If I spend enough time on this post, it will go sideways quick, so I'll keep it brief(ish).
Good employees quit for a lot of reasons, and in most cases, it has nothing to do with salary. They want to be appreciated, recognized, given the opportunity to grow, work on something exciting, etc. There are so many more things that good employees strive for, but what they don't strive for is becoming stagnant.
This is something I personally struggle with. I often joke that I know the exact moment where I took a wrong turn in life — in the guidance office my freshman year of college when I was asked if I wanted to major in Computer Science or Information Management & Technology, which was what general IT was called at the time. Because I was lazy and because coding seemed hard, I chose Information Management & Technology. 15 years have passed and the decision has haunted me ever since.
Not going into Computer Science really hobbled my career prospects, because it left me with a large gap in my skill-set. Nowadays, you can't even get your foot in the door doing without having some coding knowledge.
But I digress, that's not the point of this post.
The point is that because of my decision, I've had a largely unfulfilling career doing jobs I don't like or care about. I started in IT Support and was rarely appreciated or recognized. I lacked the necessary skills to move up, so I haven't had a lot of opportunity to grow. Support is also largely the same questions being asked by a different person, day in / day out, so you're rarely working on something exciting. On and on.
A few months back, I received an email from Quora because at some point, it would seem I signed up for their mailing list. There was an article that stood out to me that was aptly titled “Why do good employees quit in almost every job?”. After reading it, I saw so much of what I've come across in my day-to-day.
The full text is below...
Most of the answers are from management or a leadership perspective. I can write from a ‘difficult to replace engineer’ perspective.
For the first 6 months, no one knows what you are capable of. As projects complete over the first 18 months, others get to know how much you can do beyond their capabilities. More and more difficult problems find their way to your desk, even problems far outside your role.
36 months pass, and you’ve maybe gotten multiple 3 to 5% raises for 3 years. However, workload has increased maybe 6 to 10x from the 12-month checkpoint. Managers take you for granted and keep piling on the work, keeping more bonuses for themselves every year. “Performance reviews” are a laughing joke because you can clearly see other employees getting solid bonuses while you do more work and get the same. 48 and 60 month checkpoints come and go with 1–2% raises and no bonus increase.
Previous projects never die, and you can never move on to new projects. You are continually asked to babysit, operate, and maintain old stuff. The ratio of new to old projects shifts from 80:20 to 20:80, and you’re spending 45 hours/week fixing and consulting on old stuff that other teams are supposed to be owning and operating. Another 15 hours/wk goes to new projects because you’re the engineer and supposed to be improving the business.
It’s 60 months, and you’re pushing 60–70 hours/week and management says you’re overloaded, and they hire a new guy to take all of your new projects. There’s no point in staying on the job to babysit infrastructure that no one wants to spend money on to fix correctly or decommission — so you find another job elsewhere for more compensation where you are the “new guy”. Wash, rinse and repeat every 5 years because the 401k has vested, and it will probably be better at the next place… for about 4–5 years.
People that know they are valuable can find a job anywhere at any time. Perversely, they are also the people that get taken advantage of, unappreciated and dumped on when working in a team environment. People leave because they are unappreciated and unrewarded — not necessarily the money.
I'll conclude with a simple truth — what I wouldn't give to have an employer that would give me the opportunity to grow and do something interesting, fun, challenging, etc. I'm sure it will come one day, but in the meantime, I need to work on my coding skills. They still suck 15 years later.