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

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

#71

Post by cableshaft »

mjburgess wrote: post #42
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. It depends on what is being manufactured. We manufacture big, expensive things. I have friends that run Garment District companies, and they are pretty much a Bellwether for this kind of thing. > In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation. I agree. It will be slower than Japan and Korea, because China has a much larger population of poor folks t…

I suspect, based on a type of ecological-thermodynamic reasoning, that china will never be middle class. I think the "global class structure" we have today might be the peak of history. The relevant calculation: Annual US Energy Consumption per Capia: 7,000 kg oil equivalent. China: 2,000 kg. So you're looking at +5,000kg per capita * 1.4bn people annual . So you'll need to add that energy capacity to the world, ie.,…

Oh, we'll do it. And then everyone will die off or be living near the Arctic Circle or in Antartica. But by golly, we'll get it done.

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

#72

Post by nobodyandproud »

ud_0 wrote: post #27

I'm one of these. I'm an allrounder software dev in his late fourties, "lured" into a non-software middle management position by the promise of money and stability a few years ago. In practice, the money has never materialized because our sector took a big hit and much of that promise was tied to incentives based on the company's success. I can't really blame anyone for this, but that's strike one as far as job satis…

I’m in a similar boat where upper-management is completely out of touch.

For us WFH is an option because it boosts productivity: People often end up working later.

Leading a high-performance team, I should be able to do team-wide things as a reward to boost morale and combat burn out.

Yet here I am, seriously contemplating leaving.

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

#73

Post by jeffrallen »

I keep waiting for one of these stories where the journalist writes, "We tried contacting a labor economist for their take on this trend, but they all quit." Or even better, "Editor's note: we assigned this story on people quitting dead end jobs to our journalist, but he quit before he finished it."

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

#74

Post by lowercased »

ud_0 wrote: post #27

I'm one of these. I'm an allrounder software dev in his late fourties, "lured" into a non-software middle management position by the promise of money and stability a few years ago. In practice, the money has never materialized because our sector took a big hit and much of that promise was tied to incentives based on the company's success. I can't really blame anyone for this, but that's strike one as far as job satis…

"...for a man in my age group, with no significant savings or other safety net, this is extremely scary"

I'm sorry you are in this situation. I applaud your self-awareness, and suspect you have enough skills and discipline to turn this around in the next few years. You may never get to the point of having millions tucked away for retirement, but do hope you can get to a point where you do have 'significant savings'. I'd measure that by your measure of 'extremely scary'.

My wife and I have no kids, so 'saving' has been somewhat easier 'by default' than some of our peers. That said, it's not automatic, and I know plenty of folks who are high earners who will manage to spend it all without 'significant savings' to speak of.

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

#75

Post by _dibly »

bluedino wrote: post #54
_dibly wrote: post #15

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.

It ends on Sept 1st so we'll see how things go then.

Where I live, the $300 from the federal gov’t continues until early September but the $300 from the state ends this month, I could be wrong but I assume it’s going to differ moderately from state to state.

At any rate, a lot of people I know that quit have already found or started looking for a different job. Most people aren’t looking to keep living off the system so much as they are looking to find a job that doesn’t pay them _and_ treat them like dirt. Social services companies around here are literally offering $1000+ referrals because they can’t keep group homes staffed or run any community interactions. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that it’s not just about the handouts, it’s about people realizing how atrocious their working conditions were and not wanting to put up with it anymore.

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

#76

Post by granshaw »

mehphp wrote: post #62
vincentmarle wrote: post #9

This is admirable but the truth is that these jobs will not disappear, they will simply be outsourced abroad. There’s swaths of competent people abroad that are happy to take your (overpaid) place and the major shift to remote work tools has made it all the easier to blend in your team even if they’re working from another country. On top of this, foreign workers usually get paid 1/3 of the American salary, so the emp…

> There’s swaths of competent people abroad that are happy to take your (overpaid) place How is it overpaid? Engineers provide a lot more value than they are getting paid. If anything, people abroad are underpaid.

I’m on a slack channel with other startup founders and just this week I was seeing chatter about how asking rates for Eastern EU devs were skyrocketing lately

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

#77

Post by hypertele-Xii »

bamboozled wrote: post #28
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…

Nice you have the option

Imagine living in a society where basic income is guaranteed no matter what, and even its worst places - its prison cells - compare favorably to the finest hotels of other countries. You have so many options you feel constantly overwhelmed, stressing about making bad choices because everything your primitive heart could ever desire is not merely available, but plentiful and cheap. And it'll recruit you if you're not careful. Money fails to motivate when you have enough of it regardless. Life wants meaning.

Imagine having all the time in the world, just thinking about everything. Your whole life.

What would you do?

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

#78

Post by kaycebasques »

foobarbecue wrote: post #51
kaycebasques wrote: post #45

On a tangential note, it really feels like we continue to live in a historic time. Maybe it's a completely personal experience but it just seems like so many basic societal assumptions are getting meaningfully challenged or brought into focus. The pandemic panic and subsequent lockdowns focused our relationships with other humans. The racism protests also. The "inner temple" of the US empire getting breached/"violate…

Aren't all times historic? What would you consider the least historic decade?

A decade is too big of a window. It's tough to pick one decade over another but I do think I could pick one year out of every decade over the others. To put my thought another way, if you think of society as a system, you've got a short period where the rules are being changed, and then we let the system run its course for multiple years. Eventually there are some gross inefficiencies that become too big to ignore and we have another short period where the rules are changed again, and so on.

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

#79

Post by loloquwowndueo »

bamboozled wrote: post #28
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…

Nice you have the option

Don’t you? Why not? Because of financials? Job availability in your region?

There’s always an option. It might entail a more extensive change and change is hard, that’s for sure.

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

#80

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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 figured it was just a matter of time before the resignations started flooding in

The headline and the anecdote in the opening paragraph of the article are somewhat misleading. The statistics about millions of people resigning aren’t from people choosing to leave the workforce or take sabbaticals.

It’s mostly people who are simply changing jobs due to the booming economy creating new opportunities and hiring pressure. Millions sounds like a big number, but in a country with hundreds of millions of people it’s only a couple percent of the workforce. Even during normal times, a million or more people resign according to these statistics, again mostly to change jobs.

To put it in perspective: The normal turnover rate is in the 1-2% range (monthly) and the current post-COVID spike is in the 2-3% range, which is consistent with a booming economy. That means only about an additional 1% of workers are choosing to change jobs each month, which isn’t exactly the upheaval this article makes it sound like.

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