A company lost five senior engineers in 18 months. Exit interviews cited compensation. The real problem: information does not flow upward through organizational hierarchy. By the time problems reach executive level, they have metastasized into resignation decisions made months earlier.
This hits close to home.
Conversely, when an engineer or engineering manager repeatedly raises an issue and is told that they need to make it work by a date or there’s hell to pay, there’s no point in having the skip level conversations. The engineers just leave.