Does Training People Mean Drawing the Short Straw? The Dilemma of Companies Whose Young Employees Leave After Being Trained

During my years as a company employee, there was a period when I held a reasonably senior position and was responsible for training new and younger employees.

I taught them how to do the work. I reviewed their code. When they made mistakes, I stepped in to help. Then I gave them slightly more difficult assignments and reviewed their work again.

After a few years of this, young employees who had once known nothing about the job became capable of handling projects on their own.

That made me happy too.

And for some reason, that was usually when they left.

Some went independent, while others moved to companies offering better conditions.

I would think, “After all the effort I put into training them,” but I could not complain too loudly.

After all, I had left my first company in search of a higher income myself.

Being Trained Is What Makes It Possible to Leave

This dynamic is especially easy to see in the IT industry.

New employees cannot accomplish much on their own. Senior colleagues teach them, review their work, and clean up after them when trouble occurs. The company bears substantial training costs on top of their salaries.

After a few years, once they can design and implement systems independently, they begin to see what they are worth in the market.

They look at job sites and find openings that pay more than their current positions. They look at freelance projects and see even higher figures.

Then it occurs to them:

“Wait, wouldn’t I earn more if I left?”

The inconvenient truth is that this is a perfectly rational conclusion.

I left after thinking exactly the same thing, so I have absolutely no right to lecture anyone about forgetting what they owe the company.

Companies Cannot Recover Their Investment at the Most Valuable Moment

From the company’s perspective, this is a difficult situation.

Hiring a new employee does not immediately generate profit. The company assigns someone to train them, starts them on simple tasks, and bears the risk of their mistakes.

The first few years are an investment.

Ideally, the company would recover that investment through the employee’s contributions after they have developed.

Instead, just as the employee becomes a productive member of the team, they say:

“Thank you for everything.”

For the company, it is like buying a seedling, watering it, fertilizing it, and then having it transplanted into the field next door the moment it finally bears fruit.

After going through this repeatedly, it is understandable that a company would decide to hire only experienced people.

Raising Salaries Is Not Such a Simple Solution

Then why not raise trained employees’ salaries to the market rate?

That makes sense in theory, but it is not easy, especially for small and midsize companies.

It is difficult to pay new employees today based on the market value they may have in the future. Giving one person a sudden large raise can also disrupt the balance with existing employees. An employee’s salary must account for the costs of training periods, time between assignments, sales, administrative departments, and other overhead.

The employee, meanwhile, sees much simpler numbers.

They compare what the company pays them with what they could earn outside it.

If the difference is large, they consider changing jobs or going independent.

This is less a matter of loyalty than a structural problem.

The Model of Companies Developing Their Own People Is Becoming Unsustainable

I believe the model of hiring people with no experience and spending years turning them into fully capable professionals will become increasingly difficult to sustain.

Companies were once able to invest in training on the assumption of long-term employment.

But that assumption is also collapsing.

Changing jobs is no longer unusual, and companies do not guarantee lifetime employment either.

A company says:

“We will develop you with a long-term perspective.”

Then it cuts staff when business deteriorates.

An employee says:

“I owe this company for training me.”

Then they leave when a better offer appears.

In a sense, the relationship has become very fair.

In a labor market where neither side expects loyalty from the other, it is difficult for companies alone to keep bearing training investments as they did in the past.

I Had Made Someone Else Draw the Short Straw Too

When a young employee leaves after you have trained them, you are left wondering what all that teaching was for.

Still, when I look back at my own career, I cannot act too self-righteous.

I too was taught how to do my job by many people during my years as an employee. After gaining experience, I left the company in search of a higher income.

In other words, I thought younger employees had made me draw the short straw, but before that, I had made someone else draw the same one.

Perhaps employee development has always worked this way.

The difference is that more employees used to stay with their companies, making it easier for those companies to recoup their training costs through the employees’ later contributions.

As workers become more mobile, there is no longer any guarantee that this investment will be recovered.

Someone trained by Company A goes on to succeed at Company B, while someone trained by Company B moves to Company C.

Talent circulates, but the company that provided the training is not necessarily rewarded.

The more rationally employees change jobs, the more rationally companies become cautious about investing in training.

As a result, the question that ultimately remains is:

“Then who will train people with no experience?”

That is the problem.

If developing people means drawing the short straw, no one will want to draw it.