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“Great resignation” wave coming for companies

• Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Not a big deal at all. A great number of people are always looking to change their job at any given time. During the pandemic maby were reluctant to act on it, so it could have created a big delayed volume of resignations. It is not a problem because would be a lot of candidates to fill in the ranks, who too have quit their previous jobs.
  • blowski 5y ago
    I can imagine a few other factors that might be playing into this: * People who have moved, and now want a job closer to home if they want/need to go into the office. * Companies who have hoarded cash during the recession and can now offer big salaries. * Looser bonds with colleagues they only see remotely I've no idea whether and to what extent any of these things are true, but it's definitely easy to imagine a big move around. That said... I'm not seeing much change in volume on the typical job boards so perhaps it's all hypothetical.
  • kkirsche 5y ago
    You may be right but this seems extremely presumptuous—how do you know the people will go back vs taking a gap year or other extended hiatus or field change?
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      Not GP, but most people are not secure enough (either financially or psychologically) to just quit for a year. The overwhelming default is trading one job for another rather than trading your job for margaritas on the beach.
  • sleepychu 5y ago
    Synchronized resignations are definitely more of a headache than staggered ones. For example, in a normal situation if I quit my boss will be able to hire someone to replace me, knowing what my strengths and weaknesses are and what gaps my departure has created for the team. If they quit then I am a source of information to whoever is hired to replace them. Of course anyone is replaceable but some knowledge will be lost. Also your model does not account for businesses which are aggressively expanding and doing a better job than the average employer retaining their employees by either being a genuinely great place to work or LTIPs
    • chrisweekly 5y ago
      LITP: Long-Term Incentive Plan
      • dandellion 5y ago
        Thank you.
• quititor 5y ago
  I'm not sure I believe the conclusion based on the survey. Resigning and "thinking about quitting [your] job" are very different things. I've spent my whole working life thinking about quitting but I've rarely actually quit, the pandemic hasn't changed that.
  • TX0098812 5y ago
    Meanwhile I've thought about quitting and then also quit a whole bunch of times. Business as usual over here. (Turns out the grass is pretty much the same in most places.)
  • nvr219 5y ago
    Yeah I think 100% of workers think about quitting their job.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    Unless rent and mortgage payments somehow evaporate, there won't be some massive wave of resignations.
    • markh 5y ago
      And health insurance.
      • ChrisRR 5y ago
        Damn, America really needs to get their act together. Being from England, I hadn't even considered that healthcare is something that has to be factored into whether someone could take time off
        • jitl 5y ago
          After I left Airbnb, I paid $680 a month to keep my previously employer-paid health insurance. Very cool, loved to have the “freedom of choice” to “participate in the market”. Insurance feels like another little way businesses seek to own people in the US. Want to own yourself? Gotta pay the lease… on your own body.
• TX0098812 5y ago
  > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs. How does this compare to the figure over a longer period of time?
  • ndonnellan 5y ago
    This is the important question. At my previous job the results of internal surveys would have these fairly high numbers, like 20% of employees don't think they will be here in a year. But if you looked at the previous year's numbers, it was something like 18% or 15%. And the previous year's actual attrition was closer to 5-8%. So perhaps you could extrapolate if you had the attrition rates combined with survey data, but surveys are a much weaker signal.
    • c618b9b695c4 5y ago
      I am more impressed that people would confess to thinking of leaving their position to an internal survey. I have no confidence that a company sponsored survey will be confidential and 'worrisome' results would not be shared with my direct management.
      • TX0098812 5y ago
        Good point. That said, in many countries employee protection is solid enough that people would not need to worry. If within the EU, then GDPR regulations could also lead to pretty massive fines if a supposedly anonymous survey turned out not to be.
  • ChrisRR 5y ago
    Exactly. I'm sure people are often thinking about quitting their jobs, but are they actually likely to quit within the next 12 months or are they just thinking about it?
    • kevstev 5y ago
      Well another way to frame this is "X% are willing to quit their jobs if they can find a better offer" but only a fraction of that actually manage to find that something better. Not being able to do so could be due to those employee's shortcomings, but more likely its about how many better jobs there are and how competitive it is to get those jobs.
• runawaybottle 5y ago
  Hiring is just picking up. If you didn’t grab the best people during the pandemic because you had an incredible glut of qualified people applying, good luck doing that shit now.
  • rejectedandsad 5y ago
    Should be good for wages then. Unfortunately my company already did our yearly compensation adjustment. 2%, of course.
    • madengr 5y ago
      Sounds like my employer, and I’ve been on-site for 1 year. Their excuse for 2% raises was that the economy was bad, despite record earnings and productivity during the pandemic. Now that inflation is 5%, I’m gone with another 2% raise.
    • Sanguinaire 5y ago
      Found the Amazonian
      • rejectedandsad 5y ago
        Google's yearly raises are generally the same as Amazon I've learned, for what it's worth. The difference is the bonus and refreshers, and the fact that there are more evaluation periods with more achievement buckets.
  • fnord77 5y ago
    During the pandemic it was almost impossible to find qualified engineers.
    • littlecranky67 5y ago
      Because everyone is clinging to their jobs in times of uncertainty.
  • 5y ago
• dreen 5y ago
  Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. edit: thank you all for advice, encouragement as well as for cautious pessimism. By the amount of upvotes Im hoping Im not the only one doing this. See you out there!
  • elevenoh 5y ago
    >Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? Yep, that's what I'm seeing already. Financially incentivized OSS (much of which falls under the label 'crypto') is very attractive if you're in the top percentiles of competence & drive. Has there ever been an open, competitive, global, beurocracy-free, low barrier to entry market like this?
    • AlexDanger 5y ago
      Can you give some examples of this financially incentivized OSS that falls under 'crypto' ?
      • elevenoh 5y ago
        Much of crypto codebases are open source, where at the end of the day you're pushing to an OSS codebase. If you're paid by a crypto co., foundation, grants, or are financially incentivized by your crypto holdings to contribute, you're often within the bounds of both OSS & crypto. example: devs that've contributed to Defi projects e.g. uniswap, or received ethereum or solana grants for their OSS code (i think nearly everything user-facing in these organizations is OSS).
