CIO Dale Frantz on the price of failure in IT staff retention

Dale Frantz, CIO at Auto Warehousing Co., has some interesting insights about how failures in IT staff retention constitute a disruption of institutional knowledge that's at least partially to blame for the poor quality of a lot of the IT software and systems on the market.

Frantz and I corresponded on the subject earlier this week, and I found what he had to say so valuable that I asked for and got his permission to share it here:

I've been reading your editorials about women (and men) leaving the IT field. Here at AWC we've achieved some remarkable stats with retention of our IT staff and longevity in their careers. 

Our IT staff has an average tenure of 10.58 years. A full third of my staff has a tenure greater than15 years, and 50% of my staff has a tenure greater than 10 years. I have been very fortunate in having the ability to keep our intellectual capital here, and the long-term benefits of that knowledge have proven invaluable as we have grown. The "churn and burn" approach to hiring and careers in IT has been very destructive, I think, and some of the sad states of current software and system solutions available in our industry reflect that. 

Not that I want to take any pot shots at Microsoft, but I think the overall poor quality of Vista as a product is in part due to the lack of continuity of knowledge during product development and evolution, especially knowledge from prior versions of Windows. 

IT is going to continue to suffer until we figure out (like the rest of the business world did years ago) that our people are our No. 1 asset, and until we recognize that fact and treat them accordingly, we as an industry will continue to experience the huge burnout that we're seeing today. We can't continue to treat our people like a commodity and expect to  succeed.