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“Great resignation” wave coming for companies

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Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#671

Post by jghn »

foobiekr wrote: post #631
geekster777 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May not be enough to pull the trigger, but definitely enough to transition down to a part time or remote web dev gig in a low cost of living area. Once you have such a net worth secured, you just have to keep from pulling from it for a few years while it compounds. The big thing is that around 900k is when you get diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations. Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $…

I’ve never understood this logic. If you’re going to be working, why take a significant pay cut? It’s not like other lower tier jobs are actually that much less work; you’re working with less skilled people in general and often poor management. This is the coastfire philosophy and it makes no sense. You could work a a few more years at high-paying miserable job or an extra decade at low-paying probably miserable job.

There exist many jobs/fields where the pay is below top market but could scratch the person's personal itches. Non-profits, research, etc.

At a former job we could not pay anywhere near top of the market and yet we attracted decent talent as the mission was something that resonated with many people. One category of people we'd attract were those who had already made enough money that they didn't have to focus on that, and now just wanted to do good in the world.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#672

Post by asdff »

michaelt wrote: post #93
sokoloff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not passionately anti-crypto, but moving some of our best minds from ads to crypto[currencies/tokens] is not an obvious triumph to me.

What if they were moving from adtech?

From snake oil to snake oil.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#673

Post by passivate »

jason0597 wrote: post #334
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 It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm about to FIRE, no big problem". Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio to live off of. Be grateful for what you have achieved! > Suddenl…

Why limit it to the US; there is always going to be someone who is worse off than you on the planet. I think its possible to be grateful that you're not that person, but also complain about things that affect you from time to time. :)

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#674

Post by asdff »

softwaredoug wrote: post #416

Nobody is mentioning people leaving jobs because they DONT want remote. I do know of people frustrated that their company is closing its swanky office they enjoyed working at to be 100% remote.

If your office is basically a clubhouse, I can see how you could be miffed about getting the same salary at home but none of the benefits you used to have, and now have to make more space in your home for working environment, buying more food out of your pay for lunch or snacks or coffee, faster internet, printer ink, etc.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#675

Post by hvocode »

I'm sure somewhere in the big pile of comments someone else is saying this, but as another voice saying it:

1. The pandemic was weird, and likely a time when people didn't want to change jobs due to a need for stability. It seems like it would be normal to see a wave of job changes that have been basically on hold until people felt safe.

2. I'm assuming some people have had more of a chance than normal to think more about what they want out of their life and jobs over the last 18 months. For some people, this means they might make a job change that they didn't anticipate making in January 2020.

3. It's one thing to threaten to leave, and a whole other thing to actually do it. I've had co-workers who were "ready to quit" for my whole career, some of whom are still at the jobs they were ready to quit a decade+ later.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#676

Post by Matumio »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #332
dreen wrote: post #7

Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. edit: thank you…

Obviously "the West" is a big place and there are lots of cultures and in-groups within it. I can tell you as a non-elite, middle-class American that I've almost never heard of someone taking a gap year after beginning professional work. The one case that comes to mind was an ex's father who was burnt out on his accountant career. He took a year to follow his dreams on music-related stuff, which didn't pan out in ter…

As an European tech-sphere data point: it seems somewhat normal to travel the world for half a year before your first job. Gap time later on is not so common. Still, I can easily name five colleagues who took one to six months off, some as unpaid vacation, some between jobs.

Personally, six weeks sounds more like an extra-long vacation. I always took four to six months off before looking for a new job, or when on-job an unpaid month or two every other year. But that's definitively nowhere near the norm, many people don't understand it. I usually end up coding 20h per week on geek projects or random open source stuff. After six months I predictably get bored with it.

I rarely end up doing the project I planned to do. So if you want any advice from me: Don't force yourself to do what you thought you wanted to do, before you had time. Look around and don't feel guilty for following that new interest you just discovered.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#677

Post by lotsofpulp »

asdff wrote: post #662
lotsofpulp wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing that these lower than average skill level people make companies that earn the highest profits, and have the highest wages.

Is that surprising? You can cook up an electron app after a few tutorials and two weeks time. All you have to do is sell a product, the product can be junk if you can convince your buyers otherwise. Charisma gets more funding than technical expertise, because consumers buy on charisma.

Consumers are not buying iPhones because of charisma. They are not using Gmail because of charisma.

Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "lower than average skill".

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#678

Post by MisterBastahrd »

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…

COVID hasn't made people miserable in their jobs.

COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save about $2500 in gas alone.

And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a software development veteran, professional in their day to day activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the office would require.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#679

Post by asdff »

jonfw wrote: post #141
jokoon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all jobs are equal in term of necessity. Food, shelter, electricity, water, you don't need a lot of people to work those jobs. Punishing unproductive people and encourage them to work in fast food or other wage-slaving do not make sense. The main argument is UBI.

Here's the pro fast food take. There are productive people working jobs that have massive necessity, and they need to eat. The least somebody who isn't productive can do is help feed them.

I worked in fast food for several years and the job is terrible. The fundamental problem with this job and others like it are the fact that you can bust your ass day in and day out and see no benefit to your work. It's like groundhog day where every singe day you work there is exactly the same until you finally quit.

I think what would really improve a job like fast food is if workers were part owners of their franchise. Most fast food restaurants are franchises owned by one person or a local corporation that owns several franchises. Putting ownership into the workers hands would mean profit sharing, it would mean when you bust ass over the hot grill working a double shift or cleaning shit and blood from the walls in the bathroom, you are actually rewarded for the increased demand on the restaurant. It would be like a built in hazard pay for when things got busy and stressful and awful. At least benefits would be nice, I know several people who burned their forearms really bad on the fryer.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#680

Post by rootusrootus »

akiselev wrote: post #574
rubicon33 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting that software salaries are artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas developers. The second this changes, the bottom drops out of software. I don't know if it will ever happen that big companies begin openly accepting overseas applicants but if/when it does, you can expect that it wont be for 100k. Suddenly when you consider the entire plane…

> It is worth noting that software salaries are artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas developers. Because it's been tried before and for the most part it was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project after being outbid a year earlier by a…

Overall I agree with you, and my experience has been similar, but I think the comparison with outsourcing is not correct.

I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested entities whose incentives did not align well. Not necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding were bad.

Back to the guy in Argentina -- I imagine that he/she is actually in a reasonably good position as the amount of remote work increases. Indians not so much, because they are 12.5 hours ahead (of Pacific time). Argentina is only 4 hours ahead, which makes for a lot more overlap.

So I think the field has leveled a little bit in that sense, because if you have a remote developer in another state, they are not very different than one in another country who happens to be in a similar time zone. The other big barrier IMO is communication, so someone in Argentina who is not merely fluent in English but speaks it very clearly could be in a really strong position.

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