25 ms·

Evidence for the “great resignation” is thin on the ground

132 points by neilfrndes 5y ago

lelandbatey 5y ago
https://archive.md/48KaG https://archive.md/48KaG
ivalm 5y ago
5% raise when inflation is >5% is a real wage cut.
- earthscienceman 5y ago
  In simplistic terms, maybe yes. I'm on the side of labor in this (in any) market so I don't intend to undercut the purpose of your comment... ... however. This depends on where the inflation is in the market and the way you intend to use your wages. "Inflation" is a number that we use to indicate much more complex and varied market trends.
  - ivalm 5y ago
    I mean sure, you can dispute inflation number as being the relevant index, but CPI if anything underrepresents increased costs lots of people experience in Seattle.
  - incongruity 5y ago
    Indeed - inflation is an aggregate measure and it definitely doesn’t apply equally across all individuals, in terms of impact. Recognizing my own privilege here, for me, for example, many of my expenses are fixed: student loans and mortgage take the lion’s share of our monthly cash flow after taxes and retirement. Neither of those are indexed to inflation so if this drives higher cost of living increases, it’s a net win for me, in all likelihood.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Yes, and no. If you are paying for a $400k house in 2005 dollars with a 2021 salary the inflation is all good (bring it on). All the squawking about inflation is annoying and often wrong (gentle inflation like we are seeing is good for the common person). If you are sitting on piles of cash from yesteryear you become less wealthy--not counting gains from interest income or stock price appreciation. Who doesn't like inflation? I love it when the market makes my existing debt cheaper.
  - deathanatos 5y ago
    > Who doesn't like inflation? I love it when the market makes my existing debt cheaper. Those of us who want to purchase? …And understand that the housing market cannot outpace inflation indefinitely, and are queasy about what will happen when that day comes: do home prices eventually level off at some absurd level, or do interest rates rise, demand slackens, prices level off & then speculators jump ship for more lucrative investments and then prices crater, putting people underwater on their mortgage?
  - mlac 5y ago
    Here are a few people who don’t like inflation: - People who aren’t leveraged with a lot of debt. - People who are seeing wage stagnation while the cost of living goes up. The majority of jobs that keep the economy running aren’t like the tech sector where one can job hop to keep wages up. - People who have a significant chunk of their savings in cash for a down payment, and they are seeing property values run away from them while the value of their money goes down. They are also seeing increasing costs, impacting their ability to save for a down payment. - The people who are trying to buy a house that was $400k in 2005, that is now valued at 1.2M and requires $240k for a down payment.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > People who have a significant chunk of their savings in cash for a down payment, and they are seeing property values run away from them while the value of their money goes down. This is a very important issue, but it's not really inflation in any normal sense.
syntaxstic 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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jdhn 5y ago
I just moved to another company late last month. Before I left my old company, multiple people were either quitting, or moving to new positions within the company, and as a result the company was having a rough time filling all their open positions. I know this is anecdotal, but I really don't believe that the Economist is right in this case.
- the_jeremy 5y ago
  My team is full of lifers (everyone but me and the friend I got hired have been here >8 years), and only one person of the 12 of us left this year. My fiancee's company is in the process of losing the entire mobile team (Android/iOS, ~8 team members, lost 5 this year), but it's a dumpster fire with low wages, so them going down in flames isn't necessarily related to a broader movement.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - incongruity 5y ago
    I feel like you sorta added evidence to the idea that it is a broader movement. It’s not that everyone is just saying “I quit” - but those in bad jobs/bad teams/working for low wages are the ones supposedly making moves and I think your anecdotes align with that. Just say’n is all.
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    I think the broad movement is exactly people settling less for dumpster fires with low wages...
  - stetrain 5y ago
    The trends of remote work and broader competition to find tech workers would make it much easier to get out of such a dumpster fire situation over the last ~18 months. So perhaps the reasons for quitting haven't changed much, but the burden of jumping is lower so it's happening more often.
- deleted 5y ago
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epsteinisntdead 5y ago
Pass the paywall: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Ffinance-and-economics%2Fevidence-for-the-great-resignation-is-thin-on-the-ground%2F21806659 https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Ffi...
- WithinReason 5y ago
  Also: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
  - mig39 5y ago
    Doesn't seem to work with this link, for some reason. Installed the add-on, reloaded the page, and it's still paywalled.
    - WithinReason 5y ago
      Try deleting cookies for economist.com
orangepurple 5y ago
[flagged]
- petesergeant 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - gwright 5y ago
    My understanding is that one specific concern from a Christian point of view is the use of fetal cell lines in the development of the vaccine: https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210918/some-medications-also-tied-to-religious-vaccine-exemption https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021091... I'm not passing judgment on the reasonableness of religious exceptions for public health issues in general or COVID-19 issues specifically, just trying to clarify the religious concerns that have been raised (valid or not).
  - dang 5y ago
    Please do not take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want it here and it's particularly avoidable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - handrous 5y ago
      I just took it as expressing confusion that anyone believed that to be a real option at all, since Christianity broadly isn't well-known for an anti-vax stance, so "Christian" without further qualifiers is surprising in this context. Christian groups known for being anti-vax tend to be relatively fringe, small, and well-known for those positions (e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses). This matters for how upset anyone ought to be over this, assuming it's actually happening, since the government tends not to respect "deeply held beliefs" that, conveniently, were only recently arrived at, so depending on exactly which Christians we're talking about, denying these folks an exemption (despite whatever paper they got their pastor/priest/minister to sign) is either totally normal & expected, or somewhat unexpected and (perhaps) worrisome. I don't see the post as flame bait, but an expression of confusion inviting clarification. I think the tone's appropriate for the original claim (which... smells a bit rotten).
