A local medical software company suffers from understaffing; one cause is the high turnover rate among programmers, most of whom quit within their first two years of working for the company. The results of the last three annual employee satisfaction surveys have suggested that the programmers would stay longer with the company if they had more spacious offices and were better paid. Nevertheless, the company’s difficulty with understaffing would only be aggravated if the company took steps to improve programmer salaries and allot programmers more office space.
Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest support for the argument’s conclusion?
(A) The annual employee satisfaction surveys, which are optional, are more likely to be completed by employees who are unsatisfied with their jobs than by those who are satisfied.
(B) If the programmer positions became more attractive, then many of the company’s middle managers, a position which is particularly difficult to fill, would demote themselves to programmers.
(C) The company already pays its programmers five percent more, on average, than other medical software companies do.
(D) Most of the company’s programmers have to share an office with at least one other programmer, whereas the majority of programmers in the medical software industry have their own offices.
(E) Presently, the cost of providing training to new programmers is lower than the cost of providing larger offices and higher salaries to current programmers.
Official Explanation
(1) Identify the Question
Because the task is to find the strongest support for the argument, this is a Strengthen the Argument question.
(2) Deconstruct the Argument
A medical software company has staffing issues, particularly among its programmers. Employee surveys suggest that if the programmers had larger offices and higher salaries, they’d stay longer. Even so, the author concludes that giving the programmers what they want would only make the understaffing situation worse.
Here is one possible way to map the argument.
Progs understaffed
Progs want more space, more $$$
© more space, more $$$ à staffing worse
(3) State the Goal
The argument’s conclusion currently has no support. The correct answer should explain how doing something that would appear to improve the staffing situation would actually make that situation worse.
(4) Work From Wrong to Right
(A) This choice suggests that the surveys overstate the degree to which giving programmers more money and more office space would reduce the staffing problem. However, this information doesn’t explain how doing something beneficial for the programmers would actively make the staffing problem worse.
(B) CORRECT. If making things better for the programmers would reduce the company’s number of managers, then the company’s overall staffing problems could be worsened even if the programmer positions stayed filled.
(C) This choice offers an irrelevant comparison. Other medical software companies may or may not have comparable staffing issues.
(D) If anything, this choice weakens the argument by suggesting that programmer office space is indeed a serious issue. In that case, improving the office space would be more likely to reduce the understaffing problem than to aggravate it.
(E) This choice suggests that the staffing problem is not really a problem—at least, not from a financial perspective. Nevertheless, the focus of the argument is on the results of a particular plan to fix the staffing shortage, not on the results of the shortage itself. Whether this shortage has caused financial problems is beside the point.