If you’ve been in IT long enough to remember when a technical position meant at least some job security, then you already know the tables have turned completely. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 4.3 million quits in January 2022 alone, and IT workers aren’t just watching from the sidelines; we’re leading the charge out the door. For the first time in a generation, the power dynamic has flipped decisively in our favor, and everyone from your manager to the board knows it.

So here’s the question that’s probably keeping you up at night: should you leave too?

The answer isn’t as straightforward as “the market is hot, so jump ship.” The Great Resignation has created two very different realities in IT right now. Some organizations have fought desperately to retain their technical talent, offering promotions, real raises, and finally, permanent remote work options that they spent years blocking. Others have simply dug in, hoping you’ll fear the unknown enough to stay put. The decision of whether to stay or leave depends entirely on which version of your company you’re actually working for, and whether what you’re staying FOR still makes sense for your career.

What Changed (And What Hasn’t)

The bargaining position for IT workers is genuinely historic. Gartner forecasts IT spending to grow 9.2% in 2022, which translates to real budget for hiring and retention at most enterprises. Salary surveys from Payscale and Glassdoor are showing IT professionals securing raises in the 5 to 8 percent range when they move externally, and companies that want to keep existing talent are matching or approaching those numbers. A year ago, asking for a 6% raise would have been considered aggressive. Now it’s table stakes.

But here’s what hasn’t changed: not every role is growing, not every company can afford to pay what the market is demanding, and not every opportunity that looks great on the surface is actually worth your time. The temptation during a seller’s market is to assume that any move forward is the right move, and that’s when you end up in a new position that’s actually worse than what you left.

The Log4j crisis that consumed December and January is a useful lens here. When critical vulnerabilities hit and your organization mobilized quickly to patch everything, did you feel supported or abandoned? Were you working because the work mattered, or because you had no choice and nobody was going to help you manage the load? That distinction matters enormously when you’re thinking about staying, because the crisis periods are when organizations reveal their true values. If you burned out patching Log4j vulnerabilities while management held budget meetings, you already know something important about your future there.

Build Your Own Decision Framework

Before you do anything, sit down with a piece of paper and answer these questions honestly. This isn’t career-advice fluff; this is the actual work of figuring out what staying means for you.

First, what are you staying FOR, not what are you running FROM? This is the question that divides people who make good career moves from people who just make different career mistakes. “I don’t want to deal with job interviews” is running from something. “This team respects on-call boundaries and finally offered me a title that matches my actual responsibilities” is staying for something. The second one holds up when the new job gets hard. The first one doesn’t. Make a list of three to five concrete things about your current role that are genuinely good, that you’d want to have in your next position. If you can’t make that list, that’s meaningful information.

Second, has your compensation actually kept pace with the market, or is management hoping you won’t notice? Pull your salary history from your last three years of offer letters and compare it directly against what your role is pulling in on Levels.fyi, Blind, and Glassdoor. If you’re earning 10 or more percent below market rate, staying is a significant financial sacrifice, and “the team is nice” doesn’t change that math. If you’re at market rate or above, that’s a major reason to stay. Don’t fudge this one. Go pull the actual numbers.

Third, has your organization actually demonstrated it values your work during stress periods, or do you just assume they will in the future? Think back to the last time your team was underwater with work. Did management bring in temporary help, or did they assume you’d just absorb it? When you asked for something you needed to do your job better, did they get you budget or did they ask you to make do? Intentions matter less than patterns. People and organizations show you who they are when things are tight, and you should believe that version of them.

Fourth, is your growth trajectory realistic, or are you on the five-year plan to nowhere? This is where a lot of IT professionals get trapped. You’re competent, you’re reliable, and management has quietly decided that your job is to keep the lights on forever. Meanwhile, your peers are getting promoted into leadership, moving into cloud architecture, or pivoting into security. Where is the actual opportunity for growth in your current role, and how long would that actually take? If the honest answer is “unlikely,” then staying is a choice to stop growing, which is fine if that’s what you want, but you should call it what it is.

Fifth, could you realistically do this job somewhere else? This isn’t about whether your skills are transferable; it’s about whether this particular role is so tied to your specific company’s weird circumstances that nobody else would hire you to do it. If you’re the only person who understands the legacy system because nobody documented it, that’s job security in the most depressing way possible. If you’ve built a genuine skill set that’s portable and in demand, that’s something else entirely.

The Real Calculus

Once you’ve answered those questions, the decision becomes clearer. Staying only makes sense if the answer to at least three of those questions points decisively toward your current role. If you’re below market rate, you’re trapped in a growth-free zone, and the team’s niceness isn’t enough to overcome it, then the math says leave. The job market for IT professionals right now is genuinely favorable, and you’re unlikely to get another window like this for a while. You’re not being greedy; you’re being rational.

But if you’re at fair compensation, you can see a real path forward, management has demonstrated they value you during crisis periods, and you’ve built meaningful relationships that matter to you, then staying could absolutely be the right call. This is especially true if your company has finally locked in remote work or given you significantly more flexibility than the local market would offer. That flexibility might be worth more than the 10% raise you’d get somewhere else.

Here’s something worth remembering as you make this choice: the Great Resignation is still in full swing, but it won’t last forever. Markets normalize eventually, and when they do, the people who stayed at organizations that treated them well will have accumulated significant stock in those organizations’ success. The people who bounced around chasing every opportunity won’t have much to show for it besides a longer resume. Neither path is objectively right; they just require different things from you.

If you’re leaving, the negotiating power you have right now might never be higher again. Use it. Don’t accept the first offer, push back on title and scope, and make sure the next role is actually an upgrade, not just a different set of problems. And if you’re staying, make sure your organization knows you’re doing so intentionally, because right now, that retention itself is a negotiation tool. Get it in writing, whether that’s a promotion, a raise, a flexibility agreement, or something else that matters to you.

The only move that doesn’t make sense is staying put without explicitly choosing to do so, telling yourself a story about loyalty while your market value drifts lower and lower. If you’re in that position right now, read back through your own team’s patterns around burnout and stress management, and ask yourself seriously whether you’re actually staying for a good reason or just staying out of inertia.

The decision to stay or leave is one of the few places in your career where you actually have serious power right now. Use it intentionally.