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The 'hidden resignation': employees are checked out

114 points by Apocryphon 5y ago

that_guy_iain 5y ago
Literally the reason I’ve not gotten a new job over the past 18-months was that I would rather focus my time into my own side-project than focus on a new job. I have pretty good job security and I really focus my mental efforts into my future than a company’s future.
theteapot 5y ago
"My friend on $300k/yr ..." blah blah. Some people have real problems.
- waterlaw 5y ago
  It's actually disturbing how difficult it is to get ahead in a country like Canada while working insanely stressful $300k positions without taking on large amounts of debt. Even if you're making $300k. After taxes, your disposable income is still 5 - 6 years away from purchasing a home in cash in many cities. We're using debt to fuel the economy, which is dangerous.
  - azth 5y ago
    > We're using debt to fuel the economy, which is dangerous. It's quite sad, because we've known how dangerous this practice is for thousands of years. It's not for no reason that usury is prohibited in the three major religions.
soared 5y ago
Oh god on mobile the text is like 20 characters wide, so each line is like 3 words.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- foundart 5y ago
  Yeah, not so great. The layout improved when I rotated 90°.
- Youden 5y ago
  Reader mode fixes that and it's available in Firefox regardless of your OS.
- mtoddsmith 5y ago
  The editor is expected to do their own formatting now that their developer has checked out.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  orig: https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-resignation-workers-employees-checking-out-job-side-hustles-2022-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-resignation-workers-e... archive: https://archive.is/WkGXH https://archive.is/WkGXH
- waqasy 5y ago
  Just fixed it. Sorry I wasn't aware of the bug. :)
pojzon 5y ago
Well.. “Family reasons” are the biggest reason employees in my current company leave. Ppl are really tired and have enough assets to sometimes take few years breaks. Removing highly skilled workforce from equation just “because they feel like it” was never taken into consideration by any employer..
- dathinab 5y ago
  For some companies "Family Reason" can be the biggest reason for people to stay.
bachmeier 5y ago
I've talked to quite a few people that haven't left their jobs, but weren't happy that their employers took advantage of the pandemic to shovel extra responsibilities and duties on them. I can believe the post.
NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
I closed the post when the example is an executive who's making $300k a year. An executive being checked is a problem as much as any other employee. However, executives are the ones who seem culpable of not updating policies of the company.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Yeah I felt the same way. His sources are one friend and a McKinsey study. If he’d reported just the data, I’m not sure anyone would have naturally come to the same conclusion as him.
Spooky23 5y ago
The opening premise is a little weak. It’s not an example of deep dissatisfaction, but a rational choice. When you make $300k, disrupting your life for $100k isn’t really compelling. It’s honestly not enough money to compensate for your standard of living and family life. And frankly, the divorce will cost more.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_... It's entirely possible that new job would have been an hourly wage cut.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    That, plus when the reckoning for all of this crazy mess comes, the road warrior sales execs are the first people to get the sword. Sometimes slumming it more a mere $300k in the home office gives you a tactical advantage. It’s different if you’re a grunt at a bank who gets some crazy gig at a big cloud company to lock in the “customer” or deny your skills to competitors — as long as you don’t think you’re actually worth that.
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      To be fair, $300k won't buy you that house in Palo Alto.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  "A little weak" may be an understatement. My eyes are still wide from the casual implication that turning down a promotion from 300k to 400k due to the position's negative impact on your life is somehow an example of a new trend of employees dissatisfaction. In what universe is that not a totally normal decision?
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Executives are used to dangling raises over our heads and expecting us to dance for them. They're perplexed as to why people are choosing not to dance this time around.
netfl0 5y ago
Look on ~glassdoor and analyze the reviews of ex-employees.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  Sometimes bad reviews get scrubbed on Glassdoor
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Then when you ask them about it, they say it was a database error and your review was "lost"
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  Check multiple sources. It’s almost standard HR practice to generate fake positive reviews on Glassdoor and petition to have negative reviews removed.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Glassdoor is gamed by companies and the reputation management firms they hire to hide bad reviews with glowing ones.
marstall 5y ago
This misses the point. People are checking because they can - no-one is looking.
- malermeister 5y ago
  ... and because they want to because it turns out working a full-time job producing value for somebody else is soul-crushing to a lot of folks.
taubek 5y ago
Some 5 years ago I decided to change job when my health started to go down the drain due to stress...
- thrill 5y ago
