What we can actually prove about hiring engineers.
We sit on an unusual dataset: standardised assessments, stage-level hiring timestamps and post-placement outcomes for every engineer we have worked with since launching in August 2025. We publish what it says, including when it contradicts something we sell.
The 48-hour match: time-to-hire benchmarks across 1,200 engineering roles
We tracked every stage of 287 engineering hires across 94 companies over ten months. The median role took 41 working days to fill. Almost none of that time was spent evaluating anyone.
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What vetting actually predicts
We checked our own vetting against what happened next for 412 placed engineers. Written reasoning predicted performance well. Timed algorithm puzzles predicted nothing, so we removed them.
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The remote premium
Rate data from 640 engineers in 31 countries. The geographic discount is narrowing, and within-city spread already exceeds the gap between cities.
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AI-native engineers
Heavy adopters of LLM tooling spend half as much of the week writing first-draft code, and nearly twice as much reviewing it. The job changed shape more than it changed size.
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The cost of a mis-hire
A wrong senior hire on a twelve-person team costs a median of $214,000. Salary is a minor line in that, and the biggest component is almost never measured.
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Where the talent is
Nine thousand assessments across 38 countries in our first three quarters. Regional pass rates sit within seven points of each other, which makes country a poor filter.
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Take-home tests are failing everyone
Nearly half of all take-home assignments are never submitted, and the drop-off falls hardest on candidates with the least spare time. The signal does not justify the cost.
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The async advantage
Delivery velocity peaks at three to four hours of daily overlap and falls after that. Writing things down is worth about four hours of timezone alignment.
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Contract or full-time
Contractors do not leave sooner than employees once you stop counting finished projects as attrition. They leave for reasons that are much easier to fix.
Read the reportHow we work
Engagetal has been operating since August 2025, so every report here draws on months rather than years. We say so in each one. Every report states its sample, its method and what it cannot show, and where we have a commercial interest in a conclusion we say that in the report rather than in a footnote. Anonymised datasets are available to researchers and journalists on request.