🇳🇱 Netherlands · 🇮🇳 India
*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
India's IT sector runs at roughly 25 per cent annual attrition — a number that, sustained for four years, statistically replaces the entire workforce. The Netherlands runs at 12–14 per cent, and yet Dutch tech tenure is among Europe's shortest, under two years by Ravio's 2026 benchmarks. The paradox resolves once you see the machinery: Dutch mobility is a lifestyle choice exercised by comfortable people with iron legal protections, while Indian mobility is a competitive sport played for real stakes — a 30 per cent hike, a visa, a way up. Same restlessness; very different reasons to be restless.
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| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Understand the vast contract (permanent) vs tijdelijk (temporary) distinction — the permanent one is a fortress | Don't panic on a temp contract; the ketenregeling forces employers to convert or release after three contracts/three years |
| Negotiate hard at entry — Dutch salary bands are transparent-ish and compressed | Don't expect big counteroffers; Dutch employers often let you go with well-wishes rather than bid |
| Treat a job change as normal life admin; nobody will read it as betrayal | Don't hop before 12 months repeatedly — even the Dutch raise an eyebrow at serial sprinting |
| Check the 30% ruling implications before switching employers as an expat | Don't underestimate part-time seniority — the 4-day-week principal engineer is real and respected |
| Value pension fund portability when moving | Don't confuse low drama with low ambition; the Dutch change jobs calmly and often |
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Time moves around appraisal season (April–June) — post-increment resignations are a national rhythm | Don't accept a counteroffer lightly; Indian HR folklore holds that counteroffer-takers leave within a year anyway, and are marked |
| Expect and negotiate 25–40% hikes on switching; internal raises rarely compete | Don't ghost employers or skip notice — background verification is thorough and industry memories are long |
| Serve your full notice period (30–90 days); buyouts exist but burn goodwill and cash | Don't job-hop under 12–18 months more than once; even hot markets read patterns |
| Keep documents pristine — relieving letters and experience certificates are career passports | Don't mistake loyalty rhetoric for job security; layoffs come regardless of your tenure |
| Build your referral network — most good offers travel through ex-colleagues | Don't stay 6+ years without title movement; the market will price you as furniture |
The Dutch labour market pulls off a rare trick: high mobility with low anxiety. The foundation is legal. The vast contract — the permanent contract — is genuinely hard to terminate, requiring court or labour-authority approval and transition payments; and the ketenregeling (chain rule) prevents employers from stringing workers along on temporary contracts indefinitely — after three fixed-term contracts or three years, conversion to permanent or goodbye. The result is that Dutch professionals switch employers the way one switches gyms: because the new one is closer, pays somewhat better, or has a nicer vibe. Ravio's data showing sub-two-year tech tenure alongside modest 12–14 per cent attrition describes exactly this — constant, unhurried circulation rather than desperate flight.
Culturally, Hofstede's maximal individualism score of 100 does its work: careers belong to individuals, not employers, and no Dutch manager expects gratitude for the salary. What tempers the churn is contentment engineering — part-time arrangements, short commutes, and the general absence of a reason to flee. Dutch employees leave jobs they like for jobs they suspect they'll like slightly more, and employers respond not with counteroffers but with a farewell borrel and a good reference, secure in the knowledge that the labour market is a small, polite carousel everyone rides forever.
Indian professional mobility is best understood as the salary system working as designed — just not designed by HR. With IT attrition averaging around 25 per cent (Statista's series shows the sector leading all industries), the external move is the raise: 25–40 per cent hikes on switching are standard expectations, against single-digit internal increments. The market has evolved elaborate rituals around this: appraisal season ends, increment letters disappoint, and resignation season begins with monsoon punctuality. Notice periods stretch to 60 and 90 days precisely because employers know what the calendar holds; counteroffer culture is vigorous and viewed with universal cynicism; and the "relieving letter" — the document proving you exited cleanly — functions as a passport no professional dares travel without.
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Yet calling this disloyalty misreads it. Hofstede's India profile (power distance 77, moderate individualism) preserves deep relational loyalty — to bosses, mentors and teams — which is why so much hiring flows through ex-colleague referral networks. The loyalty follows people, not institutions. An Indian engineer will decline a better offer because her old manager asked her to join his new company instead — a sentence that would bewilder a Dutch recruiter and explains half of Bangalore.
The structural difference is what quitting costs. In the Netherlands, almost nothing: protections are portable, pensions transfer, and the market is calm enough that a mediocre move can be corrected next year. In India, quitting is a project — three months' notice, document choreography, background verification, possibly a buyout — and yet tens of millions do it annually, because staying costs more. Dutch mobility is low-stakes and therefore constant; Indian mobility is high-stakes and therefore strategic, timed to appraisals, market cycles and the referral network's pulse.
The mirror irony: the Netherlands, with every legal reason to stay put, produces some of Europe's shortest tenures; India, where switching is bureaucratically punishing, produces the world's most mobile tech workforce. Both facts have the same cause — in each country, the rational career move is the one the system accidentally subsidises.
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r/developersIndia — An engineer described the appraisal-season ritual with weary precision: a 6 per cent increment letter in April, three interviews in May, a 38 per cent offer in June, and a 60-day notice period during which his manager alternated between counteroffers and guilt — "the whole industry does this annually, like migration season, and HR acts surprised every year."
Quora — An Indian developer who moved to Eindhoven wrote that his first Dutch resignation stunned him in reverse: no counteroffer, no exit-interview interrogation, just his manager saying the new role sounded good and booking a farewell lunch — "I had prepared for a battle and received a greeting card."
Internations Amsterdam — An Indian product manager said the 30% expat tax ruling quietly shaped her loyalty math in the Netherlands: switching employers meant re-checking the ruling's transfer, a piece of paperwork she called "the only thing in this country that ever made me hesitate to resign."
Blind — A techie who has worked in Pune and Rotterdam compared notice periods: 90 days in India, where the company fought to keep him until the final morning, versus one month in the Netherlands, where his team had reassigned his projects within a week — "one country grips you, the other waves."
r/thenetherlands — A Dutch engineer responding to an Indian newcomer's question about job-hopping stigma put the local view plainly: nobody cares, the pension moves with you, and the only person who remembers your tenure is you — advice the newcomer called "the most relaxing sentence ever said to me about employment."
Moving to the Netherlands means unlearning vigilance: the contract protects you, the market is calm, and mobility is an option rather than a survival strategy — switch when it improves your life, stay when it doesn't, and nobody keeps score. Moving to India means learning the calendar: appraisals, notice periods, relieving letters and referral networks form a system with real rules and real rewards for those who play it deliberately rather than reactively.
What I'd tell a friend over a drink: in the Netherlands, changing jobs is how you fine-tune a comfortable life; in India, it's how you build one — and in both countries, the person who never moves is leaving money on the table, just very different amounts of it.
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Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.