If your top engineers or IT staff start leaving this year, don’t assume it’s about the paycheck.
New workforce research shows work-life balance is now the second biggest reason technical professionals change employers, right behind pay.
If you’re an IT hiring manager, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.
The quick answer
- Salary still matters most (around 60% rank it #1), but work-life balance is close behind at 55%
- Work-life balance is now the #1 reason technical employees stay with an employer (ranking above pay and job security)
- Improving work-life balance is the second most common reason engineering and technical talent leave a job, right after compensation
- Teams that treat this as a “nice to have” are quietly bleeding senior talent to competitors who don’t
Why this matters for IT specifically
IT and engineering roles have never been a clean 9-to-5. On-call rotations, release deadlines, incident response… it comes with the territory.
A few things we’re seeing on our end, working staffing desks across banking, healthcare, retail, and manufacturing IT teams:
- On-call burnout is a top attrition driver. Engineers will tolerate a rough sprint. They won’t tolerate a rough sprint every sprint.
- “Flexible” needs to mean something concrete. Vague policies (“we’re flexible!”) read as empty to candidates who’ve heard it before and got burned.
- Retention and recruiting are now the same conversation. The employer brand you sell in an interview has to match what a new hire experiences in month three or they’re back on LinkedIn.
What actually drives people to leave (in order)
- Low compensation – still #1, no surprise
- Poor work-life balance – closing the gap fast
- Lack of career growth – especially for mid-level engineers who feel stuck
Notice these are the same three things people say they want when choosing a new employer. That’s not a coincidence. It means most companies are failing to deliver on the specific promises made during hiring.
It’s not one-size-fits-all
Work-life balance means different things depending on where someone is in their career:
- Early-career technical hires care most about mentorship and support. They want to learn without burning out
- Mid-career professionals tie it to growth. Can they develop new skills without sacrificing their personal life?
- Senior IT talent cares most about recovery time. Nearly 40% cite time off as essential, compared to about a third of younger workers
If your retention strategy cannot treat every employee the same.
What IT hiring managers can actually do about it
Here’s what tends to move the needle:
- Fix workload planning before you fix perks.
- Make on-call sustainable.
- Train managers, not just engineers.
- Say what you mean in job postings.
Where staffing partners fit in
When internal hiring capacity can’t keep pace with project demand, that’s usually when teams reach out to a staffing partner. They need experienced technical talent fast, without inheriting the burnout cycle that pushed the last person out.
We spend our days talking to both sides of this: candidates telling us what actually made them leave their last role, and hiring managers trying to figure out why offers aren’t closing. That gives us a pretty clear read on where the gap usually is.
It’s rarely just the number on the offer letter.
Frequently asked questions
Is work-life balance really more important than salary for IT hires?
Not more important but close, and it’s the bigger driver of who stays once they’re hired. Salary gets people in the door. Work-life balance keeps them there.
How do I know if my team’s workload is actually a problem?
Looking at on-call frequency, after-hours Slack activity, and unused PTO maybe a good place to start.
Does this apply to contract and staff-augmentation hires too?
Yes. Contractors talk to each other and to their staffing reps. A team known for burning people out gets a reputation fast and that reputation affects who’s willing to take the next assignment.
What’s the fastest fix if I don’t have budget for major changes?
Manager training. It costs the least and has the biggest measured impact on how employees experience work-life balance day to day.
Donato Technologies has been helping U.S. companies build IT teams for over 13 years; through staffing, consulting, and the occasional hard conversation about why the last hire didn’t stick. If you’re trying to figure out whether your hiring problem is actually a retention problem, let’s talk.