avgDev 5y ago
Honestly, I'm not concerned if it "great resignation" really happened. My boss heard the news and I was able to leverage an offer to get a 50% salary increase. This worked out well for me. The negative side-effect is that I am getting ghosted a lot on linked-in as my salary is high for the area and recruiters just stop responding when they hear what offer I would consider. However, my next move is going to be to a tech company which will enable another 50% jump hopefully.
- belval 5y ago
  Honestly I'd have trust issues if someone increased my salary 50% because it would mean they severely underpaid for several years to get to a point where I am worth a 50% increase. Not saying that your boss is bad or that you should leave your company, whatever works, but yeah it's something.
  - avgDev 5y ago
    I wasn't underpaid. I was about average for the market but I liked the flexibility they offered. I'm now way above average. I doubled my salary in 4 years, but I try to do my best to produce results.
- SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
  Telling recruiters what I'd expect from a salary, and then never hearing from them again, is something that I consider a feature, not a bug. It means I'm not getting nagged by recruiters weekly. I still get a new one every month or two, but the frequency is much more manageable now.
  - joshstrange 5y ago
    Agreed. When I'm in "Job hunt mode" I write up a paragraph or two with what I'm looking for (salary, health insurance, 401k+matching, etc) and what I'd be willing accept in lieu of some of those things (no matching? Ok then I need to be making X% more to make up for that). It also includes what types of technology I'm interested in working with. Then I just spam that out to every recruiter that has or is currently emailing me or messaging me on platforms like LinkedIn. Every time I do look at switching jobs I consider going into recruiting instead as most all recruiters I've ever worked with are completely incompetent. I don't expect them to know every technology and how it works but I do expect some basic patten-matching-level of competence (for example, you don't need to know anything about Angular/Vue/React but those should come to mind when "frontend" is mentioned and if a developer says they want to work with "Vue" the recruiter should be able to ask "Would you also be ok with Angular/React?"). Most of the time they function only as slow go-betweens in a game of telephone that they mangle horribly. I've had recruiters lie, ghost me, or just fail at basic message-passing. The last recruiter I worked with was so slow at responding that I just went around them and contacted the company directly and had an interview setup almost immediately. For the amount a recruiter gets for placing someone I'd expect they'd be much better at what they do.
andrew_ 5y ago
I resigned in August 2021 for a new position. Four other colleagues left in July before I split. "Evidence" may be limited to bubbles.
ozzythecat 5y ago
I don’t know what exactly the truth is, but I’m one of the tech workers living in the Seattle area. I’ll start off by saying that I work 60 hours a week, at least. My stress and anxiety levels are manageable now, but only because I found ways of managing them. They’re not reasonable though and most importantly, they’re not sustainable. Based on the neighborhood I live in and my compensation, I am extremely privileged. I don’t have money concerns that my parents had. Most things that I might need, I can buy them without having to think too much or without putting a dent in my net worth. But my job is not sustainable. So, I live way below my means and avoid any lifestyle creep. I would like to own a home, a nice one. Not a $1M property that’s not even comparable to my parents home. Given my compensation and many, many years of savings, this would be reasonable. I looked at several houses over the weekend. One dump after another, going for $1.3MM at the minimum. One actually had an offer accepted, merely hours after we toured it. They told us the buyer offered $1.6MM. But Seattle has become a lawless dump. The east side has started homes for $1.4MM where the inspection report shows you that you’re basically just paying for the land. If I have to be a renter my whole damn life and can’t even afford a house, what is the god damn point? Yeah I get paid very well, but I am a pawn of people who earn significantly more. And it’s not that I’m just comparing myself, but even after all this work and money I can’t comfortably buy a house - then where does this leave the majority of this country? I don’t know.
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  >"I don’t have money concerns that my parents had." vs >"can’t even afford a house" Only one of these statements can be true. Would you have money concerns if you did buy a house that is as good as your parents? i.e. if your housing costs were $10k/mo, $20k/mo or more?
- cafard 5y ago
  Neighbors' son and daughter-in-law are moving from the Washington, DC, suburbs to Raleigh, North Carolina. A four-bedroom house there in a good development costs maybe a third of what his parents' house would sell for in a good (but not most expensive) neighborhood of Washington.
- t-writescode 5y ago
tedivm 5y ago
What an awful article. Two quotes to show how garbage this is- > The great-resignation thesis seems strongest in America and Britain. In September a record 4.4m Americans quit their jobs (see chart 1). In the third quarter of the year nearly 400,000 Britons moved from one job to another after handing in their notice, also the highest-ever level. > In other parts of the rich world, however, a great resignation is harder to spot. So basically the premise of their title is that the "Great Resignation" doesn't count because it's primarily happening in two countries instead of in every country.
- seoulmetro 5y ago
  Of course it doesn't count. Two countries is a drop in the ocean. If you want to be right, maybe name it more like "The Minor Resignation".
