Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 270 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#131

Post by lordnacho »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #113

> Remote work allows better matching of people and jobs. This is my theory on non-tech jobs too. You get stuck in a rut with a shit job waiting tables, when the pandemic hits and your restaurant shuts down. We’ll now you have to take a crack at that other career you told yourself you’d try, or you’d move back home like you meant to. Friction is hard to overcome. But when something external acts as a catalyst, matchin…

Very good comment. I think you can call it metastability. Or Wiley E Coyote running off the edge of the cliff. He doesn't realise it until he looks down.

A lot of people, more than most of us realise, are stuck living hand to mouth. No time or money to train themselves up to do something different. No way to build the networks that are often needed to transition. That feeling of having to run to stay still.

When the treadmill stops you have to do something. Perhaps it's swallowing your pride and borrowing money from a friend, or moving back in with the parents, but I reckon a lot of people discovered that when they needed it there was some credit in the system, note to mention actual credit in the form of government help.

So now all those people who were busy being busy have some time to actually think about what they want to do.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#132

Post by jpgvm »

urthor wrote: post #121
jpgvm wrote: post #111

Remote and increased liquidity are the two biggest drivers. Remote is making people reevaluate work/life balance in general, some people that aren't getting their preferences matched in this regard are thus leaving. Huge amounts of liquidity means there is now a lot more money sloshing around in the pockets of startups and public tech companies that raised money in the 2020/2021 equities boom. Tech companies suck at…

Appropriate retention based raises actually require a huge quantity of finesse and genuine ability from line managers and HR. Even if a company is willing to do so in in good faith , a rarity, a "market price" raise consumes an extraordinary amount of paperwork and HR time and effort. You take your employee, often parked with a nebulous job title and a role that has morphed entirely from the one they were hired for.…

Every employee you manage to retain in turn reduces HR work however, I imagine even if the sum isn't quite balanced (i.e it's slightly more work to retain than re-hire) then the difference is very easily offset by the massive reduction in disruption to the team in question.

If HR is infact the reason why this doesn't happen then HR is hamstringing the rest of the company.

The difference between companies with high retention vs low retention is massive in my experience, both in terms of code quality and morale. Anecdotally companies with higher retention did better with raises but also generally better with hiring (so they had higher quality employees worth awarding raises to).

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#133

Post by onion2k »

the_jeremy wrote: post #45

anecdote: This year, I was on a team of 2 and my coworker left for Google for a little under $300k. I told my boss I was going to quit to do interview prep and said I was making onsites for companies offering $200k, and they offered me $200k to stay. That was a 90% raise for my teammate who left and a 60% raise for me.

So your boss could afford to pay you 60% more but decided not to until he was effectively forced to, and you figure that's who you want to work for?

Getting a very significant raise to stay in the same role is a strong signal that the company doesn't value its people and will pay you as little as possible in the future. I'd bet any money that your next 2 or 3 reviews will come with no further raises because "you just got a huge pay increase".

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#134

Post by ldoughty »

1) remote work opened doors that were not possible before. We lost a junior employee to a company paying Texas tech hub wages in an area where most don't make 6 figures before 10 years experience or management. They probably feel they got the employee cheap to.

2) my partner and I are hoping to have a kid, the pandemic really highlighted the child care issues in our country. We basically decided if when we have a kid (which we've been unlucky in our attempts during the pandemic) were going to be a single income home and one of us won't work. At dual income, 25% would go to taxes, and 30% would go to paying for daycare. This, in turn, puts pressure on the other to seek those "city wage" remote jobs, which is probably a 100% raise, but raises job security and satisfaction concerns... But that encourages resigning and moving up the pay scale.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#135

Post by Cookingboy »

imiric wrote: post #130
yadaeno wrote: post #29

Pre-Covid much of my job satisfaction came from the sense of comradery of working on a team. Even as an introvert I enjoy interacting with coworkers, and being intune with the needs of the group and generally helping other people succeed. When we transitioned to full remote, all of this was stripped away and I was left to focus purely on a product that on its own I was not passionate about (think ad-like product). I…

Another introvert here, working fully remotely since before COVID. I couldn't imagine working on a product I wasn't passionate about and genuinely wanted to succeed. Most of my motivation is based around doing interesting and socially valuable work. This doesn't have to be groundbreaking, but knowing I'm helping put out some good in the world is a large factor in choosing and staying with a company. The team is also…

>To me it's mostly for the better, since everyone is focused on the product and not on some pointless team building events, company gossip or drama.

