7 ms·

Yes, this is a good thing. Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Emp

Yes, this is a good thing. Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.”

MattGaiser 5y ago
> We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.” Is this part happening? Are those who remain getting raises or just the new people hired as replacements? Heard a lot about that.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Most definitely is happening at business that employ the lowest wage workers.
- dudus 5y ago
  In my circle people are leaving eng jobs as seniors where they make 200k to offers of 400k-600k. People who remained got little to no raises and are looking around for other opportunities. It's crazy, to me it feels like a bubble waiting to burst.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am placing my bets on the USD losing purchasing power rather than nominal wages declining again. It would not be good for either political party to let nominal wages go down, at least for the bottom 50% of earners.
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      Agree with this. For the "bubble" in high-end SWE comp to burst, the "bubble" in VC would have to burst. And VC isn't a liquid asset class that's likely to crash on a Black Tuesday like event. The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. All of this money is extremely sticky, and once allocated will take 10+ years to de-allocate. So really the only way we see private equity funding collapse is if public equities quickly crater, forcing endowments to rebalance to stay in their allocation mandate. And that could possibly happen, given how rich public equity valuations are. But the reality is the modern Fed is never again in our lifetime going to let nominal stock prices fall by 35% or more like they did in 2008. The traumas from the GFC are simply too ingrained in the current generation of central bankers and policy makers. If push comes to shove and equities hit a bear market (20% drawdown), the Fed is going to turn the liquidity faucet to max. The forever war against Covid gives them a convenient excuse. In the scenario, you'll probably just see the Fed let inflation run hot at 10%+ for a few years. Again the Covid transitory narrative gives the cover.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        > The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. Also, where else would they invest this money?
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on the bubble bursting part? I don’t have much knowledge about how this works. If companies couldn’t afford those salaries, why would they be paying them? I’m probably misunderstanding.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      1. Afford is a weird concept when you can go to a multi billion dollar company without ever making a profit with VC investment. A lot of tech jobs are in businesses that may not be able to make money. 2. It could lead to companies re-evaluating whether all their projects are worth it. Anecdotally, I have heard of some automation projects being cancelled as manual workers in other countries are cheaper.
      - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
        Thanks for the explanation. This makes sense.
    - dudus 5y ago
      That is a very personal opinion, I have very low risk apetite when it comes to investing. And the bubble i mention is me translating that to the job market. If you look at the job market as a commodity where companies are on the buy side and workers are on the sell side you could say that the price of the commodity spiked suddenly. Whenever that happens I'm usually wary of the corrections that surely follow. That could mean mass layoffs in the future when companies realize the commodity isn't worth that much. It could mean business closings due to lack of purchase power to compete. It could mean inflation to adjust the purchase power. Again it's all speculation. And it's derived from risk tolerance. If you like risky investments it makes sense to try to capitalize and sell your labor for the most you can. I can't blame you.
      - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
        Thanks for explaining. This makes a lot of sense.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    In my circle I know a lot of people making 400-600k, but the 1 senior person that went job hunting, after about 6 months, ended up at a startup making 150k.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours. Office workers (including SWEs) in general benefited a lot because WFHing made the logistics of interviewing around significantly easier. A lot of my old department at my previous company jumped ship for places that offered significantly more pay (specifically, tech companies) or better WFH policies. More people left in the span of a few months during the summer of 2021 than I recall leaving during my entire tenure there (7 years).
    - ncpa-cpl 5y ago
      > or better WFH policies The main reason I stay in my job is that our department is pro WFH.
      - decafninja 5y ago
        I have heard since my departure that base salaries have been bumped up. Now compensation is competitive versus other banks at least, but probably still around at least ~25% lower than most decent tech companies, and ~100% lower than FAANG tier companies. WFH policy is as conservative and hostile as ever AFAIK.
    - alienthrowaway 5y ago
      > Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours. Speaking for myself, grinding leetcode in 2021 was very difficult because I was close to burning-out (very little outdoor recreation, blurred lines between work hours and non-work hours which resulted in me frequently working 9-11 hours per day (with breaks). I think it would have been easier pre-covid. With in-person schools and daycares closed and the kids at home, there was no "downtime within working hours" - cue the working late at night after kids had gone to bed to make up for it (and the subsequent near-burnout experience). Also, my recruiter told me they were seeing record-high post-screen interview cancellations by interviewees during COVID times - but perhaps their numbers were not representative. My suspicion is that there was a massive mental health disaster that was mostly hidden from view[1], and software engineers were not spared. 1. I wasn't even aware of my mental state until I started grinding leetcode and recognized the tell-tale signs of burnout as I had experienced full-blown burnout before (my self-motivation was reduced, but not yet gone)
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    Is this at FAANG? Or smaller companies?
- cj 5y ago
  (20 person company here) We've been giving raises above what we normally would do simply because it's not fair to have a developer who's 1 week on the job, same skillset, making $15-20k more than someone who's been working with us for 2 years. When giving the raises, I've been saying "This raise is to keep our pay competitive with the market, and will not affect your regular annual review" (we also give raises to people annually)
  - mcguire 5y ago