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The "Great Resignation" has been fueled by anecdotes and a tiny upward tick in the underlying data. If you go looking, it's not hard to find comments, anecdotes, and stories from people whose workplaces did experience some sort of large resignation event where a lot of people went out and got new jobs. The common theme in those anecdotes is always that they were underpaid and/or mistreated to begin with. In some ways, the "Great Resignation" news stories being blasted all over the news gave a lot of people the final push they needed to go out and look for new jobs. Combined with the booming economy, it wasn't hard for these people to find better jobs. Once their coworkers realized what was happening, they also made the leap. So in a sense, it does appear that small pockets of employers who were behind the curve are finally getting what's coming to them. I half believe the news stories about "Great Resignation" stuff became a self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone who wasn't getting a new job felt left out. But if you look at any larger company data or at companies who were smart enough to keep pace with compensation and employee treatment norms, there isn't really a wave of resignations like the news stories suggest. Overall employee turnover is slightly higher than normal, unless you also factor in the decrease in employee turnover during early COVID, at which point the running average of employee turnover is all that abnormal.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >The common theme in those anecdotes is always that they were underpaid and/or mistreated to begin with. One area where it certainly seems to be very common is with restaurants. In every city I've been to over the past few months, restaurants are very obviously on reduced hours, reduced days, or (supposedly "temporarily") closed. And it's fairly obvious in many cases that it's not due to lack of demand. And, in many cases, these jobs are not terribly attractive. Restaurants are adding surcharges and increasing worker pay but it appears to not be enough in general.
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Many restaurants treat their employees like shit and let their customers treat their employees like shit. It's not surprising people don't want to work for them. It doesn't have to be this way but no one wants to be the first place to refuse abusive customers.
subsubzero 5y ago
I would have to imagine that tracks similar to the "K" shaped economy recovery. This means that lower pay physically based positions [retail, travel, food] have seen great amounts of people leaving those industries as Government stimulus checks have given people time and money to think about their jobs, many are also leaving the industry permanently if they can. On the flip side higher payed professional positions are seeing some turnover but no where anywhere like the other lower paid sectors. I know for a fact that the restaurant/food service situation is on full meltdown mode in Southern California. A few panda expresses have run out rice. Multiple Habit burgers have shut down due to lack of staff, eating out at restaurants have been the worse I have ever seen it as everyone is really new and it shows. That being said I have been to a lot of places in the country this year(Utah, Arizona, Hawaii) and nothing is similar to what I've seen locally in southern California so it may track to how expensive California has become and could be people are quitting jobs in expensive areas and moving to cheaper ones.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  This has been a long time coming for California. It’s a great state in many ways, but the way most of the local and state leaders have repeatedly punted on the issue of housing affordability is shameful. Calling their efforts half assed would be too generous, it’s quarter assed at most. The recent change to upzone previously single family home only areas is good, but even then, the new regulation is filled with caveats that weaken it.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >I know for a fact that the restaurant/food service situation is on full meltdown mode in Southern California. I won't say it's everywhere but I've seen the same problem as California in Washington (including rural Washington) and Raleigh. Everyone I know who travels has been running into the difficulties of trying to find places to eat at on a given day.
- bit_logic 5y ago
  I'm in LA and it's in a downward spiral. Went to a restaurant yesterday and a dish was $16 which was a shocking increase. I went to look at menu photos from 2019 on yelp and the same dish was $12 back then. Service was really bad, they basically took the order, delivered the food, and we never saw them again. No water refills, got tired of waiting for the check and had to walk up front to ask for it. I'm usually generous with tips, but why should this poor service be rewarded? And on top of the already inflated prices? So restaurants are getting squeezed on all sides. Supply costs up, wages are up, labor shortage, rent is up. Tips will go down as customers are upset with poor service, which means more pressure on wages. All of this means higher prices, which means fewer customers and more takeout orders. The old restaurant business model is simply not sustainable.
move-on-by 5y ago
I’m not going to comment on the evidence, but I can say that my previous manager was very quick to support the ‘great resignation’. It was a very convenient excuse to deflect from her terrible management.
- hinkley 5y ago
  But isn’t the Great Resignation due in part to bad managers hanging onto people through the quarantine despite being bad managers?
spike021 5y ago
I left a FAANG just last week. I'd say for a mix of work-related reasons and also because I just wanted a break in general. I wouldn't say it was "COVID" or some specific reason but I'm sure it contributed. Edit: Also, FWIW roughly 4 people left my team in the past year (since Oct 2020) before me. A couple went to new jobs, a couple did not and just resigned without plans (me too).
- tombert 5y ago
  Similarly, I quit a job at a FAANG earlier this year. I had had frustrations there for awhile, and while it wasn't COVID that directly made me quit, I think it exacerbated my existing problems to a breaking point. In a sense I'm sort of glad about growing to hate the job as much as I did; it inspired me to finish my bachelors and start the path forward to transition out of software engineering and into CS research. Granted, this transition is going to take 5-6 years, but it's at least a path forward.
  - czbond 5y ago
    Is there a lot of opportunity in CS research? What roles would that entail?
    - tombert 5y ago
      > Is there a lot of opportunity in CS research? No, I don't think so, and I don't think they pay terribly well. I just got accepted into a PhD program, which will take me 5-6 years to complete, so I'm hoping that will qualify me for the roles that do exist, and get something approaching a decent salary in the process. > What roles would that entail? I would ideally like to work entirely on formalization of algorithms, working primarily within Isabelle or Coq or Agda or something like them. I realize those jobs aren't exactly common, but it's at least a goal to work towards.
      - oblio 5y ago
        > get something approaching a decent salary in the process. You weren't getting a decent salary at a FAANG? :-o
arduinomancer 5y ago
I always try to look at incentives If the "great resignation" is not real, who is benefiting from that narrative?
- subsubzero 5y ago
  The dark cabal of recruiters /s
micro_cam 5y ago
