Software engineers are quitting their jobs. LinkedIn has found that IT has the highest turnover rate among all industries, at 13.2%. While tech giants like Google and Microsoft offer handsome packages to attract software engineers, the data shows many of them cannot retain the tech talent to stay with them long after joining.
Software engineers are leaving
The following are the average number of years software engineers stay in the top 10 tech giants:
- Meta – 2.02 Years
- Google – 1.90 Years
- Oracle – 1.89 Years
- Apple – 1.85 Years
- Amazon – 1.84 Years
- Twitter – 1.83 Years
- Microsoft – 1.81 Years
- Airbnb – 1.64 Years
- Snap Inc. – 1. 62 Years
- Uber – 1.23 Years
Why do software developers leave?
According to Payscale’s Compensation Best Practices Report, 70 percent of companies in the tech industry have experienced labor shortages or more trouble attracting talent in 2021 than in previous years. Additionally, 44 percent believe insufficient pay increases are what makes them lose their talent.
Lack of growth is the main reason for their quits: Software engineers are likely to leave an employer if they don’t feel happy about their career advancement. 31.5 percent of software developers said they would leave their job if it doesn’t give them enough development opportunities or if the projects they’re in charge of lack challenges and sound boring.
Software developers are quitting for better packages: 22.4 percent of tech personnel are willing to switch jobs for better offers. Half of the millennials say they will accept an offer out of the blue if it gives better pay or benefits.
Lack of Fit: 20.2 percent are willing to quit due to the company culture issues. Office politics, discrimination, and harassment are reasons software engineers don’t want to stay at a company.
Management issues: Software developers tend to quit their jobs when they have to handle too much pressure at their current ones. Nearly 20 percent will leave if they don’t feel they are being trusted or valued by their teams.
What motivates software engineers to stay?
Many factors determine how your software engineers evaluate the decision to stay at your company versus switching to another. These can include location and workplace flexibility to relationships with the team. Yet what matters most to them is how they feel about working for you as software engineers.
Do your software developers feel valued?
This can be evaluated by:
- How are the software engineers treated as human beings at your company?
- How appreciated and fair do they feel for the work that they do? Both mentally and financially?
In one of our recent articles, we shared how much software engineers dislike being forced to work the way they don’t like. Many organizations can substantially reduce turnover by supporting their employees’ choices. Forty percent of Singapore companies offer remote-friendly to their established software engineers and newcomers.
If you are unsure about your software engineers’ experiences and preferences, find ways to hear them out. It can be done by doing a survey or a catch-up with your tech employees. Once you have the answer, make changes to build a more rewarding work culture that your software engineers love.
Also, bear in mind that, in any case, employment is a contract between a worker and a business. Fair and competitive pay is table stakes for employees of any industry, not just in IT. Being underpaid hurts software engineers’ feelings. Even if everything else about their job is awesome, your most committed software developers won’t stay if they are underpaid.
Know your competitive advantages
While putting a well-known company on resumes feels fantastic to some software engineers, many feel the urge to strike out and make their mark on a smaller organization where they can have a bigger impact on cutting-edge tech and more challenges to solve.
So if your company is a startup or a small-sized tech company, to compete with giant firms that could afford to pay much more, raising salaries so no one would ever want to leave may not be the move you want to take.
However, showing the (potential) software engineers how vital their roles are to the team, giving them a clear view of their career ladder, and ensuring your company’s support for their career advancement can help reduce turnover and attract tech talent.
Studies also point out that companies that offer pay transparency have lower turnover rates. Also, for development teams competing against bigger tech employers in Singapore, hiring remote software engineers in emerging tech talent hubs like Vietnam can help better their software engineers’ tenure and hiring costs.
Improve your software engineers’ tenure
The road to fair pay and rewarding work culture to retain tech talent is neither easy nor inexpensive. Thus, it’s not surprising that more tech companies are looking for alternatives rather than doing it themselves. One of the most sound options that SMEs and startups in Singapore have used is partnering with tech recruitment firms – not just any firm doing staffing alone but ones that can help them both in their talent attraction and retention.
Inspius combines candidate assessment and after-hire service to help Singapore companies get the right remote software engineers in Vietnam and increase their retention rate, which is correlated with lower turnover.
Ready to learn more? Get in touch with us today.
