This approach results in a bit of a self-fufilling prophecy, though. If you aim for meeting averages (anecdotal or not), then why would you expect turnover bet

This approach results in a bit of a self-fufilling prophecy, though. If you aim for meeting averages (anecdotal or not), then why would you expect turnover better than average? You'll probably end up optimizing just above that average and likely not hit a critical point high enough to deviate form the underlying problem, because your goal isn't about minimizing turnover even if it's an idealistic goal, when push comes to shove its about getting ROI above all and everything else is secondary. I argue that aside from TC optimizing engineers, most engineers do not want to jump ship that often, especially in the current hiring process. Unfortunately, there's a business culture that created these environments where turnover is this high, sometimes higher. If you provide no stability for your engineers, no WLB, poor internal growth opportunities relative to market, poor training, and grunt work then you should expect this. The way to reduce employee turnover is to provide a significantly better overall deal to employees, otherwise you'll continue to have flighty engineers and just point at the numbers, "well this is what's going on in the industry." Yes, and if you've adopted the rest of the culture of the industry, why would you expect yourself to be much different then? Don't start with the expectation engineers will leave in 2.7 years and build a culture around that, look at places engineers stay longer and build a culture around that. Issue is that those places tend to be less efficient and profitable for investors because the engineers are getting a bigger slice of the pie in some fashion, be it improved WLB, better training, less hostility, etc.