Not One Size Fits All (Score 4, Insightful)

It's always kind of funny when companies wonder about retaining staff. It shouldn't be that hard to answer that question.

If people are happy with their compensation and their work, they will stay. If they are not happy, they will leave.

And this is different for everybody. Some people want to work 40hrs. Some people are ok working more if the compensation is there. Some people want to work on prototyping with new technology. Some people want to work on designing large scale solutions.

When you are small, it is arguably easier to treat everybody differently. Once you scale, you start having these "one size fits all" reviews and compensation packages that don't really capture what people think is important.

Free lunch is cool, but will it make up for the fact that your manager isn't any good? Spending 20% of your week on your own project is cool, but what if you already worked 50hrs on something that's overdue where you didn't come up with the estimate?