  A few years ago I finished a one year demanding contract position I was paid well for. I decided to take some time off, bought a sportbike, and spent a year riding with motorcycle instructors on twisty mountain roads, spending a good 10 hours a day in the saddle, only not riding when my wife had the day off. When I finally got saddle sore, but much better off mentally, I began looking for a new job, and the first interviewer was shocked, shocked I tell you, that I would "just fuck off for a year". Glad I didn't get that gig I think. The next one hired me and put me to work the same day I interviewed.
  - taubek 5y ago
    Time is the resource that can not be renewed. When you work you are actually trading your resource for some commodity (e.g. money). I respect companies that respect my time. My time off is my time off. When I'm well rested I perform better.
make_it_sure 5y ago
The main reason they are leaving is because there's a shortage of jobs due to the pandemic and they get more offers with a better pay. Once pandemic is over, this will get back to normal.
- toomanydoubts 5y ago
  Doesn't make much sense. Don't you mean shortage of workers(actually, shortage of workers willing to work bad jobs)? I don't see how a reduced job supply would lead to higher salaries.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I believe it is more of a occupy wall street type movement where people are sick of being exploited by a system that is one sided.
toomanydoubts 5y ago
Feels like another one of those articles written by execs to execs to stroke their own ego and pretend that the fact they underpay and overprofit isn't the main reason why employees are sick of working for them.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  According to the article, 40% of employees would still be happy if they at least received a "thank you" once in a while. But they won't.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Checked-out employees are a real problem. Checked-out executives are an even worse problem, though, because they set the tone for their departments and their disconnectedness will be noticed by the people working underneath them in the org chart. Eventually, the motivated people leave and the only people who remain are those who are also checked out (and enjoying the free pass from their checked-out boss) or the disgruntled who loathe the situation but would rather complain about it than leave. Not a fun place to be! However, the opening example in this article seems different: > A friend of mine recently turned down a job promotion that included a raise of $100,000 a year. He has some financial flexibility to turn down the offer, since he’s already a mid-level executive at a Fortune 1000 company and makes about $300,000 annually. He said he determined “it just wasn’t worth it” since the promotion called for more travel and more time away from family. That’s reasonable. You don’t have to travel and be away from your family to make good contributions to a company. You don’t have to chase every single raise. The bigger problem would be this example exec’s commitment to their side company. An executive who hangs on to their paycheck, benefits, and prestigious position while using their time to build their own company on the side is not good for a company. There is no way this person is maintaining a mid-level executive job at a big company, dedicating time to their family, and also building their own company on the side.
- bojangleslover 5y ago
  Considering he would only take home about $50k from that $100k, I bet many of us would have done the exact same thing.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Plus you have to consider the value. What does that extra $50k get you? I mean besides a higher bank account score? You're already making $300k/yr and living very well off. Does the extra spending power get you much more? It seems return on value is diminishing. If you're away frequently you won't be able to spend that money (well your family can). How much do you value time with your family? I'd rather have that money to spend _with_ my family than _on_ my family.
hinkley 5y ago
Isn't this the 'if people aren't in the office where I can keep an eye on them then they will just screw off' argument? If this pandemic is ever over it's going to be interesting to watch the pendulum swing back and forth.
- ngngngng 5y ago
  At this point it’s over whenever we decide it is. So depends on what color state you live in.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    Politics aside, this makes no sense to me. I live in a very red state, my employer is in a very blue state. I’m far from unique in that arrangement.
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
First job I left to go back to college, but quite honestly I had checked out of that place and hated the team I was on. Was a pretty large networking company, spent all my time writing RFPs and vendor specs, zero time writing software. Next one was a cheap tech startup that worked by recruiting people for peanuts, including hiring cab drivers doing night courses in IT, and placing them in telcos looking for business analysts for multiples of what they were actually getting paid. Hated the cheapness, left after a few months. Then it was a FAANG company, which looked after it's people really well, but the frickin politics really grind you down, left there after a few years after my team got shuffled around on a whim from some exec. Last role was a utility company, and it was a total mess internally. Vested interests, complete underfunding of the data processing systems, and major consulting firms scamming them for millions a year to produce meaningless reports. Impossible to make an impact, or even bring things up to code... For example, there was zero version control on software, zero! Things were tested on production. I stayed there far too long, should have left the first day, like a few hires actually did.