  • Jenk 5y ago
    Best of luck! I didn't do a gap year either. I left education at 16 and immediately went into FTE and have been there ever since (for longer than I dare count) and now that I am all wrapped up in a mortgage and kids I'm not sure I'll be taking a gap year any time soon (voluntarily, anyway!) FWIW I have worked with several colleagues who took a gap year and never stopped. They pick up remote contract work along their travels and continue living the life of a modern day nomad. Not one of them is unhappy :)
• Jenk 5y ago
  As well as the pandemic causing employment uncertainty, as @Andrew_nenakhov says, there could be a temporary downturn in the number of resignations in the last year and a significatnt portion of this "great wave" is potentially the numbers catching up again. I also think that because a lot of people lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, some industries moreso than others, the market may also be temporarily saturated (at least more so than usual) with candidates at the moment, which will dampen the number of resignations. Having said that, I personally am receiving just as much recruiter spam as I was before.
• jawns 5y ago
  This already happened at the company I left two months ago. We had been acquired a few months before the pandemic started, and the people who had not left by February 2020 mostly buckled down to ride things out. So there was remarkably little turnover for about 9 months. Once the vaccines got approved, it was like the dams burst, and people started leaving left and right, particularly senior engineers. (My guess is that, like me, they had dependents, so didn't want to jump ship until they felt like the worst was behind us.) Basically a year's worth of departures in a very compressed timeframe. Not a good situation for the acquiring business, especially since they prided themselves on a longer hiring process than comparable companies.
• elevenoh 5y ago
  An anecdote: a handful engineers I've worked with (and they're all high quality) have resigned from traditional bigtech to work in open source finance within crypto. It's as though pandemic solitude gave many the mind-time to ponder their authentic values hierarchy. I'm glad more bright minds will be spending less time working directly or indirectly on ads. It's hard to watch.
  • bronzeage 5y ago
    You prefer those minds working on a Ponzi scheme instead?
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    I’m not passionately anti-crypto, but moving some of our best minds from ads to crypto[currencies/tokens] is not an obvious triumph to me.
    • elevenoh 5y ago
      > crypto[currencies/tokens] From how I perceive the definition of the 'crypto' domain, it's a lot wider in range than currencies/tokens. These are just one integral primitive of a p2p economy.
    • toyg 5y ago
      Money gotta money. At least crypto is a slightly-less-obnoxious industry than ads and tracking...
      • dimgl 5y ago
        And much less useful.
        • elevenoh 5y ago
          Is open finance less useful than ads? I don't think so.
• ur-whale 5y ago
  The article sounds quite negative. Sounds like people are discovering it's actually not that hard getting off the teat of a boring 9 to 5 job ... I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing.
• Pet_Ant 5y ago
  The increasing acceptance of working from home has allowed me to get offers from major cities nearby instead of being low-balled by my small town rate.
  • sydthrowaway 5y ago
    At FAANGs?
    • Pet_Ant 5y ago
      FAANGs take some of the employees at second tier companies and the vacancies trickle down and now I'm getting opportunities for remote work from the companies at major cities nearby (that previously were on-prem only) instead of just what is available in Wichita. And with coworkers quitting as well it gives me more leverage for a counter offer.
  • ghotli 5y ago
    For what it's worth, this was my strategy living in a bigger city in the south. Local salaries are so egregiously out of line with the national US market that breaking into remote work a decade ago is easily, easily the best decision I've personally made. At the time it was hard work and a bit of serendipity. At this point I already found a great remote job I have no desire to leave. It's wild that currently there is a deluge of recruiters from very large west coast companies trying to get me to join without any relocation. That's been a big shift in the past year. Good time to live somewhere cheap with decent internet.
• durmonski 5y ago
  I guess we all want more free time and less work.
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Most people are open for new opportunities and are proactively or passively checking at all times anyway. If a recruiter calls me and has an up to date cv, I will have a chat with them. This might lead to something, if not, at least they have their crm updated for the next calls. And when the need arises, you can get back at them, one of them placed me in a FAANG with full remote recently, totally unexpected. I think many people will consider quitting one semi or on premises job for a remote, I certainly would not go back to office unless it is a head of or c level position, if I can avoid it.
  • yosito 5y ago
    I get so many recruiters contacting me that I could never do this. 95% of them are low quality jobs anyway.
  • CoastalCoder 5y ago
    Sorry for the tangent, but have you found any benefit in maintaining a traditional CV / resume? I'm not actively looking for a job, so I just tell them to have a look at my LinkedIn profile. But I wonder if that's keeping me from some worthwhile opportunities.
    • yawaworht1978 5y ago
      I think this is important, not just tangential. The traditional cv is still something most companies will check, one way or another. At the very least, they will use a tool to check for keywords, same thing on job platforms. I personally never update my LinkedIn with the current role, I always think if my employer checks, they would think I am shopping around, so I leave that. But on job platforms, I have the most current CV. LinkedIn never gave me good results anyway, only currently held roles. But Glassdoor is pretty ok and some other platforms(I can pm if you like) have proven good, they seem to have some kind of alert system whenever a keyword of a recruiter portfolio is triggered and on cv updates. I do think limiting oneself to LinkedIn will definitely make you miss on some opportunities. I spend no more than an hour a month to update etc. Most have auto apply button etc. It is easy to send 50-100 applications within an hour. Of course some of the contacts will be rubbish, just delegate to spam I it keeps happening, eventually unsubscribe. I got some interviews to places where I thought they would never, ever touch me. However, sometimes such companies are desperate to hire. I went pretty far with bitfinex, just for fun and because it's remote, despite knowing sweet little about what is needed to know . Many stories like that.
• beforeolives 5y ago
  Even if it's true, you'll need an equal hiring wave on the other side of the equation. It's not like people are stopping work altogether.
  • elevenoh 5y ago
    If you're freelancing, contributing to OSS, working in crypto etc. perhaps there is less than equal ostensible 'hiring' on the other side?
• jonplackett 5y ago
  > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs I wonder what the baseline is for this. I reckon loads of people are thinking about it all the same.
  • ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Yeah if "I think about quitting my job" is the metric, I'd expect the result to be 70-80%.
• ChrisRR 5y ago
  Anecdotally I've had much more contact from recruiters this year and I suspect many greybeard embedded devs have decided this was the year to finally take their retirement.
• EMM_386 5y ago
  I've worked remotely for over 8 years as a senior software engineer, and I'm not going back anytime soon. This will get interesting for both salaries and global movement. Being a digital nomad certainly won't be as "hip" when everyone else can do the same thing. And now people are going to be competing with a lot of low-cost employees with equal skills. This has already been the issue with offshoring, but now you can hire someone in Fargo, SD instead of San Fran, CA and pay them going market rate. For the same skills. In the long-term, this might get people out of packed cities and horrific commutes and help become a rebirth of small-town America (or small-town Chile and everywhere else).
  • elevenoh 5y ago
    >In the long-term, this might get people out of packed cities and horrific commutes and help become a rebirth of small-town America (or small-town Chile and everywhere else). Perhaps. I think the shift will be to more healthy-livable cities, whether thats big or small. Vast majority of humans seem love the benefits of high population density more than they dislike the costs, remote work or not.
