The retention of software development employees in the IT industry in Taiwan

Taiwan’s IT industry has been suffering from a shortage of IT knowledge workers. Despite the economic downturn highly skilled workers such as software programmers are still in big demand. This research, undertaken in late 2008, presents the results of a retention survey undertaken with 362 software development employees, namely software engineers, project leaders, and assistant managers in Taiwan. The retention factors this study tested for were: financial compensation, training and development, promotion, recognition, challenging work, innovation and creativity, leadership style, autonomy, work-life balance, and job satisfaction. Ten factors were significant for software engineers. However, challenging work was not significant for the project leaders, and both financial compensation and challenging work were not significant for the assistant managers.