Total anecdotal evidence but it seems that in tech a lot of people are quitting/changing jobs or looking at it. It seems like big co's have tweaked their comp packages a bit to front load equity packages and avoid those crazy comp numbers you could get in the past and that and various news stories have made people more willing to leave. Some companies may also be doing a bit of downsize without layoffs and others have done layoffs and reigned in comp in a way that leaves the remaining people looking at their options. Overall it seems like a good time to be hiring, especially as a startup/pre ipo company.
dymk 5y ago
> Local tech firms, worried about losing staff, have raised average salaries by nearly 5% since 2020. So... less than inflation?
citilife 5y ago
I've seen around 50% attrition this year in the ML department I'm in. The reasoning: - People want to leave the cities - People want to spend time with family - Racism, sexism and exclusion is becoming unbearable (largest single factor I've seen) - Forcing medical procedures (second largest single factor I've seen) - Salaries are becoming very competitive with the inflation and job switching - Companies are re-gearing to be more online and that means more tech opportunities Every time someone leaves I ping them and ask why. Personally I'm curious. Many have purchased farms and have moved to the middle of no where. I generally think they'll miss the cities, but there's a pretty significant move of tech people out to the country.
- prionassembly 5y ago
  > Forcing medical procedures Covid vaccines?
  - citilife 5y ago
    That and testing. Many people don't want to get tested 2x times a week either. They'll just move to a remote company and leave.
    - prionassembly 5y ago
      Eh. My wife has trouble taking out blood for panels and exams. Arm goes blue for up to a week for the tinest quantity of blood extracted. Frequent exams would be painful.
- honkycat 5y ago
  > - Forcing medical procedures (second largest single factor I've seen) Yeah I'm sure this is true. /s Even the supposed "mass exodus" of cops everyone was saying will happen, didn't happen. Cops, a very conservative group of people, decided getting the jab was better than getting a new job.
  - citilife 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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llbeansandrice 5y ago
Does it really matter if it's "real" or not? The original article says it's not for equally tenuous reasons in my opinion: e.g. it's only happening in the US and GB which apparently means it's not "real" if it's not happening literally everywhere. Further, I think highlighting the collective power of workers and people generally leaving shitty jobs, bosses, and companies for greener pastures is a good thing. There's a million ways to Sunday that this phenomenon could be localized or sliced (certain geographies, any number of socio-economic or demographic lines, industries, even specific job titles etc. may show increased worker turnover). If people are leaving customer facing service jobs because of anti-mask nut-jobs, low pay, lack of autonomy in hours, and general staff shortages I don't exactly blame them. It also doesn't mean that this turnover would be visible in high-earning tech jobs. I hate being conspiratorial, but who does this narrative benefit? Obviously employers (and probably the majority of the subscribership of The Economist).
didibus 5y ago
What are you going to do after you quit? I've seen a lot of turn over, but it's not like anyone started working in the first place because they wanted, we all work for money, so I never really understood the great resignation idea, what happens next? A great turn over where people that weren't happy try to find a job they are happy with might happen, and honestly that sounds great for everyone.
johnny35 5y ago
Does anyone have a good understanding of how this narrative got started and took off? We've always had narratives outpacing facts (in hopes that the facts could be nudged into catching up), but I wonder to what extent social media plays a role in driving these stories now.
- vikingerik 5y ago
  It's just the media fishing for clicks, like everything else. People love stories about quitting because they dream of doing it themselves. Particularly the people whose attention is already on social media rather than work. The reality of the so-called "great resignation" is just pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic. Every number looks high compared to 2020's artificially suppressed baseline. Of course social media wants to push the idea that people aren't working, because people who aren't working consume more media, and that's all they care about.
cwkoss 5y ago
I don't think a significant proportion of people are actually leaving the workforce permanently, but something major is shifting in the US: workers are demanding better working conditions and pay, and taking less bullshit. I think there are probably 10% of the worst employers in the country who just can't hire right now - from a mixture of bad reputation and unwillingness to pay (rising) market wages. There are better jobs out there - so workers are going to where managers treat them with humanity. Check out reddit.com/r/antiwork - this subreddit has grown extremely rapidly over the past ~6 months. It feels like a movement is bubbling. I wouldn't be surprised if we see widespread labor marches and strikes in 2022.
destitude 5y ago
To add more data points, I also just quit my software engineering job last week to go to a place with a better product and better pay. I think one of the commenters was right on when they said it was more about the "last straw" and incentivizing people to look for other jobs and that there are a LOT of tech jobs that offer remote work now.
pezzana 5y ago
Odd that the article doesn't even mention the labor participation rate ("the number of people ages 16 and over who are employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total noninstitutionalized, civilian working-age population". https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp A quick look at the Fred chart shows that the US is nowhere close to regaining pre-pandemic levels, and that this comes amid a multi-year decline: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Although the reasons may not be clear, the resignation itself has some pretty good evidence.
- twoquestions 5y ago
  Looks like baby boomers retiring is what's fueled this decline for the last 20 years or so, and the pandemic has forced people to reevaluate their situation. I'd be shocked if we got back up to pre-pandemic participation barring a WWII style extreme scenario.
_the_inflator 5y ago
I think that there is some sort of resignation. Judging by my experience in a global bank in Europe, people are very willing to leave and they do. Even HR is changing: 2 years ago, people who left were officially bid farewell, while now HR tries to conceal these news. What has changed? LinkedIn. People get hit on via LinkedIn a lot. And this caused a landslide. New hires vs resignations is negative. This might be different to especially the USA, but I believe that headhunting for jobs now has finally arrived in Europe. And that is a huge factor. Beforehand it was tough to recruit people via headhunters. Now this can even be automated to a certain extend.

