Why your best IT managers quit

Understanding the chief reasons top managers leave is critical for CIOs seeking to develop and retain high-performing teams. Compensation aside, leadership, culture, and stagnation top the list.

It’s one of those sayings that sticks around: People quit managers, not jobs.

But, for all its staying power, is it actually accurate?

When it comes to why your best IT managers quit, the answer is yes, no, and maybe.

Yes, top managers — like all high performers — are less likely to tolerate working for a bad boss; because they typically are more driven (which is why they’re valuable employees), they’re more willing to seek a better gig.

So they will walk if the executives who manage them aren’t up to the task, says Eric Bloom, executive director of the IT Management and Leadership Institute and part of the Society for Information Management (SIM) Leadership Institute.

But top-tier managers may bail for myriad other reasons, too, even if their own bosses are superstar managers. And they might just stay if the money is too good to pass up.

Teasing out why good managers leave, and what could make them stay, is a critical topic for CIOs, who year after year identify recruiting and retaining talent as both a priority and a challenge.

But identifying what makes a good manager quit can be a complex task, with multiple intertwining factors at play. Still, it’s an important exercise for CIOs to undertake, if they want to keep their best players on the team.

“Why someone leaves is a culmination of all the different interactions — positive and negative — that someone would have with the organization. We call those interactions ‘moments-that-matter.’ And while all those moments-that-matter matter, there will be one that makes someone throw up their hands and say, ‘I’m out,’” says Nicholas Kozlo, senior research analyst in the people and leadership practice at Info-Tech Research Group.

“So although it’s important to focus on big things like promotions,” he says, “CIOs and executives also have to make sure their managers are having an overall positive experience, that they get the support they need, that they’re listened to, and that there aren’t any outstanding issues. Because when issues pile up, managers will quit.”

Reasons good managers quit

People quit their jobs for a slew of personal and professional reasons. They may want a better boss, more money, a better title, a shorter commute, nicer colleagues, less stress, a new career, or more time for family and personal interests.

Of course, top managers may quit for any one of those reasons, too. But experienced IT leaders and management advisers say top managers more often tend to quit for more specific reasons.

The most obvious one: money.

“Compensation is really the No. 1 factor. Inflation is rampant, and people are struggling to pay their mortgage,” Kozlo says, citing Info-Tech’s IT talent research on this point. “Salary is one of those things that pulls people away from otherwise stable jobs.”

That’s not the only big factor that lures good managers away: Not surprisingly, many top managers also leave to advance their careers.

Money and advancement opportunities, however, are only part of the story, say consultants, researchers, and veteran IT leaders. Problematic on-the-job circumstances typically drive top managers to quit, too.

“The boss is the classic reason why managers leave,” says Greg Barrett, a senior executive advisor and senior consultant, noting that he has seen this factor, more than money, prompt top talent to resign.

Such bosses tend to micromanage and keep tight control on their direct reports, rather than allowing managers the autonomy they want and need to be good leaders themselves, Kozlo says.

Bev Kaye, founder and CEO of employee development, engagement, and retention consultancy BevKaye&Co, has heard from plenty of promising professionals who quit their jobs because of a bad boss. “They’d say, ‘My boss was a jerk and I couldn’t stand it anymore.’”

Bosses who are arrogant, condescending, and disrespectful are displaying “jerk behaviors,” Kay says.

Moreover, top performers complain when their bosses don’t cultivate personal connections that help demonstrate that they, as bosses, have a genuine interest in helping their managers succeed and advance, she says.

“We ask people why they leave, and they answer, ‘My boss never really knew me, never really knew the things I loved doing and working on,’” explains Kaye, who points to the complaints she once heard workers voice as they were traveling to an event, a trip they had been given as a reward for their great performance yet they didn’t want.

Even if top managers don’t experience such scenarios firsthand, executive failure to address such problems leads to a poor workplace culture that will drive out their best managers, Kaye and others say.

And it’s not just the stereotypically bad workplace cultures that will have them heading out the door, management experts say.

