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While I think the data is good, the conclusion of "don't want" is downright silly to me, because if you look at all the top contenders, "don't have any better o

While I think the data is good, the conclusion of "don't want" is downright silly to me, because if you look at all the top contenders, "don't have any better options" seems like a better interpretation to me. If you work at Apple (company with the shortest tenure), then you likely have tons of other options, and can job hop your way into higher and higher comp. If you work for one of the giant oil companies, where else are you going to go (generally, of course this doesn't apply to everyone equally)? This is especially true in many places where oil and gas jobs are the only working class jobs that pay well. Edit: other good comment also pointed out that Apple has a huge retail workforce that would definitely bring down the average tenure.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Yeah, this is simply a chart of worker mobility. I think you nailed that one.
- manymatter 3y ago
  It looks like lack of mobility at the top end, but probably another factor near the bottom.
- caslon 3y ago
  It looks like your mail server's down, if the address listed in your profile is accurate.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Thanks I’ll take a look. For now you can use Twitter DM for anything
alexjplant 3y ago
> "don't have any better options" seems like a better interpretation to me. This is certainly the case for a company like Lockheed Martin. I used to live in an insular area where defense contracting was by far the dominant area of employment; although you could hop from one contractor to another you ended up having a very finite career progression because each of these companies were all competing for the same contracts which all had the same rules regarding how much they can pay employees. Staying at one such company for a decade isn't particularly uncommon because all of the others offer practically the same benefits and pay. Although the government periodically updates these rules they haven't kept pace with the market for some time now. Such downward pressure on wages combined with: - a conservative technical vision that keeps worker skill sets 5-10 years behind industry - long production timelines owing to slow, broken security and procurement processes (which are merely replicated in a new form every time somebody tries to introduce a streamlined alternative) - promotions based on seniority and credentials instead of technical acumen and impact (since this is how the government attempts to objectively measure employee value) - lack of technical rigor in interview processes (because contractors are incentivized to hire anybody remotely capable due to cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts, i.e. the "bodies in seats" mentality) ...results in employee stagnation and the phenomenon that you see in the article. I don't imagine that it's terribly different for large, entrenched interests like oil and freight companies. These are, after all, mature organizations with workforces many orders of magnitude larger than Dunbar's number with a dizzying number of orthogonal incentive structures spread across layers upon layers of middle management. Avoiding these types of issues at scale is obviously difficult - it's just a fact of life.
plorkyeran 3y ago
Average tenure is also significantly a measure of how fast you're growing. My employer has doubled in size over the last three years, so even if literally zero people had ever left the company we'd have a median tenure of three years.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Yeah, this is simply a chart of worker mobility. I think you nailed that one.

manymatter 3y ago
It looks like lack of mobility at the top end, but probably another factor near the bottom.
caslon 3y ago
It looks like your mail server's down, if the address listed in your profile is accurate.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Thanks I’ll take a look. For now you can use Twitter DM for anything

alexjplant 3y ago

> "don't have any better options" seems like a better interpretation to me. This is certainly the case for a company like Lockheed Martin. I used to live in an insular area where defense contracting was by far the dominant area of employment; although you could hop from one contractor to another you ended up having a very finite career progression because each of these companies were all competing for the same contracts which all had the same rules regarding how much they can pay employees. Staying at one such company for a decade isn't particularly uncommon because all of the others offer practically the same benefits and pay. Although the government periodically updates these rules they haven't kept pace with the market for some time now. Such downward pressure on wages combined with: - a conservative technical vision that keeps worker skill sets 5-10 years behind industry - long production timelines owing to slow, broken security and procurement processes (which are merely replicated in a new form every time somebody tries to introduce a streamlined alternative) - promotions based on seniority and credentials instead of technical acumen and impact (since this is how the government attempts to objectively measure employee value) - lack of technical rigor in interview processes (because contractors are incentivized to hire anybody remotely capable due to cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts, i.e. the "bodies in seats" mentality) ...results in employee stagnation and the phenomenon that you see in the article. I don't imagine that it's terribly different for large, entrenched interests like oil and freight companies. These are, after all, mature organizations with workforces many orders of magnitude larger than Dunbar's number with a dizzying number of orthogonal incentive structures spread across layers upon layers of middle management. Avoiding these types of issues at scale is obviously difficult - it's just a fact of life.

plorkyeran 3y ago

Average tenure is also significantly a measure of how fast you're growing. My employer has doubled in size over the last three years, so even if literally zero people had ever left the company we'd have a median tenure of three years.