I’m not sure I understand your point. Let’s imagine that I work a job for three years, and a company spends $30,000 training me over that time period, when I t

I’m not sure I understand your point. Let’s imagine that I work a job for three years, and a company spends $30,000 training me over that time period, when I then leave because that training helped me reach a better career position. If they hadn’t paid for that benefit, I would have left after only two years — because the need to transfer for career advancement would happen sooner. This would save them $20,000-30,000 depending on how you count. So what’s the net difference? In scenario 1, they received a ROI of 1 year of improved labor, and 1 year of doubly improved labor. Additionally, the fixed costs of hiring are amortized over three years instead of two, and so decrease by 33%. So for $30,000 they decreased my hiring costs by 33% and received two years of increased quality labor — say 5-10% productivity. Hiring an engineer is 25-50% of their yearly salary, so they’re saving 8-15% of my salary over three years. The productivity of an engineer is going to be like twice their salary, just to pay overhead and profit. So we’re looking at a boost of 10-20% my salary in their revenues. So they’re looking at ~15-25% of my salary as the return for spending $10k/year. Naively, it seems like that pays off in many cases: it just requires you operate in a trust based manner.