An experienced developer in Atyrau or Aktobe is no longer poached by the company next door. Today the offer comes from Almaty, Warsaw or Berlin — and it arrives without asking the person to move anywhere at all. That single shift is why IT talent retention in the regions has stopped being a matter of "add a little to the salary" and turned into a management discipline of its own. With the country short by roughly fifty thousand tech workers, every strong engineer on a regional team is someone who could receive an offer worth twice their current pay on any given Monday.
The gap in the numbers explains the tension better than any argument. The median IT salary in Kazakhstan sits around 700,000 tenge, while remote work on Western products pushes the median to 1.4 million; specialists at foreign companies earn on average twice what the local market pays. At FSSA we see this in every request to recruit engineers for oil, gas and industrial regions: finding a candidate is hard, and keeping one is harder still, because the labour market has long since gone global for them — even when they live two hundred kilometres from the nearest office.
It helps to drop one illusion right away. Many regional managers still believe their main competitor for talent is the local firm down the road and "capital-city salaries". In practice it looks different. The competitor is a laptop and a stable internet connection, through which the entire planet reaches the developer. And in that contest, employers usually lose on something other than money.
Why the Regions Lose on Environment, Not Pay
Roughly 60% of the country's IT specialists are concentrated in Almaty, and salary ranges in the capitals are predictably higher: regional offers are often 20–30% more modest. It would be logical to assume that all the churn comes from this. But when we break down why specific people leave, money almost never stands alone in first place.
The wider backdrop matters too. Between 2021 and 2024, IT salaries in Kazakhstan grew by about 40%, and expectations grew with them. Meanwhile new tools for attracting talent — such as the Digital Nomad Residency programme — are for now concentrated in Astana and Almaty, pulling opportunity even harder toward two dots on the map. The paradox is that oil, gas and industrial regions can actually pay well: large enterprises and international contractors hold a high bar on compensation. Yet even a locally strong rate loses to remote work, where the median is twice as high and the employer's geography is irrelevant. So the competition for an engineer in Atyrau is not with the contractor next door but with a market that has no borders.
What comes first is the environment. An engineer needs to grow, and growth only happens next to problems harder than yesterday's and people worth learning from. On a small regional team of three, the ceiling is reached within a year or so: everything is already built, the architecture has settled, there are no new challenges. The specialist gets bored long before they start thinking about salary. When an outside offer arrives — not necessarily richer, but with an interesting product and a strong team — they leave, and the employer is genuinely baffled, because "we paid perfectly well".
The second factor is the sense of a career dead end. If the only way up in a company is to become a manager, but the person wants to stay a strong engineer and go deeper into the technology, they are trapped. Good retention starts with having at least two distinct tracks: a management path and an expert path. Then a senior developer does not have to "become a boss" just to feel movement.
The third factor, the one talked about least in the regions, is the quality of the direct manager. People leave managers, not companies. An engineer handed tasks without context, denied a say in decisions and nagged over trivia will start looking for the exit even if everything else suits them. It is a cheap factor to fix and, at the same time, the most underrated: teaching a team lead to give feedback and shield the team from chaos costs far less than filling a strong developer's seat all over again.
What Actually Holds People: IT Talent Retention in Practice
The first thing that works is an honest conversation about money and a predictable review. This is not about paying Berlin rates — that is neither possible nor necessary. It is about making sure the person never feels they have to pry a raise loose with the threat of leaving. Openness about compensation, regular scheduled reviews and a transparent grade logic remove half the reasons to look elsewhere. Large tech employers figured this out long ago: transparency in pay builds trust and reduces turnover more effectively than one-off bonuses. In practice it is enough to fix two or three moments a year when pay is reviewed against clear criteria — and "someone offered me more" turns from blackmail into a normal working dialogue both sides came prepared for.
The second is work you are not ashamed of. Retention in a region almost always comes down to the substance of the job. If a company cannot offer scale, it can offer depth: real ownership of a product, the right to make technical decisions, a seat in design rather than execution alone. An engineer who feels the result depends on them is far less receptive to other people's offers.