132 points by neilfrndes 5y ago

lelandbatey 5y ago

https://archive.md/48KaG https://archive.md/48KaG

ivalm 5y ago

5% raise when inflation is >5% is a real wage cut.

earthscienceman 5y ago
In simplistic terms, maybe yes. I'm on the side of labor in this (in any) market so I don't intend to undercut the purpose of your comment... ... however. This depends on where the inflation is in the market and the way you intend to use your wages. "Inflation" is a number that we use to indicate much more complex and varied market trends.
- ivalm 5y ago
  I mean sure, you can dispute inflation number as being the relevant index, but CPI if anything underrepresents increased costs lots of people experience in Seattle.
- incongruity 5y ago
  Indeed - inflation is an aggregate measure and it definitely doesn’t apply equally across all individuals, in terms of impact. Recognizing my own privilege here, for me, for example, many of my expenses are fixed: student loans and mortgage take the lion’s share of our monthly cash flow after taxes and retirement. Neither of those are indexed to inflation so if this drives higher cost of living increases, it’s a net win for me, in all likelihood.
datavirtue 5y ago
Yes, and no. If you are paying for a $400k house in 2005 dollars with a 2021 salary the inflation is all good (bring it on). All the squawking about inflation is annoying and often wrong (gentle inflation like we are seeing is good for the common person). If you are sitting on piles of cash from yesteryear you become less wealthy--not counting gains from interest income or stock price appreciation. Who doesn't like inflation? I love it when the market makes my existing debt cheaper.
- deathanatos 5y ago
  > Who doesn't like inflation? I love it when the market makes my existing debt cheaper. Those of us who want to purchase? …And understand that the housing market cannot outpace inflation indefinitely, and are queasy about what will happen when that day comes: do home prices eventually level off at some absurd level, or do interest rates rise, demand slackens, prices level off & then speculators jump ship for more lucrative investments and then prices crater, putting people underwater on their mortgage?
- mlac 5y ago
  Here are a few people who don’t like inflation: - People who aren’t leveraged with a lot of debt. - People who are seeing wage stagnation while the cost of living goes up. The majority of jobs that keep the economy running aren’t like the tech sector where one can job hop to keep wages up. - People who have a significant chunk of their savings in cash for a down payment, and they are seeing property values run away from them while the value of their money goes down. They are also seeing increasing costs, impacting their ability to save for a down payment. - The people who are trying to buy a house that was $400k in 2005, that is now valued at 1.2M and requires $240k for a down payment.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > People who have a significant chunk of their savings in cash for a down payment, and they are seeing property values run away from them while the value of their money goes down. This is a very important issue, but it's not really inflation in any normal sense.

syntaxstic 5y ago

[flagged]

deleted 5y ago
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jdhn 5y ago

I just moved to another company late last month. Before I left my old company, multiple people were either quitting, or moving to new positions within the company, and as a result the company was having a rough time filling all their open positions. I know this is anecdotal, but I really don't believe that the Economist is right in this case.

the_jeremy 5y ago
My team is full of lifers (everyone but me and the friend I got hired have been here >8 years), and only one person of the 12 of us left this year. My fiancee's company is in the process of losing the entire mobile team (Android/iOS, ~8 team members, lost 5 this year), but it's a dumpster fire with low wages, so them going down in flames isn't necessarily related to a broader movement.
- deleted 5y ago
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- incongruity 5y ago
  I feel like you sorta added evidence to the idea that it is a broader movement. It’s not that everyone is just saying “I quit” - but those in bad jobs/bad teams/working for low wages are the ones supposedly making moves and I think your anecdotes align with that. Just say’n is all.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  I think the broad movement is exactly people settling less for dumpster fires with low wages...
- stetrain 5y ago
  The trends of remote work and broader competition to find tech workers would make it much easier to get out of such a dumpster fire situation over the last ~18 months. So perhaps the reasons for quitting haven't changed much, but the burden of jumping is lower so it's happening more often.
deleted 5y ago
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epsteinisntdead 5y ago

Pass the paywall: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Ffinance-and-economics%2Fevidence-for-the-great-resignation-is-thin-on-the-ground%2F21806659 https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Ffi...

WithinReason 5y ago
Also: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
- mig39 5y ago
  Doesn't seem to work with this link, for some reason. Installed the add-on, reloaded the page, and it's still paywalled.
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    Try deleting cookies for economist.com

orangepurple 5y ago

[flagged]

petesergeant 5y ago
[flagged]
- gwright 5y ago
  My understanding is that one specific concern from a Christian point of view is the use of fetal cell lines in the development of the vaccine: https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210918/some-medications-also-tied-to-religious-vaccine-exemption https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021091... I'm not passing judgment on the reasonableness of religious exceptions for public health issues in general or COVID-19 issues specifically, just trying to clarify the religious concerns that have been raised (valid or not).
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want it here and it's particularly avoidable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - handrous 5y ago
    I just took it as expressing confusion that anyone believed that to be a real option at all, since Christianity broadly isn't well-known for an anti-vax stance, so "Christian" without further qualifiers is surprising in this context. Christian groups known for being anti-vax tend to be relatively fringe, small, and well-known for those positions (e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses). This matters for how upset anyone ought to be over this, assuming it's actually happening, since the government tends not to respect "deeply held beliefs" that, conveniently, were only recently arrived at, so depending on exactly which Christians we're talking about, denying these folks an exemption (despite whatever paper they got their pastor/priest/minister to sign) is either totally normal & expected, or somewhat unexpected and (perhaps) worrisome. I don't see the post as flame bait, but an expression of confusion inviting clarification. I think the tone's appropriate for the original claim (which... smells a bit rotten).

