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Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
91–100 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#92I just quit my job to find something more interesting to do. From my experience, this is the first time since the virus-drama started that I felt safe enough to take the step. But I was unemployed when it hit the fan, and the first year was really tough since it was pretty much impossible to find jobs around here.
> I just quit my job to find something more interesting to do. Heh, that was my plan. I ended up just settling for more money again.
I ended up getting both :)
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#93Asshat bosses want bums on seats in plague pit openplan offices even if #WFH is eminently possible and as someone over 60 even vaccinated I'm still more at risk than I'd like.
If I was more financially secure I'd resign in a heartbeat, so looking around for a remote job.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#94pretty harsh knowing a tech worker who's been disabled by covid and seeing you write off deaths from covid as irrelevant without any explanation.
first, no, not irrelevant. what on earth even justifies thinking that?
second, disability from covid is far more widespread than death. some studies indicate 10% of covid cases turn into long covid, becoming essentially permanent. that's much higher than the death rate.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#95It'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 work at a large company that changed to become remote first in 2020, and we are seeing similar rates of churn. I am not sure this is the whole story.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#96There is good evidence in terms of attrition numbers published by major tech companies --- it has gone as high as 22%!! India is also experiencing a major demand for software developers
It's due to venture funds, remote work & high demand ...
Cash is cheap. US, Europe & Japan have unleashed >$9 trillion since the pandemic in stimulus checks & buying of bonds in the market. Global venture funding hit a record high of $221B with 250 start-ups becoming unicorns this year. Coinbase debuted publicly with a market cap of $89B on its opening day. Indian start-ups have received a record funding of $8.76B
Salary Difference is Huge . The average salary of a software developer in the US is $107K with senior developers commanding $300K in San Francisco, a stark difference compared to India. Demand for talent is coming from all industries, the automotive sector hired more software engineers than the tech sector last year, all the more reason for going remote
Which means remote postings have risen by 457% since the past year! Engineers prefer to continue WFH as it enables flexibility, increased productivity & reduced commute times. Even the challenge of different time zones can be solved using good asynchronous communication in remote work
To recap, an engineer can work for - FAAMG (Remain the top pick) - US & EU software giants (Coinbase, GitLab, Automattic) - 3000 India Dev Centers (Eg: John Deere) - IPO-bound unicorns (Zomato, Paytm, MobiKwik) - Freshly funded start-ups (100s) - 2800 IT services firms
What is the impact?
Attrition rates in Indian IT will be at an all-time high of 22-23% this year. Top-tier candidates now get multiple offers with an eye-popping 2x-3x (not 20%-30%) raise. The 2-3 month notice period means candidates continue interviewing after accepting the 1st offer. Developers are consistently learning new skillsets on AI, Machine learning, cloud computing, automation, blockchain to be in high demand. No doubt, multiple founders have recently tweeted about this new competitive market & candidates informing before joining date
Recruiters & founders need to differentiate themselves not just with cash, but also with ESOPs, buybacks, venture backing, eye-watering benefits, rapid career growth & work even harder to retain existing talent
The war for talent is on
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#97I worked for a company where I had a great relationship with the CEO and directly reported to him. There was a reorg the January of 2020 and I remember thinking, "I'm on the bottom of this org chart", even though the product I was building was supposed to be worth 5x the current revenue of the company, and I was the only person full-time on it and was architecting it to be scalable and low maintenance (we can't afford Amazon level support staff).
I got put under the CEO'S twin brother who did not trust the tech stack I was using (never mind that three of our critical SAASes we were subscribing to -- including payments!! and 24/7 alert monitoring!! used that stack) "it was an unknown quantity" -- and then we had arguments about hiring (he pushed through a hire that three of the four tech reviewers thumbs downed, and I personally flagged as problematic because he had wrong code and asserted during the interview "I am certain it's correct" -- his code was so crap and hard to understand that took me three hours of writing a property testing framework to find the bug), then he forced onto a team someone "with Amazon experience" who I thumbs downed because his code was shit and didn't read the instructions (which is part of my interview acceptance criteria). I had found some great "almost seniors"/"early senior" devs who had the right attitude to figure shit out and deliver code, but he didn't want to hire them because they "weren't senior enough".
Anyways shortly after that I quit with no immediate prospects, and pretty quickly got a great job on a fantastic team (though the codebase is very brownfield), so I'm not sad I resigned.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#98It'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…
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.
* tech companies having record profits and all wanting to expand at the same time.
And I feel like #3 is the most important one. They all want mid-senior developers but every other company wants them too so they go in to a bidding war and their wallets are stuffed right now so the bids are huge.
This will probably continue until a new wave of developers reaches senior level but by then the market may have failed to predict tech companies growing at an even faster rate than they are now.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#99I think inflation is a part of it. There is more money around but always the same internal reluctance to give raises that match the market. So higher inflation implies that more people have to switch jobs in order to take advantage.
Some managers don't understand it and dismiss inflation
The worst part is that some workers are being completely left behind and the divide grows greater. Tech jobs have kept up and exploded over inflation rates while retail and gig economy jobs are now paying unliveable rates.
IMO there _needs_ to be a complete recalculation of costs of living for the current year and an adjustment of minimum wages to reflect this.
Re: Ask HN: Is the Great Resignation in tech real? If so, why?
#100Pre-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…
Not working in tech but this seems to make a lot of sense. If you had a socially fulfilling job pre-covid then maybe you're wage didn't matter so much because being in tech it's probably pretty good. But being stuck at home it's hard to optimize for anything else than your salary when you're considering your employment. So if you're gonna sit and stare at a screen you might as well get as much money as possible.