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Interesting that High Employee Retention is so high for the US (#4) but the only country with it in the top 10 is India (#10). As an engineer who has recently m

Interesting that High Employee Retention is so high for the US (#4) but the only country with it in the top 10 is India (#10). As an engineer who has recently moved from the US to the UK, I'm just getting used to these cultural differences and I think mature tech locations (US) are able to understand the importance of employee retention toward an individuals fulfillment in the job. A deeper dive into the statistics would be insightful for comparing countries. Specifically, looking at the values that are uniquely high or low for a location.

lynnetye 9y ago
I look forward to collecting more data and will definitely share them once I do. The US, despite being more "tech mature" than other countries, still fails to provide work/life balance or maintain quality code. I was honestly surprised to see these two things at the top of every list. It seems obvious that companies would prioritize these two things, yet... they aren't the standard. Just reading the other popular posts on HN today (ie. https://medium.com/@deusexmachina667/you-fired-your-top-talent-i-hope-youre-happy-cf57c41183dd https://medium.com/@deusexmachina667/you-fired-your-top-tale...), it sounds like these are common stories. You can be well-respected, be incredibly experienced/knowledgable, and still be overworked and pushed to push code we're not proud of. These things lead to turnover. I wonder if the startup culture in the US ("grow as fast as you can, do whatever it takes!") is especially bad, and contributes to low retention. Probably.
- majormajor 9y ago
  That's where the fuzziness of the terms comes in, I think. For instance, I've seen in-house codebases that drive US devs to anger about their low quality that are regular paragons of excellence compared to stuff that's come back as part of outsourced projects (and not solely offshores outsourcing), so it's all relative.

lynnetye 9y ago

I look forward to collecting more data and will definitely share them once I do. The US, despite being more "tech mature" than other countries, still fails to provide work/life balance or maintain quality code. I was honestly surprised to see these two things at the top of every list. It seems obvious that companies would prioritize these two things, yet... they aren't the standard. Just reading the other popular posts on HN today (ie. https://medium.com/@deusexmachina667/you-fired-your-top-talent-i-hope-youre-happy-cf57c41183dd https://medium.com/@deusexmachina667/you-fired-your-top-tale...), it sounds like these are common stories. You can be well-respected, be incredibly experienced/knowledgable, and still be overworked and pushed to push code we're not proud of. These things lead to turnover. I wonder if the startup culture in the US ("grow as fast as you can, do whatever it takes!") is especially bad, and contributes to low retention. Probably.

majormajor 9y ago
That's where the fuzziness of the terms comes in, I think. For instance, I've seen in-house codebases that drive US devs to anger about their low quality that are regular paragons of excellence compared to stuff that's come back as part of outsourced projects (and not solely offshores outsourcing), so it's all relative.