It's very interesting to see how people look at relationship building with others. Many introverts on HN and Reddit see it as a mostly negative thing and equivalent people interaction and relationship building to drama, gossip, and forced friendliness.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#136

Post by baloki »

Gigachad wrote: post #98
doktorhladnjak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even remote friendly companies are seeing people leave and higher turnover

Yeah I’m not at all convinced this is the explanation. I just started at a company in Australia where their office isn’t even legally allowed to open yet and they have still seen a bunch of people leave. My hot take is that it’s a few factors. * pent up demand from last year with people not moving out of fear but now feeling certain of the future * remote work opening up a larger selection of companies to work at. *…

Record profits and unwilling to provide decent payrises, using the excuse of the pandemic uncertainty.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#137

Post by yarcob »

yadaeno wrote: post #29

Pre-Covid much of my job satisfaction came from the sense of comradery of working on a team. Even as an introvert I enjoy interacting with coworkers, and being intune with the needs of the group and generally helping other people succeed. When we transitioned to full remote, all of this was stripped away and I was left to focus purely on a product that on its own I was not passionate about (think ad-like product). I…

> much of my job satisfaction came from the sense of comradery of working on a team

I think this is a seriously undervalued factor and something I was completely unaware of.

I used to always judge job opportunities either by how well they pay, or how interesting the work is. But in reality, the social factor is just as important.

So some time ago, I was trying to hire my first employee. I paid a lot of money for job ads, and got very little applications. I offered the same salary as the other tech companies in my city, and I really tried my best to attract people.

I couldn't understand why people instead only applied to work for boring consultancies or even for an online gambling company -- why would people prefer such mind numbing or even morally questionable jobs?

I realized that the social situation at work is really important. When I met people who worked at the online gambling website, they weren't talking about the actual work; they just told me about their awesome boss, and how they had fun with their team mates, etc. It didn't matter how interesting my project was, nobody wanted to sit all day in an office just alone with me.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#138

Post by KaiserPro »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #7

I think, quite simply, remote work in the tech sector has redefined work-life balance. Rather than work 9-5 and go home and disconnect, you can mix and match personal and work tasks throughout the day. This reduction in sole focus on "work time" has led a lot of us to realize that work isn't everything. As such, for those who have significant savings, resigning and taking a sabbatical or an early retirement is an att…

> Rather than work 9-5 and go home and disconnect, you can mix and match personal and work tasks throughout the day.

Personally that sounds, difficult. I cannot multitask, and frankly the lockdown was horrifically lonely for me. Stuck in the same place, all the time, with no opportunity to go out.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#139

Post by KaiserPro »

sam0x17 wrote: post #63

It's completely to do with work from home. Everyone is fed up after what they had to deal with in 2020, and tech workers (almost 100% of them) got to work from home, many for the first time ever. After everything they've been through in 2020, it makes zero sense to willingly go back to work in an office where you put yourself at risk and have to deal with all those horrible things you had to deal with before 2020. So…

I think that the number of people that want to go remote, are not the same as the number of people that we think want to go remote.

From my immediate team(20), there are two people who will go full remote. The _vast_ majority want something blended or flexible. Then there are some people ~3 who want to be in the office full time.

Granted this is for the UK.

I suspect that there is bias in news for remote only, because they are the sort of people who already put out a curated vision of them selves (ie linkedin infulencers) We know the archetype, and we know that they are not remotely representative.

Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?

#140

Post by fbrncci »

Pre-covid to me it felt like I had to follow an employers rule of employment to the letter. Post-covid; it very much feels like I am on my own conditions here, both salary and terms of where I work (100% remote). Also feels like part of the resignation wave is coming from employers still believing they can run their company on pre-covid terms.
Post reply on HN