A blog post on LinkedIn mentioned that in 2017, the software industry had the highest turnover rate. It mentioned that peeople were more readily jumping ship due to high demand and increased salary. However, if you really consider it, if you’re actually HAPPY in your position, that can be worth a lot more than a few extra dollars per month. There are four main reasons people leave, according to LikedIn’s survey results:
Lack of opportunities for advancement (45%)
Unhappy with leadership (41%)
Unhappy with the work environment (36%)
Desire for more challenging work (36%)
Oddly enough, though, many software engineers don’t realize how much of a difference they themselves can make in each of those four areas! Software engineers have a surprising amount of control over their work environment, and their relationship with management. And what may be perceived as a “Lack of opportunity” may simply be due to something that is being communicated, whether consciously or subconsciously, to leadership. An area for personal growth may be determining in what areas an engineer wants to portray “I’m ready for the next step”, and what areas might be telegraphing “I’m NOT ready”. Of course, there are cases where there are simply no open positions, but many times the reality is simply that someone *else* is promoted.
The question then becomes “What do I need to do to advance, and is there something I’m doing that is getting in my way?”.
It does take “two to tango”, so to speak, and managers could greatly benefit from understanding the communication styles of their individual team members. All four of the above things could be more about an employee’s perception, than an objective reality. Managers might be well served to examine their objective business environment with respect to the above. In addition, managers might want to consider if the positive aspects like advancement opportunity, leadership that cares about them, a positive supportive work environment, and opportunity for challenging tasks are being communicated effectively to their teams.
