Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#431

Post by cableshaft » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

claytonjy wrote: post #420

cableshaft wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone curious, since I turned that on 7 hours ago I've gotten 7 recruiters that have messaged me, and most look like pretty decent fits for my experience, better than the random messages I usually get (and I usually only get a few that reach out each month). Guess I should have done this sooner.

That's great! I sent a few cold applications through workatastartup.com, but I mostly just updated my profile there and on LinkedIn, and flipped the switch to "tell recruiters I'm open" on the latter. I had a similar experience to you on LI. I wasn't particular desperate for a new gig, so I aimed high on salary range. At first I was told I was too expensive, but a couple weeks in I had plenty of options at or above m…

I'm trying to shoot for the moon, but yeah, so far I keep getting told it's too expensive. Sounds like this 'labor shortage' is definitely just companies don't want to pay, or haven't gotten the memo yet.

I'm still getting told ranges I expected to see two years ago for senior engineers (like pre-pandemic, where Chicago's market just kinda sucks compared to elsewhere and if you're here there's almost no remote jobs elsewhere to get higher compensation, but now there is), not even for principal engineers, which some of these roles are for.

And yet I've had about 25 recruiters reach out to me in the past few days. So there's got to be a lot of demand out there.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#432

Post by acituan » Wed, Jun 16, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #422

acituan wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop the sarcasm, it's annoying and obfuscates the dialogue. WFH employees get paid too, we're talking about the differences between costs of WFH and WFO externalized to the employee, which are not trivial e.g. commute, access to wider and cheaper housing market, all the associated stresses etc.

As a manager it seems to me that WFH externalises one of the most expensive costs to employees: office space. I think you’re being naive if you think that BigCorps aren’t thinking about how to turn this to their advantage.

> As a manager it seems to me that WFH externalises one of the most expensive costs to employees: office space.

I would agree on principle but there is a circularity here. The cost of own housing used as office space is directly related to how expensive the housing was. In Bay Area the marginal cost of a 3rd bedroom could be $XXXk while anywhere else it can easily an order of magnitude less. Then it is not necessarily as the most expensive item anymore.

The more office time employers demand, the more spatially concentrated the work force is going to be housed, which will increase the cost of that extra bedroom.

Turns out concentrating the work force is also aligned with the sunken real estate investments those BigCorps had undertaken. You can bet as we look higher in the corporate hierarchy, the likelihood of personal real estate investments increase too. So it is a balancing act of those influences vs. the projected attrition rate of the workforce, who mostly did actually like WFH. That's how we landed on the unstable-as-hell equilibrium of hybrid WFH-WFO for now.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#433

Post by rmetzler » Thu, Jun 17, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #183

chillel wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how that's an obvious option for everyone else too! /s

I have a hard rule on myself - if the commute is more than about 20-30 minutes or particularly unpleasant, I must change jobs or move house. Life is too short to spend such a huge part of it in a commute you don't enjoy.

Yeah, my wife has a 10 minute commute by bike. I make her change her job, so I can be nearer to mine.

No, sorry, it’s great where I live. Great nature around the corner, everything walkable, still a town with restaurants, but there aren’t that many interesting full stack dev and devops jobs and they didn’t pay as good. So, I’ll stay remote as long as I can.

Re: Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead

#434

Post by aksss » Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #430

aksss wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said anything about "stop having children" (good night!) - back to reality: I think the established pattern for countries joining the developed world is large economic growth/dev, followed by baby boom, followed by declining rates of reproduction until under the replacement value. This happens not only because of changing priorities of a wealthier population and changing behaviors, but also the availability of…

my entire point is that such determinism is illusory and your example wrong in every way there are direct factors that explain away TFR drops that are not "prosperity" - in fact prosperity alone has historically increased TFR pretty much every time drastic drops in fertility rates in Europe and North America respond to very specific cultural phenomena that are unlikely to happen in a similar fashion in Africa or the…

I think you're still missing the idea that after the growth phase which triggers a boom in population, that sustained prosperity after the growth spurt is when TFR starts falling off.

Look at any given developed society today (characterized by long-term peaceful stability and general prosperity, development of professional classes, liberalization of gender roles, shifts away from field work) and you'll see TFR falling below replacement levels. This isn't a "western" phenom, you can see it in Korea and Japan as well, for example.

It's simply practical economic decisions by individuals - kids cost a crap ton of attention and money, and when the risks of them dying have decreased (lower mortality due to medical care, less war/violence) and the obligation to reproduce is lowered (changing gender roles, birth control availability, women having options for professional careers), and kids are less useful as labor units, you get fewer of them. Predictably. Across hemispheres.

I suspect your examples are all "developing" countries, not "developed" but you've thus far only referred to nebulous regions and continents. Interested in a specific example of a developed country that has not exhibited this pattern.