Please do not go: understanding turnover of software engineers from different perspectives

TL;DR

This paper investigates software engineers' turnover by combining interviews and surveys, identifying key reasons and strategies to reduce turnover, offering insights for industry and academic research.

Contribution

It presents a mixed methods study that uncovers 19 reasons for turnover and 18 strategies to mitigate it, providing comprehensive insights from engineers and CEOs.

Findings

Identified 19 reasons for software engineers' turnover.

Discovered 18 effective strategies to reduce turnover.

Provided implications for industry and future research.

Abstract

Turnover consists of moving into and out of professional employees in the company in a given period. Such a phenomenon significantly impacts the software industry since it generates knowledge loss, delays in the schedule, and increased costs in the final project. Despite the efforts made by researchers and professionals to minimize the turnover, more studies are needed to understand the motivation that drives Software Engineers to leave their jobs and the main strategies CEOs adopt to retain these professionals in software development companies. In this paper, we contribute a mixed methods study involving semi-structured interviews with Software Engineers and CEOs to obtain a wider opinion of these professionals about turnover and a subsequent validation survey with additional software engineers to check and review the insights from interviews. In studying such aspects, we identified 19 different reasons for software engineers' turnover and 18 more efficient strategies used in the software development industry to reduce it. Our findings provide several implications for industry and academia, which can drive future research.