Employee Attrition - Fixing the Obvious Doesn’t Always Work: A case study

Have you ever tried to solve a problem, thought you nailed it, and then watched it sneak back in like nothing changed? Or maybe your fix accidentally stirred up a couple of new messes? I’ve been there, and I’m guessing you have too. It’s frustrating, right? But there’s a reason it happens—and a tech company I came across recently showed me how this plays out.

This company had a big issue: their developers were churning with high turn over and it was eating away at their team, and they apparently thought money was the answer. So, they hiked salaries up by 15%. Simple, logical fix. The thesis was that people stay for more cash.

Well, six months later, nothing changed. People were still leaving. When they dug into exit interviews, the truth came out: it wasn’t about the money. Developers were fed up with technical debt - old, messy code that made their jobs harder and less fun every day. The pay raise didn’t touch that.

So, what was really going on?

Let’s break it down. The company was stuck in a cycle:

• There’s pressure to ship features fast (customers want it yesterday).
• To hit deadlines, the team cuts corners on code quality.
• That builds up technical debt - think of it like a pile of dirty dishes you keep ignoring.
• The messier the code gets, the harder and slower it is to work with.
• Which just ramps up the pressure to deliver even more.

Sound familiar? That salary hike fix was a classic “fix that fails.” In systems thinking, that’s when you try a quick solution like 'more money for staying back' that seems to help at first but doesn’t address the real problem, so it boomerangs back worse. Here, turnover stayed high, and the technical debt kept piling up because the root issue wasn’t the paychecks; it was the work itself.

What they needed was to step back and see the bigger picture. Systems thinking has this idea called “fixes that fail,” and it’s perfect for spotting when a solution’s just kicking the can down the road. Instead of sticking with the quick fix, they dug into what was driving the turnover. Here’s what they did: they balanced getting stuff done now with keeping the code healthy for later. They set aside 20% of every sprint (about one day a week) for cleaning up technical debt. No new features, just fixing the foundation. They also started tracking code quality alongside delivery deadlines. It wasn’t just “Did we ship it?” anymore. it was also “Is this code something we can live with down the road?” They made those metrics visible to everyone, so the team could see the progress and feel the difference.

Recognizing this as a “fixes that fail” situation helped them see why the salary bump flopped and shift to something that actually broke the cycle. I don’t have the long-term results. I’m not in their office, but it feels like a solid move. By giving the team room to fix things properly, they’re not just plugging a leak; they’re redesigning the ship so it doesn’t keep springing new ones.

This story got me thinking about how we handle problems at work. How often do we go for the obvious fix like more money, more people, tighter deadlines without asking what’s really broken? It’s like if your car’s making a weird noise, and you just keep swapping parts instead of figuring out why it’s clunking.

I’ve seen it in my own work too. You rush to solve something, feel good about it, and then a month later, you’re back at square one or dealing with two new headaches. It’s exhausting. But when you pause and ask if you’re stuck in a “fixes that fail” trap, you might catch the real issue before it bites you again.

So, next time a problem won’t quit, try zooming out. Ask what’s feeding it, not just what’s loudest. What do you think. Ever had a fix backfire because it was too quick? Drop your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear!