What Does an Empty Engineering Seat Cost You?
Enter the seats, the days they stay empty and your salary figure. The calculator shows the cost per day, per week and until the seat is filled, then the exposure that remains if capacity arrives sooner.
Your inputs
Use your own time to fill if you know it. The two presets are published hiring benchmarks.
What the empty seat costs
$14,529
for 1 seat over 39 calendar days
- Salary-equivalent per day
- $373
- Salary-equivalent per week
- $2,608
- Salary-only floor
- $14,529
- Your blocked work
- $0
Formula: annual salary divided by 365, times days empty, times seats, plus your weekly blocked value times weeks empty. The salary-only figure is a floor. It leaves out overtime on the engineers who stay, recruiter fees and interview time.
If capacity arrives sooner
Engineers can typically start within one to two weeks of first contact; a full team usually takes two to four weeks.
- Engineers start within one to two weeks of first contact$2,608 to $5,216
- A full team takes two to four weeks$5,216 to $10,431
That is the same formula over the shorter window: the exposure that remains, not a saving. External capacity has its own cost. Staff augmentation starts from $4,500 per developer per month, with a 3-month minimum and weekly billing.
Where do the defaults come from, and what do they leave out?
The salary default is the US Bureau of Labor Statistics median for software developers, $135,980 (May 2025). The two time-to-fill presets are the SHRM median of 39 calendar days and the Employ average of 63.5 days. All three are editable, because your own search is what counts. The full method is in the cost-of-vacancy article.
The salary-only figure is a floor. The work you are waiting for is worth more than the salary, or you would not have opened the role, so add the weekly value of the blocked work if you can. To compare hiring timelines, read how long it takes to hire software developers. For the commercial terms behind the staff augmentation line, see the pricing page or staff augmentation page.
