“Strong people quit out of the blue”
The company thought it was about pay. Exit interviews showed people were leaving their manager and a loss of meaning — not chasing money.
Company. A tech company of about 600 people. Market-level salaries, but strong specialists are leaving more and more, and hiring can't keep up with the gaps.
Valuable people quit “out of nowhere.” On the standard exit form, the top answer was “salary.” They raised pay — turnover didn't change.
“We're being poached with money.” A conclusion drawn from checkboxes on the exit form.
The full question set (9)
- 01Take me back to when you first thought “time to go.” When was that?
- 02What was going on in your work and your team at the time?
- 03What was the last straw?
- 04When was the last time you felt your work actually mattered?
- 05How was your relationship with your manager?
- 06Did you raise the problems out loud? What came back?
- 07What would have genuinely kept you — honestly?
- 08How much was money the real reason, and how much just a pretext?
- 09What turned out to be different at the new place?
The AI doesn't read these off like a list. It moves through the questions and, after every answer, follows up naturally until it gets to the real point. Here's how it actually sounds.
Interview excerpt
Analysis of 20 interviews
sonarum pulls 20 conversations into a single report: which themes come up most, real quotes, and what it all means.
“The real thing is: people just stopped noticing me.”
“Salary is the easy thing to tick in a box.”
“Over there someone needs me again — that's the whole difference.”
- The main reason for leaving is the relationship with the manager and a loss of meaning, not money. Raising salaries missed the point.
- “Salary” on the form is a respectable label hiding the real pain.
- People sent signals months before leaving — the system never noticed them.
Stop chasing salaries. Introduce regular one-on-ones about meaning and growth, train managers, catch early signals, and explain honestly when a project gets shut down.
It turned out retention isn't about money — it's about managers and meaning. Targeted work with managers cut turnover among strong people nearly in half — and cheaper than raising pay.