How to make your IT staff unpoachable

My husband has a job at a small company. There is no doubt whatsoever that he could get a 40% raise by moving elsewhere. He has no interest in doing so, and I would discourage him from even entertaining the idea. Among the reasons:

* He works on products that he feels make the world better.

* Everyone, from CEO to colleagues, say _Thank You_. Regularly. And they mean it.

* He spends minimal time in meetings. When a meeting is held, it's for a good reason. Nor, as an introvert, is he encouraged to interact with the public.

* If he wants to go to a tech conference for anything even vaguely relevant, he never gets an argument about it. Nor do they suggest he do it on the cheap. They see education as an investment in staff.

* Like a lot of businesses, his company says, "We're a family." Unlike a lot of businesses, they mean it. When the spouse of one employee got cancer, the employees created a fund (that the CEO decided to match) to raise money for one of those "make food in advance" freezer-meals companies. This way the employee and spouse could focus on her healing, not on coping with dinner.

Nor is this a matter of treating a star player in a special manner. Of the 70 people in the company, about 40 have been at the firm for 10+ years. They have extremely little turnover.

Money? Feh. The point is to be happy at what you do. And he is.