8 ms·

Tech workers warned they were going to quit. The problem is spiralling out

46 points by amrrs 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago
> "every organization's top priority" to keep them in the workforce. I wait to hear a single anecdote about a company that prioritizes keeping staff over just hiring replacements.
- lazypenguin 5y ago
  I used to work for a private company that had a market cap in the billions of dollars and is the dominant monopoly in their field. I left that job in September. Here are things they could have done to make me stay (only would have needed one): - Increase paid vacation from 3 weeks to 6+ weeks - Increase base salary to match offers I was receiving at other companies - Reduce work week from 40 hours to 32 hours - Hire people more experienced than me so I can learn from them and keep growing - Fire the toxic team member on our team who, despite being junior to me in experience and ability level, was at risk of becoming my manager on a long enough timeline simply because he had been at the company longer than me However, none of these were offered to me when I announced I would be leaving. I was leaving to move to my own company so I was open to being convinced to stay but there was never a serious attempt. Instead everyone during my exit lamented how hard it is to hire people right now. I had a good team and the company is pretty decent but HR was seriously lacking when it came to managing developers.
  - bklaasen 5y ago
    You said you weren't offered any of these, but did you tell your boss that you'd have stayed if any of your conditions had been met?
    - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
      I think the broader point is that the onus should not be on the employee but on the employer. The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. Even if the company isn’t seeing significant levels of attrition yet, they should be extra attentive and provide incentives to stay before the employee has decided to leave. By then, it’s usually too little too late.
      - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        > The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. In the case of the parent comment, be ahead of the employee how? "Good news, Steve. We're giving you a $50,000/year raise but you'll be working 32 hours a week instead of 40. We're giving you 2 months of paid vacation next year instead of 3 weeks. We're hiring 5 new people with more experience than you, who will be responsible for mentoring you and helping you grow, as well as a personal comedian, who can keep you entertained when you're feeling down."
        ser0 5y ago
        Effectively, yes, this. Just as businesses are expected to monitor and react to competitors that are after their customers. They should also have processes in place to react to competitors for their staff.
        LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        > ...react to competitors... In this case, there were no competitors. The parent poster indicated that he was leaving to start his own thing. Nobody was offering him a high-paying job where he would work only 32 hours a week, have 6+ weeks of paid vacation annually and generally be treated like the company's most valuable asset. While I wish the parent poster the best, he's far more likely to discover that running his own business will require him to work more, not less, and at least initially, is likely to provide him with lower net pay and benefits. Unless you're an absolute rockstar, you have to be realistic, even in this market.
    - stubish 5y ago
      Companies who want to keep staff need to proactively work this out rather than wait for employees to make demands, or you end up only with employees prepared to make demands. Not everyone is emotionally or culturally comfortable with that. It is a management problem. Thankfully many companies are tackling the issue because diversity, as one of the numerous reasons there are things like gender pay gaps is that people in many less privileged social groups are uncomfortable or unwilling to make demands of their employer.
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        Plenty of companies also only accept the demand when you have already gotten the demand satisfied elsewhere.
        chii 5y ago
        Because the demands being satisfied elsewhere is proof that those demands are the minimum required to keep the employee - after all, what a company wants to pay is the minimum viable pay for the worker to work.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    weeks_per_year = 52 vacation_weeks = (3, 6) hours_per_week = (40, 32) old_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[0]) * hours_per_week[0] new_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[1]) * hours_per_week[1] ratio_of_hours_worked = new_hours_per_year / old_hours_per_year how_much_less_did_i_work = 100 * (1 - ratio_of_hours_worked) print(f"{old_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{new_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{ratio_of_hours_worked = :0.2f}") print(f"{how_much_less_did_i_work = :0.0f}%") Output: old_hours_per_year = 1960 new_hours_per_year = 1472 ratio_of_hours_worked = 0.75 how_much_less_did_i_work = 25% So...you wanted to work 25% LESS, doing the same job, at the same company, and make more money? That's the pitch? Even better: > I was leaving to move to my own company As a good friend likes to put it: "I run my own business, which gives me complete freedom." "Now, seven days a week, I get to choose which twenty hours of the day I want to work for just over minimum wage" I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. If you do not, unless your business is trivial, you will. You will one day experience an employee coming to you with a similar view of the universe. And then you will understand. You will surely chuckle and think "Wow! Did I really sound like that? What was I thinking?".
