Code, culture, and competitive edge: Who’s winning the engineering talent game?

Every engineering leader wants to build a company that attracts top developers, but in 2025, that’s harder than ever. A competitive pay package is table stakes, remote flexibility is expected, and AI is reshaping how teams operate and what engineers value.

So how do you actually attract and retain world-class technical talent today?

Our data reveals a new reality: a handful of companies have cracked the code to build cultures where top engineers flock to, stay, grow, and multiply their impact. These outliers have achieved something rare: both high talent density and high retention, at scale.

• Retention leaders: Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon set the standard for keeping top engineering talent.
• Attrition winners and losers: Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta are growing engineering teams 2-3x faster than they’re losing them, while Tesla, Bloomberg, and Walmart are losing talent faster than they can hire.
• Fewer managers, bigger impact: Over nine years, the engineer-to-manager ratio rose 30% (from 5.87 to 7.65) thanks to better tools and more autonomous teams.
• Tenure is steady: Four-year tenures dipped only slightly (59% → 52%), challenging the “job-hopper” myth.
• Pedigree isn’t required: A college degree isn’t required for big tech jobs. At Microsoft, Adobe, and Walmart, 15%+ of engineers lack degrees; Disney, Netflix, and Apple follow at 13%, proving skills and experience can open doors without diplomas.

The three pillars: talent, retention, scale

To anchor this analysis, we analyzed 20 years of data across major tech companies and uncovered a shared blueprint behind the rise of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google). Despite wildly different products, sectors, and GTM strategies, these five companies nailed three things:

1. Hired elite engineering talent
2. Retained them through scaling and growth cycles
3. Grew their teams without burning out managers or breaking the culture

These three pillars—talent, retention, and scale—became the rubric for spotting the next wave of engineering culture leaders.

2. Meet the next generation of engineering powerhouses

We used this rubric to spotlight the companies leading the next era of engineering culture leaders. Some are open-source powerhouses, and others are magnets for world-class technical talent, but all of them excel in three key areas:

• They are building engineering orgs at scale  (employ 2,000+ engineers)
• They boast top-tier talent density
• They have above-average talent retention rates

We’re calling this new elite group M²A³GNUS for short, and it includes:

• Microsoft (New)
• Meta
• Apple
• Amazon
• Adobe (New)
• Google
• Netflix
• Uber (New)
• Stripe (New)

These companies didn’t stumble into greatness. They’ve built intentional cultures that keep top engineers engaged, empowered, and sticking around through clear missions, internal mobility, open-source cred, trust in leadership, and clear technical missions.

3. Engineering gravity: A new way to spot engineering strongholds

It’s no surprise that engineers are gravitating toward companies that invest in strong, supportive engineering cultures and continue to invest in them. What matters most? Technical relevance, supportive culture, room to grow, and a sense of being valued.

Thanks to recent hiring and attrition data, we can now quantify which companies are getting this right. Let’s look at the data through two important lenses:

The hiring-to-attrition ratio matters

This metric tracks how many engineers a company hires for every one who leaves. A ratio over 100 means the company is growing its engineering headcount—a signal of both engineering demand and internal retention.

The chart below highlights who’s pulling ahead. These companies are successfully scaling engineering headcount by hiring faster than they’re losing talent.

• Meta, Netflix, Uber, and Google are leading the pack, with ratios well above 100, signaling net-positive headcount movement.
• Companies above the 100 mark are retaining and scaling sustainably, while those below are backfilling losses or burning out their teams.

Brand gravity map: Who’s growing, and how fast

This scatterplot charts which companies are truly expanding their engineering teams—plotting net headcount growth (Y-axis) against total team size (X-axis).

• Meta stands out, soaring above the trendline, as the only large company adding thousands of engineers at remarkable speed.
• Google and Netflix show steady, healthy growth, balancing scale with stability.
• Tesla, Walmart, and Palantir fall below the line, suggesting instability or attrition despite aggressive hiring.