    • EMM_386 5y ago
      > Vast majority of humans seem love the benefits of high population density more than they dislike the costs, remote work or not. Over these 8 years I've lived everywhere from NYC to small town America and other countries in AirBnbs. They each have their benefits, they are just different. If you have a family, small towns can be amazing. Good school districts, tight-nit communities, great charitable events to participate in. Of course you can find that in NYC but it's a completely different scenario and vibe. It comes down to what works for the individual, which is perfect and exactly where we need to be moving to.
      • elevenoh 5y ago
        Agree. More people should try out different living contexts to find which tradeoff matrix works best for them. I'm now in Vancouver BC, quite a high population density, yet I find it's super easy to remain healthy & happy (air quality, access to nature, safety etc.).
• riccardomc 5y ago
  anecdotally, I can confirm this happening in a few companies I know... I left my job at the beginning of 2020 to work for myself. A lot of ex-colleagues took a similar path. I guess the "focus on the mission" companies are trying to foster among their ranks is also useful to distract oneself from what your own mission actually is. This hiatus on company focus might have been the best thing that happened to a lot of engineers I know. Including, alas, myself.
• lordnacho 5y ago
  I can tell you all the market for devs is white hot at the moment. I mean it was never cold, but right now seems to be insane. If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in the office and would pay them very well are feeling forced to let people work from home at least a couple of days. Salary wise it seems like it's breaking upwards too, though of course all I have is my own offers and the word of some recruiters. There's also just a lot of firms out there who are happy to create roles for people they like, or discuss new ventures with new people. Also, don't forget if you're going to look, absolutely everyone is interviewing remotely. You can sit at home at interviews all day until you find the job for you, something you might not be able to once more firms go back in the office.
  • joecot 5y ago
    This. The WeWorkRemotely posting silicon valley type companies are getting flooded and are quite picky currently. But once you apply to a few jobs elsewhere that have recruiters, you get flooded with small to medium size companies looking for devs. And the market is so hot that companies which previously had longer interview processes are condensing down to 1-2 interviews, because if they take any longer all their applicants have already taken offers elsewhere. For most devs, no matter what you're making someone else would pay you more, and they're willing to do it remotely. Don't wait on your company to make a remote work plan once they've got you all back in the office. Start looking around now while they don't have a monopoly on your time. That doesn't necessarily mean taking interviews during work hours -- my previous job was 10-6 eastern, and east coast companies would happily interview me at 9, while west coast ones interviewed me at 7. Once your current company has you back in the office, they have a much stronger grasp on you, and they know it. That's why they want everyone back in the office before they talk about remote work. But if you're not going to a company that is itself 100% remote, I'd still be wary about being the stranger that they only see online. I went with a job where I was only an hour away from the office but could still work remotely, and plan to be there once every couple months, so I still get some face time.
• KaiserPro 5y ago
  [citation needed] Now, from memory I seem to recall that depending on which staffing survey, and how you phrase it, 10-35% of all employees say they intend to quit. I'm not saying that we will won't see and increase turn over. However I suspect that given the level of disruption we've already had, I would be skeptical that its going to get worse. The counter argument to that is of course that the people who were forced to change jobs from ones they liked (ones that were heavily hit by covid) to ones that existed, will migrate back to their old profession.
• vsskanth 5y ago
  Not sure if this was just pent up demand from the limited mobility due to lockdowns last year. Now that places are opening up, people can actually move.
• fortran77 5y ago
  I've been a consultant for years, and I'd be unable to work as an employee for any company, especially a larger one. Seeing all the bullshit employees have to put up with at companies would make me scream. I'm not talking about the work, it's everything else. The culture.
  • vbtemp 5y ago
    What do you do? Contact Fortran code?
    • fortran77 5y ago
      Ha! Erlang, GPGPU, and FPGA
• austincheney 5y ago
  I was looking around recently, particularly at startups, but then chose to stop. Here is my reasoning: * I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange: leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of responsibilities. I wasn’t seeing this. * If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody wants a tool jockey. They claim to want somebody full stack. But when you really press for details the really want somebody to do react on the front end and play around with their cloud provider. The services piece in the middle is where things get strained in a full stack interview. If tools are the direction of work I have already lost interest. Why would I want to give up stable employment with great benefits to wire tools together? I would rather just stare out the window. * The idea of a senior engineer is incredibly convoluted. It sounds like people want somebody who can mentor in a vacuum. You can only mentor so much about dicking around with tools. If you try to mentor past that and the culture is just go dick around with tools you are either mentoring too much or not enough. Either way you are a horrible senior incompatible to the new organization. Worse is when they ask you to guide and train junior developers without leadership support. Really if that should work beyond vague hints you need a title. Excellent juniors have a passion for learning but many juniors aren’t excellent, just want a paycheck, and feel insecure when challenged. From going through the exact same conversation several times in a row I get the impression many employers kind of know what they want to build, kind of guess at what they need, and completely guess at what qualifies as execution planning but cannot put any of that together into a single vision.
  • jitl 5y ago
    What do you mean by “tools”? Generally I think of “tools” as anything that assists you in building, deploying, or operating a (production) service, but not the service itself. For my definition, the firebase CLI is a tool, but Google Cloud Firestore (a no-SQL data store) is not. At the places you talked to, was everything service-y left to a separate back-end/infra team?
    • austincheney 5y ago
      By tools I don’t mean your OS or IDE. I mean those things so you don’t have to write code beyond a couple of figurations or text content.
• hooande 5y ago
  What I don't understand is that everyone still has roughly the same expenses as they did before. The basic economics of rent, groceries, child care, car payments, etc have not changed. I'd think people might move from one industry to another. But how can a wave of people afford to quit? I guess people are living off of their savings, but that seems like a temporary solution. At the least I'd expect to see a similar wave of people re-entering the job market in 6-12 months. I'm still not sure what to make of this general trend, though
  • Octoth0rpe 5y ago
    > The basic economics of rent, groceries, child care, car payments, etc have not changed. For some people, they have though. Quite a few people moved out of the bay area/NYC, some have partners that lost jobs and have chosen to focus on child care instead, some have sold 1 of 2 cars because remote work no longer requires a commute.
  • snowwrestler 5y ago
    Capital assets went up a surprising amount during the pandemic. My stock portfolio and my house are worth a lot more than they were 2 years ago. I feel a temptation to use that money. I also have a nagging feeling that it’s somewhat artificial (the govt pumped a ton of money during the pandemic) so I should cash out before it falls.