avgDev 5y ago

Honestly, I'm not concerned if it "great resignation" really happened. My boss heard the news and I was able to leverage an offer to get a 50% salary increase. This worked out well for me. The negative side-effect is that I am getting ghosted a lot on linked-in as my salary is high for the area and recruiters just stop responding when they hear what offer I would consider. However, my next move is going to be to a tech company which will enable another 50% jump hopefully.

belval 5y ago
Honestly I'd have trust issues if someone increased my salary 50% because it would mean they severely underpaid for several years to get to a point where I am worth a 50% increase. Not saying that your boss is bad or that you should leave your company, whatever works, but yeah it's something.
- avgDev 5y ago
  I wasn't underpaid. I was about average for the market but I liked the flexibility they offered. I'm now way above average. I doubled my salary in 4 years, but I try to do my best to produce results.
SomeCallMeTim 5y ago
Telling recruiters what I'd expect from a salary, and then never hearing from them again, is something that I consider a feature, not a bug. It means I'm not getting nagged by recruiters weekly. I still get a new one every month or two, but the frequency is much more manageable now.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  Agreed. When I'm in "Job hunt mode" I write up a paragraph or two with what I'm looking for (salary, health insurance, 401k+matching, etc) and what I'd be willing accept in lieu of some of those things (no matching? Ok then I need to be making X% more to make up for that). It also includes what types of technology I'm interested in working with. Then I just spam that out to every recruiter that has or is currently emailing me or messaging me on platforms like LinkedIn. Every time I do look at switching jobs I consider going into recruiting instead as most all recruiters I've ever worked with are completely incompetent. I don't expect them to know every technology and how it works but I do expect some basic patten-matching-level of competence (for example, you don't need to know anything about Angular/Vue/React but those should come to mind when "frontend" is mentioned and if a developer says they want to work with "Vue" the recruiter should be able to ask "Would you also be ok with Angular/React?"). Most of the time they function only as slow go-betweens in a game of telephone that they mangle horribly. I've had recruiters lie, ghost me, or just fail at basic message-passing. The last recruiter I worked with was so slow at responding that I just went around them and contacted the company directly and had an interview setup almost immediately. For the amount a recruiter gets for placing someone I'd expect they'd be much better at what they do.

andrew_ 5y ago

I resigned in August 2021 for a new position. Four other colleagues left in July before I split. "Evidence" may be limited to bubbles.

ozzythecat 5y ago

I don’t know what exactly the truth is, but I’m one of the tech workers living in the Seattle area. I’ll start off by saying that I work 60 hours a week, at least. My stress and anxiety levels are manageable now, but only because I found ways of managing them. They’re not reasonable though and most importantly, they’re not sustainable. Based on the neighborhood I live in and my compensation, I am extremely privileged. I don’t have money concerns that my parents had. Most things that I might need, I can buy them without having to think too much or without putting a dent in my net worth. But my job is not sustainable. So, I live way below my means and avoid any lifestyle creep. I would like to own a home, a nice one. Not a $1M property that’s not even comparable to my parents home. Given my compensation and many, many years of savings, this would be reasonable. I looked at several houses over the weekend. One dump after another, going for $1.3MM at the minimum. One actually had an offer accepted, merely hours after we toured it. They told us the buyer offered $1.6MM. But Seattle has become a lawless dump. The east side has started homes for $1.4MM where the inspection report shows you that you’re basically just paying for the land. If I have to be a renter my whole damn life and can’t even afford a house, what is the god damn point? Yeah I get paid very well, but I am a pawn of people who earn significantly more. And it’s not that I’m just comparing myself, but even after all this work and money I can’t comfortably buy a house - then where does this leave the majority of this country? I don’t know.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
>"I don’t have money concerns that my parents had." vs >"can’t even afford a house" Only one of these statements can be true. Would you have money concerns if you did buy a house that is as good as your parents? i.e. if your housing costs were $10k/mo, $20k/mo or more?
cafard 5y ago
Neighbors' son and daughter-in-law are moving from the Washington, DC, suburbs to Raleigh, North Carolina. A four-bedroom house there in a good development costs maybe a third of what his parents' house would sell for in a good (but not most expensive) neighborhood of Washington.
t-writescode 5y ago

tedivm 5y ago

What an awful article. Two quotes to show how garbage this is- > The great-resignation thesis seems strongest in America and Britain. In September a record 4.4m Americans quit their jobs (see chart 1). In the third quarter of the year nearly 400,000 Britons moved from one job to another after handing in their notice, also the highest-ever level. > In other parts of the rich world, however, a great resignation is harder to spot. So basically the premise of their title is that the "Great Resignation" doesn't count because it's primarily happening in two countries instead of in every country.

seoulmetro 5y ago
Of course it doesn't count. Two countries is a drop in the ocean. If you want to be right, maybe name it more like "The Minor Resignation".

