I agree that such talent retention problems occur across the board, but I still think the problems are magnified in IT relative to other departments because of the seemingly larger variance in productivity/output in IT. It is common that some people in IT produce several _orders of magnitudes_ more in output than others. Such variability is less common in other fields and certainly it not reflected in compensation.
But I do believe that in general variability in talent/ability is much higher than people intuitively believe, because we are all accustomed to prize "equality", perhaps sacrificing cold hard truth along the way. In the future as more traditional companies begin to exploit this in the manner that Google has (Google recognizes talent, is willing to pay for it, and is enormously successful as a result..) an employee's total benefit of working for a company (which includes salary, happiness, intellectual stimulation, pride of work, etc.) will more accurately follow talent and subsequently the Dead Sea Effect will subside.
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I agree that such talent retention problems occur across the board, but I still think the problems are magnified in IT relative to other departments because of the seemingly larger variance in productivity/output in IT. It is common that some people in IT produce several _orders of magnitudes_ more in output than others. Such variability is less common in other fields and certainly it not reflected in compensation. But I do believe that in general variability in talent/ability is much higher than people intuitively believe, because we are all accustomed to prize "equality", perhaps sacrificing cold hard truth along the way. In the future as more traditional companies begin to exploit this in the manner that Google has (Google recognizes talent, is willing to pay for it, and is enormously successful as a result..) an employee's total benefit of working for a company (which includes salary, happiness, intellectual stimulation, pride of work, etc.) will more accurately follow talent and subsequently the Dead Sea Effect will subside.