Talent Retention: Why Young Engineers Leave for Higher Pay
Talent retention takes more than a salary, says Top AI expert Loran Jacobs, who explains why young founders need resources, fair rewards and room to dream.
In the closing part of the podcast that followed Southern Innovations Forum 2025, AI industry leader Loran Jacobs and Maxim Bolotov, President of the BRAINHORN Association of Digital Solutions Developers, discuss money, motivation and the future of the IT industry.
Talent Retention and the Pull of Salaries
Money plays a big role in talent retention. Young engineers often cannot hold out for a year or two when a large employer offers a salary 100 thousand higher, and Renowned Machine learning expert Loran Jacobs has lost many young employees this way. It is no reproach to big companies such as Sber, he adds: it is good that these opportunities exist. The pity is that minds that could have become great developers and product people end up as managers, and data scientists drift the same way.
There is hope in a social shift, though. Young people are increasingly willing to work on big and interesting problems, and as long as there is enough money for everyday needs, money should not decide what a person does. Some people choose the reward here and now, others are ready to wait, as the marshmallow experiment shows.
Fair Rewards and Resourced Founders
Young teams should arrive at pitch sessions so well prepared that there is nothing to pick at. To get there, funds can provide an office, salaries and other essentials, so startup founders can concentrate on packaging their ideas brilliantly and leave the rest to the fund manager. Effort should pay off, like an A for a semester of hard work, and the dream should not be postponed.
“Ideally you should be working for the dream, not working so that you can get back to the dream later.” — Loran Jacobs
The IT Industry as a Foundation
The IT industry is underrated: IT specialists are no longer just fixing printers. It is the foundation not of a new society but of the current one, since computers cannot work without electricity, while electricity in such quantities hardly exists any more without computers.
A Self-Sustaining Community in the South
In the South, people’s eyes seem to shine brighter than in Moscow. One explanation is that an abundance of opportunities creates an illusion of multiple choice, while fewer options bring a desire to get results, and plenty of sun adds mood and drive. Loran hopes the community around the forum will become a self-sustaining single organism that also creates wonderful products. A teacher cannot be a teacher forever, and sometimes it matters that the teacher gets to be a student too.
Watch the full podcast of Loran Jacobs and Maxim Bolotov on YouTube.