So what does brand gravity really mean? Simply put, it means engineers are drawn to companies that offer:

• Growth without chaos
• Impact without burnout
• Structure without red tape

The winners in 2025 are the companies balancing technical challenges with sustainability. This may be why Meta, for all its public volatility, remains a top draw thanks to scale, speed, and outsized AI compensation packages. Netflix, despite hiring fewer engineers, retains some of the industry's most elite talent by prioritizing focus, autonomy, and craft.

In the end, brand gravity isn’t about making headlines—it’s about scaling fast without losing your people.

4. Why retention is the strategy

For engineering leaders, retention isn’t just an HR metric; it’s a strategic moat. Here’s why it shapes everything from velocity and code quality to team morale:

• Every resignation drains context and momentum.
• High retention leads to faster ramp times, cleaner systems, and less disruption.
• Retention creates a self-reinforcing culture where engineers invest, mentor, and ship at higher levels.

If you want to build a world-class org, your retention rate is a leading indicator of whether you're on track to hit your business goals.

Developer retention leaders: Who’s keeping their engineers?

If you're building an engineering organization, retention isn't just a metric; it's a culture report card. While salary and perks matter, they’re not what keep top engineers around. Culture, clarity, challenge, and trust in leadership are the main drivers. With our data, we can now quantify which companies are getting this right.

Using multiple sources of career data and engineering org analysis, we ranked companies based on their engineering retention: 

• How long do engineers stay?
• How often do they return to those companies?
• How deep does their tenure run?

Many of the leaders in this category, with consistently high retention and stability, also showed up in our M²A³GNUS quadrant: 

• Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe stand out, with engineers often staying well beyond 3 - 5 years, a rarity in tech. 
• Stripe and Square also have decent retention given their smaller size, indicating strong leadership and technical missions that retain senior talent. 
• (It’s worth noting that some of the bigger orgs have the option of shuttling top engineers between subsidiaries, giving them a unique advantage. Feeling stuck at Google Search? You can go work on Android or Veo.)

What makes engineers stay? (It’s not just Open Source projects or AI)

High retention is the hallmark of a healthy engineering culture, but it's not always driven by what the industry assumes. While Open Source contributions and AI-native prestige might signal technical excellence, our data suggests that neither is a guaranteed formula for keeping engineers long-term.

We analyzed 20+ top tech companies and compared their open-source activity scores with their engineering retention rates (measured as a percentage of engineers with above-average tenure). Surprisingly, the correlation was slightly negative (r = -0.27). Companies like Meta, Stripe, and Netflix rank highly in public contributions, but that doesn’t consistently translate into longer engineer tenures.

While open source cred plays a role in engineering culture by boosting a company’s reputation, improving code quality, and giving engineers external visibility to fuel career momentum, it’s not a silver bullet for retention.

But that doesn’t mean open source cred isn’t valuable. Our data shows a clear pattern: companies active in open source attract stronger engineering talent overall. This suggests that OSS culture doesn’t just build credibility, it draws in ambitious, high-caliber developers, even if it doesn’t always guarantee they’ll stay long-term. That raises a broader question: How long are engineers actually staying at top companies today?

Engineering tenure holds steady across the industry

Our cohort analysis (cleaned up for outliers and small orgs) shows that the average 4-year engineering tenure has declined slightly from nearly 59% in 2015 to just over 52% in 2024. That’s a slow, steady drop, not a freefall.

Considering the last five years of chaos with a global pandemic, remote-work shifts, return-to-office whiplash, layoffs, reorgs, and now the AI gold rush, that’s surprisingly stable. It points to a deeper truth: strong engineering cultures still stick. The best teams are holding onto top talent, even as the market churns.

While companies may be shrinking team sizes, core engineering culture remains resilient. But even small declines matter. In a world where AI labs are poaching relentlessly, any decline represents a risk to your company.

So how do you hold onto your top engineers?

How leading tech orgs are keeping their best engineers

It’s not just about perks and cool projects. Top engineers stay at companies where they can ship meaningful work and keep growing. They gravitate toward organizations with clear, technical leadership and structures that support rather than stifle their progress. That’s harder than ever to pull off in today’s lean, post-reorg tech landscape. As companies flatten and rewire their teams, engineering culture is being rebuilt from the ground up.

