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“Great resignation” wave coming for companies

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Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#401

Post by zero_deg_kevin »

Loughla wrote: post #278
DebtDeflation wrote: post #215

This is about far more than WFH vs Return To Office. Many of us, after a year of lockdowns, losing family members, suffering mental and physical health issues, spending more time with our families, etc. are re-evaluating our priorities in life and deciding that our jobs are no longer the most important things in life and probably never should have been.

Higher education is my main job - we're not seeing an influx like we expected of people returning to college, but we are seeing an increase in non-traditional (24y.o.+) students. They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales industries. The forced time off last year made them realize they were killing themselves for not very much money, and they're…

A lot of people were told their jobs are nonessential and the public debate was about whether or not they deserve assistance with basic survival needs. If it were me, I’d be doing everything in my power to never be in that position again. I suspect that’s part of what’s happening.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#402

Post by refenestrator »

obstacle1 wrote: post #308
hpoe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if you don't have a family to provide for. It turns out that it becomes a lot harder to take a gap year when you've still got a spouse and little people depending on you.

I don't see this as much different from "sure, if you don't have a million dollar mortgage and 2 car payments to cover!" Having a family is partially a financial decision. People should make the decision with eyes wide open, having planned for it. Achieving a financial position above sustenance before having the expensive family is generally a good idea. Same as buying the house and cars.

Having a family is the bedrock of society. If only the top 10% of earners had one, we'd find ourselves in some trouble.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#403

Post by ryandrake »

rchaud wrote: post #363
obstacle1 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trust fund crowd You're on a discussion board filled with software developers and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the hedonic treadmill and save up.

> If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. Why would you assume to know what other people's financial situations are, let alone their wage scale in an industry where not everyone is a US-based SWE?

Not to mention, even if you can save this much, put it in your 401(k), not a vacation savings account. The financial impact of taking a whole year without pay in your 20s probably adds 5 years to your retirement date, due to compounding interest and investment growth. Is it really worth it, just so you can fill your Insta with pictures of you windsurfing in Ibiza?

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#404

Post by ericd »

BurningFrog wrote: post #291
obstacle1 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trust fund crowd You're on a discussion board filled with software developers and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the hedonic treadmill and save up.

Yeah, I easily make twice as much as I spend. So I take a year of now and then, if I feel like it.

Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on return difficult?

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#405

Post by jlokier »

jason0597 wrote: post #354
benjaminwootton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a very popular thing to do in the UK before or after university. Around 20% of people at my university did the whole travel around Europe or Australia thing. Edit - Sorry, see all the peer comments made the same point.

I'm studying at a UK university too, and I always scratch my head as to how on earth people get the money to travel around Europe or Australia before they go to uni. Who funds it?

> Who funds it?

Generally, I think family does. Some families have more money than others. It also depends how much the parents are willing and able to sacrifice, of course.

The same way you might scratch your head wondering how some fellow students pay for rentals you can't imagine affording, and alcohol binges you can't imagine affording. Students from poorer families rarely go on gap years. But even some poorer parents will sacrifice a lot, if they can find a way, to pay for their children to travel.

That said, the costs aren't outrageous. Travelling around Europe or Australia is fairly cheap for a young person (or at least used to be). There are schemes to allow travelling costs to be lower for young people, visas tend to be cheaper and easier to get, and people do local, temporary work e.g. in bars in kitchens to supplement the money they brought with them, to make it last longer.

I went to university in the UK a long time ago. And I struggled to understand how people afforded gap years (or rent) then, too. I never had a gap year, and it makes me a little sad. But as I couldn't even afford to eat regular meals, and certainly couldn't join people for socialising when they went out to places like Pizza Hut (too expensive), it was the right decision not to take a gap year :/

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#406

Post by ghaff »

the_gastropod wrote: post #397
screye wrote: post #263

> Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs. This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarif…

> In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. I think your circles are rather unusual, if this is true. A $900k net worth is in the 99th percentile for 30-34 year olds and 95th percentile for 35-40 year olds in the US ( https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/ ) Even among my anecdot…

I didn't have any substantial savings until I was well into my 30s. I didn't graduate from grad school until I was 28. (Worked for a few years prior in engineering but nothing like the salary levels in SWE today.)

