Why software employees leave and how to understand why
Engineers and product staff leave for many reasons beyond salary. How to run an exit conversation in a software company, read the pattern and act on it.
6 min readRead articleA POS software provider sells billing systems to shops, restaurants and chains, and supports them when the till stops. Here is how to manage developers, installers and support teams who are called at the busiest hours of their customers' day.

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Share your requirementsA point-of-sale software provider sells billing and inventory systems, often with printers, scanners and tablets, to shops, restaurants, pharmacies and chains. Staff include software developers, hardware and installation engineers who visit stores, trainers, support agents and sales executives. Calls come when customers are busiest: lunchtime, evenings, weekends and festival days. A stuck billing screen means a queue of angry shoppers, so the pressure on the support line is direct. Field engineers travel between shops with hardware, and each visit must be quick. Updates must not break a shop's tax-related settings or product lists, so testing matters. Staff must be patient with owners who are not technical. See also HR for IT and software.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in POS software providers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Support agents work evenings, weekends and festival days when everyone else is off.
Engineers cover many shops a day with travel, tools and spare parts, and little time for each fix.
Agents explain simple steps repeatedly to stressed customers with queues at the till.
A release changes billing or tax fields, and the next morning support is flooded.
A printer fault is traced to a driver, then to firmware, and the customer is left waiting.
New shop staff are trained once at install and forgotten, so the same questions return.
Resellers set up systems in their own way, and support inherits their mistakes.
Field staff run out of the part they need, and visits are repeated.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Operations and Governance; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Employee Administration. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for information technology and software, not in general.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a POS software providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A rota with proper allowances, rest days and records, using the attendance and shift process.
A rota with proper allowances, rest days and records, using the attendance and shift process.
Route planning, a standard kit and spares check, and a daily call-in point.
Route planning, a standard kit and spares check, and a daily call-in point.
A fixed checklist for billing, tax settings and printing, with a rule against releasing on peak days.
A fixed checklist for billing, tax settings and printing, with a rule against releasing on peak days.
A simple triage guide showing who takes a fault first and how it is handed on.
A simple triage guide showing who takes a fault first and how it is handed on.
Short guides and refresher sessions after installation, supported by the learning and development process.
Short guides and refresher sessions after installation, supported by the learning and development process.
A set-up checklist and training for resellers, with feedback when errors repeat.
A set-up checklist and training for resellers, with feedback when errors repeat.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Fair evening and festival rotas, travel records and clear allowances.
Training for support, field staff and customers so repeat queries fall.
Safe travel and handling of hardware for engineers, and stress support for the desk.
Goals that count resolution quality, not just the number of calls handled.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in information technology and software, and one on each of the topics this page points to.

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Plan rotas around trading peaks, pay a fair allowance, give rest days and cross-train other teams. Brief staff before festivals about likely issues.
Plan routes, standardise a kit and spares list, and give a call-in contact for faults they cannot fix. Do not measure only visits per day; include repeat-visit rates.
Use a test checklist, avoid peak days and roll out in stages. Support should be told in advance about changes so they are ready.
Agree a triage guide naming one owner at the start, then a clear route to hardware or software specialists. The customer should hear from one person throughout.
Give them a setup checklist and training, give feedback on mistakes and recognise the better ones. Poor partners create tickets that your staff pay for.
We would ask about peak-hour rotas, field visit load, release rules and hand-offs between hardware and software. A sensible first project is a support rota with a field engineer plan. Scope goes into writing before you decide.
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