    - bandyaboot 5y ago
      “Only would have needed one”.
      - greenyoda 5y ago
        Exactly. The original comment said that they were underpaid, and would be happy with either a raise to a market-level salary or a reduction in hours. Getting the same amount of pay for 25% fewer hours would be equivalent to a 25% raise in hourly earnings, and it wouldn't be surprising if someone were 25% underpaid if they had stayed at one employer for a long time. So it doesn't seem like such an unreasonable thing to ask for. > I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. I hope you understand what your comment suggests about you, as an employer: you're quick to mock an employee for making a reasonable request, without even listening carefully enough to understand the question. You might want to reconsider this attitude if you care about employee retention.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  My company reviewed and increased nearly everybody's compensation to make sure they stayed.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yay! After 18 hours and 33 votes, I finally got one.
Factorium 5y ago
COVID-era restrictions to Europe and India are dropping on November 8th. Be prepared for a reflux of desperate migrants who will happily take those jobs. (Disclaimer: I'm one of them).
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  How were these keeping you from picking up jobs in the US? You couldn't leave??
  - Factorium 5y ago
    Europeans, Indians, several other countries were banned from entering the USA since 2020.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  Same bro, but in 6 months.
- tasogare 5y ago
  > Be prepared for a reflux of desperate migrants No worry, be assured I'll register on the consular electoral list of to vote Zemmour at the next election to stop the madness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    what the flux described here, skilled labor from the US to EU, and France in particular? Is that happening for real?
azemetre 5y ago
Kinda curious as how companies are spinning this news internally? A normal amount of churn is perfectly healthy and can be dealt with, but if entire teams disappear together within a month or two... I'm guessing there's where the trouble appears?
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Are they? Until Friday I worked for a company with very high churn. Complaints on Glassdoor. Complaints in the suggestion box. Not a peep from anyone officially.
  - nameisname 5y ago
    I'm with a multinational multibillion dollar company and entire teams will quit on core products all the time. The VPs make up stats and dodge questions on calls. The reality is that it's actually never really hurt the company because the deals that are being made are millions of dollars and delivery is guaranteed by insanely complex requirements and app certifications that alternative offerings can't meet.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Yeah, one of the naive things I thought when I joined the work world was that operational excellence would matter significantly. In practice, there is too much friction for companies to switch unless it decays into a disaster.
  - ser0 5y ago
    Agreed. A company that would enable a work environment that fosters a mass exodus would be unlikely to feel accountable to any remaining employees.
orionblastar 5y ago
I dropped out in 2002. I got burned out and my health was not so good. Profits over people my employers wanted and used IT as slave workers with little benefits. I now work for myself with my own business.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > I now work for myself with my own business. Running a business is usually more stressful compared to a job.
  - orionblastar 5y ago
    Oddly enough it isn't for me. I use Quickbooks and Turbo Tax. They must have rung me through the ringer. It was ultimate stress.
  - chii 5y ago
    > Running a business is usually more stressful compared to a job. it is, but you are adequately rewarded for running a business (or you fail). A stressful job which underpays you is worse than a stressful job which pays.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    It hasn't been for me. There is a lot to be said for having control over your environment and the type of work you do.
brundolf 5y ago
Where is this happening? I keep seeing these articles, but anecdotally I don't think I know a single person who's actively dissatisfied with their tech job, much less people quitting in droves. People occasionally leave for even better offers, of course, but that's about it. And this isn't just at my company, it's across my nontrivial network.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Correct, Information worker quit rates declined if you dig into the JOLTS data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm The people who are quitting are the ones working for hotels and restaurants. This is yet another activist piece that cites a headline JOLTS figure but doesn't even bother to look to see if the statistics support the claim of the piece.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Interesting. My entire network has churned in the past 6 months except for those locked in at FAANG and a few utterly unemployable elsewhere people.
quantified 5y ago
> New research by training platform TalentLMS and Workable, a provider of recruiting software, suggests that tech and IT workers are likely to be planning an exit soon. Still thinking about it. Not happening yet.

