Nearshore Americas

Exorbitant Salaries Won’t Stop Developers From Moving On

“You can put up with a lot as a developer, you know, if you get paid for it.” Richard Demeney is a representative for TechJobFinder.com with almost a decade’s experience as a web developer. “However, there are other key reasons for dissatisfaction that stem from bosses not understanding the nature of IT jobs.”

Recently, we wrote about the growing dissatisfaction tech developers feel towards their jobs. Dice’s Tech Sentiment Report survey signals a growth in tech workers looking for new job opportunities. To be precise, 2023’s measurements showed 23% of participants were on the lookout. The number rose to 47% in 2024, with burnout cited as the main reason.

The first approach a company leader might take to address challenges in attraction and retention is to consult their HR department for solutions or engage employee-benefit companies like Pluxee or Ticket for their assessments. Such efforts are likely to have a significant impact on these labor trends.

However, they are often costly and can miss the point.

Those approaches fail to adequately address cultural and workflow issues that are exacerbating the difficulty of tech jobs. The transition into the increasing workloads of the AI-adoption era can be facilitated with more structural and organizational strategies. However, the perspectives of many company leaders do not seem to reflect the sentiment of developers and their views on what makes their jobs so tiresome.

Jessica Katz, leadership coach, speaker, and CEO of Poly-Labor
Jessica Katz, leadership coach, speaker, and CEO of Poly-Labor

We interviewed various tech executives to get their takes on the matter. Two of them summarized the strategies mos frequently offered by HR heads. Jessica Katz, leadership coach, speaker, and CEO of Poly-Labor, which specializes in building consent-driven workplace environments, weighed in:

“Employee benefits are no longer just a perk—they are a strategic lever shaping the customer service and IT industries. Companies that prioritize meaningful benefits and adopt a human-centered leadership approach will set themselves apart in this rapidly evolving industry. In IT, where innovation and agility are critical, benefits focused on upskilling, creative autonomy, and work-life balance are essential. Such perks ensure teams are equipped and motivated to tackle complex problems with fresh perspectives.”

On the other hand, James Zhong, Chief Operating Officer at RJ Living, summed up the insights of more than ten officers who talked us through their ideas on how to approach the issue:

James Zhong, Chief Operating Officer at RJ Living
James Zhong, Chief Operating Officer at RJ Living

“I have seen incredible results when we personalize perks based on real feedback from our teams. If it’s really executed, it gives employees that nod of ‘yes we see you, and yes we value you and your wellbeing’.

In high-pressure fields like IT and customer service, it’s amazing to see how regular recognition, whether that’s big celebrations or small daily wins can transform team dynamics. At the end of the day, listening and taking action based on employee feedback is showing your employees that you respect them. That’s what it comes down to, a level of respect and recognition shown through action.”

But what are IT teams saying?

During our interview with TechJobFinder’s Richard Demeney, we learned a lot about the view of developers. Of course, they concede on the need to pay with sufficient salary and benefits, and the importance of flexibility and dialogue. But what stands out the most are practical, hands-on differences on work dynamics that can have great impact.

Demeney’s frustration with the approach company leaders tend to have towards IT was evident throughout our interview.

Richard Demeney, TechJobFinder representative
Richard Demeney, TechJobFinder representative

For him, and most of developers we talked with, flexibility on working hours and settings is paramount. A topic which is also reverting against developers in the case of Latin America, where trends are moving back towards on-site work.

The next key aspect of workflow he identified as a widespread issue for developers’ efficiency is what he referred to as “too much politics”, which is the opposite of the “continuous check-in” logic:

“Bosses often forget tech developers tend to be introverts. It’s very common for companies to extend and overcomplicate meetings and even give contradictory instructions throughout a single interaction. The quality of [instruction] tickets can be so low you end up spending a lot more time figuring out what people want than coding. So, we often face increasingly huge workloads and, at the same time, people expect us to stick around for meetings that can easily amount to 10 weekly hours throughout different moments of the day.”

His description of the ideal workflow matches the perspective of other interviewed tech professionals: “I would say many would prefer to have routines that guarantee quiet, focused working hours, which means, for example, what a company I just talked to does: from 1 pm until the end of the day, there are no meetings whatsoever.”

There are also technical standards companies could seek out to strengthen in favor of coders’: “If it’s a good quality code base that will make you happy. You can do your work easily. But when you work in a dysfunctional code base that is low quality, you want to quit after a month”. That is an essential part of what makes Big Tech more desirable as an employer for most coders, according to Dice’s survey.

Another issue he pointed out was bosses who weren’t effective at identifying bad workers quickly and offloading them when it’s visibly slowing-down the whole development team.

Finally, Demeney offered insight on the retention crisis as part of a structural process of transition. “The market has shifted: power is on the hands of employers, not employees. I’ve got a software development job out of university, and I didn’t even study computer science. As a software engineer, if you’re graduating in 2025, you can’t expect much. When I graduated in 2017, the market was red hot. Any graduate who had bad grades from a technical university could get a graduate job easily. Now, people will study computer science for three years, have the best grades, and won’t get a job.”

Juan Diego Barrera Sandoval

Colombian business, politics, and cultural journalist. Managing Editor for Nearshore Americas and El Enemigo.

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