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 Wi-Fi solution provider designs, installs and supports networks for offices, hotels, schools and campuses. The people side is about field engineers, survey records and who answers when a network drops at night.

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Share your requirementsA Wi-Fi solution provider sells and builds wireless networks for hotels, schools, hospitals, offices, warehouses and housing societies. The team usually has pre-sales engineers who do site surveys, project coordinators, installation crews who pull cable and mount access points, network engineers who configure controllers, and a support desk that handles faults after handover. Work comes in bursts: a large site means many people on a ladder for a week, then nothing for a fortnight. Support is the opposite, steady and often out of hours, because a hotel network fails on a Saturday night. Most people learn on the job and hold vendor certifications that rival firms would like to buy. Related reading: HR for IT and software businesses.
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 Wi-Fi solution 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.
Heat maps, cable routes and ceiling notes sit on one person's laptop, and the next visit starts from scratch.
A big hotel needs twenty hands for a week. Between projects the same people have no work and drift to rival crews.
A guest network fails at midnight and the same two engineers pick up every time, until one of them quits.
You pay for vendor training and exams, and the engineer takes the certificate to a bigger integrator within a year.
Ladders, ceiling voids and work at height are treated casually because the job is 'only a few access points'.
Engineers travel to far sites and claim fuel, lodging and food on loose rules, and disputes follow every project.
Installers leave without a clear record of passwords, device lists and as-built drawings, so the support desk guesses.
A salesperson commits to a go-live date that installers learn about only when the customer calls.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for information technology and software, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
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.
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.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a Wi-Fi solution providers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Survey notes, as-built drawings and device lists in one shared place, closed out before the installer's last day on site.
Survey notes, as-built drawings and device lists in one shared place, closed out before the installer's last day on site.
A published rota for support, with a rest day after a night call and a clear rule on what extra time is recognised.
A published rota for support, with a rest day after a night call and a clear rule on what extra time is recognised. The attendance, shift and leave process can hold it.
Helper, installer, lead installer and site supervisor, with tasks signed off at each step so crews can see growth without leaving.
Helper, installer, lead installer and site supervisor, with tasks signed off at each step so crews can see growth without leaving.
Agree which vendor courses you fund, what the engineer commits in return and who they must train in turn.
Agree which vendor courses you fund, what the engineer commits in return and who they must train in turn. See learning and development.
A short checklist for work at height, ladders, ceiling access and electrical points, briefed before each site.
A short checklist for work at height, ladders, ceiling access and electrical points, briefed before each site. The health, safety and wellbeing work covers the habits.
One page on distance bands, lodging limits, receipts and who approves, so claims stop being argued case by case.
One page on distance bands, lodging limits, receipts and who approves, so claims stop being argued case by case.
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.
On-call rosters and rest rules for support engineers, with site attendance that matches payroll.
Site routines for ladders, ceilings and long travel days that crews will actually follow.
A plan that links certification spend to commitments and builds a bench of trained engineers.
A repeatable way to find installers and network engineers before a big project starts.
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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Agree the commitment before the course, in writing, and pair it with a visible next step: a better grade, a lead role on a project. Many leave because nothing changes after the exam.
Decide the rule before the first call: rotation, rest the next day and any extra pay or time off. Confirm the wage and overtime treatment with a qualified professional.
Many providers use project crews. Whatever the arrangement, the terms, safety briefing and records must be clear. Confirm the legal position with a qualified professional.
Safe work at height, how to read a survey and as-built drawing, how to label and document devices, and how to speak to a customer's front desk without promising dates.
Ask pre-sales to check crew availability with the project coordinator before quoting a go-live date. A shared calendar of crew commitments is enough to start.
We would ask how handovers work, who takes night calls and how installers move between projects. A site record routine and an on-call rota are common first jobs, with scope agreed in writing for you to accept or change.
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