46 points by amrrs 5y ago

> "every organization's top priority" to keep them in the workforce. I wait to hear a single anecdote about a company that prioritizes keeping staff over just hiring replacements.

lazypenguin 5y ago
I used to work for a private company that had a market cap in the billions of dollars and is the dominant monopoly in their field. I left that job in September. Here are things they could have done to make me stay (only would have needed one): - Increase paid vacation from 3 weeks to 6+ weeks - Increase base salary to match offers I was receiving at other companies - Reduce work week from 40 hours to 32 hours - Hire people more experienced than me so I can learn from them and keep growing - Fire the toxic team member on our team who, despite being junior to me in experience and ability level, was at risk of becoming my manager on a long enough timeline simply because he had been at the company longer than me However, none of these were offered to me when I announced I would be leaving. I was leaving to move to my own company so I was open to being convinced to stay but there was never a serious attempt. Instead everyone during my exit lamented how hard it is to hire people right now. I had a good team and the company is pretty decent but HR was seriously lacking when it came to managing developers.
- bklaasen 5y ago
  You said you weren't offered any of these, but did you tell your boss that you'd have stayed if any of your conditions had been met?
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    I think the broader point is that the onus should not be on the employee but on the employer. The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. Even if the company isn’t seeing significant levels of attrition yet, they should be extra attentive and provide incentives to stay before the employee has decided to leave. By then, it’s usually too little too late.
    - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
      > The employer should be ahead of the employee anticipating needs and reacting to broader market trends. In the case of the parent comment, be ahead of the employee how? "Good news, Steve. We're giving you a $50,000/year raise but you'll be working 32 hours a week instead of 40. We're giving you 2 months of paid vacation next year instead of 3 weeks. We're hiring 5 new people with more experience than you, who will be responsible for mentoring you and helping you grow, as well as a personal comedian, who can keep you entertained when you're feeling down."
      - ser0 5y ago
        Effectively, yes, this. Just as businesses are expected to monitor and react to competitors that are after their customers. They should also have processes in place to react to competitors for their staff.
        LurkingPenguin 5y ago
        > ...react to competitors... In this case, there were no competitors. The parent poster indicated that he was leaving to start his own thing. Nobody was offering him a high-paying job where he would work only 32 hours a week, have 6+ weeks of paid vacation annually and generally be treated like the company's most valuable asset. While I wish the parent poster the best, he's far more likely to discover that running his own business will require him to work more, not less, and at least initially, is likely to provide him with lower net pay and benefits. Unless you're an absolute rockstar, you have to be realistic, even in this market.
  - stubish 5y ago
    Companies who want to keep staff need to proactively work this out rather than wait for employees to make demands, or you end up only with employees prepared to make demands. Not everyone is emotionally or culturally comfortable with that. It is a management problem. Thankfully many companies are tackling the issue because diversity, as one of the numerous reasons there are things like gender pay gaps is that people in many less privileged social groups are uncomfortable or unwilling to make demands of their employer.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      Plenty of companies also only accept the demand when you have already gotten the demand satisfied elsewhere.
      - chii 5y ago
        Because the demands being satisfied elsewhere is proof that those demands are the minimum required to keep the employee - after all, what a company wants to pay is the minimum viable pay for the worker to work.
- robomartin 5y ago
  weeks_per_year = 52 vacation_weeks = (3, 6) hours_per_week = (40, 32) old_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[0]) * hours_per_week[0] new_hours_per_year = (weeks_per_year - vacation_weeks[1]) * hours_per_week[1] ratio_of_hours_worked = new_hours_per_year / old_hours_per_year how_much_less_did_i_work = 100 * (1 - ratio_of_hours_worked) print(f"{old_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{new_hours_per_year = }") print(f"{ratio_of_hours_worked = :0.2f}") print(f"{how_much_less_did_i_work = :0.0f}%") Output: old_hours_per_year = 1960 new_hours_per_year = 1472 ratio_of_hours_worked = 0.75 how_much_less_did_i_work = 25% So...you wanted to work 25% LESS, doing the same job, at the same company, and make more money? That's the pitch? Even better: > I was leaving to move to my own company As a good friend likes to put it: "I run my own business, which gives me complete freedom." "Now, seven days a week, I get to choose which twenty hours of the day I want to work for just over minimum wage" I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. If you do not, unless your business is trivial, you will. You will one day experience an employee coming to you with a similar view of the universe. And then you will understand. You will surely chuckle and think "Wow! Did I really sound like that? What was I thinking?".
  - bandyaboot 5y ago
    “Only would have needed one”.
    - greenyoda 5y ago
      Exactly. The original comment said that they were underpaid, and would be happy with either a raise to a market-level salary or a reduction in hours. Getting the same amount of pay for 25% fewer hours would be equivalent to a 25% raise in hourly earnings, and it wouldn't be surprising if someone were 25% underpaid if they had stayed at one employer for a long time. So it doesn't seem like such an unreasonable thing to ask for. > I hope you understand what your comment says about you to an employer. I hope you understand what your comment suggests about you, as an employer: you're quick to mock an employee for making a reasonable request, without even listening carefully enough to understand the question. You might want to reconsider this attitude if you care about employee retention.
SkyPuncher 5y ago
My company reviewed and increased nearly everybody's compensation to make sure they stayed.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yay! After 18 hours and 33 votes, I finally got one.

