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> Millennials are labeled lazy, self-entitled, and, therefore, responsible for high turnover rates in the labor market. Who are they supposed to be loyal to? C

> Millennials are labeled lazy, self-entitled, and, therefore, responsible for high turnover rates in the labor market. Who are they supposed to be loyal to? Certainly not their employer, who is squeezing every cent of labor value from their work. I'd understand this attitude if companies took care of their people or if the person was part of a worker's coop. Also, anecdotally, job hopping has been incredibly lucrative for me. My first hop, from Boeing to Amazon literally doubled my income. I highly encourage devs to get out there and see what they are worth, especially if they are happy at their current place. Get an offer in hand and negotiate hard. Who knows, maybe you'll land an amazing bump.

asdff 7y ago
Anecdotally among my fellow millennials across different fields who've jobbed hopped, few did it for the promotion, most did it because they were being exploited and depressed. Companies are becoming increasingly aware that they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits because people are just that desperate to get a job that whittles down ye olde student loan and has a health plan with a 10k deductible.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > Companies are becoming increasingly aware that they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits If job hopping is a viable strategy (which it certainly is in some sectors), then that is literally proof that they can’t get away with this. That’s not to say that every company out there is actually going to figure out the source of their staff retention problems, but the fact that those problems exist for employers is really the only way such conditions will improve.
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    The existence of job hopping does not negate existence of abuse. Because the baseline is, and in my understanding, will remain low. You will get some extra money but that 50 hour will turn to 55. People are so crushed by their loans that they will just see the dollar amount because at some point sadness over amount of work saturates. I am just as depressed at 50 hours a week as I am at 55 hours a week. Of course eventually it creeps up to no weekends and 80 hours. But people don't feel it because it happens gradually and they have by that point acquired more debt for a house and maybe they have kids. Also for the lower end jobs there is an infinite supply of people when the current lot eventually burns out.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      > The existence of job hopping does not negate existence of abuse It (at least to some extent) negates your assertion that employers can get away with it. Employee churn is literally employers failing to get away with it. If a bad employer cares about employee churn, then it’s something they’ll have to address eventually by solving the problems they’ve created that led to employee churn in the first place. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will though. Having contracted/consulted for a lot of companies, I’ve come to the conclusion that most companies are bad at most things, and that a company really only needs to be good at a select few things to be viable in the market. But if there’s competition for labor (which there is in a lot of software engineering sectors), then failing at employee retention will put them at a competitive disadvantage, and companies that succeed at it at a competitive advantage.
      - newswasboring 7y ago
        Yeah but they don't care about employee churn at all. That's the whole point. There is almost an infinite supply of replacements. Did you not read my post?
        AmericanChopper 7y ago
        The only way for a company to not care about churn is if they literally don’t care about the quality of their product or services. There are very few businesses where this is the case (in software engineering at least), so if you’re trying to suggest that such businesses are a common problem, then you’re delusional.
        newswasboring 7y ago
        > The only way for a company to not care about churn is if they literally don’t care about the quality of their product or service. I disagree. There are plenty of jobs which are basically about qualified warm bodies. It doesn't matter who is doing it, it will get done. Even in high tech there are plenty of jobs like this. Not all companies have a heavily customized set of libraries. Most use off the shelf fairly famous things. It costs less to hire someone new and let them ramp up than to give someone a raise.
  - VRay 7y ago
    > that is literally proof that they can’t get away with this ?? What if the company saves a lot of money, and only lose a tiny percentage of employees every year? I think it's pretty safe to say that most salaried employees will just keep trucking along happily so long as their bills are paid and they don't feel horribly oppressed or stressed out. If there's a mandatory 5 minute daily meeting at 10 AM and free dinner at 7 PM, it's pretty easy to get everyone to put in 9 hours a day along with the occasional hour of e-mail at home or chunk of crunch time. So long as everybody gets a 2-4% raise every year and feels like there's another job title to strive for, they'll just keep falling farther and farther behind the market rate.
