slow to make decisions or unclear on their own story lose candidates to organisations that are not.

Retention is the next problem

A strong executive can be fully committed today and receive a compelling offer next month. We are seeing it regularly. Experienced development managers, construction directors, and operations leaders are being approached by new entrants, neocloud platforms, and development companies who are building from scratch and offering equity and scope that established operators find hard to match.

Retention needs to go beyond compensation. Meaningful work, a clear long-term vision, strong leadership, and genuine investment in people's development all play a role. Executives stay where they feel they are building something significant and where they are trusted to lead it.

Some practical approaches worth considering include structured long-term incentive plans with meaningful vesting periods, regular conversation about career trajectory within the organisation, and creating genuine ownership of outcomes rather than just responsibility for delivery.

Building redundancy before you need it

Even with attraction and retention done well, people will leave. The market is too active to assume otherwise. The question is whether the organisation is ready when it happens.

Building redundancy into critical skill areas is something very few companies in this sector do proactively. Doubling up on key roles, either by developing internal successors or carrying an additional senior hire in high-risk positions, is increasingly a business continuity decision rather than a luxury. Losing a critical development director or engineering lead with no successor identified means months of disruption at exactly the moment a project cannot afford it.

The organisations that will build and sustain the strongest teams in this market are the ones treating talent with the same strategic rigour they apply to power procurement and supply chain planning. Not as something to solve when a problem appears, but as something to build continuously before it does.

If you want to talk through your talent strategy, succession planning, or have a specific hire that needs to move quickly, we would be pleased to help.