    What's fairness got to do with it? I get that some employers, particularly in small businesses like you describe, might be committed to such fairness, but most employers in my experience have been perfectly content and even fight back (as in, "well, if you had a competing offer...") if the employees start comparing numbers.
    - abeyer 5y ago
      And the businesses that thought that way were able to maintain the status quo by forbidding or at least strongly discouraging employees sharing compensation info. That's no longer legal in the US, and people are still playing catch up, but I think this is on its way out. As soon as it's easy for employees to _know_ that they've gotten the short stick they aren't going to stay quiet about it.
    - cj 5y ago
      > What's fairness got to do with it? Fairness itself has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with avoiding employees getting mad when they here the new guy makes significantly more, which leads to conflict, which leads to unhappy employees, which leads to poor productivity. Perhaps "fairness" is the wrong thing to call it. More like "do things to retain good employees". Usually "being fair" falls into the "do things to retain good employees" category.
- sndean 5y ago
  Might have to wait for real numbers? I can only find reports about companies planning to give raises. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-2022-raises-inflation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...
- prophesi 5y ago
  I would also add that the jobs people are leaving are in the service industry. I know it's also difficult to hire in the tech industry currently, but it's already offset by higher wages and remote work. The service industry is reluctant to do the former and literally can't do the latter.
  - sytelus 5y ago
    This was the part I am also confused. Anacdotely, I haven’t seen mass exodus in big tech yet.
    - mcguire 5y ago
      I have. A large number of our senior developers left last fall.
vikingerik 5y ago
Right. And a fair amount of it is also pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic. The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait. People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.
- whoisthemachine 5y ago
  A lot of folks are also reflexively drawn by the negativity of the headline (myself included)... "how is society going to handle no one working?!" was my initial thought, before my conscious brain caught up with my instinctive thoughts.
- d82nsjk9 5y ago
  > People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs. I don't read "quitting jobs" as leaving the work force forever, just changing jobs. How would that even make sense? People need jobs.
- etchalon 5y ago
  People fantasize about quitting their job for a better job too.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I'm sure a ton of people do both or neither, since "people" is a pretty vague category. But based on those I've talked to myself, and the popularity of reddit's antiwork sub, along with the rumblings in social discourse for the past, I dunno, 30 years or more, there are a lot of PEOPLE out there who really just want to not work at all. There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer. Still, others would be perfectly content becoming characters from WALL-E. I don't know how to feel about those types yet.
freeflight 5y ago
> “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” I don't see why that has to be necessarily the case from that data. 2021 also saw the introduction of vaccine mandates for many jobs, we saw sectors like healthcare, accommodations&food services, and logistics struggle to fill their labor demand due to the pandemic; > Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000). +159,000 people quit accommodations and food services, yet; > Job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000) The sector lost more jobs than people quit, which points into the direction of people not willingly quitting for a better job, but people not finding jobs in the sector, at least with the terms they want, due to lost jobs in the sector.
walshemj 5y ago
Or Women quit to take on more childcaring duties.
wiremine 5y ago
Agreed. The emphasis on the "quitting" part always seemed odd to me. I guess it is catchier to say "The Great Resignation"? But that sounds like all these people are leaving their jobs and hiking the Appalachian Trail or something. But the long-term impact for workers is positive in most ways. "The Great Realignment" feels more truthful.
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
  We're also undergoing "The Great Reshuffling", coined by Zillow CEO Rich Barton, regarding the physical movement of (mostly remote) workers, creating booms in places like Boise and Bozeman and lowering rents in places like SF and NYC. That isn't quite leaving your job to hike the Appalachian Trail, but for some people it means an opportunity to prioritize living near one's preferred recreational opportunities rather than prioritizing living near one's job. Or others might prioritize living near family, or in a low-tax state, or somewhere they can afford a big yard or a pool, etc.
munk-a 5y ago
A slightly worse headline: "The standard of modern employment is to pay a premium for new unskilled employees you need to train up on your system and then stagnate their wages so they're force to go elsewhere." This is the new norm and it's extremely short sighted and inefficient for most employers. If your cost of living increase (or combined "merit increase") is below inflation your company is doing something wrong.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.” Is this part happening? Are those who remain getting raises or just the new people hired as replacements? Heard a lot about that.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Most definitely is happening at business that employ the lowest wage workers.
dudus 5y ago
In my circle people are leaving eng jobs as seniors where they make 200k to offers of 400k-600k. People who remained got little to no raises and are looking around for other opportunities. It's crazy, to me it feels like a bubble waiting to burst.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I am placing my bets on the USD losing purchasing power rather than nominal wages declining again. It would not be good for either political party to let nominal wages go down, at least for the bottom 50% of earners.
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    Agree with this. For the "bubble" in high-end SWE comp to burst, the "bubble" in VC would have to burst. And VC isn't a liquid asset class that's likely to crash on a Black Tuesday like event. The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. All of this money is extremely sticky, and once allocated will take 10+ years to de-allocate. So really the only way we see private equity funding collapse is if public equities quickly crater, forcing endowments to rebalance to stay in their allocation mandate. And that could possibly happen, given how rich public equity valuations are. But the reality is the modern Fed is never again in our lifetime going to let nominal stock prices fall by 35% or more like they did in 2008. The traumas from the GFC are simply too ingrained in the current generation of central bankers and policy makers. If push comes to shove and equities hit a bear market (20% drawdown), the Fed is going to turn the liquidity faucet to max. The forever war against Covid gives them a convenient excuse. In the scenario, you'll probably just see the Fed let inflation run hot at 10%+ for a few years. Again the Covid transitory narrative gives the cover.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. Also, where else would they invest this money?
