Open Discussion Thread: "Software Team Turnover: Why Developers Leave (And What You Can Do About It)" by Aaron Reed
This is an open discussion and comments thread for the article published in developer.* Magazine, "Software Team Turnover: Why Developers Leave (And What You Can Do About It)" by Aaron Reed. If you haven't already, you can read it here, then add your comments below. If the discussion hasn't already started, no need to fear posting first!
Top Ten Reasons You Don't Leave When You've Stayed Too Long
1. You're afraid of jumping from the pot to the frying pan.
2. You live in an area with limited opportunities and don't want to uproot your family.
3. You've been here so long (and received so many pay increases through the years), you'd have to take a significant pay cut to leave.
4. There is comfort in the familiar and fear of the unknown.
5. Related to #3, even though you may be willing to take a cut in pay, you're afraid the lesser-paying job will be just as stressful and all you will have accomplished is making less money.
6. Related to #3, even though you're willing to take a cut in pay, you don't feel it is fair to your family who depends on your wages.
7. You have a retirement plan that you and your spouse are counting on for the golden years. You have so many years in this system, it would be to your detriment to leave now.
8. You've been here so long, you've worked up to several weeks of vacation and hate to go back to the minimum, as a new employee somewhere else.
9. You always think things are on the verge of getting better and you don't want to make a hasty leap.
10. You think...if I'm hesitating to leave because I make a good amount of money and have a decent amount of benefits, maybe this is a good place to work after all.
The moral of this top 10 list? Leave when you're relatively young or at least not so settled. It's awful to stay at a job for selfish/personal reasons, but I dare-say many do. The thing to do is to rediscover your first love...what attracted you to the job to begin with,if possible. Look for lateral moves within the organization that might be interesting. A couple of years ago my boss decided he would rather be a systems analyst again than to be the boss, so he arranged his own demotion. It seemed odd at the time, but he's very happy now. I am starting to see the beauty of such a plan myself.
Great Post.
Well said, Aaron. Great Article!
I agree great article
I must say i found this article so good i emailed it to my friend right away.
Excellent article
Amazing article. It is so true, every single bit of it.
Interesting article, the
Interesting article, the author has summed up all the major points. Here in India the software job market is very dynamic with all the big guns (and the small ones) coming in to setup shops.
In that context reason #1 here has become very important, also I feel that the companies here still have to develop maturity in terms of identifying key people and then developing. So what normally happens is that good people jump ship and the rest i.e. the mediocre ones stay which in turn effects the overall quality.
Signs You've Stayed Too Long
A friend pointed this article out to me, which was published within a day of Aaron's article:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/26/commentary/everyday/sahadi/index.htm
Two sides of the same coin.
Dan