I think there's more variables at play though. A person who has been at a company 3+ years has figured out how to be effective in certain areas, but is also now asked to be effective in a much wider range of areas. They are asked to maintain something they wrote in their first year, they are asked to attend meetings or respond to emails because they have the knowledge and influence, they can't start anything new because they are so pivotal to the thing they're currently doing. And yeah, these things are important to the company, but they make the worker feel like they're stagnating. The company starts to get in their way and they feel like the only way to do something they find interesting is to leave.
Companies need to give engineers the opportunity at a clean slate. Let them shed responsibilities and pretend they're just a very competent new hire with the freedom to start working on whatever they want to. If it's a larger company, you can usually transfer to another team somewhere, but you still get pinged about stuff you never want to spend time on again.
Companies need to give engineers the opportunity at a clean slate. Let them shed responsibilities and pretend they're just a very competent new hire with the freedom to start working on whatever they want to. If it's a larger company, you can usually transfer to another team somewhere, but you still get pinged about stuff you never want to spend time on again.