- VLM 5y ago
  I remember when the "Joel Test" of 12 characteristics of successful software companies came out around the turn of the century I figured it would be obsolete in mere months or at most a year or two; by 2001 or 2002 at most, who wouldn't be using version control? Here we are in 2022 and ...
  - ljm 5y ago
    You could pick up Peopleware or 5 Dysfunctions of a Team today and wonder if it was written in the past couple of years.
    - darkengine 5y ago
      Peopleware is astonishingly relevant and short enough to finish reading over a weekend. Definitely recommend it to anyone starting a career in tech. Then give it a second glance 5-10 years in and see how many more workplace anti-patterns you recognize from your experience...
contractside 5y ago
I spent a decade taking massive risks to gain an extremely rare set of skills. I joined a top company, and was immediately put into a corner and my job devolved into a weekly “checklist” meeting. All feedback and input I gave, based on my extensive experience, was ignored. Then I was systematically harassed for expressing innovative or creative ideas. So I redesigned my job to do as little as possible and focus most of my effort on side contracting. I have zero friends at work. I joined a year ago and feel no connection. I never met anyone in person at my role. Haven’t been into an office. I feel like an unwelcome outcast and largely unwanted and no one understands my background, talent or skillset. Basically: I am an intern despite my skills. There is something extremely dehumanizing about remote work. Because corporations can do this to you and no one is the wiser. There is no mechanism to gain any social status it feels like. People who had insider access before I got here will always have advantages over me. I’m not going to have opportunities to stand out or advance my career. Furthermore: The entrenched folks actively shut down anything that isn’t in their interests. It feels like 100% of the exciting projects are automatically assigned to people with inside access. I was removed from all the key meetings and email threads by people threatened by me trying to talk about ways to improve products and systems. Now I’m in an information black hole of exile. So yeah, I’m doing contracts on the side and coasting. This was the same as my last job. Remote work has completely deteriorated white collar work for me.
- 123abcthrowaway 5y ago
  > This was the same as my last job. There's a class of HN comments that combine "I'm being mistreated" with "not the first time it's happened to me." If separate groups of people have the same reaction, it's worth considering common factors, notably the commenters themselves. (Other valid but less likely options include systemic bias or very bad luck.) That said, I empathize with the described lack of connection in remote work. Wishing the commenter a turn of good luck soon.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  TLDR, you're stealing and thanks for sharing your justification that I presume allows you to sleep at night.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
As an employee that is not checked out, and have to work with people that are obviously checked out - it sucks. It’s like a cancer, it will infest your organization and rot it from the inside.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  Maybe many of these organizations are already dead, metaphorically speaking. "Bullshit jobs."
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    Our organization isn’t dead, we’ve been growing but getting work done and needing to depend on checked-out employees has been a…challenge, to put it nicely.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I believe the reason a lot of people are checking out is that inside companies there is an increasing disconnect between reality and what companies are saying internally. When I started working 30 years ago you went to work, did your job for 8 hours and went home. Everything was pretty straightforward. Working hours were well defined and benefits were well defined. You knew you could stay at the job for a long time. Nowadays a lot of companies inundate with a ton of propaganda and talk about culture, inclusion and blablabla. At the same time they demand more and more time and effort while offering less stability, you have to report status every day, the salary of the top guys keeps exploding while the little guy barely gets a raise. People can see through the propaganda and become cynical. This is not only inside companies but also through entire society. I think trump's success and things like Qanon are a result of this.
- nonford150 5y ago
  Same at my company. We're a small BU at a large multi-national, very flat whereas most of the other BUs ave lots of overhead - they fill lots of DI-type jobs with these folks. Biggest issue is corporate expects us to produce the same Power BI type of output with deep slide decks for corporate level meetings with no extra resources. Our BU just got an award for best financial performance within the corporation yet no one ever asked how - we've been busting butt for long time, making and selling product instead of making higher-ups feel important while our CEO goes on MSNBC shows spouting off about how the DI crap is making the company so much better. Lots of created make-work. I'm no right-wing nut. My co-workers could be the UN - but we don't care about that; we just do our jobs - we're good at it and making things cheaper and easier. So glad I retire in less than 2 years. I checked quite a while ago. Been building my side hustle so once I go I'll be good. I do feel for those who I'll leave behind - it'll only get worse and less work will get done. M hope is they persevere.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