    - honestoHeminway 7y ago
      At some point, those companys themselves are going to get poached- not for the value they are worth, but for the value they hold back for the market. Sort of a gold hoarders house bought.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Companies complaining about job hopping are basically complaining that they can't get away with paying their employees too little for too much work. Then again, every employee who's overworked and underpaid is proof that they are getting away with it. Assertive workers hop jobs when the situation demands it, less assertive ones suffer.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      > Companies complaining about job hopping are basically complaining that they can't get away with paying their employees too little for too much work. Pay and hours worked is really only one part of the equation, but this is pretty much right. Complaining won’t do anything to solve retention problems though. > Then again, every employee who's overworked and underpaid is proof that they are getting away with it. This really depends on your definition of “getting away with it”. If continuing to perpetuate the problems that cause it, at great expense to the business is “getting away with it”, then I guess your right. You could “get away with” never going to work again, if you were prepared to accept the costs of being destitute for the rest of your life. However I think you’ll find there’s a large number of companies that have been forced to improve their practices in order to remain competitive. Anecdotally speaking, it’s why I personally won’t get out of bed for less than 4 figures after tax per day, and why I’d be incredibly reluctant to work in an office that didn’t provide me with free food, coffee and other drinks.
- at-fates-hands 7y ago
  > they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits I would also add "free Red Bull, breakfast buffets, Friday Beer Time" and other "Freebies" DO NOT count to me as benefits. So many of the startups I've interviewed for try and lure you in with all these additional "benefits". No, ten cases of free Red Bull will not pay my rent. These companies routinely low ball really good developers with these freebies thinking it makes up for paying them slave wages; expecting them to work 50-60 hour work weeks and burn out like clockwork every 18 months. It's sad so many people I know just grab that carrot and don't realize they could be at a Fortune 500 company making triple what they're making at a startup who claims its harder to get hired at their company than to get accepted at Harvard.
  - Viliam1234 7y ago
    I already perceive "free coffee" as a red flag, but "free Red Bull" would make me run away screaming. (Not sure if this needs explaining, but if company provides all kinds of free drinks, it could be generosity, but if the choice is suspiciously limited to stimulants... you will probably need them.)
luckylion 7y ago
> Certainly not their employer, who is squeezing every cent of labor value from their work. > Also, anecdotally, job hopping has been incredibly lucrative for me. It seems both sides are simply maximizing their value here.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  The employer almost always makes more money than the employee and is the one profiting from the worker. It is not an equal comparison and the worker will always make less than the money they bring in to the company.
  - tiglionabbit 7y ago
    Then we should all start our own business, right?
    - newswasboring 7y ago
      That's the dream, isn't it? Like a network of microservices. And we must realize that a few hundred years ago that was the default (well, if you were not a slave of some description).
      - dragontamer 7y ago
        A few hundred years ago, indentured servitude and slavery were the norm.
        newswasboring 7y ago
        Yeah true. So I guess we just have replaced slaves with employees?
        philosopher1234 7y ago
        You can go back if you like but I think being an employee suits me better ...
kamaal 7y ago
>>Who are they supposed to be loyal to? To themselves. The best advice I ever received was from my dad. And it was 6 months into my first job. I wanted to hop and there came the advice 'investments matter more than income, and you need stability to borrow money for the big ticket ones'. I hopped anyway because like your case I was looking at doubling my income. But the next two ones I've gone slow and with stability built up good investment assets. The advice is true. Inflation can eat whatever you earn, so investments are where the magic is.
- ChuckNorris89 7y ago
  What investments can you recommend? I'd like to invest but my savings aren't too big and I'm scared to loose them on stocks vs buying a house.
- drdrey 7y ago
  You need to borrow for investments? I hope you mean for a house
non-entity 7y ago
I mean, I'll stop job hopping when one of the following becomes true: 1. I genuinely enjoy both the work environment and enjoy what I'm working on. (pretty low chance of this happening) 2. I can no longer get a significant [idk, ~20%+]increase in income. (I still have a loooong way to go) 3. My life changes in a way where much more stability is required or ideal.

