Retention starts before day one
You can't outbid an AI lab for the best people in investment technology. You can make sure the people you do hire actually want to stay.
I asked this a few years ago
A few years ago I ran a poll asking what the main focus should be when hiring. Most people expected the answer to be "hire the best talent". I argued it should be retention. There's not much point winning the best people if you can't keep them.
I touched on that again in April, but only the hiring half of it. The keeping half deserves its own piece, because the competition for good people in this market looks very different to how it did then.
The competition has changed
"We don't really lose people to the traditional competitors anymore."
A CPO at a fast-growing investment technology firm said that to me recently. For years the people leaving went to the same handful of platforms everyone in this space knows. Now they're being picked off by AI labs, at salaries the rest of the market can't get near.
It isn't only the labs. To give a sense of how far apart the top of the market is, Hudson River Trading's UK staff averaged around £820k each in 2025. Most scale-ups aren't going to win a bidding war against that, and they shouldn't try.
What they can control is whether the people they hire want to leave in the first place.
Honest hiring is retention
"I'd rather they walk in clear-eyed than walk out in six months."
A founder told me that when explaining why he won't sugarcoat a role to land a hire. I think he's spot on, and it's the part of retention most firms skip.
When a search has dragged on and everyone just wants it done, the temptation is to sell the upside and go quiet on the rest. The chaos, the targets, the gaps in the product, the bits of the job nobody else wants. You might still win the yes. Then the person spends their first few months finding all of that out for themselves, and starts taking calls again.
People rarely leave because a job turned out to be hard. They leave because it turned out to be different from what they were told.
What I hear when people are ready to move
I speak to a lot of people who weren't looking six months ago and suddenly are. The reasons are rarely about money on its own. It's usually one of a few things:
The role isn't the one they were sold.
The commission plan or targets changed after they joined.
The person who hired them has gone, and nobody explained what happens next.
They're performing well and nobody has noticed or said anything.
Every one of those can be avoided. Most of them start in the hiring process, with promises that weren't quite true or decisions that weren't made before the offer went out.
What keeps good people
The firms I see holding on to their best people aren't doing anything magic.
They're honest at the start about the risk as well as the upside. They put the right person in charge of the new hire and keep them there. They pay fairly when someone outperforms, without making them threaten to leave first. And they treat internal decisions the way the good ones treat hiring: quickly and with conviction, because a promotion that takes six months to agree sends the same message as a week of silence after an interview.
None of it is expensive. It's just easier to skip when everyone is busy.
The cheapest hire
The most expensive hire is the one you have to make twice. The cheapest is the one you never have to make, because the person you already have is still there and still doing well.
You can't outbid everyone for talent. You can give people a reason to stay that a bigger number on its own won't beat.
When did you last ask your best person why they're still with you?