[hitsurume]

#1 reason why people leave their jobs is because of their managers. A good IC will stay with a good manager, a good IC will leave instantly with a bad manager, and easily find another job (because they're a good IC, duh). So if all your good people leave, and all the not as good are left, then your team is gonna be in a "rut", and nothing you can do will stop that until you fix what was the real problem, replacing the manager that forced good people to leave. I've been on teams where all the good people leave, and the people who either hate change or don't have as many oppurtunities stay, but just do the bare minimum.

[potta_coffee]

It's really difficult to recover once all the good ones have left. How do you attract good devs after that? If they interview onsite, they will see the warning signs if they have any experience. I've wondered this a lot because at my last company, management pretty much drove off anyone competent. Not just developers, but across departments.

[hitsurume]

Assuming you're in the position of power, you have to clean house in your company / department and weed out all the bad management / policies that drove people out in the first place. Then, you in theory will have a large amount of budget to work with (since people have left, and people have been fired/let go) and you can use that budget to incentivize good people to work there. Competitive salaries, equity, benefits etc. A lot of good engineers like small teams / companies because they believe they can make a bigger impact on the culture and direction of the company.