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on the bubble bursting part? I don’t have much knowledge about how this works. If companies couldn’t afford those salaries, why would they be paying them? I’m probably misunderstanding.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    1. Afford is a weird concept when you can go to a multi billion dollar company without ever making a profit with VC investment. A lot of tech jobs are in businesses that may not be able to make money. 2. It could lead to companies re-evaluating whether all their projects are worth it. Anecdotally, I have heard of some automation projects being cancelled as manual workers in other countries are cheaper.
    - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. This makes sense.
  - dudus 5y ago
    That is a very personal opinion, I have very low risk apetite when it comes to investing. And the bubble i mention is me translating that to the job market. If you look at the job market as a commodity where companies are on the buy side and workers are on the sell side you could say that the price of the commodity spiked suddenly. Whenever that happens I'm usually wary of the corrections that surely follow. That could mean mass layoffs in the future when companies realize the commodity isn't worth that much. It could mean business closings due to lack of purchase power to compete. It could mean inflation to adjust the purchase power. Again it's all speculation. And it's derived from risk tolerance. If you like risky investments it makes sense to try to capitalize and sell your labor for the most you can. I can't blame you.
    - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      Thanks for explaining. This makes a lot of sense.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  In my circle I know a lot of people making 400-600k, but the 1 senior person that went job hunting, after about 6 months, ended up at a startup making 150k.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours. Office workers (including SWEs) in general benefited a lot because WFHing made the logistics of interviewing around significantly easier. A lot of my old department at my previous company jumped ship for places that offered significantly more pay (specifically, tech companies) or better WFH policies. More people left in the span of a few months during the summer of 2021 than I recall leaving during my entire tenure there (7 years).
  - ncpa-cpl 5y ago
    > or better WFH policies The main reason I stay in my job is that our department is pro WFH.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      I have heard since my departure that base salaries have been bumped up. Now compensation is competitive versus other banks at least, but probably still around at least ~25% lower than most decent tech companies, and ~100% lower than FAANG tier companies. WFH policy is as conservative and hostile as ever AFAIK.
  - alienthrowaway 5y ago
    > Software engineers specifically probably benefited a lot from WFHing in 2020-2021 by being able to grind leetcode during downtime within working hours. Speaking for myself, grinding leetcode in 2021 was very difficult because I was close to burning-out (very little outdoor recreation, blurred lines between work hours and non-work hours which resulted in me frequently working 9-11 hours per day (with breaks). I think it would have been easier pre-covid. With in-person schools and daycares closed and the kids at home, there was no "downtime within working hours" - cue the working late at night after kids had gone to bed to make up for it (and the subsequent near-burnout experience). Also, my recruiter told me they were seeing record-high post-screen interview cancellations by interviewees during COVID times - but perhaps their numbers were not representative. My suspicion is that there was a massive mental health disaster that was mostly hidden from view[1], and software engineers were not spared. 1. I wasn't even aware of my mental state until I started grinding leetcode and recognized the tell-tale signs of burnout as I had experienced full-blown burnout before (my self-motivation was reduced, but not yet gone)
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  Is this at FAANG? Or smaller companies?
cj 5y ago
(20 person company here) We've been giving raises above what we normally would do simply because it's not fair to have a developer who's 1 week on the job, same skillset, making $15-20k more than someone who's been working with us for 2 years. When giving the raises, I've been saying "This raise is to keep our pay competitive with the market, and will not affect your regular annual review" (we also give raises to people annually)
- mcguire 5y ago
  What's fairness got to do with it? I get that some employers, particularly in small businesses like you describe, might be committed to such fairness, but most employers in my experience have been perfectly content and even fight back (as in, "well, if you had a competing offer...") if the employees start comparing numbers.
  - abeyer 5y ago
    And the businesses that thought that way were able to maintain the status quo by forbidding or at least strongly discouraging employees sharing compensation info. That's no longer legal in the US, and people are still playing catch up, but I think this is on its way out. As soon as it's easy for employees to _know_ that they've gotten the short stick they aren't going to stay quiet about it.
  - cj 5y ago
    > What's fairness got to do with it? Fairness itself has nothing to do with it. It has everything to do with avoiding employees getting mad when they here the new guy makes significantly more, which leads to conflict, which leads to unhappy employees, which leads to poor productivity. Perhaps "fairness" is the wrong thing to call it. More like "do things to retain good employees". Usually "being fair" falls into the "do things to retain good employees" category.
sndean 5y ago
Might have to wait for real numbers? I can only find reports about companies planning to give raises. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-2022-raises-inflation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...
prophesi 5y ago
I would also add that the jobs people are leaving are in the service industry. I know it's also difficult to hire in the tech industry currently, but it's already offset by higher wages and remote work. The service industry is reluctant to do the former and literally can't do the latter.
- sytelus 5y ago
  This was the part I am also confused. Anacdotely, I haven’t seen mass exodus in big tech yet.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    I have. A large number of our senior developers left last fall.

