On the Toptal.com site they've posted an article from Fernando Martinez with some suggestions about how to attract and retain software developers. The ideas cover the full range - all the way from the job posting/interview process out to how to keep them with the company and help them thrive in their role.

Management is all about people. Whether managers or employees, both are thinking about how to achieve their personal and professional goals. The combination of these goals and the personal traits of the people involved give shape to relationships that, in time, can be positive, productive, and fulfilling, or sometimes just plain stressful, demanding, and conflict-prone.

[...] This is especially true in managing software developers, because of their job’s technical complexity and creative nature, compressed into often narrow timelines for producing results. [...] In this article, we will focus on the main management aspects, rather than on the technical ones, that we think should be considered by anyone who wants to be successful in managing to retain software developers.

He starts with a look at how to attract and hire the right people for the roles you're trying to fill with suggestions about the interview process and the job offer. Next he gets into recommendations about managing the team itself and the importance of training, organization and communication. The article then goes on to cover other topics like conflict management, keeping up motivation and assigning objectives/follow up.

Paul Jones has posted his thoughts about factory behavior in PHP applications (well, really any kind of application as it's a pan-language concept). He suggests that factories should only create the objects requested and not persist them.

In a recent Reddit conversation, some of us went off on a tangent about factories. I maintained then, and do now, that a “factory” always-and-only returns a new instance. If you have a “factory” that returns anything other than a new instance, it’s not a factory alone. In the case of factory methods, it is a factory + accessor; in the case of factory objects, it is a factory + registry. A “factory” (whether a factory method or factory object) is one way to separate object creation from object use.

He gives an example of a case where an object needs to be created for a "doSomething" method. His first example shows the creation of the "Item" inline, mixing the creation and use of the object into the same place. He replaces this with a "factory" class/method that only returns the new "Item" requested. He points out that a factory method that retains the object (like as a class property) has the same problem as the first example - retention. Instead he suggests an intermediate "collaborator" that splits out the creation and retention once again.

On FogCreek.com they've posted a new interview they recorded with PHP community member Cal Evans about how to find, hire and retain developers for your business.

We’ve interviewed Cal Evans, author of ‘Culture of Respect’, and we discuss how to find, hire, and retain Developers. He gives tips on where to find great developers, how to write job ads which appeal to them and how best to interview them. We also discuss ways to build a great team culture that can help startups and growing businesses compete with the big guys for talent.

You can catch the interview in a few different ways - either through the in-page video recording, audio-only over on SoundCloud or you can download it for listening offline.

Rich McIver has provided a guide of sorts for companies out there to help "attract, retain and utilize rock star programmers" for their business:

There are plenty of programmers out there, but rock star programmers? They are few and far between. Learn how to locate these gems and keep them happy with the resources below.

The article is broken up into five different sections:

• Job Sites
• Locating Quality Programmers
• Screening
• Care and Feeding of Programmers
• Other Considerations

There's tons of links under each with some good advice not only for those doing the interview but also for the interviewee trying to land the job.

Rich McIver has provided a guide of sorts for companies out there to help "attract, retain and utilize rock star programmers" for their business:

There are plenty of programmers out there, but rock star programmers? They are few and far between. Learn how to locate these gems and keep them happy with the resources below.

The article is broken up into five different sections:

• Job Sites
• Locating Quality Programmers
• Screening
• Care and Feeding of Programmers
• Other Considerations

There's tons of links under each with some good advice not only for those doing the interview but also for the interviewee trying to land the job.