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The "Great Resignation" has been fueled by anecdotes and a tiny upward tick in the underlying data. If you go looking, it's not hard to find comments, anecdotes, and stories from people whose workplaces did experience some sort of large resignation event where a lot of people went out and got new jobs. The common theme in those anecdotes is always that they were underpaid and/or mistreated to begin with. In some ways, the "Great Resignation" news stories being blasted all over the news gave a lot of people the final push they needed to go out and look for new jobs. Combined with the booming economy, it wasn't hard for these people to find better jobs. Once their coworkers realized what was happening, they also made the leap. So in a sense, it does appear that small pockets of employers who were behind the curve are finally getting what's coming to them. I half believe the news stories about "Great Resignation" stuff became a self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone who wasn't getting a new job felt left out. But if you look at any larger company data or at companies who were smart enough to keep pace with compensation and employee treatment norms, there isn't really a wave of resignations like the news stories suggest. Overall employee turnover is slightly higher than normal, unless you also factor in the decrease in employee turnover during early COVID, at which point the running average of employee turnover is all that abnormal.

ghaff 5y ago
>The common theme in those anecdotes is always that they were underpaid and/or mistreated to begin with. One area where it certainly seems to be very common is with restaurants. In every city I've been to over the past few months, restaurants are very obviously on reduced hours, reduced days, or (supposedly "temporarily") closed. And it's fairly obvious in many cases that it's not due to lack of demand. And, in many cases, these jobs are not terribly attractive. Restaurants are adding surcharges and increasing worker pay but it appears to not be enough in general.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  Many restaurants treat their employees like shit and let their customers treat their employees like shit. It's not surprising people don't want to work for them. It doesn't have to be this way but no one wants to be the first place to refuse abusive customers.

subsubzero 5y ago

I would have to imagine that tracks similar to the "K" shaped economy recovery. This means that lower pay physically based positions [retail, travel, food] have seen great amounts of people leaving those industries as Government stimulus checks have given people time and money to think about their jobs, many are also leaving the industry permanently if they can. On the flip side higher payed professional positions are seeing some turnover but no where anywhere like the other lower paid sectors. I know for a fact that the restaurant/food service situation is on full meltdown mode in Southern California. A few panda expresses have run out rice. Multiple Habit burgers have shut down due to lack of staff, eating out at restaurants have been the worse I have ever seen it as everyone is really new and it shows. That being said I have been to a lot of places in the country this year(Utah, Arizona, Hawaii) and nothing is similar to what I've seen locally in southern California so it may track to how expensive California has become and could be people are quitting jobs in expensive areas and moving to cheaper ones.

TulliusCicero 5y ago
This has been a long time coming for California. It’s a great state in many ways, but the way most of the local and state leaders have repeatedly punted on the issue of housing affordability is shameful. Calling their efforts half assed would be too generous, it’s quarter assed at most. The recent change to upzone previously single family home only areas is good, but even then, the new regulation is filled with caveats that weaken it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >I know for a fact that the restaurant/food service situation is on full meltdown mode in Southern California. I won't say it's everywhere but I've seen the same problem as California in Washington (including rural Washington) and Raleigh. Everyone I know who travels has been running into the difficulties of trying to find places to eat at on a given day.
bit_logic 5y ago
I'm in LA and it's in a downward spiral. Went to a restaurant yesterday and a dish was $16 which was a shocking increase. I went to look at menu photos from 2019 on yelp and the same dish was $12 back then. Service was really bad, they basically took the order, delivered the food, and we never saw them again. No water refills, got tired of waiting for the check and had to walk up front to ask for it. I'm usually generous with tips, but why should this poor service be rewarded? And on top of the already inflated prices? So restaurants are getting squeezed on all sides. Supply costs up, wages are up, labor shortage, rent is up. Tips will go down as customers are upset with poor service, which means more pressure on wages. All of this means higher prices, which means fewer customers and more takeout orders. The old restaurant business model is simply not sustainable.

move-on-by 5y ago

I’m not going to comment on the evidence, but I can say that my previous manager was very quick to support the ‘great resignation’. It was a very convenient excuse to deflect from her terrible management.

hinkley 5y ago
But isn’t the Great Resignation due in part to bad managers hanging onto people through the quarantine despite being bad managers?

spike021 5y ago

I left a FAANG just last week. I'd say for a mix of work-related reasons and also because I just wanted a break in general. I wouldn't say it was "COVID" or some specific reason but I'm sure it contributed. Edit: Also, FWIW roughly 4 people left my team in the past year (since Oct 2020) before me. A couple went to new jobs, a couple did not and just resigned without plans (me too).

tombert 5y ago
Similarly, I quit a job at a FAANG earlier this year. I had had frustrations there for awhile, and while it wasn't COVID that directly made me quit, I think it exacerbated my existing problems to a breaking point. In a sense I'm sort of glad about growing to hate the job as much as I did; it inspired me to finish my bachelors and start the path forward to transition out of software engineering and into CS research. Granted, this transition is going to take 5-6 years, but it's at least a path forward.
- czbond 5y ago
  Is there a lot of opportunity in CS research? What roles would that entail?
  - tombert 5y ago
    > Is there a lot of opportunity in CS research? No, I don't think so, and I don't think they pay terribly well. I just got accepted into a PhD program, which will take me 5-6 years to complete, so I'm hoping that will qualify me for the roles that do exist, and get something approaching a decent salary in the process. > What roles would that entail? I would ideally like to work entirely on formalization of algorithms, working primarily within Isabelle or Coq or Agda or something like them. I realize those jobs aren't exactly common, but it's at least a goal to work towards.
    - oblio 5y ago
      > get something approaching a decent salary in the process. You weren't getting a decent salary at a FAANG? :-o

arduinomancer 5y ago

I always try to look at incentives If the "great resignation" is not real, who is benefiting from that narrative?