The third is flexibility of format, and here the regions have gained a rare trump card. Remote and hybrid schedules have stopped being a perk. For someone living in Atyrau, the ability to work from home, run their own day and skip the commute is part of the salary — just the non-cash part. A company that clings to mandatory office presence "because it feels safer" hands that advantage to competitors whose remote-first culture is wired into how the work is organised.
The fourth is learning treated as retention, not as a line in the benefits package. Paid courses, conferences, time to experiment and internal tech communities give a person exactly the sense of growth a cramped team lacks. The paradox that frightens many employers — "what if we train them and they leave?" — has it backwards. The ones who leave are precisely those nobody invests in. Spending on development is a signal that the company sees a future in the person, and that signal holds better than a bonus.
The fifth, and most human, is onboarding and mentorship in the first months. A large share of churn falls in the first ninety days, while the new hire has not yet integrated, learned the rules or built connections. An assigned mentor, a clear plan for the probation period and regular feedback sharply reduce early attrition. Retention begins not when someone hands in their notice but in their first working week.
Where Retention Breaks: Risks and Pitfalls
The most common mistake is reacting with a counteroffer alone. When an employee brings in an outside offer, the panicked employer raises the salary and exhales. But research and practice say the same thing: a significant share of those who accept a counteroffer leave within the year anyway. The money treated the symptom, while the cause — boredom, a dead end, a clash with the manager — stayed put. A counteroffer makes sense only as part of a systemic conversation, not as a buyout.
The second pitfall is trying to hold people legally. Rigid notice periods, penalties for leaving early and "work off your training or pay" clauses rarely retain a motivated specialist, and they almost always damage relationships and the employer's reputation on a narrow regional market where everyone knows everything about everyone. Under Kazakhstan's Labour Code the ability to hold an employee against their will is limited, and betting on coercion is a strategic loss.
The third risk hides inside the most convenient tool — remote work itself. Allow work from home and it is easy to lose sight of a person: they seem present, yet drift from the team, lose the sense of belonging and at some point are already half in another company. Flexibility retains only alongside a living team culture: regular calls, shared goals, reasons to meet in person. The format alone does not cure isolation.
Finally there is a systemic risk — overvaluing money and undervaluing meaning. A company that can only speak to engineers in the language of raises enters a race where someone richer always turns up. Durable retention rests on the idea that pay must be fair but never the only argument. The moment it becomes the only one, the person leaves for whoever offers more — and on a global market there are always plenty of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you retain an engineer with money alone?
Not for long. Fair pay is mandatory — underpaying reliably pushes people out. But above a certain threshold money stops holding: the specialist starts valuing interesting work, growth, their manager and flexibility. Companies that rely on raises alone enter an endless price race with employers who have deeper pockets.
Is it worth making a counteroffer once someone is already leaving?
Sometimes, but with caution. If the person is valuable and the reason for leaving really is only money, a counteroffer can work. More often, though, the resignation is the finale of accumulated problems, and a raise merely delays the exit by a few months. It is wiser to discuss compensation and growth in advance, not the moment an offer is on the table.
How do you retain a specialist when the regional budget is smaller than the capital's?
Play on the field of environment, not salary. Give real ownership, a short distance to decisions, a flexible schedule, paid training and a clear growth path. For many people the sense of development and respect matters more than a few extra percent that will not catch up to remote work on a Western product anyway.
Does remote work help keep people in the region?
Yes, if it is a deliberate culture rather than a reluctant concession. Working from home removes the competitor's main argument — "no need to relocate, we're remote". But without a living team life, remote works against you: an isolated employee leaves more easily than one woven into the team.
IT talent retention in the regions is, in the end, not about how to bind a person to a company but about how to make them not want to leave. The difference is fundamental. The first is built on fear and restrictions and collapses at the first strong offer. The second is built on meaning, growth and respect — and it is exactly what lets a small team in Atyrau keep, for years, the engineers the whole world calls every week.