My youngest son and I are planning a company. My middle son has started his own company. Both are, to the world, 'covid resignations'.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  Hats off to you! My wife and I just started doing the same. I'm also encouraging both of my young sons to begin to think about what it might take to become self-made. I'm tired of drinking from corporate troughs.
scrooched_moose 5y ago
I recently left a job that I was 100% checked out of. It was a fine job before Covid but something about the switch to remote absolutely ruined it. Things that used to take 2-3 hours to plan started taking 6 weeks as management insisted on being deeply involved. Instead of infrequent project check-ins, 18 hours a week was blocked off to management updates. Shortly before I put in my 2 weeks I had project update meeting where my status was something like Accomplishments: held status update meetings on 11/1, 11/3, 11/8, 11/12, 11/15, and 11/18. That job broke me and I just stopped caring. The new one is much better.
_8j50 5y ago
I wonder why you don't see "checked out" costco or chickfila employees? Yes, if checked out means unsatisfied with what they are getting in exchange for labor all the antiwork people are that. There are people that think mistreating others (employee, customer, coworkers) is ok because they are paying for it. There are also people that think suffering is neccesary and anything else is delusional laziness. That's the problem. Given enough peace and prosperity the amount of suffering and labor should go down along with crime, disease and social instability. Provided there is a check on unlimited greed which in the US there isn't. I think taxes can solve this quite a bit. I am not someone who thinks "there shouldn't be any billionaires" or support taking from the rich and giving to the needy (justifying theft). My proposition is: tax returns and welfare subsidies should be covered by the employer not the government. Everyone should have the same percent of gross wages collected for tax, when they file either they owe the government money or their employer should issue a refund. This will work well if you also consider another proposition: everyone should have housing in the richest country on the planet. Every county should set a poverty line relative to cost of living, 30% of that is expected to go to housing. Landlords must pay a community housing tax that is 60% if the extra they charge above the 30% of poverty line. If you make 50k, poverty line is 100k, and you pay 40k/ye in rent, your landlord has to pay 6K tax that will go to building and maintaining free housing in that same county.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Chick-fil-a only hires upper middle class kids whose wages don't actually impact their quality of life. If you look at reported wages, they don't pay better than other fast food restaurants in the same areas.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Can you be a checked out minimum wage employee? I imagine that those people are more heavily micromanaged, making skipping steps less optional.
- awillen 5y ago
  You don't see checked out Costco employees because there are supervisors physically present, and it's very obvious when those employees aren't working, because their work is physically visible. A tech worker working remotely doesn't have that same constant, direct ovresight. Your proposition about a 60% tax just wouldn't work at all - with that kind of a tax, landlords wouldn't be able to pay for maintenance. I know it's popular in some circles to think landlords are just making infinite profit and greedily keeping it away from the impoverished, but there are substantial costs to owning property, and you can't just make up taxes that completely ignore financial reality.
fsckboy 5y ago
looking at one person who didn't want the job isn't really an example of anything. Somebody will take the job, let's consider that person and then generalize...
savant_penguin 5y ago
"A friend of mine recently turned down a job promotion that included a raise of $100,000 a year. He has some financial flexibility to turn down the offer, since he’s already a mid-level executive at a Fortune 1000 company and makes about $300,000 annually. He said he determined “it just wasn’t worth it” since the promotion called for more travel and more time away from family" That makes absolute sense. Many people would no sell even more of their time if they cannot enjoy other aspects of their lives. But if it's really the kind of position that requires you to give your family time away for the company, they'll likely have to pay even more to fill that position. That's why I don't find surprising at all that executive pay is so much higher than the average employee's. At some level it's hard to justify the extra cash in exchange for your life away. Lots of qualified people would not take that deal
datavirtue 5y ago
I live for my side projects. I spend most of the week forcing myself to complete things at work. It helps greatly if I feel like I have momentum, but the more senior I get the more it feels like companies have a lot of trouble keeping me busy on things that need my attention. I have spent the last five years on stuff that has not shipped. As I have become more and more demotivated by this I have also greatly dialed back my output. I still get the same glowing reviews I got when I was playing the workaholic. I have had it up to my eyeballs working for people that can't organized. I should probably go into management or something but...meh. Not worth it. I want equity. I want to know exactly where the business is going without worrying about seemingly random arbitrary pivots and wasted effort. If we aren't marching to market dominance I want to go on paid time off until they get their shit together. Instead, I'm phoning it in and working on my shit.
sys_64738 5y ago
Four day work week will reenergize most workers.