    • csomar 5y ago
      Stocks, sure. But don't sell your house (if you only have one).
      • snowwrestler 5y ago
        I was lucky enough to buy into a great neighborhood in a city years ago. If I sold now and quit my job, I could live farther out and get more property for less money, and pocket the difference. In the U.S., capital gains on your primary residence can be kept tax free up to $250,000 ($500k if you’re married).
      • 5y ago
• ho_schi 5y ago
  "human resources" Well. As long as you treat people like that it is now wonder that the leave you as quick as possible.
• jokoon 5y ago
  I've been unemployed for a long time, living on benefits, without guilt or remorse. For health and other reasons. One problem being lack of social integration and interaction. But honestly I don't think I can believe in the necessity of having a job, if I can't see purpose or meaning. There are few jobs that matter, and a lot of barriers and filtering. /r/antiwork is really a viewpoint I can understand and defend.
  • FinanceAnon 5y ago
    How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society? Someone has to work to produce food. Someone has to work to produce electricity. Until we can automate everything, most people have to work and contribute to society (unless you choose to be self-sufficient - grow your own food, produce your own electricity etc.)
    • jokoon 5y ago
      Not all jobs are equal in term of necessity. Food, shelter, electricity, water, you don't need a lot of people to work those jobs. Punishing unproductive people and encourage them to work in fast food or other wage-slaving do not make sense. The main argument is UBI.
      • jonfw 5y ago
        Here's the pro fast food take. There are productive people working jobs that have massive necessity, and they need to eat. The least somebody who isn't productive can do is help feed them.
        • jokoon 5y ago
          There are not many such people, and everybody knows how to cook. Ready to eat meals are good enough, collective food preparation is good too. Not to mention fast food is generally of poor quality.
          • 5y ago
• JohnWhigham 5y ago
  And people can still rely on unemployment insurance Pretty sure most states won't accept you if you voluntarily leave.
• yawnxyz 5y ago
  I got laid off a few years ago and took off to Spain to do the Camino de Santiago (French route) and it was pretty life changing. Met some cool people on the route and completely changed my outlook on life.
• Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I think a lot of people are just biding their time, if they have job security now then why take the risk? It's a global pandemic, it's possible it'll turn around again (example: despite a national vaccination rate of nearly 50%, the number of 'rona cases is on the rise there because of the even more infectious Delta variant).
  • manuelabeledo 5y ago
    > if they have job security now then why take the risk? Because, at least in the US, and at least in IT, it is a buyer's market.
• trentnix 5y ago
  > "I don't envy the challenge that human resources faces right now," says Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University. Maybe part of the problem is sitting right there in plain sight. Looking back, virtually every work frustration that led me to start looking elsewhere was nothing that HR could (or should) fix. In my experience, the degree of HR's influence over company culture, hiring, and firing directly correlates to the degree that the work environment is impersonal, homogenized, and rote.
  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    HR is mostly there to cross t and dot i in case company runs into legal issues.
    • Arrath 5y ago
      Its all there in the name. We're resources, to be marshalled and managed by HR for the benefit and protection of the company. HR doesn't care a whit about us employees beyond the extent of any liability we might leverage into suing the company for.
    • CoastalCoder 5y ago
      In my experience it really depends on the company. In one company for which I've worked, the HR department had a surprising amount of power regarding software developers' salaries and (for hiring) qualifications. It was almost impossible for hiring managers to override those policies. Perhaps HR was merely implementing the policies chosen by executive leadership; i.e. perhaps they were just the messenger. But either way, HR was an additional level of bureaucracy that collectively hamstrung the company's ability to hire and retain top talent. IIUC this is really coming back to hurt them now.
• calltrak 5y ago
  My last company wanted me to wear face knickers at the office because of the scaredemic. I told them viruses are invisible. Pandemics are NOT. I don't see any signs of a pandemic anywhere, except all the maskholes at the grocery store and the fear porn on the fake news. Hopefully my ex boss is still trying to shove that job up his arse, sideways.
• ciisforsuckas 5y ago
  They want us back in the office July 16... I'm going to pass so found a new remote role with higher salary and equity. I will be part of this wave. I didn't realy even try with how insane the market is especially if you are specialzed in the current hotness. Moreso, the rise of fully remote role has opened up our ideas about our current living situation. The real estate market in our city is shattered and broken. So we will also move 60 miles south to a different city... before the pandemic I was remote and missed the office. Post pandemic... fuck the office and 1+ hour commutes purely because the city, state, and country have mismanaged infrastructure for 20 years.
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    Any software company that’s ending remote work right now is basically risking its entire existence. There’s no possible way, in this market, a company will be able to replace 10% of its workforce in a reasonable time. I can understand why management wants to go back to the office, but why would you ever take the risk of being one of the first, before gauging how the market will react.
    • ciisforsuckas 5y ago
      It's a big company and they are an ERP vendor thus rooted in old fashioned manufacturing ideas. They think their size will protect them.
      • asdff 5y ago
        These companies are probably right that their size will protect them. People who are currently employed know better than to take the abuse. That's why these major companies recruit so heavily at colleges and rope in people who have zero perspective on work who don't know any better.
        • aidenn0 5y ago
          I had a poor college GPA. I missed a lot of good job opportunities because of this. However, it made me un-hireable at a lot of large companies that I might have considered at the time.
• 41209 5y ago
  This is fantastic For one life is too short to work like a dog, and for anyone who stays they'll be able to demand higher salaries. Right now I have enough money saved up where I don't really need to work for the rest of the year. If it wasn't for the pandemic restricting international travel, I would simply up and move to a low cost of living country and try and take a full year off.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  > There's not much firms can do to hold onto employees Well, they could always offer more money. Sometimes I crack myself up.
  • metalliqaz 5y ago
    of course they can, and facing a labor shortage they eventually will, but those changes take time. businesses compete for workers and customers in a market, and the market has to change. it has a lot of inertia.
  • martin_a 5y ago
    At this point, still not making six figures but it's Germany, I'd prefer a nicer office/work environment over more money. More space, more open-minded culture, fresh food for lunch (not even free but let's split cost)... Things like these would probably benefit me (and my colleagues) more than paying us another X hundred Euro.
    • CoastalCoder 5y ago
      > more open-minded culture Could you expand on this a bit? I've only worked in the U.S., so most of what I "know" about working in Germany is based on stereotypes. I'd love to hear your first-hand perspective.