“Sometimes it’s less about being treated badly and more about putting up with mediocracy. These managers are working substantially harder to pick up the slack of others, and they’re not getting credit for it,” says Eric Sigurdson, CIO practice leader at leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

There are other organizational circumstances that prompt resignations from top managers, according to longtime IT leaders.

“Managers leave when they become disillusioned with the culture at the company, when the fun has run out of [their jobs],” says Barrett, a global technology executive who works as a liaison for SIM’s Rising Leaders Forum.

Barrett notes that managers also tend to flee when companies are stagnant or contracting.

Meanwhile, Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president and general manager of training and certification at open-source nonprofit Linux Foundation, says he has seen good managers leave due to a common workplace issue in IT: not enough workers.

“These managers can’t get fully staffed, and they’re just running on fumes. They’re frustrated that they cannot get the people to deliver on the expectations that they are being held to,” he says.

On a related note, Seepersad says the inability for the manager to experiment and innovate is another IT workplace issue driving good managers to the door.

“They’re feeling that they’re being put in a very small box without a lot of room to try new things and sandbox new technologies,” he explains, noting that such a scenario makes managers feel they’re falling behind on understanding evolving tech trends even though they need that experience to continue advancing their careers.

Similarly, that lack of experience on emerging tech can make them feel isolated from the larger professional community, he adds, a fact that will push top performers closer to the exit.

Another organizational issue that will drive away top managers: lack of work-life balance, which is common in IT due to staffing challenges and the 24/7 nature of IT services.

“A lot of IT managers are working longer hours, and they’re picking up slack when their teams are falling behind, which is often because they’re undermanned. So they decide to take a new job where they can get more reasonable hours,” Kozlo says.

Intentional retention

It’s unrealistic — and unreasonable — to believe that top-notch talent will stay put forever, yet executive advisers say CIOs can — and should — do more to get their best managers to stick around. That starts with prioritizing retention, Seepersad says.

Doing that, Kozlo says, requires an honest assessment of what the IT department and the organization as a whole offer.

That can be a reality check for many execs, he says. Remote or hybrid schedules, flexible hours, and limited overtime “aren’t perks; those should be table stakes.” Free snacks, ping-pong tables and holiday parties “aren’t office culture, those are office perks” that surveys show most people don’t care about.

“There are Band-Aids that people are slapping on the issues rather than looking internally to what are the issues around retaining top talent,” Kozlo says. “But there is definitely a lot within the CIO purview that can be done.”

To be clear, there is no single formula for addressing the various factors that commonly make top managers want to quit, but IT execs must be attentive to what they offer managers and to the workplace culture they have — and whether those actually align with what managers (and employees, overall) want.

Kaye, who has authored multiple books on employee topics, including Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, advises CIOs to check their assumptions, as what they assume their managers want may not be accurate.

Instead, she says CIOs should ask: What could I do more of? Less of? What should I continue as is? How can I help you get more of what you want in your current job?

“Otherwise you’re guessing at what your workers want,” Kaye adds.

The next step, according to Kaye, is to act on that feedback.

Kaye and the other management experts interviewed on this topic say that may mean more mentoring combined with greater manager independence; creating rotations through business unit roles to help advance managers when there are no open positions to fill higher up in IT; and setting more realistic delivery timetables for IT projects so managers don’t feel they can’t succeed despite their and their teams’ best efforts.

CIOs also should recognize the benefits of seeing their best players move on — especially when such a parting is positive and even planned, such as when they’re leaving to move up in their career or to pursue a personal passion.

“Their leaving can be an opportunity as much as a loss,” says Jim Knight, executive director of the SIM Leadership Institute and former global CIO at Chubb Insurance.

CIOs can promote a promising worker, a move that cultivates a good workplace culture, or recruit a manager with fresh ideas that can invigorate a team — knowing that the managers they helped train and develop are part of the overall IT community.

There’s also the possibility that those managers will come back.

That happened with University of Phoenix CIO Jamie Smith.

“We had one engineer who wanted to see what life was like elsewhere. He went to a startup and now he’s back,” Smith says. “Sometimes it’s good for our leaders to see something else, and if they come back, they come back with new skills and a deeper understanding of our culture and how meaningful it is.”

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