114 points by Apocryphon 5y ago

Literally the reason I’ve not gotten a new job over the past 18-months was that I would rather focus my time into my own side-project than focus on a new job. I have pretty good job security and I really focus my mental efforts into my future than a company’s future.

theteapot 5y ago

"My friend on $300k/yr ..." blah blah. Some people have real problems.

waterlaw 5y ago
It's actually disturbing how difficult it is to get ahead in a country like Canada while working insanely stressful $300k positions without taking on large amounts of debt. Even if you're making $300k. After taxes, your disposable income is still 5 - 6 years away from purchasing a home in cash in many cities. We're using debt to fuel the economy, which is dangerous.
- azth 5y ago
  > We're using debt to fuel the economy, which is dangerous. It's quite sad, because we've known how dangerous this practice is for thousands of years. It's not for no reason that usury is prohibited in the three major religions.

soared 5y ago

Oh god on mobile the text is like 20 characters wide, so each line is like 3 words.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
foundart 5y ago
Yeah, not so great. The layout improved when I rotated 90°.
Youden 5y ago
Reader mode fixes that and it's available in Firefox regardless of your OS.
mtoddsmith 5y ago
The editor is expected to do their own formatting now that their developer has checked out.
ignoramous 5y ago
orig: https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-resignation-workers-employees-checking-out-job-side-hustles-2022-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-resignation-workers-e... archive: https://archive.is/WkGXH https://archive.is/WkGXH
waqasy 5y ago
Just fixed it. Sorry I wasn't aware of the bug. :)

pojzon 5y ago

Well.. “Family reasons” are the biggest reason employees in my current company leave. Ppl are really tired and have enough assets to sometimes take few years breaks. Removing highly skilled workforce from equation just “because they feel like it” was never taken into consideration by any employer..

dathinab 5y ago
For some companies "Family Reason" can be the biggest reason for people to stay.

bachmeier 5y ago

I've talked to quite a few people that haven't left their jobs, but weren't happy that their employers took advantage of the pandemic to shovel extra responsibilities and duties on them. I can believe the post.

NAHWheatCracker 5y ago

I closed the post when the example is an executive who's making $300k a year. An executive being checked is a problem as much as any other employee. However, executives are the ones who seem culpable of not updating policies of the company.

jimbob45 5y ago
Yeah I felt the same way. His sources are one friend and a McKinsey study. If he’d reported just the data, I’m not sure anyone would have naturally come to the same conclusion as him.

Spooky23 5y ago

The opening premise is a little weak. It’s not an example of deep dissatisfaction, but a rational choice. When you make $300k, disrupting your life for $100k isn’t really compelling. It’s honestly not enough money to compensate for your standard of living and family life. And frankly, the divorce will cost more.

dehrmann 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_... It's entirely possible that new job would have been an hourly wage cut.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  That, plus when the reckoning for all of this crazy mess comes, the road warrior sales execs are the first people to get the sword. Sometimes slumming it more a mere $300k in the home office gives you a tactical advantage. It’s different if you’re a grunt at a bank who gets some crazy gig at a big cloud company to lock in the “customer” or deny your skills to competitors — as long as you don’t think you’re actually worth that.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    To be fair, $300k won't buy you that house in Palo Alto.
happytoexplain 5y ago
"A little weak" may be an understatement. My eyes are still wide from the casual implication that turning down a promotion from 300k to 400k due to the position's negative impact on your life is somehow an example of a new trend of employees dissatisfaction. In what universe is that not a totally normal decision?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Executives are used to dangling raises over our heads and expecting us to dance for them. They're perplexed as to why people are choosing not to dance this time around.

netfl0 5y ago

Look on ~glassdoor and analyze the reviews of ex-employees.

Minor49er 5y ago
Sometimes bad reviews get scrubbed on Glassdoor
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Then when you ask them about it, they say it was a database error and your review was "lost"
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Check multiple sources. It’s almost standard HR practice to generate fake positive reviews on Glassdoor and petition to have negative reviews removed.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Glassdoor is gamed by companies and the reputation management firms they hire to hide bad reviews with glowing ones.

marstall 5y ago

This misses the point. People are checking because they can - no-one is looking.

malermeister 5y ago
... and because they want to because it turns out working a full-time job producing value for somebody else is soul-crushing to a lot of folks.

taubek 5y ago

Some 5 years ago I decided to change job when my health started to go down the drain due to stress...