      • martin_a 5y ago
        Hm, maybe that's not specific to Germany, but in this company there are lots of people who think something like this: - Totally not my problem, see how you figure it out for yourself - We've never done it that way - We've always done it this way - Don't look left and right while doing your work - I don't want to improve but I don't like where you are - If you're not physically at work you can't be working at all I think Germans sometimes have a specific sense of order and structure for work. Also succesful people, like in hard-working and making something out of themselves, are often belittled and in general nothing to look up to. These cultural "problems" creep into workplaces, too. To paraphrase a bit more: Work is a place you go to and leave after 8 hours. 8.5 hours precisely, because of 0.5 hours of lunch break. Don't stay longer, but NEVER leave 15 minutes earlier. You also don't hang out with colleagues for a beer or food, except for the colleagues from your pack. But you only meet those in your free time to talk about the other colleagures. Also the other packs/departments are probably all idiots. "Online people" don't work at all, because I never see them on the phone, they just chill and surf the web probably. And they even work less now that they stayed at home because of Covid. I've experienced all of this not only in my current but in other companies and I start to think it's a workplace-culture thing, where Germans don't realise that we're all in the same team but some people work just differently than others. This leads to a lot of envy, bad mood and stress, because I've always got the feeling that I need to fight. Fight for how I work, what I work on, how I communicate that to clients and so on. So, I'd like my leaders up in the C-level to work on "relaxing the people", connecting the departments, thinking more about purpose and mission and vision and less about whether we can make 5% more profit this year. I'd love if we would get something like a Skillshare/Udemy/LinkedIn learning membership for all of us and you get two hours a week to learn whatever you want, so everybody can become better. I'd love if the company would support renting a bike, but "it's too complicated/too much work". I'd also love if I could get rid of most of the wall units here in our space and instead get a couch and some plants. Best we will get (learned that today) is that we can paint one wall in a color we'd like. We might even be allowed to paint that in our working time, but we'll see. I don't expect middle to larger companies to be like a startup and everything is possible all the time and so on, but I think in Germany we need to see work more as a place where you are also allowed to have fun and enjoy the environment and learn and develop yourself and look next to the road and so on...
• loydb 5y ago
  Just lost out on a candidate who was in the 'talking with HR phase'. Their existing company offered a 100% salary bonus to stay for 12 months. I'll hit them up again in a year :)
  • travisjungroth 5y ago
    Hit them up again in two months. That level of raise signals "stick around while we find your replacement."
• dolmen 5y ago
  To prevent this the tech company I work for has just introduced world-wide a flexible work policy which allows you to chose (with only your manager's approval) if and how you want to return to the office. 100% were in full remote worldwide since August and offices are just starting to reopen.
  • mLuby 5y ago
    > flexible work policy To me at least, the vagueness of this phrase has made it untrustworthy. It can mean way too many different things. > with only your manager's approval I'd hope we're beyond tying your (and your family's) physical location to your boss's whim.
    • CoastalCoder 5y ago
      > To me at least, the vagueness of this phrase has made it untrustworthy. Perhaps that was the GP's choice of wording, to keep the comment brief?
      • mLuby 5y ago
        That could be—I've heard businesses talk about their "flexible work policies" too.
• ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  in 2017, I left my job of 27 years. Back then, the market was flooded with young folks out of bootcamps. So much so, in fact, that several companies had absolutely no problem treating me in quite shabby fashion, as I have committed the crime of Eld, along with a rather disturbing level of Provable Competence. These seem to be characteristics that immediately mark people for ridicule, humiliation, and indignity. Fortunately, I had been quite frugal, and have enough to retire anytime I wanted. I won't be zipping around in any learjets, but I'll be OK. I have never worked harder in my life; but I'm not making a dime. I'm working on the kind of software I find interesting, and that will actually have some real social impact, with people that treat me with basic human dignity and simple respect. It's cool. I'm also trying out and refining all kinds of ideas for high-quality, flexible software development, that no one was ever interested in exploring. They are working out fairly well. My GH Activity Graph has been solid green, for a couple of years. I like writing software (and delivering it). I'm in no hurry to put myself in a position again, where my work can be destroyed by others; even if I do make decent money at it. I have found that the pain of having my work ruined is far greater than I had thought. It took several years of being able to do things the way that I want, to realize that[0]. This is actually what I have wanted all my life. I just didn't know it, as I had never taken the risk to give it a go. This would not have happened, if the door had not been slammed in my face, forcing me to adapt. I'm really quite happy to see that people younger than I am, are getting a chance to make this realization, and I wish them all the luck in the world, in following their muse. The tech industry should be engaging, fun, and a source of wonder. We have amazing tools, technology, and a maturity of community that was unavailable, when I started. It would be great to see the tech field return to a greenfield, and a garden of pride in craftsmanship, real creativity, and joy in exploration, as opposed to the rather sordid, low-quality, mercenary mess, that it is now. [0] https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-02 https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-02
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • cweill 5y ago
    I love this comment. Thank you for sharing this experience. I also underestimated the impact of having my work burned in front of me after 2 years of overtime and sacrifice. The money afforded me some level of financial Independence which at least gives me the optionality to choose whether I want to suffer this again. I'm thinking of following in your footsteps. Wish me luck!
• deanclatworthy 5y ago
  Listen, I am completely on board with giving employees the right to choose the remote situation - but don't be surprised when you're competing against people from all over the globe, who will probably take a lower salary than you, who probably aren't entitled as you, and will bite at the opportunity. Furthermore, what are employers meant to do with their workplaces when employees are half-in, half-out with the office thing. Many folks (myself included) want to have 1-2 days at the office a week, but have the flexibility to decide that. That's not going to help my employer decide how much space is needed or whether to renew their lease.
  • metalliqaz 5y ago
    Our company is forcing almost everyone to become remote and has closed down probably half of its office space. Now when you come in you don't have an assigned desk and they will just expect everyone to find a desk. I am also of the opinion that the writing is on the wall. I live in a HCOL area and have no doubt that remote workers in other places will eventually replace me.
  • slumdev 5y ago
    > don't be surprised when you're competing against people from all over the globe, who will probably take a lower salary than you, who probably aren't entitled as you, and will bite at the opportunity. This competition mostly doesn't exist. The language barrier is too great, and working across time zones is something that most companies are horrible at, to say nothing of the legal/regulatory/jurisdictional challenges.
    • deanclatworthy 5y ago
      I don't agree. And you're looking at this from a very anglo-centric point of view. This will open doors for french-speaking Africans to work for French companies. For Brazilians working for Portugal etc. I've worked with skilled developers from all over the world, who speak more than good enough English.