subsubzero 5y ago
The dark cabal of recruiters /s

micro_cam 5y ago

Total anecdotal evidence but it seems that in tech a lot of people are quitting/changing jobs or looking at it. It seems like big co's have tweaked their comp packages a bit to front load equity packages and avoid those crazy comp numbers you could get in the past and that and various news stories have made people more willing to leave. Some companies may also be doing a bit of downsize without layoffs and others have done layoffs and reigned in comp in a way that leaves the remaining people looking at their options. Overall it seems like a good time to be hiring, especially as a startup/pre ipo company.

dymk 5y ago

> Local tech firms, worried about losing staff, have raised average salaries by nearly 5% since 2020. So... less than inflation?

citilife 5y ago

I've seen around 50% attrition this year in the ML department I'm in. The reasoning: - People want to leave the cities - People want to spend time with family - Racism, sexism and exclusion is becoming unbearable (largest single factor I've seen) - Forcing medical procedures (second largest single factor I've seen) - Salaries are becoming very competitive with the inflation and job switching - Companies are re-gearing to be more online and that means more tech opportunities Every time someone leaves I ping them and ask why. Personally I'm curious. Many have purchased farms and have moved to the middle of no where. I generally think they'll miss the cities, but there's a pretty significant move of tech people out to the country.

prionassembly 5y ago
> Forcing medical procedures Covid vaccines?
- citilife 5y ago
  That and testing. Many people don't want to get tested 2x times a week either. They'll just move to a remote company and leave.
  - prionassembly 5y ago
    Eh. My wife has trouble taking out blood for panels and exams. Arm goes blue for up to a week for the tinest quantity of blood extracted. Frequent exams would be painful.
honkycat 5y ago
> - Forcing medical procedures (second largest single factor I've seen) Yeah I'm sure this is true. /s Even the supposed "mass exodus" of cops everyone was saying will happen, didn't happen. Cops, a very conservative group of people, decided getting the jab was better than getting a new job.
- citilife 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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llbeansandrice 5y ago

Does it really matter if it's "real" or not? The original article says it's not for equally tenuous reasons in my opinion: e.g. it's only happening in the US and GB which apparently means it's not "real" if it's not happening literally everywhere. Further, I think highlighting the collective power of workers and people generally leaving shitty jobs, bosses, and companies for greener pastures is a good thing. There's a million ways to Sunday that this phenomenon could be localized or sliced (certain geographies, any number of socio-economic or demographic lines, industries, even specific job titles etc. may show increased worker turnover). If people are leaving customer facing service jobs because of anti-mask nut-jobs, low pay, lack of autonomy in hours, and general staff shortages I don't exactly blame them. It also doesn't mean that this turnover would be visible in high-earning tech jobs. I hate being conspiratorial, but who does this narrative benefit? Obviously employers (and probably the majority of the subscribership of The Economist).

didibus 5y ago

What are you going to do after you quit? I've seen a lot of turn over, but it's not like anyone started working in the first place because they wanted, we all work for money, so I never really understood the great resignation idea, what happens next? A great turn over where people that weren't happy try to find a job they are happy with might happen, and honestly that sounds great for everyone.

johnny35 5y ago

Does anyone have a good understanding of how this narrative got started and took off? We've always had narratives outpacing facts (in hopes that the facts could be nudged into catching up), but I wonder to what extent social media plays a role in driving these stories now.

vikingerik 5y ago
It's just the media fishing for clicks, like everything else. People love stories about quitting because they dream of doing it themselves. Particularly the people whose attention is already on social media rather than work. The reality of the so-called "great resignation" is just pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic. Every number looks high compared to 2020's artificially suppressed baseline. Of course social media wants to push the idea that people aren't working, because people who aren't working consume more media, and that's all they care about.

cwkoss 5y ago

I don't think a significant proportion of people are actually leaving the workforce permanently, but something major is shifting in the US: workers are demanding better working conditions and pay, and taking less bullshit. I think there are probably 10% of the worst employers in the country who just can't hire right now - from a mixture of bad reputation and unwillingness to pay (rising) market wages. There are better jobs out there - so workers are going to where managers treat them with humanity. Check out reddit.com/r/antiwork - this subreddit has grown extremely rapidly over the past ~6 months. It feels like a movement is bubbling. I wouldn't be surprised if we see widespread labor marches and strikes in 2022.

destitude 5y ago

To add more data points, I also just quit my software engineering job last week to go to a place with a better product and better pay. I think one of the commenters was right on when they said it was more about the "last straw" and incentivizing people to look for other jobs and that there are a LOT of tech jobs that offer remote work now.

pezzana 5y ago

Odd that the article doesn't even mention the labor participation rate ("the number of people ages 16 and over who are employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total noninstitutionalized, civilian working-age population". https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp A quick look at the Fred chart shows that the US is nowhere close to regaining pre-pandemic levels, and that this comes amid a multi-year decline: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Although the reasons may not be clear, the resignation itself has some pretty good evidence.

twoquestions 5y ago
Looks like baby boomers retiring is what's fueled this decline for the last 20 years or so, and the pandemic has forced people to reevaluate their situation. I'd be shocked if we got back up to pre-pandemic participation barring a WWII style extreme scenario.

_the_inflator 5y ago

I think that there is some sort of resignation. Judging by my experience in a global bank in Europe, people are very willing to leave and they do. Even HR is changing: 2 years ago, people who left were officially bid farewell, while now HR tries to conceal these news. What has changed? LinkedIn. People get hit on via LinkedIn a lot. And this caused a landslide. New hires vs resignations is negative. This might be different to especially the USA, but I believe that headhunting for jobs now has finally arrived in Europe. And that is a huge factor. Beforehand it was tough to recruit people via headhunters. Now this can even be automated to a certain extend.