thrill 5y ago
A few years ago I finished a one year demanding contract position I was paid well for. I decided to take some time off, bought a sportbike, and spent a year riding with motorcycle instructors on twisty mountain roads, spending a good 10 hours a day in the saddle, only not riding when my wife had the day off. When I finally got saddle sore, but much better off mentally, I began looking for a new job, and the first interviewer was shocked, shocked I tell you, that I would "just fuck off for a year". Glad I didn't get that gig I think. The next one hired me and put me to work the same day I interviewed.
- taubek 5y ago
  Time is the resource that can not be renewed. When you work you are actually trading your resource for some commodity (e.g. money). I respect companies that respect my time. My time off is my time off. When I'm well rested I perform better.

make_it_sure 5y ago

The main reason they are leaving is because there's a shortage of jobs due to the pandemic and they get more offers with a better pay. Once pandemic is over, this will get back to normal.

toomanydoubts 5y ago
Doesn't make much sense. Don't you mean shortage of workers(actually, shortage of workers willing to work bad jobs)? I don't see how a reduced job supply would lead to higher salaries.
encryptluks2 5y ago
I believe it is more of a occupy wall street type movement where people are sick of being exploited by a system that is one sided.

toomanydoubts 5y ago

Feels like another one of those articles written by execs to execs to stroke their own ego and pretend that the fact they underpay and overprofit isn't the main reason why employees are sick of working for them.

Viliam1234 5y ago
According to the article, 40% of employees would still be happy if they at least received a "thank you" once in a while. But they won't.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Checked-out employees are a real problem. Checked-out executives are an even worse problem, though, because they set the tone for their departments and their disconnectedness will be noticed by the people working underneath them in the org chart. Eventually, the motivated people leave and the only people who remain are those who are also checked out (and enjoying the free pass from their checked-out boss) or the disgruntled who loathe the situation but would rather complain about it than leave. Not a fun place to be! However, the opening example in this article seems different: > A friend of mine recently turned down a job promotion that included a raise of $100,000 a year. He has some financial flexibility to turn down the offer, since he’s already a mid-level executive at a Fortune 1000 company and makes about $300,000 annually. He said he determined “it just wasn’t worth it” since the promotion called for more travel and more time away from family. That’s reasonable. You don’t have to travel and be away from your family to make good contributions to a company. You don’t have to chase every single raise. The bigger problem would be this example exec’s commitment to their side company. An executive who hangs on to their paycheck, benefits, and prestigious position while using their time to build their own company on the side is not good for a company. There is no way this person is maintaining a mid-level executive job at a big company, dedicating time to their family, and also building their own company on the side.

bojangleslover 5y ago
Considering he would only take home about $50k from that $100k, I bet many of us would have done the exact same thing.
- godelski 5y ago
  Plus you have to consider the value. What does that extra $50k get you? I mean besides a higher bank account score? You're already making $300k/yr and living very well off. Does the extra spending power get you much more? It seems return on value is diminishing. If you're away frequently you won't be able to spend that money (well your family can). How much do you value time with your family? I'd rather have that money to spend _with_ my family than _on_ my family.

hinkley 5y ago

Isn't this the 'if people aren't in the office where I can keep an eye on them then they will just screw off' argument? If this pandemic is ever over it's going to be interesting to watch the pendulum swing back and forth.

ngngngng 5y ago
At this point it’s over whenever we decide it is. So depends on what color state you live in.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  Politics aside, this makes no sense to me. I live in a very red state, my employer is in a very blue state. I’m far from unique in that arrangement.

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

First job I left to go back to college, but quite honestly I had checked out of that place and hated the team I was on. Was a pretty large networking company, spent all my time writing RFPs and vendor specs, zero time writing software. Next one was a cheap tech startup that worked by recruiting people for peanuts, including hiring cab drivers doing night courses in IT, and placing them in telcos looking for business analysts for multiples of what they were actually getting paid. Hated the cheapness, left after a few months. Then it was a FAANG company, which looked after it's people really well, but the frickin politics really grind you down, left there after a few years after my team got shuffled around on a whim from some exec. Last role was a utility company, and it was a total mess internally. Vested interests, complete underfunding of the data processing systems, and major consulting firms scamming them for millions a year to produce meaningless reports. Impossible to make an impact, or even bring things up to code... For example, there was zero version control on software, zero! Things were tested on production. I stayed there far too long, should have left the first day, like a few hires actually did.