      • slumdev 5y ago
• DebtDeflation 5y ago
  This is about far more than WFH vs Return To Office. Many of us, after a year of lockdowns, losing family members, suffering mental and physical health issues, spending more time with our families, etc. are re-evaluating our priorities in life and deciding that our jobs are no longer the most important things in life and probably never should have been.
  • Loughla 5y ago
    Higher education is my main job - we're not seeing an influx like we expected of people returning to college, but we are seeing an increase in non-traditional (24y.o.+) students. They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales industries. The forced time off last year made them realize they were killing themselves for not very much money, and they're refusing to go back to those employers. But it's the $300 in weekly payments that is stopping people from returning to work, if you ask business owners in the area. There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why.
    • pwned1 5y ago
      I've considered going back and getting a new degree but the cost is so insane that it's just not worth it.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • zero_deg_kevin 5y ago
      A lot of people were told their jobs are nonessential and the public debate was about whether or not they deserve assistance with basic survival needs. If it were me, I’d be doing everything in my power to never be in that position again. I suspect that’s part of what’s happening.
    • alistairSH 5y ago
      There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why. Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend business owners would have us believe.
• camhenlin 5y ago
  I joined this wave, started a new position last week for nearly another $100k/year, similar work, fully remote, great benefits. Tried asking for a raise at my previous job twice this year and my old boss wouldn’t discuss. Good luck to him retaining the rest of that team!
• ilamont 5y ago
  But human resources may be able to retain some workers by offering as much flexibility as possible, says Cathy Moy, chief people officer at BDO USA, a financial services company. It's not just flexibility or WFH. For many people it's about pay, policies, management, and a host of other issues, many of them well known but never addressed. Good luck to those firms who think the old HR playbook - making sympathetic noises while doing nothing about these other issues - will suffice.
  • mumblemumble 5y ago
    For my part, I am guessing none of this is really in HR's hands. The conversations I'm having in my social sphere tend to be something to the effect of how the past year has really made it clear how dysfunctional their company's team social dynamics are. And it's often not something you can expect anyone to ever fix, because that sort of thing is largely driven by senior management.
• deagle50 5y ago
  If you can stomach it, consider the sales side. You'll be allowed to WFH at pretty much any company and can't be replaced by someone in another city.
• screye 5y ago
  > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs. This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever) Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends. > Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults. > "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says. Press 'X' to Doubt
  • tgtweak 5y ago
    I appreciate the alternative perspective and productive-pessimism, but anecdotally in my immediate social circle of engineers, 5 have changed jobs - all for substantial upgrades, and not 1 of them was for a job that required office presence or downgrade in quality of environment. The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them. Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment). Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.
• amotinga 5y ago
  before pandemic started: - I asked more money (so that I can afford live alone in high COL) they said no. - I asked to work remotely - they sad no - I asked for more money (but less now) they still said no. I left. found a remote job with 25% raise. in 3 months pandemic hit and everybody started working remotely.
• m0llusk 5y ago
  The record 9.3 million job openings may be evidence that commonly used hiring practices have broken down and are not serving labor markets efficiently.
• hungryforcodes 5y ago
  So where is everyone searching for these remote only positions -- any special sites to recommend?
• gibbonsrcool 5y ago
  I quit last June after 13 mostly consecutive years in tech. I haven't saved enough to be financially independent but I can coast for a while. Even at a company that seemed to have good work life balance, I couldn't take it so I have no idea how you FAANG folks do it. I don't know if I'm just not suited for the career or what, but working as a software engineer caused several stress related health problems that have either gone away or drastically improved over the past year. I can't imagine going back, it's not worth sacrificing my health and happiness.
  • FartyMcFarter 5y ago
    Work-life balance isn't bad at FAANG (not generally speaking at least).
    • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      Broad generalization: I've seen friends burn out due to overwork at Amazon and Netflix, but it seems less common at Facebook, Apple, and Google. Would be interesting to see actual data.
      • reducesuffering 5y ago
        https://www.teamblind.com/company https://www.teamblind.com/company and if you use the app there's a separate data based on survey questions called Pulse, which mostly aligns with these Reviews. WLB goes: Google >> Netflix > Apple > Facebook >> Amazon
    • grillvogel 5y ago
      i think theres a discrepancy between junior engineers who get abused/overworked and don't know any better, and the seniors who know that they can say no to things without any repercussions
• pokstad 5y ago
  Funny, I think the same thing happened to teachers despite the fact that they cannot realistically have a remote option. Teachers unions have been holding out for better pay and benefits while holding in-school services hostage.
• myko 5y ago
  I've interviewed a lot of devs in the midwest (Columbus, OH) the past few months and everybody, even new college grads, expect $120k+ salaries. Mind blowing to me as I know devs who've been around ~10 years in the midwest who are only approaching those numbers.
  • handrous 5y ago
    3rd-tier (considered nationally, not regionally) city in the Midwest checking in, here. For one thing, starting salaries around here were already pushing that for mid-level and better devs before the pandemic. There are definitely small, crappy shops in tech stacks that tend to pay worse (ahem, PHP) shooting well under that, but starting salaries for new grads at places that actually both have and make money (mostly bigger companies or hotshot startups) were creeping to around 6-figures even before the pandemic. Anyone offering much lower than that was already bidding on the bottom-of-the-barrel, especially if their benefits suck (bad benefits and low pay tend to go hand-in-hand, so...). Local firms have been bidding up local talent fast since, oh, 2012 I'd say, as there were more seats to be filled than there were good local developers. Remote work has definitely been a factor. A half-decent experienced developer can easily land jobs that outbid the local market, and I'm not even talking major West Coast places with interview processes resembling torture. A lot of local devs have been slow to realize just how much money they're leaving on the table without even needing to move or practice leetcode for six months and submit to multiple day-long grueling interviews, but I have to assume that's changing fast with the pandemic pushing remote work into the zeitgeist. I'd imagine local firms are seeing some serious remote competition for their best developers, and losing a lot of them. That's going to mean rising salaries, or that their dev teams get somewhat worse. Basically I think the only thing keeping salaries as low as they were was that a high percentage of local developers weren't looking for new opportunities often enough, local or remote. Now that everyone's been prompted to pop their heads up and take a look around, it'd be very surprising to me if salaries didn't shoot way up. There's been a plain market mis-match locally, to begin with, suppressed only by not enough developers realizing how much more they could make by switching jobs, and add remote work competition to that, and there's going to be a lot of upward pressure on salaries.
  • busterarm 5y ago
• SebastianKumor 5y ago
  I was on my severance package from mid January until end of may 2021 and I was just working on my apps and doing my hobbies and it was one of the best times I had. Now that I got another job that pays pretty well compared to what I had before or even similar jobs to where I live I feel like meh and I am trying to figure out how to go to the work on my own stuff/hobbies asap.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  I'm just worried that my company will fire some people, including me :/ I don't have the luxury to enjoy a gap year.