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#407

Post by NikolaNovak »

ahelwer wrote: post #109
NikolaNovak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the advice is a reasonable thing to consider; a lot of responses (and presumably downvotes) are either "It doesn't matter to potential employers", which is categorically untrue - it'll matter to some, raise a question to others, and be irrelevant to others yet. How you answer that question is important, and it's fascinating that other half of comments is, basically, "Lie!". When I'm interviewing candidates, a…

You mind seems to be trapped in the employment binary where you're either a full-time W-2 employee or you're unemployed. With contracting and startups it isn't so simple. Contractors (especially ones working in boutique niches on scoped projects) might work for a month with much time between contracts. During that down time maybe they write blog posts or contribute to OSS or hang out with someone else prototyping som…

1. All of it is true in general and explicitly not the case for the OP/GP I was responding to, which indicated a traveling/no-work year, so it feels you're fighting a straw man.

As well, all of it is easily discussable during interview, and my team and myself will not see any of these in a negative light.

2. >> "It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting."

Of course not. At the time of my post however, a lot of advice in comments was explicitly to lie and "Say you were in a startup / independent consulting / working on OSS / CTO even if you weren't, rather than admitting to gap / traveling year", and my reaction to them is: That lie will harm you much more than any honest discussion of the gap year.

So again, I feel we are talking past each other here a bit. I've been a contractor, I've been a consultant, and I'm a full-time employee now; I've taken a time to write a book/techmanual, I've run a photography business for a bit,and I've taken extended paternity leave; so I don't think my mind is trapped into thinking of employment as binary. But I do think honesty during interview is paramount - on my team, I don't care how good your technical or functional skillset is, if we cannot trust your integrity. I understand that this is a tricky position for the candidate as market at times rewards dishonesty; but I try to be convincingly upfront in what we're looking for.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#408

Post by toto444 »

obstacle1 wrote: post #308
hpoe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if you don't have a family to provide for. It turns out that it becomes a lot harder to take a gap year when you've still got a spouse and little people depending on you.

I don't see this as much different from "sure, if you don't have a million dollar mortgage and 2 car payments to cover!" Having a family is partially a financial decision. People should make the decision with eyes wide open, having planned for it. Achieving a financial position above sustenance before having the expensive family is generally a good idea. Same as buying the house and cars.

You are thinking from the point of view of someone with no mortgage, no family and you can choose what to do with your spare income. Some of us have a family or a house and that means they have renounced traveling.

You can have a family, a house be sustainable but not earning enough to be able to pay for a year off of work. Which is the lot of 99.99% of people on this planet.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#409

Post by SuoDuanDao »

malozite wrote: post #348
the_fire_friar wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the FIRE movement is going to see a huge surge. Financial Independence Retire Early

I find the FIRE movement fascinating but also slightly depressing. Among the actually old (my parents' generation - in their 60s and 70s) retirees I know, around half of those retiring from decent 'knowledge worker' jobs have kept on working part-time to some extent. They are consultants, advisers, board members, independent researchers, and so on. They seem to be very happy - they are working at something they are g…

I would suspect that the online communities skew a certain way that may not be reflective of the people actually doing it. One of the most well-known FIRE bloggers is known for saying that he is as active after retiring as he was before, but that he now gets to choose his projects - and despite his blog bringing in an income comparable to his pre-retirement income, blogging was not one of the major 'pulls' in his life after a while. I imagine people who spend a lot of time contributing to such forums may temperamentally enjoy the fantasy better than the reality.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#410

Post by jokoon »

jonfw wrote: post #355
jokoon wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not many such people, and everybody knows how to cook. Ready to eat meals are good enough, collective food preparation is good too. Not to mention fast food is generally of poor quality.

There are plenty of people building houses, growing food, and maintaining infrastructure like water treatment that directly contribute to sustaining life. And there are plenty of people in the industries that are required to support those people. I'm not saying they don't know how to cook- but I'm saying that the least the rest of society who aren't responsible for sustaining us can do is make life better for those w…

Depend on those people are treated. Minimum wage and work conditions matter. If it's not sustainable, it's just not, and you cannot argue that "work is mandatory" on the premise that some people should prepare food for others.
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