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IME, yes people are hesitant to leave sometimes out of a fear of the interview process, but I think this is no different than other industries where people gene
by bern4444 5y ago
IME, yes people are hesitant to leave sometimes out of a fear of the interview process, but I think this is no different than other industries where people generally are hesitant to take action that has a chance of of 0 payoff with a lot of upfront investment.
I don't think that's unique to software engineering, and I don't think its more pronounced in our industry.
The standard tenure of most engineers is about 3 - 5 years, a very short amount of time. People try and leave all the time. How long it takes someone to leave is likely a good proxy for their risk aversiveness. But people do switch a lot.
- efnx 5y agoI had a VP of Engineering tell me once that 17 months is a standard tenure and that we should be happy with that. I think turnover was part of the strategy at that point though...
- ivalm 5y agoI don’t quite understand, switching is good for the employee but in what world is it good for the employer? On-boarding/institutional knowledge/etc all suffer.
- jhatemyjob 5y agoHe didn't mean "we should be happy with that" literally. It's a colloquialism.
- rightbyte 5y agoYe it is really strange. Maybe it is some kinda of rationalization. Or people believe in that new people bring new ideas or something. My experience is that even the best engineers wont catch up for a year or something, to an mediocre one with years of experience in the project/field, if the project is somewhat complex and not routine. In 17 months it is really hard to do anything magnificent.