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  Nobody is mentioning people leaving jobs because they DONT want remote. I do know of people frustrated that their company is closing its swanky office they enjoyed working at to be 100% remote.
  • cjpearson 5y ago
    I'm curious how those numbers compare. There seems to be a significant majority in favor of remote work in online forums, but that's not a perfect sample.
    • ajkjk 5y ago
      Anti-office people are very vocal on here. I don't think it's representative; most of the people I know in real life want their office back. I didn't know how much I wanted to be around people all day until it was taken away.
  • mrfusion 5y ago
    Agreed. Ideally I’d want flexibility to decide when to WFH and then still have a nice office to come into when I feel social, or need to collaborate.
    • mavelikara 5y ago
      > still have a nice office to come into when I feel social Who else would be at the office then to socialize with you? Paid actors?
  • asdff 5y ago
    If your office is basically a clubhouse, I can see how you could be miffed about getting the same salary at home but none of the benefits you used to have, and now have to make more space in your home for working environment, buying more food out of your pay for lunch or snacks or coffee, faster internet, printer ink, etc.
• chkaloon 5y ago
  In the US if the health insurance issue could be taken off the table the rate would be even much higher.
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• aerosmile 5y ago
  Remember how everyone predicted a baby boom in 2021 and instead we saw a 8-10% decline in birth rate [1]? It turns out that while people had more time to focus on their families, the financial uncertainty had a greater impact on their family planning decisions. The same thing happened in 2009 - there's a close link between the birth rate and recessions [2]. While I don't doubt that many people will change their jobs to better fit their life styles, I doubt that we'll end up with as big of a dip in total employment due to resignations (jobs will just shift from some companies to others). [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expected-covid-baby-boom-may-be-baby-bust-n1265674 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expected-covid-ba... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-birth-rate-decline-linked-to-recession/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-birt...
  • cbHXBY1D 5y ago
    Instead, we saw a dog adoption boom.
    • aerosmile 5y ago
      So true!
    • solidsnack9000 5y ago
      It's sad that so many people get dogs and don't train with them. Watching young women get dragged along by their big working dogs is a common sight in Uptown Dallas.
    • thehappypm 5y ago
      I adopted a dog in early March 2020, unrelated to pandemic, because my wife really wanted one. I was on the fence but really unsure about it -- we lived in a 3rd floor walkup, for one, and used to travel a lot so it didn't see like the best idea. I wish I could say it was a success story but I really haven't enjoyed it. I love the dog but as he got older he got really anti-social with people (the pandemic definitely made it harder to help solve that, sadly). A lot of "dog fun" like having your dog meet your friends, take your dog to a picnic, have your dog running around at your BBQ, just isn't in the cards for us. Taking him on walks is a challenge because he lunges and barks at people walking by. With consistent training we've gotten it under control and generally he's a happy pup but man, it was a huge commitment and a gigantic stressor.
• superfrank 5y ago
  I'll believe it when I see it. There's a massive difference between thinking about quitting and actually quitting. People don't like change and there's tons of it happening right now as we transition out of our COVID lifestyles. People are upset, but, I think it's much more likely that people will just moan about it for a while before eventually accepting it rather than actually taking action.
• reaperducer 5y ago
  There have been so many similar articles over the last three months. And every time I see one, I'm reminded of how resistant to change the company (and industry) I'm in is. The company I work for is starting to bring people back to the office department by department. People are resisting, and the company is telling them not to let the door hit them in their asses on the way out. Officially, it's because there is no "policy" for long-term work-from-home. But it's just stubbornness that comes from its habit of moving at the speed of a glacier. I've heard that some departments have lost 20% of their people so far. I know for a fact that one department I work closely with has lost 40%. My observation is that the better the employee, the more likely he is to refuse to come back to the office.
• loopz 5y ago
  During crisis decade post 1999, many shifted to better pastures, not content with being played like pawns and having bleak outlooks. Now, many developers having regretted biting the bullet for two f. decades are thinking the same, after quite a bit of introspection during COVID. Not saying everyone will jump on the same: Some went to work in kindergartens, just sick of everything java. However, this situation is exactly the spark that'll make people seek more of what they truly are meant to do in this life. The best advice I can give is, treat other people as you yourself would want to be treated, or how you think they wish to be treated. Be kind and seek the best in others.
• jc_811 5y ago
  I feel like I keep seeing articles on this topic, but nobody is addressing the (obvious) elephant in the room: If there is a great resignation, and people are quitting jobs they are not happy with - how are they going to pay their bills and way through life? Am I missing something? It seems these articles all talk about workers realizing they are underpaid, overworked, and after a year don't want to go back to the same exploitive job. While I completely agree with all this, it doesn't address the question of how these newly unemployed workers will pay their bills and way through life Are people just counting on their savings? If so, how many people can realistically live out of their savings (esp with rising costs of goods)? Do people think the extended unemployment benefits are going to continue for longer (this seems wildly unrealistic)? I'm genuinely curious if there are answers to these questions? From my point of view, it seems these articles never mention the fact that people have jobs they don't like, because they have to in order to earn money (in normal non-pandemic times)
  • ajkjk 5y ago
    > Am I missing something? If you're making tech salaries and not spending all of it, you can easily save enough to not work for a decade in just a few years of work. Anecdotally I worked for three years at a big company and then didn't work for three years until those savings ran out, and that wasn't really even trying. Of course the calculus changes if you're married or have kids. But living in America in a cheap town is not expensive compared to income in this field. You can live comfortably on 40k a year (lots of Americans do!). And a 200k+ income like you see in major tech hubs can easily translate to 100k+ of savings a year.
    • jc_811 5y ago
      That I can totally understand. However, if we're looking at the labor market as a whole, people making comfortable tech salaries are definitely outliers. Coupled with the fact that (anecdotally) it seems many of the people who don't want to return to their old jobs (or want to resign) are either in the service industry, or have/had lower paid entry level job salaries, I'm still stuck trying to understand how these folks will survive financially. I guess I'm trying to figure out if all these "great resignation" articles are referring to high paid skilled jobs (eg tech workers), which in my opinion wouldn't effect the economy as a whole very much since they are a relatively small portion of it, or if these articles are referring to the broad economy including lower paid jobs.
• zigzaggy 5y ago
  I resigned today. Back to solo work.
• nomy99 5y ago
  I am going to resign today. I was hired as UI developer during the pandemic, and my employer was kind enough to not let me go when the project ended during the pandemic. Now I'm moving to chicago from nyc to do UI work. The pandemic has been hard because I never enjoyed the work I was doing, but I grinded through it considering it was hard to find a job.
