By Elson Correia
There are a lot of tech companies that are struggling to keep their top engineers and with the pandemic, engineers are looking for new perks that companies are trying to accommodate to attract and keep employees.
Great engineers often take on a lot of responsibilities. They provide support for the team and guidance for the product and business. These individuals are often an essential key to the product's success but they often end up leaving for very common reasons if nothing is done to keep them.
The software engineering industry perks
Companies go out of their way to provide amazing perks for their engineers as they are an essential part of the business.
From unlimited vacations, restaurant-quality free food, education loan support, amazing offices equipped with a massage parlor and gyms, babysitting services, and baby cash for new parents as well as long parental leave, you would be surprised to find out that it is not enough.
During the 2020 pandemic, engineers got to work from home and some companies changed to be 70–100% remote with home office support for equipment, etc. Working from home became a super desired perk and helped drive a lot of job switches.
Software Engineer Money Compensation
For the year 2020, the average pay in the tech industry was a nice $146,000 a year. This puts engineers among the most well-paid professionals in the United States 3 times the public school workers’ yearly salary and it is also more than twice the national average salary.
With all these nice perks and compensation, why are top engineers changing jobs?
1 — Burnout
As I mentioned before, top engineers take on a lot of responsibilities. These engineers often become the core of the team as the tech lead, senior, or lead engineers which means they are constantly providing team support, are required in a lot of important meetings, are put in positions of leading or supporting multiple projects, etc.
This can be even more stressful in startup environments or the gaming development industry where engineers can easily put in 50–70 hours a week working late and even on weekends. Once you are done with a project, another one is right on the corner waiting for you allowing you no time to rest.
Unlimited vacation does not help when you are so essential for the team's progress. Work-life balance becomes hard when you are constantly taking on high responsibilities. With the working from-home perks, you oftentimes need to switch to work different hours to take into consideration the timezone difference between remote teams.
Not everyone is good at managing their time and companies often put in place strategies meant to make people work longer hours like offering early breakfast or late dinners.
Engineering takes a serious toll on mental health. You often need to solve complex problems with complex structures, deal with bad managers and systems, and cover up for less efficient co-workers, while trying to balance work and life.
Engineers are notorious for complaining about burnout. Oftentimes surveys show that over 50% face this problem at any given time. This number only got worse with working from home perk during the pandemic where engineers found themselves working longer shifts than usual.
2 — Career Stagnation
After higher pay, career stagnation is the second most popular reason engineers leave their current jobs. Most companies do not offer enough challenges and opportunities because they have a shallow structure and lack a diversity of products.
After initial work tech discovery, engineers find themselves solving for same problems, and the work stop being challenging. A lot of them confess to finding new side-projects in order to feel mentally challenged because the job was getting boring.
Some even prefer to go solve the same problems in a different company for a higher salary and the need for change.
Managers often fail to notice this need and as consequence, the engineer does not get promoted or provided with opportunities to go learn new things, or get involved in different projects and challenges.
What can happen in this state of “boredom” is that engineers explore new territories and find new passions which end up misaligning their career growth view with the company roadmap causing them to leave to pursue their new goals.
3 — Entrepreneurship/Freedom
Great engineers are skilled enough to identify gaps in the product and a need in the market. If not provided with the opportunity to pursue new ideas inside the company, they will leave and start something on their own.
Some engineers are natural leaders. They understand the business, the product needs, and what it takes to build a successful product and conduct a project. They no longer see themselves as someone that can only provide value with their coding skills. They want to solve the problems they discovered.
Many start adventuring into new things, exploring new ideas, or even creating a product that complements or competes with their current company product and services. Others see their side projects gaining track and becoming their main job.
This is the next level of experiencing career stagnation. If nothing out there fits, you must create it from scratch.
4 — Pay
Pay is the number one reason engineers leave. The competition is fierce and the average compensation is always increasing and some companies fail to adapt or simply cannot compete.
Engineers are constantly growing and learning new things, off-course they deserve to be paid for their newly acquired skills.
If there is a company out there willing to pay more they will find worthy engineers and lure them in with a better salary.
Stock options are often used as a perk for not providing a higher salary but with the risk of startups taking a long to go public or even failing, this is often not an attractive perk for someone looking to make money to take care of their family or current situation.
Offering bonuses or 401k high matches are also compensation perks companies use to pay a little less salary but it is not a very popular thing among tech companies. Bonuses are often based on performance and 401k matches often depend on the year you have been with the company.
It is safe to say that higher pay is almost always a great way to compensate software engineers.
5 — Work Location Flexibility
A new perk that companies are now offering due to the COVID pandemic is the ability to work from home or hybrid. The market has seen an increase in companies offering remote jobs which are causing engineers to leave their current jobs that are failing to provide the same perk.
Working from home allows engineers to save in commute, have the opportunity to see family members more often, work flexible hours, improve their work-life balance, relocate closer to family or to cities they always wanted to live in, pay cheaper rent, or even buy houses in cheaper areas, etc.
Working-from-home opportunities are the new standard and big tech companies are paving the way announcing working from home as a permanent change. This change caused remote job searches to increase and engineers to protest for companies to change their policies to accommodate this attractive perk.
The 2020 pandemic changed the way we see office space and many see it as a permanent change that tech companies are now trying in order to attract and keep engineers.
Conclusion
Once in tech, always a tech. Engineers will almost rarely change their careers to a different industry. From coding to managing or even running your own company, engineers tend to stick in the tech industry for a very long time.
Companies need to learn to adapt to changes in the industry and learn what makes them unique to attract and keep the right people.
Engineers will always leave, it is like parenting. Your kids will eventually grow up and start desiring more than you can provide so you need to let them go for their own sake. The key here is how to better care for the ones that are around and wish to stay.
If you take care of your people, they will take care of your company and product.
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