Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 342 posts

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#11

Post by dougmwne »

5 years ago I hit a burnout point and took a year off work. It was a huge perspective shift. I realized that my day-to-day of a rushed commute to work, a stressful and distracting office, thimble-deep coworker relationships and a life completely orientated around doing the above was an insane waste of my short time on Planet Earth. I reoriented my life around family, remote work, flexibility and balance. My quality of life has hugely improved and there is no turning back the clock.

When I saw what the pandemic was doing to nearly every professional office worker, I figured it was just a matter of time before the resignations started flooding in. Everyone had a whole year "pause" to reevaluate if their lives were organized around their goals, and for millions, the answer was no. There's no putting this genie back in the bottle.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#12

Post by kaycebasques »

I am on a 1 year sabbatical as of the start of this month. I wrote a "prologue" [1] summarizing my motivations, fears, and plans and I plan on posting an "epilogue" at the end to compare my expectations with the actual outcome.

[1] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#13

Post by mabbo »

I wonder how this might affect political measures. For decades, the measurements governments have used for themselves have mostly been economical. How's GDP? How's average income? How's productivity? And look at how my policies improved all of those numbers! You'd best re-elect me.

What will politicians do when the people whose votes they want care less and less about those things? In a perfect world, they might start selling themselves on measures that matter which aren't about how much money someone made.

A small cultural shift in the west away from economics as the religion of the masses would be, in my mind, a silver lining to this whole, awful pandemic.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#14

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

It's a new world. We'll have to see what rises from the ashes.

I think that a lot of the stressors were there, before COVID, but the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back.

As an older software engineer, I find the statement that "everyone wants devs" to be fairly amusing. I'm rather grateful that I don't need to work for a living. Instead, I'm working for free. I'm glad to have the tools that are available these days, and the means to afford them.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#15

Post by _dibly »

The first thing I said when the $600/week unemployment started rolling out was that people were going to realize how little they were being paid to work, and here we are. It's almost like they didn't know any better.

I'm sure the landscape is different for people already set in their careers or making some decent money, but everyone making minimum wage got to see how little $10/hr actually is.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#17

Post by streamofdigits »

There is no doubt that the pandemic has been a huge mental shock (and hopefully it will trigger overall more sustainable and meaningful behaviors). But sketching how the post-pandemic work landscape would look like seems extremely premature. People currently underappreciate the impact of government support at all levels. The sense of calm and control (or the absence of panic if you wish) is the result of an unprecedented intervention (which among others has demolished the brain-damaged neoliberal narrative).

Yet only after the government support gets withdrawn will we see how the diverse actors in the private economy sectors restore their eternal "games". To be continued...

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#18

Post by yetihehe »

heterodoxxed wrote: post #7
Riesling wrote: post #3

Inflation of specific asset prices is also playing into this. Money is losing its value. Try buying a house with a regular wage nowadays. Politicians, central banks and economic experts are sleeping at the helm.

Cheap wants, expensive needs. This is our economy now. "I love my iPhone, but I worry about health insurance." as I've heard it put here on HN. Ironically, the Soviet system fell from opposite. Expensive wants, cheap needs. Everyone saw the West getting cheaper and cheaper consumer goods and central planning failed to keep up. Now we get to see what happens.

Soviet system fell because there was not enough to even satisfy needs. There were always some shortages.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#19

Post by draw_down »

beforeolives wrote: post #10
lordnacho wrote: post #8

The first guy in the article is a dev. There's never been a better time to find work as a dev. Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before. On top of it all, if your firm wants people back in the office soon, now is the time to do loads of remote interviews so that you can keep being remote. I was interviewing recently and almost everyone is at least partly remote, with a huge number o…

> Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before. I'm in the UK and not seeing any of this.

Hilarious

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#20

Post by suketk »

dougmwne wrote: post #11

5 years ago I hit a burnout point and took a year off work. It was a huge perspective shift. I realized that my day-to-day of a rushed commute to work, a stressful and distracting office, thimble-deep coworker relationships and a life completely orientated around doing the above was an insane waste of my short time on Planet Earth. I reoriented my life around family, remote work, flexibility and balance. My quality o…

I had the same experience [0]. The tunnel vision from work is so strong, that you forget about what's really important. Now, the office feels like a past life - I do not miss the commute, unnecessary meetings or facade of comradery. Ideally I don't have ever to go back to work, but even if I do the perspective shift has made sure I'll do it in a more balanced way next time.

[0] https://suketk.com/why-i-quit-google

Post reply on HN