• sb8244 5y ago
  I resigned from my company of 7 years back in April. I gave up life-changing amounts of money in order to leave. I got super burnt out over the last year and there was not really another option imo. I had been working on my own company on the side and I feel immensely more recharged working on it. For people that have been sitting at home and not spending their salaries for the past year, that might be an appealing option.
• hvocode 5y ago
  I'm sure somewhere in the big pile of comments someone else is saying this, but as another voice saying it: 1. The pandemic was weird, and likely a time when people didn't want to change jobs due to a need for stability. It seems like it would be normal to see a wave of job changes that have been basically on hold until people felt safe. 2. I'm assuming some people have had more of a chance than normal to think more about what they want out of their life and jobs over the last 18 months. For some people, this means they might make a job change that they didn't anticipate making in January 2020. 3. It's one thing to threaten to leave, and a whole other thing to actually do it. I've had co-workers who were "ready to quit" for my whole career, some of whom are still at the jobs they were ready to quit a decade+ later.
• throwaway93939 5y ago
  Throwaway since this is private, but I’ve tendered my resignation for pretty much exactly what this article says. To be clear, I’m in a very privileged position where both my spouse and I are in software and she can more than cover the bills on her own. I have the ability to take time off, pursue other projects, do something else, etc. I think remote work, generally works, but there is an incredible long term drain on energy from not connecting with co-workers in person. It may work for some and there will certainly be a long term shift more towards remote work, but I predict it won’t be as pronounced as maybe some suspect because it’s much harder to sustain. The flexibility is indeed great and a net win especially for parents or those with long commutes, but I think it’s harder to actually work.
• dang 5y ago
  Related thread from yesterday: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27493945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27493945 - June 2021 (386 comments)
• systematical 5y ago
  HAPPILY just left a company. I'm done working at companies that don't offer unlimited PTO. Second to that, I'm not letting a job chain me to an overpriced city.
• callen43 5y ago
  I guess I'm part of this wave. Just these days I struggle with the decision if I should rather (a) quit my job without having found a new position yet or (b) keep working while applying for new jobs. (I'm located in Germany) Pros of early quitting: (1) I'm not learning anything anymore in my current job. The earlier the better... (2) My current job is subject to 3 months' notice, so I'm definitely free from October onwards (3) I hope this gives me some extra motivation to work on data science projects in my spare time Cons of early quitting: (1) Obviously no income anymore from October onwards unless I have found a new job. (2) From October onwards, it might be hard to find a new flat as the landlords request to get evidence of a regular income
• gaoshan 5y ago
  I fear that this trend will end up hurting a large percentage of the people that buy fully into this trend. The ideal, from my perspective, would be a shift in how business as usual is conducted, not a wholesale rejection of it. We are just coming out of an extreme period and I feel like some of this reaction is just rebound that could end up hurting many people. At my company we are trying to use this sentiment to shift to a mix of the old work from the office full time (with flexible policies about WFH as needed) to a more hybrid approach where we will still provide for a solid collaborative in-person environment while baking in even more flexibility for managing your WFH needs (maybe in office 3 days a week with WFH available 2 days a week... still trying to figure out the right balance). I'm sure we will still have at least a little attrition but suspect this will leave us with a stronger than ever core (while allowing those that leave to try to find something more suitable to their needs... but again, I worry about this ending up the case for them).
• amyjess 5y ago
  Well, I can finally say it: I'm part of the Great Resignation. I found a new position that's 100% remote, I put in my notice at my current job the week before last, and my last day is coming up this week. It's kind of bittersweet: I'm leaving just before my fifth anniversary here, and this is the only company where I've even made it to three years, much less five, but it is what it is. I like what I do, and I like my coworkers, but I just can't go back to working in an office after spending the last year working from home, so it's time for me to move on.
• theferret 5y ago
  Yeah not seeing it in my world. Moving jobs has never been easier - just change Zoom meetings.
• cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  I don't particularly want to be remote. I haven't enjoyed it at all. But it is potentially opening up possibilities for me outside of the area I live in. I'd be open to the idea if I could find a company that did a better job of it than my employer has. I suspect many others are in the same mindset, and that greatly weakens the negotiating position of employers in our industry -- even for recruiting people who don't necessarily want to be remote.
• xianwen 5y ago
  I'm currently living in Europe. I wonder how this affects people who are based in Europe and other continents. Can one work remotely for a Bay area company in a different continent, and receive a salary that is at the level of Bay area salary?
• imgabe 5y ago
  > Some are quitting because their bosses won't let them work from home post-pandemic. Others are leaving because they miss their offices, but their companies are now hybrid or all-remote. Seems like these people will just switch companies.
• stakkur 5y ago
  Finally, the perfect example of how 'Surveys show' is almost always bullshit.
• brailsafe 5y ago
  I see a lot of people talking about a hot market, and heres hoping it's true, because fuck I've been out of work a long time. With companies trying to adopt the same hiring practices of FAANG, applying is a crapshoot. It's either a 2 hr coding test (before a phone call) followed by 6 interviews or the company just has no clue at all and gets their sales person to determine how much you're down for their startup's 'mission'.
• anm89 5y ago
  I'll believe it when I see it.
• instaheat 5y ago
  Quit my sales job cold turkey. I'm in the enviable position of a having a large bank account and and setting my sights on reading more and creating a business. There are challenges ahead that is to be sure but the significant weight on my shoulders has been lifted. I got so tired of the micromanagement and constant pressure from Management to meet production standards, that I couldn't take it anymore.
• brasscodemonkey 5y ago
  Yes. Please leave. I’m a developer and single parent having trouble finding work. We could end up homeless. Maybe after everyone fortunate enough to be able to leave their jobs is gone, I won’t have to solve hard-level leetcode questions just to build React components.
• alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  Talking to my brother-in-law who's a CEO of a tech company, he said that his recruiter put 2 jobs out. Both identical, except one was work in the office while the other was work from home but with a $20k in pay reduction... The work from home job got over 60 applications while the work in the office got a single application. ... the "Great Resignations" wave is definitely coming.
• mankypro 5y ago
  There are plenty of folks willing to work. The figures will be used to justify more Visas for lower paid, indentured immigration status tethered slave labor.
• mancerayder 5y ago
  On-call is the lifelong misery for me. I found a job recently without a lot of it, but I sense it's coming. Those in the DevOps space would love to resign and find something-that-isn't-that, but there doesn't seem to be much relief outside of very large environments with follow the suns.