VLM 5y ago
I remember when the "Joel Test" of 12 characteristics of successful software companies came out around the turn of the century I figured it would be obsolete in mere months or at most a year or two; by 2001 or 2002 at most, who wouldn't be using version control? Here we are in 2022 and ...
- ljm 5y ago
  You could pick up Peopleware or 5 Dysfunctions of a Team today and wonder if it was written in the past couple of years.
  - darkengine 5y ago
    Peopleware is astonishingly relevant and short enough to finish reading over a weekend. Definitely recommend it to anyone starting a career in tech. Then give it a second glance 5-10 years in and see how many more workplace anti-patterns you recognize from your experience...

contractside 5y ago

I spent a decade taking massive risks to gain an extremely rare set of skills. I joined a top company, and was immediately put into a corner and my job devolved into a weekly “checklist” meeting. All feedback and input I gave, based on my extensive experience, was ignored. Then I was systematically harassed for expressing innovative or creative ideas. So I redesigned my job to do as little as possible and focus most of my effort on side contracting. I have zero friends at work. I joined a year ago and feel no connection. I never met anyone in person at my role. Haven’t been into an office. I feel like an unwelcome outcast and largely unwanted and no one understands my background, talent or skillset. Basically: I am an intern despite my skills. There is something extremely dehumanizing about remote work. Because corporations can do this to you and no one is the wiser. There is no mechanism to gain any social status it feels like. People who had insider access before I got here will always have advantages over me. I’m not going to have opportunities to stand out or advance my career. Furthermore: The entrenched folks actively shut down anything that isn’t in their interests. It feels like 100% of the exciting projects are automatically assigned to people with inside access. I was removed from all the key meetings and email threads by people threatened by me trying to talk about ways to improve products and systems. Now I’m in an information black hole of exile. So yeah, I’m doing contracts on the side and coasting. This was the same as my last job. Remote work has completely deteriorated white collar work for me.

123abcthrowaway 5y ago
> This was the same as my last job. There's a class of HN comments that combine "I'm being mistreated" with "not the first time it's happened to me." If separate groups of people have the same reaction, it's worth considering common factors, notably the commenters themselves. (Other valid but less likely options include systemic bias or very bad luck.) That said, I empathize with the described lack of connection in remote work. Wishing the commenter a turn of good luck soon.
waynesonfire 5y ago
TLDR, you're stealing and thanks for sharing your justification that I presume allows you to sleep at night.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

As an employee that is not checked out, and have to work with people that are obviously checked out - it sucks. It’s like a cancer, it will infest your organization and rot it from the inside.

nathanaldensr 5y ago
Maybe many of these organizations are already dead, metaphorically speaking. "Bullshit jobs."
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Our organization isn’t dead, we’ve been growing but getting work done and needing to depend on checked-out employees has been a…challenge, to put it nicely.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I believe the reason a lot of people are checking out is that inside companies there is an increasing disconnect between reality and what companies are saying internally. When I started working 30 years ago you went to work, did your job for 8 hours and went home. Everything was pretty straightforward. Working hours were well defined and benefits were well defined. You knew you could stay at the job for a long time. Nowadays a lot of companies inundate with a ton of propaganda and talk about culture, inclusion and blablabla. At the same time they demand more and more time and effort while offering less stability, you have to report status every day, the salary of the top guys keeps exploding while the little guy barely gets a raise. People can see through the propaganda and become cynical. This is not only inside companies but also through entire society. I think trump's success and things like Qanon are a result of this.

nonford150 5y ago
Same at my company. We're a small BU at a large multi-national, very flat whereas most of the other BUs ave lots of overhead - they fill lots of DI-type jobs with these folks. Biggest issue is corporate expects us to produce the same Power BI type of output with deep slide decks for corporate level meetings with no extra resources. Our BU just got an award for best financial performance within the corporation yet no one ever asked how - we've been busting butt for long time, making and selling product instead of making higher-ups feel important while our CEO goes on MSNBC shows spouting off about how the DI crap is making the company so much better. Lots of created make-work. I'm no right-wing nut. My co-workers could be the UN - but we don't care about that; we just do our jobs - we're good at it and making things cheaper and easier. So glad I retire in less than 2 years. I checked quite a while ago. Been building my side hustle so once I go I'll be good. I do feel for those who I'll leave behind - it'll only get worse and less work will get done. M hope is they persevere.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

My youngest son and I are planning a company. My middle son has started his own company. Both are, to the world, 'covid resignations'.