vikingerik 5y ago

Right. And a fair amount of it is also pent-up demand for job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic. The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait. People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.

whoisthemachine 5y ago
A lot of folks are also reflexively drawn by the negativity of the headline (myself included)... "how is society going to handle no one working?!" was my initial thought, before my conscious brain caught up with my instinctive thoughts.
d82nsjk9 5y ago
> People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs. I don't read "quitting jobs" as leaving the work force forever, just changing jobs. How would that even make sense? People need jobs.
etchalon 5y ago
People fantasize about quitting their job for a better job too.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I'm sure a ton of people do both or neither, since "people" is a pretty vague category. But based on those I've talked to myself, and the popularity of reddit's antiwork sub, along with the rumblings in social discourse for the past, I dunno, 30 years or more, there are a lot of PEOPLE out there who really just want to not work at all. There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer. Still, others would be perfectly content becoming characters from WALL-E. I don't know how to feel about those types yet.

freeflight 5y ago

> “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” I don't see why that has to be necessarily the case from that data. 2021 also saw the introduction of vaccine mandates for many jobs, we saw sectors like healthcare, accommodations&food services, and logistics struggle to fill their labor demand due to the pandemic; > Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000). +159,000 people quit accommodations and food services, yet; > Job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000) The sector lost more jobs than people quit, which points into the direction of people not willingly quitting for a better job, but people not finding jobs in the sector, at least with the terms they want, due to lost jobs in the sector.

walshemj 5y ago

Or Women quit to take on more childcaring duties.

wiremine 5y ago

Agreed. The emphasis on the "quitting" part always seemed odd to me. I guess it is catchier to say "The Great Resignation"? But that sounds like all these people are leaving their jobs and hiking the Appalachian Trail or something. But the long-term impact for workers is positive in most ways. "The Great Realignment" feels more truthful.

lastofthemojito 5y ago
We're also undergoing "The Great Reshuffling", coined by Zillow CEO Rich Barton, regarding the physical movement of (mostly remote) workers, creating booms in places like Boise and Bozeman and lowering rents in places like SF and NYC. That isn't quite leaving your job to hike the Appalachian Trail, but for some people it means an opportunity to prioritize living near one's preferred recreational opportunities rather than prioritizing living near one's job. Or others might prioritize living near family, or in a low-tax state, or somewhere they can afford a big yard or a pool, etc.

munk-a 5y ago

A slightly worse headline: "The standard of modern employment is to pay a premium for new unskilled employees you need to train up on your system and then stagnate their wages so they're force to go elsewhere." This is the new norm and it's extremely short sighted and inefficient for most employers. If your cost of living increase (or combined "merit increase") is below inflation your company is doing something wrong.