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

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

#191

Post by nonameiguess »

gambiting wrote: post #150
nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OPs point was that the past employer effectively leveraged the social aspect to underpay. Now that there is a hobby outside of work, the latter is suddenly not a center of life anymore. The pay raise is the ironic reality of employers catching up with the real cost of labour.

That assumes that these social aspects are valued at zero. Money isn't everything in a job. Your compensation consists of the money, yes, but also everything else in the job. Good social aspect at work takes effort to build and maintain, so maybe, actually, those employers weren't underpaying at all. Again, money isn't everything.

It assumes exactly the opposite of that. The underlying economic principle at work is that the social aspects of a job do have an equivalent monetary value, and now that they're gone, employers have to make up the shortfall by paying more in plain money.

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

#192

Post by ALotOfBees »

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…

This was almost my EXACT experience ad well. differences are I took 6 months off, wasnt working on an ad-like product, and my pay boost getting back into the market was 48% instead of 50%.

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

#193

Post by sanderjd »

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.…

Sounds like management needs to reduce friction in order to improve efficiency. There is no argument that it is more efficient to lose a successful employee who already knows your business and hire a new one who does not.

A good system would be to always grant the retention raise when presented with a competing offer (without all this work you described), with a short window of time to allow for someone up the chain to veto.

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

#194

Post by truly »

Not a tech worker per se, but I do teach computer science at a higher education institution.

Pre-covid, my professional satisfaction came mostly from interacting with students. The academic freedom to explore essentially whatever you are interested in is also good compared to any tech job, so the job is not that bad (even if pay is not great compared to industry).

Currently however, with everything online, I essentially have to teach a blank screen, which sucks.

I am exploring alternatives, although I am reluctant to quit my job.

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

#195

Post by nonameiguess »

sanderjd wrote: post #188
aetherspawn wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your post: > As luck would have it, global healthcare plans seem reasonably priced. My partner and I got covered under Aetna's MHP Exclusive plan (their most comprehensive package) for under $300 a month total (not $300 per person). As an Australian, this figure seems ridiculous, even if it were in $AUD! To give you an idea, I pay around $45 AUD/mo (but I've never had to use it because free healthcare).

I'm curious what your tax rate is. Most countries with way lower health care premiums have it offset with higher "middle class" taxes than we have in the US. This is the big issue with changing the system here, people are convinced that their taxes will go up without their premiums actually going down. This is a reasonable concern because it kind of is what happens / happened with middle of the road (arguably worst o…

Presumably, the tax amount is 0 if you're taking a year off from work and not earning any income, regardless of what the rate is.

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

#196

Post by mdorazio »

aikinai wrote: post #161
timthorn wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consultancy might have a boring image, but the work can be extremely varied. I was at one of the big names and got to go behind the scenes at a major theme park, spend a night with police officers on blue light calls, watch open heart surgery in person, meet a lunar astronaut and eat lunch in a tv studio watching a live broadcast.

Wow, that sounds way more interesting that I've been led to believe! Did you just get lucky? What was your role?

I'll chime in since I also worked in consulting for a long time (still do). It depends a lot on what vertical you get pulled into, but I'd say it's 50% luck and 50% you putting in the effort to develop and prove you have skills (including social ones) to get staffed on interesting projects. Many consultants never see more than conference rooms and the home office, but the parent commenter's experience also happens quite a bit. It's worth noting that in my experience the more advanced you get in your career the more likely you are to work only in a specific industry.

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

#197

Post by naveen99 »

Before covid and normalization of remote work, I couldn’t afford a quality on-site programmer. With covid I was able to hire a better quality remote programmer for a lower cost. Work is now getting done that was not happening before.

There are two ways to reduce prices:

1. Reduce need: air travel, commute, commercial real estate, sears, middle management, highway speed traps, paper, wars, suits, gold, diamonds, brokers, theatre, stadiums, crowds

2. Increase productivity: software, internet bandwidth, gpu, nvme ssd’s, solar, batteries, youtube, hacker news, wikipedia, wsb, zoom, twitter, linkedin, Robinhood, tiktok

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

aetherspawn wrote: post #166
kaycebasques wrote: post #71

In June 2021 I left Google after 6 years. I outlined my motivations here [1]. Long story short it's a conscious bet that time and energy are scarcer commodities for me than money. I'm not sure I'll last a full year but I think I have a few months left in me. [1] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

From your post: > As luck would have it, global healthcare plans seem reasonably priced. My partner and I got covered under Aetna's MHP Exclusive plan (their most comprehensive package) for under $300 a month total (not $300 per person). As an Australian, this figure seems ridiculous, even if it were in $AUD! To give you an idea, I pay around $45 AUD/mo (but I've never had to use it because free healthcare).

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by _nalply »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #181
_nalply wrote: post #146

Let me add something about a tangent subject: What about tech workers with a disability? I hope you find this interesting, even if this answers your question only indirectly. People with disabilities experience the pandemic the same as everybody else. Of course. However they don't have the same opportunities. yadaeno wrote that he took some time off and when he returned he got a raise [0]. This would be riskier for m…

Working remote made my disability less of a problem. There are still weeks I can’t work full time but they are less frequent now that I don’t need to go to an office and pretend to work on bad days. Without a commute or having to be around people, I have more energy available to work and I recover faster. Pretending to not be depressed or manic behind a camera once a day is so much easier than doing so a full day in…

It's about opportunities.

A story: Fifteen years ago I and my colleague from class we were selected as top engineers of our class fresh from university for an ambitious project. However that project got cancelled two months later. My colleague phoned once and immediately found a different job and left the same day.

Because of my disability I don't phone. I needed three months to find a different job.

I agree with you that remote makes more things possible and makes working easier.

But it is about to find a job at all. And if I found something I wouldn't have the same power to negotiate salary and benefits as others and must accept what is given to me.

Luckily I don't have the need to look for a job.

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

#200

Post by tyingq »

I haven't personally seen a huge uptick in resignations where I work. What I have seen, though, is that it's very difficult to hire anyone. We seem to be losing people at the offer stage. And I work somewhere where an opaque "compensation group" in HR makes the offers, so I have no idea how out of touch they are with the market. We have many positions that have been open more than a year.
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