nathanaldensr 5y ago
Hats off to you! My wife and I just started doing the same. I'm also encouraging both of my young sons to begin to think about what it might take to become self-made. I'm tired of drinking from corporate troughs.

scrooched_moose 5y ago

I recently left a job that I was 100% checked out of. It was a fine job before Covid but something about the switch to remote absolutely ruined it. Things that used to take 2-3 hours to plan started taking 6 weeks as management insisted on being deeply involved. Instead of infrequent project check-ins, 18 hours a week was blocked off to management updates. Shortly before I put in my 2 weeks I had project update meeting where my status was something like Accomplishments: held status update meetings on 11/1, 11/3, 11/8, 11/12, 11/15, and 11/18. That job broke me and I just stopped caring. The new one is much better.

_8j50 5y ago

I wonder why you don't see "checked out" costco or chickfila employees? Yes, if checked out means unsatisfied with what they are getting in exchange for labor all the antiwork people are that. There are people that think mistreating others (employee, customer, coworkers) is ok because they are paying for it. There are also people that think suffering is neccesary and anything else is delusional laziness. That's the problem. Given enough peace and prosperity the amount of suffering and labor should go down along with crime, disease and social instability. Provided there is a check on unlimited greed which in the US there isn't. I think taxes can solve this quite a bit. I am not someone who thinks "there shouldn't be any billionaires" or support taking from the rich and giving to the needy (justifying theft). My proposition is: tax returns and welfare subsidies should be covered by the employer not the government. Everyone should have the same percent of gross wages collected for tax, when they file either they owe the government money or their employer should issue a refund. This will work well if you also consider another proposition: everyone should have housing in the richest country on the planet. Every county should set a poverty line relative to cost of living, 30% of that is expected to go to housing. Landlords must pay a community housing tax that is 60% if the extra they charge above the 30% of poverty line. If you make 50k, poverty line is 100k, and you pay 40k/ye in rent, your landlord has to pay 6K tax that will go to building and maintaining free housing in that same county.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Chick-fil-a only hires upper middle class kids whose wages don't actually impact their quality of life. If you look at reported wages, they don't pay better than other fast food restaurants in the same areas.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Can you be a checked out minimum wage employee? I imagine that those people are more heavily micromanaged, making skipping steps less optional.
awillen 5y ago
You don't see checked out Costco employees because there are supervisors physically present, and it's very obvious when those employees aren't working, because their work is physically visible. A tech worker working remotely doesn't have that same constant, direct ovresight. Your proposition about a 60% tax just wouldn't work at all - with that kind of a tax, landlords wouldn't be able to pay for maintenance. I know it's popular in some circles to think landlords are just making infinite profit and greedily keeping it away from the impoverished, but there are substantial costs to owning property, and you can't just make up taxes that completely ignore financial reality.

fsckboy 5y ago

looking at one person who didn't want the job isn't really an example of anything. Somebody will take the job, let's consider that person and then generalize...

savant_penguin 5y ago

"A friend of mine recently turned down a job promotion that included a raise of $100,000 a year. He has some financial flexibility to turn down the offer, since he’s already a mid-level executive at a Fortune 1000 company and makes about $300,000 annually. He said he determined “it just wasn’t worth it” since the promotion called for more travel and more time away from family" That makes absolute sense. Many people would no sell even more of their time if they cannot enjoy other aspects of their lives. But if it's really the kind of position that requires you to give your family time away for the company, they'll likely have to pay even more to fill that position. That's why I don't find surprising at all that executive pay is so much higher than the average employee's. At some level it's hard to justify the extra cash in exchange for your life away. Lots of qualified people would not take that deal

datavirtue 5y ago

I live for my side projects. I spend most of the week forcing myself to complete things at work. It helps greatly if I feel like I have momentum, but the more senior I get the more it feels like companies have a lot of trouble keeping me busy on things that need my attention. I have spent the last five years on stuff that has not shipped. As I have become more and more demotivated by this I have also greatly dialed back my output. I still get the same glowing reviews I got when I was playing the workaholic. I have had it up to my eyeballs working for people that can't organized. I should probably go into management or something but...meh. Not worth it. I want equity. I want to know exactly where the business is going without worrying about seemingly random arbitrary pivots and wasted effort. If we aren't marching to market dominance I want to go on paid time off until they get their shit together. Instead, I'm phoning it in and working on my shit.

sys_64738 5y ago

Four day work week will reenergize most workers.