While there is no single explanation for declining engineer retention, the data reveals clear signals that companies shouldn't ignore.

The teams that are successfully retaining their best engineers consistently provide:

• Strong, technical engineering leadership
• Career growth beyond the management track (see our last Engineering Career Mobility Report)
• A healthy pace of work and real psychological safety
• Technical excellence without the chaos

Retention isn’t magic; it’s more about structure, support, and showing engineers they matter.

5. The era of efficiency: Why leaner teams are reshaping engineering culture

Tech’s growth era is giving way to an efficiency era, and it’s evident in organizational structures.

Over the past decade, the average number of engineers per manager at leading tech companies has risen by 30%, equating to two additional direct reports per manager. 

This shift underscores a broader trend toward leaner teams, stretched managerial capacities, and increased autonomy and accountability placed upon individual engineers.

However, this trend doesn't indicate a diminishing role for engineering leadership; rather, it highlights an evolution in managerial functions.

For managers: Technical depth and focused mentorship matter more than ever. The data clearly illustrates that effective managers in high-retention organizations maintain robust technical involvement, regularly contributing to design documentation and actively participating in mentoring. Although managerial roles are numerically reduced, their strategic importance intensifies, with emphasis shifting from broad oversight toward deeper technical contributions and targeted coaching. Managers who maintain close ties to technical workflows and direct interaction with their teams through regular feedback loops are consistently linked to higher retention rates.

This may mean you need to prune your meetings and spend more time on GitHub, but it’ll be worth it. 

For ICs: Increased autonomy demands versatility and resilience. For individual contributors, leaner management structures translate into heightened visibility, ownership, and ambiguity. With fewer managerial figures available to set explicit goals or resolve bottlenecks, engineers must adapt to a new normal characterized by increased self-direction and proactive problem-solving.

The data suggest that successful individual contributors in these environments demonstrate technical versatility, exceptional organizational skills, cultural intelligence, and emotional resilience. Those able to self-navigate uncertainty, actively solicit feedback, and maintain consistent productivity, even amid organizational flux, tend to experience accelerated professional growth.

What org flattening says about tech’s future

SignalFire’s decade-long analysis of the 100 largest tech companies reveals a slow, steady, and consistent trimming of management layers even within legacy giants. While some firms show gradual increases in their engineer-to-manager ratios, others experienced sharp restructures triggered by funding rounds or new leadership.

Managerial bloat isn't just a headcount problem; it's a strategic warning sign. As entry-level roles give way to AI automation, management layers might stabilize, but don't expect a return to top-heavy structures anytime soon.

6. Rethinking pedigree: Who’s hiring bootcamp grads and self-taught engineers (and is it working)?

For decades, a degree from a top computer science program was a prerequisite for elite engineering roles. But in 2025, that gatekeeping is fading fast. Today, the companies shaping the future of software are hiring bootcamp grads, self-taught coders, and non-traditional talent at scale —and it appears to be paying off.

The chart above highlights the percentage of engineers at each company without a traditional bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD. Here’s what stands out:

• At least 1 out of 8 engineers at Disney, Microsoft, Google, and Adobe don’t hold a formal degree
• Even deep-tech players like Anthropic and NVIDIA show notable numbers, a signal that ability is starting to outpace credentials in modern engineering hiring.

Why this hiring approach works

These companies aren’t lowering the bar. They’re broadening it by rethinking what excellence looks like. Engineers from non-traditional paths often bring:

• Richer, stronger, hands-on project portfolios
• Diverse, fresh perspectives on users and edge cases
• Grit, speed, adaptability, and hustle from self-taught learning paths

Backed by the right internal support systems, these hires often become high-impact ICs who are more mission-driven and less boxed in by academic orthodoxy.

Here is a look at the data for all of the companies we analyzed:

Are creative cultures driving more inclusive hiring?

Some of the companies hiring the most nontraditional engineers—like Apple and Disney—are also known for design, storytelling, product innovation, and a creativity-first culture. That’s not a coincidence. When creativity, product thinking, and user experience are core to the culture, rigid credentialing tends to matter less.

