Tim Bacon blogs about the importance of agile shops investing on retention. He's right in that companies must invest in their people even after the recruitment decision. If they don't, their best staff will eventually jump ship. Unfortunately, the problem is even worse in non-agile shops. Think about it. If an agile shop has trouble keeping their people, how difficult it must be for a traditional sweatshop to keep their people when the working environment is, well, non-agile and they pay anywhere from 0-xx% less than what the employee's market value might be.

I know a certain big consultancy right here in Finland that has had a continuous stream of good developers walking out one after another. Yet, they're doing little to correct the situation. Well, their loss, not mine.