Factorium 5y ago

COVID-era restrictions to Europe and India are dropping on November 8th. Be prepared for a reflux of desperate migrants who will happily take those jobs. (Disclaimer: I'm one of them).

DangitBobby 5y ago
How were these keeping you from picking up jobs in the US? You couldn't leave??
- Factorium 5y ago
  Europeans, Indians, several other countries were banned from entering the USA since 2020.
Dma54rhs 5y ago
Same bro, but in 6 months.
tasogare 5y ago
> Be prepared for a reflux of desperate migrants No worry, be assured I'll register on the consular electoral list of to vote Zemmour at the next election to stop the madness.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  what the flux described here, skilled labor from the US to EU, and France in particular? Is that happening for real?

azemetre 5y ago

Kinda curious as how companies are spinning this news internally? A normal amount of churn is perfectly healthy and can be dealt with, but if entire teams disappear together within a month or two... I'm guessing there's where the trouble appears?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Are they? Until Friday I worked for a company with very high churn. Complaints on Glassdoor. Complaints in the suggestion box. Not a peep from anyone officially.
- nameisname 5y ago
  I'm with a multinational multibillion dollar company and entire teams will quit on core products all the time. The VPs make up stats and dodge questions on calls. The reality is that it's actually never really hurt the company because the deals that are being made are millions of dollars and delivery is guaranteed by insanely complex requirements and app certifications that alternative offerings can't meet.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Yeah, one of the naive things I thought when I joined the work world was that operational excellence would matter significantly. In practice, there is too much friction for companies to switch unless it decays into a disaster.
- ser0 5y ago
  Agreed. A company that would enable a work environment that fosters a mass exodus would be unlikely to feel accountable to any remaining employees.

orionblastar 5y ago

I dropped out in 2002. I got burned out and my health was not so good. Profits over people my employers wanted and used IT as slave workers with little benefits. I now work for myself with my own business.

sumedh 5y ago
> I now work for myself with my own business. Running a business is usually more stressful compared to a job.
- orionblastar 5y ago
  Oddly enough it isn't for me. I use Quickbooks and Turbo Tax. They must have rung me through the ringer. It was ultimate stress.
- chii 5y ago
  > Running a business is usually more stressful compared to a job. it is, but you are adequately rewarded for running a business (or you fail). A stressful job which underpays you is worse than a stressful job which pays.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It hasn't been for me. There is a lot to be said for having control over your environment and the type of work you do.

brundolf 5y ago

Where is this happening? I keep seeing these articles, but anecdotally I don't think I know a single person who's actively dissatisfied with their tech job, much less people quitting in droves. People occasionally leave for even better offers, of course, but that's about it. And this isn't just at my company, it's across my nontrivial network.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Correct, Information worker quit rates declined if you dig into the JOLTS data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm The people who are quitting are the ones working for hotels and restaurants. This is yet another activist piece that cites a headline JOLTS figure but doesn't even bother to look to see if the statistics support the claim of the piece.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Interesting. My entire network has churned in the past 6 months except for those locked in at FAANG and a few utterly unemployable elsewhere people.

quantified 5y ago

> New research by training platform TalentLMS and Workable, a provider of recruiting software, suggests that tech and IT workers are likely to be planning an exit soon. Still thinking about it. Not happening yet.