The future of engineering excellence won’t be decided in admissions offices. It’ll be written in code that ships and improved by the people who stay to build version two.

Now let’s tie this all together.

7. The blueprint for building engineering cultures that last

Attracting great engineers is hard. Keeping them is harder. But building an engineering culture that does both—consistently and across cycles—is what separates good companies from generational ones. Here’s what that looks like in practice and how to apply it.

Talent isn’t credentialed. It’s proven.

Apple, Adobe, and Disney are hiring more non-degreed engineers than most of their peers, and these orgs continue to create new categories of innovative products and retain their best engineers.

It’s a move from gatekeeping to real-world problem-solving and signals a shift in what top-tier orgs prioritize:

• Practical skills over academic pedigree
• Project ownership over exam scores
• Creative perspective over conventional résumés

Brand gravity is measurable

Engineers don’t just go where the jobs are. They go where they believe the engineering culture offers growth, challenge, support, and peer quality. This belief shows up in talent movement data:

• Meta, despite public volatility over the past few years, is growing its engineering headcount rapidly. Why? Engineers still believe in technical rigor and upward mobility. We have Meta to thank for React, GraphQL, and PyTorch—tools the industry runs on. Or as one redditor put it: “Meta has made some incredible OSS that much of the world embraces and relies on.”
• Netflix and Google are proof that “big” doesn’t have to mean “slow,” and you can still retain top talent
• Tesla and Walmart, by contrast, show signs of churn and a large number of job openings, suggesting that strong hiring goals can’t mask weak cultural signals.

If you’re scaling a team, here’s what the best companies get right:

• Maintain manager ratios that support, not stifle, engineer growth
• Invest in IC career paths, not just management tracks
• Hire for ability, then build systems that unlock it
• Treat retention like a core business KPI

Key takeaways for startup founders and builders

If you're a founder or engineering leader, the roadmap is clear:

• Retention is a lagging indicator of trust and impact. Engineers stay where they can grow, ship, and influence direction.
• High talent density attracts more talent. Top engineers want to work with peers who challenge and inspire them.
• Culture scales, but only when it's intentional. All of these orgs have figured out how to embed engineering values deeply, even with thousands of engineers.

Don’t mimic big tech. Learn what works and build it your way.

Want to dig into the data? Got feedback, questions, or stories to swap? You can reach me at jarod@signalfire.com.

Research Methodology

This report is powered by data from Beacon, SignalFire’s proprietary AI platform that tracks and ranks more than 80 million companies, 600 million people, and millions of open-source projects. To power it, we rely on 40 different datasets spanning job movements, funding rounds, company filings, patent applications, open source activity, and more. We layer machine learning rankings and classifications on top of this data, allowing us to arrive at a holistic picture of the ecosystems we invest in. Our analysis leverages real-time signals to identify emerging trends in engineering culture, team dynamics, and talent strategy.

Data Sources & Processing

• Workforce Signals: All retention, headcount, and role classification data is derived from publicly available profiles, updated continuously, as well as multiple sources of data. While self-reported data may contain inaccuracies or omissions, large sample sizes and longitudinal patterns help mitigate individual anomalies.

Key Definitions

• "Engineers": Employees with titles that match industry-standard engineering roles, including software engineers, infrastructure engineers, data engineers, ML engineers, and similar IC positions. We exclude ambiguous or managerial-only roles unless specified in ratio calculations.
• M²A³GNUS: This category includes Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Adobe, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Uber, and Stripe. These were evaluated individually and in aggregate to assess large-cap tech trends.

Cohort Analysis & Retention

• Tenure & Retention: Our retention metrics are cohort-based, measuring the percentage of engineers who remain at a company after a fixed duration (e.g., 3 or 4 years). We analyze tenure distributions by role, company size, and manager-to-IC ratios. Emerging AI labs were excluded because they don't yet have long-term retention data.

AI Lab Inclusion Criteria: For retention comparisons among AI-native orgs, we limited the dataset to labs with consistent employment records from 2023–2024 and verified LinkedIn company profiles.