[nine_k]

Let's estimate.

Assume that the company loses 10 employees and loses $1.57M as a result.

This means that it would be better off if it spent less than $157k on each employee, on the average, to prevent the loss.

$157k is a yearly salary of a senior developer, or maybe the entire yearly cost of a senior employee outside the hotbeds like SV or NYC.

We can cautiously suppose that a company could retain the employees with measures less drastic than paying them twice as much for a year. OTOH paying them +20% for 5 years would be the same. So, if they can keep hiring cheaper developers, even while losing productivity due to onboarding issues, maybe they can actually save money!

[euphoria83]

The money that they can spend per employee is 1.57M / # total employees. Not, 1.57M / # of employees who left. They don't know who will leave. Their cost of good initiatives will be spread over all their employees.