Alocal 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.