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

Salary increases are minuscule if you stay at the same company, but switching around let’s you avoid the power imbalance between structurally underpaid employees and overpaid CEOs..

Especially considering that the current expected salary of a CEO is extremely distorted by the fact that it’s decided by a board usually filled with other CEOs..

The embarrassing thing is that bloody Adam Smith warned us of this a few centuries ago:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices”

> 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.

There is a difference between team building, workplace social dynamics, and genuine relationships. Thankfully, most of my coworkers recognize this. We work together as a team, the negative workplace social dynamics are at a minimum, and genuine relationships between coworkers don't exclude others or erode the confidence of others. Simply put, everyone behaves as professionals.

On the other hand, I have been in workplaces where the opposite is true. Team building exercises lead to cliques that reinforce certain relationships and erode others, coworkers undermine each other through gossip and use forced friendliness will conceal their intent. None of the relationships are genuine since you know that the drama will eventually lead to someone being in tears (sometimes in front of their coworkers) or leaving altogether.

For what it's worth, I have seen both situations arise outside of tech and both dynamics in play with both introverted and sociable people.

I remember that too and I am was told by a software engineer at the time that that was the future. And it kind of was pre Internet. You had to be in a big box store on a PC. Post Internet, I think we will see a lot of "no code solutions" that develop but I think that there will still be room for software engineers plus software is eating the world so the opportunities are basically limitless. I mean it use to be 10k+ for a website with a form handler and now basically anyone can make a decent one for free if they want.

No company is going to pay everyone the highest amount they possibly can. Is that how you buy groceries?

In my experience, it's a real thing.

Lockdown was a catalyst for offline to online. Tech was the epicenter of this. This also fueled deliveries, which requires tracking and optimization (of packages and the hordes of new delivery people). Then other related stuff - remote communication, payments, etc, etc. There was just endless tech stuff to do. Even hardware stuff like drones had more demand.

There was also a sudden drop in things that rich people could invest in. Early 2021, a lot of companies decided capital was cheap and companies with good revenue started raising money, then hiring/expanding. Crypto boomed and bust again, but it fueled some more startups who made money off crypto infrastructure.

A lot of tech workers were forced to come to office during the pandemic. A factory worker might be a lot more tolerant to this. But I found it highly insulting and inefficient to risk my family's lives for something of lower productivity, and that was the last straw. Plus offices were poorly maintained and being downgraded at this point. I decided I did not want to return to office after the next lockdown and started job hunting at this point.

Mid-late 2020, people started quitting jobs. The surge in demand combined with the drop in supply created a kind of vacuum.

This probably wasn't felt in richer countries, but remote work meant that it suddenly made sense to outsource to other countries. In developing countries, we had a double surge from developed countries. Australians decided to outsource to Malaysia and other companies. Suddenly Malaysian companies were competing with Australian wages, making more people quit. I was personally getting offered 2.5x wages and the interview bar was much, much lower than usual. A good job used to take weeks of interviews, and now it was a weekend.

Mid 2021, remote/hybrid work was already offered up front. I basically rejected all interview offers that didn't allow remote, unless on site was necessary (e.g. drones or factory machinery). My sister was an intern and did the same - normally interns would be told to screw off for any disagreement.

By Aug 2021, I'd have a very good company inviting me to interview with them almost every week. Oil conglomerates, brands like Nokia and Motorola, Fortune 500, unicorns offering top tier wages and vacation time, small companies that pay well for routine maintenance work. Companies that rejected me in the past were suddenly offering the jobs again (you know that thing where they say they'd keep your resume on file?)

Eventually I did end up with a dream job, where I get to focus on making the users happy.

tl;dr: market forces created a lot of good jobs. So people are resigning and moving closer to theirs, which isn't necessarily better pay. Developing countries have a windfall thanks to remote, followed by startups, but the extra demand means everyone else feels it too.