asdff 7y ago

Anecdotally among my fellow millennials across different fields who've jobbed hopped, few did it for the promotion, most did it because they were being exploited and depressed. Companies are becoming increasingly aware that they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits because people are just that desperate to get a job that whittles down ye olde student loan and has a health plan with a 10k deductible.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> Companies are becoming increasingly aware that they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits If job hopping is a viable strategy (which it certainly is in some sectors), then that is literally proof that they can’t get away with this. That’s not to say that every company out there is actually going to figure out the source of their staff retention problems, but the fact that those problems exist for employers is really the only way such conditions will improve.
- newswasboring 7y ago
  The existence of job hopping does not negate existence of abuse. Because the baseline is, and in my understanding, will remain low. You will get some extra money but that 50 hour will turn to 55. People are so crushed by their loans that they will just see the dollar amount because at some point sadness over amount of work saturates. I am just as depressed at 50 hours a week as I am at 55 hours a week. Of course eventually it creeps up to no weekends and 80 hours. But people don't feel it because it happens gradually and they have by that point acquired more debt for a house and maybe they have kids. Also for the lower end jobs there is an infinite supply of people when the current lot eventually burns out.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    > The existence of job hopping does not negate existence of abuse It (at least to some extent) negates your assertion that employers can get away with it. Employee churn is literally employers failing to get away with it. If a bad employer cares about employee churn, then it’s something they’ll have to address eventually by solving the problems they’ve created that led to employee churn in the first place. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will though. Having contracted/consulted for a lot of companies, I’ve come to the conclusion that most companies are bad at most things, and that a company really only needs to be good at a select few things to be viable in the market. But if there’s competition for labor (which there is in a lot of software engineering sectors), then failing at employee retention will put them at a competitive disadvantage, and companies that succeed at it at a competitive advantage.
    - newswasboring 7y ago
      Yeah but they don't care about employee churn at all. That's the whole point. There is almost an infinite supply of replacements. Did you not read my post?
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        The only way for a company to not care about churn is if they literally don’t care about the quality of their product or services. There are very few businesses where this is the case (in software engineering at least), so if you’re trying to suggest that such businesses are a common problem, then you’re delusional.
        newswasboring 7y ago
        > The only way for a company to not care about churn is if they literally don’t care about the quality of their product or service. I disagree. There are plenty of jobs which are basically about qualified warm bodies. It doesn't matter who is doing it, it will get done. Even in high tech there are plenty of jobs like this. Not all companies have a heavily customized set of libraries. Most use off the shelf fairly famous things. It costs less to hire someone new and let them ramp up than to give someone a raise.
- VRay 7y ago
  > that is literally proof that they can’t get away with this ?? What if the company saves a lot of money, and only lose a tiny percentage of employees every year? I think it's pretty safe to say that most salaried employees will just keep trucking along happily so long as their bills are paid and they don't feel horribly oppressed or stressed out. If there's a mandatory 5 minute daily meeting at 10 AM and free dinner at 7 PM, it's pretty easy to get everyone to put in 9 hours a day along with the occasional hour of e-mail at home or chunk of crunch time. So long as everybody gets a 2-4% raise every year and feels like there's another job title to strive for, they'll just keep falling farther and farther behind the market rate.
  - honestoHeminway 7y ago
    At some point, those companys themselves are going to get poached- not for the value they are worth, but for the value they hold back for the market. Sort of a gold hoarders house bought.
- mcv 7y ago
  Companies complaining about job hopping are basically complaining that they can't get away with paying their employees too little for too much work. Then again, every employee who's overworked and underpaid is proof that they are getting away with it. Assertive workers hop jobs when the situation demands it, less assertive ones suffer.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    > Companies complaining about job hopping are basically complaining that they can't get away with paying their employees too little for too much work. Pay and hours worked is really only one part of the equation, but this is pretty much right. Complaining won’t do anything to solve retention problems though. > Then again, every employee who's overworked and underpaid is proof that they are getting away with it. This really depends on your definition of “getting away with it”. If continuing to perpetuate the problems that cause it, at great expense to the business is “getting away with it”, then I guess your right. You could “get away with” never going to work again, if you were prepared to accept the costs of being destitute for the rest of your life. However I think you’ll find there’s a large number of companies that have been forced to improve their practices in order to remain competitive. Anecdotally speaking, it’s why I personally won’t get out of bed for less than 4 figures after tax per day, and why I’d be incredibly reluctant to work in an office that didn’t provide me with free food, coffee and other drinks.
at-fates-hands 7y ago
> they can get away with de facto 50+ hour weeks while offering the bare minimum in benefits I would also add "free Red Bull, breakfast buffets, Friday Beer Time" and other "Freebies" DO NOT count to me as benefits. So many of the startups I've interviewed for try and lure you in with all these additional "benefits". No, ten cases of free Red Bull will not pay my rent. These companies routinely low ball really good developers with these freebies thinking it makes up for paying them slave wages; expecting them to work 50-60 hour work weeks and burn out like clockwork every 18 months. It's sad so many people I know just grab that carrot and don't realize they could be at a Fortune 500 company making triple what they're making at a startup who claims its harder to get hired at their company than to get accepted at Harvard.
- Viliam1234 7y ago
  I already perceive "free coffee" as a red flag, but "free Red Bull" would make me run away screaming. (Not sure if this needs explaining, but if company provides all kinds of free drinks, it could be generosity, but if the choice is suspiciously limited to stimulants... you will probably need them.)

luckylion 7y ago

> Certainly not their employer, who is squeezing every cent of labor value from their work. > Also, anecdotally, job hopping has been incredibly lucrative for me. It seems both sides are simply maximizing their value here.

WilliamEdward 7y ago
The employer almost always makes more money than the employee and is the one profiting from the worker. It is not an equal comparison and the worker will always make less than the money they bring in to the company.
- tiglionabbit 7y ago
  Then we should all start our own business, right?
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    That's the dream, isn't it? Like a network of microservices. And we must realize that a few hundred years ago that was the default (well, if you were not a slave of some description).
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      A few hundred years ago, indentured servitude and slavery were the norm.
      - newswasboring 7y ago
        Yeah true. So I guess we just have replaced slaves with employees?
        philosopher1234 7y ago
        You can go back if you like but I think being an employee suits me better ...

kamaal 7y ago

>>Who are they supposed to be loyal to? To themselves. The best advice I ever received was from my dad. And it was 6 months into my first job. I wanted to hop and there came the advice 'investments matter more than income, and you need stability to borrow money for the big ticket ones'. I hopped anyway because like your case I was looking at doubling my income. But the next two ones I've gone slow and with stability built up good investment assets. The advice is true. Inflation can eat whatever you earn, so investments are where the magic is.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
What investments can you recommend? I'd like to invest but my savings aren't too big and I'm scared to loose them on stocks vs buying a house.
drdrey 7y ago
You need to borrow for investments? I hope you mean for a house

non-entity 7y ago

I mean, I'll stop job hopping when one of the following becomes true: 1. I genuinely enjoy both the work environment and enjoy what I'm working on. (pretty low chance of this happening) 2. I can no longer get a significant [idk, ~20%+]increase in income. (I still have a loooong way to go) 3. My life changes in a way where much more stability is required or ideal.