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

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281–290 of 342 posts

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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3 of America lives paycheck to paycheck. Taking a year off is definitely not the norm

Most people pay $100+/month for cable, eat out multiple times per week, have thousands of credit card debt, and an unexpected $400 bill would ravage them. If you want to live a un-average life, you need to have un-average priorities and sacrifice. Few on HN should be living paycheck to paycheck. Check out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover for a starting model. And yes, you'll have to sacrifice now to benefit later.

Do you actually know anyone like this, or are you basing this off of what cable news personalities say?

I know plenty of people with no cable, no Internet other than their phone, living paycheck to paycheck... This idea that poor people just need to stop wasting their money is propaganda used to justify starvation wages

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

#282

Yeah I think it's a major transition for both employees and employers to figure out where to go from here. I suspect the best thing for people looking for new work is to find something that matches your values. As a startup founder, I started Earth Wallet around these core values - Creating a Better Planet, Innovating & Evolving, and Trust & Respect. If anyone believes in these values, we offer a flexible, remote-fri…

So not to single you out, but I've been seeing a lot of pitches from recruiters recently, and after a few interviews where afterwards the recruiter circles back and clarifies "so by remote-friendly we mean they will let you work from home maybe once or twice a week, instead of never, is that okay?", or "it's remote...but only until labor day" (what all companies have deemed 'post-covid' apparently). So I'm quickly learning to avoid jobs that advertise themselves as 'remote-friendly'.

If you're 100% remote or 'remote except a couple of optional team building events' or 'remote except come into the office once every month or two', I would be very specific and say so, and not just say 'remote-friendly' or 'remote-flexible' (even just saying 'remote' is starting to be suspicious), because those terms seem to have morphed into a signal that the opposite is true.

Also, if your company was remote before the pandemic, you should also say that, because that gives me reason to believe it will stay that way, instead of being another bait-and-switch "we're 100% remote!...for a few more months".

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

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called the myth of overconsumption. It creates a simple fairy tale that financial success or failure rests solely on the individual. It allows people to ignore wage stagnation, inflation, rising costs of critical goods and services, rising inequality, and fundament structural inequities with society. Here's a more in-depth academic paper that provides data beyond unsourced colloquialisms if you're interested.…

And this is the myth of "The Man is keeping me down". It allows people to ignore that their choices are by far the biggest factor in what happens in their lives, and instead allows them blame society and take no responsibility.

Your unsourced colloquialisms is a pretty tone deaf response to this comment, but I guess you're demonstrating their point, good job

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most are speaking about themselves with variations of "must be nice!" Not necessarily. It's called empathy. And your lifeguard story makes no sense.

A drowning victim will instinctively push the rescuer under the water, so the rescuer must have a secure flotation device. It was (probably still is) taught to pull the rescue-e to land by having the victim facing away with your arm around their neck and under the armpit facing away. This is to keep them from drowning you. This is also biblical - take the splitter out of your own eye before you take the splinter out…

I know that. But it is not apparent why that was relevant to the conversation.

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

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that Brexit is the cause of something based on one's experience with clients, expressed in a way that suggests that it did not positively or negatively affect themselves in any way, does not strike me as particularly bitter, but suit yourself.

It is phrased as 'it is your own fault' ( Y'all have to thank ). How is that not bitter.

First, nothing about "y'all have to thank" suggests that they consider the person they are responding to responsible for Brexit, which is a requirement for it to imply that they are putting some sort of blame on the person (or the collective group they represent).

But let's for the sake of it accept that "it's your own fault" is what was meant by it anyway. That still doesn't imply bitterness.

If parents explains to their child not to run with scissors because they might hurt themselves, the child does so anyway and ends up hurting themselves, and one of the parents says in-between consoling their child "but do you see how you only have yourself to blame for it, if you decided to do this anyway after we warned you this would happen?", then that might not be the most considerate timing for sharing a harsh truth, but there's nothing bitter about the statement.

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

#286
Im a senior dev in the US and my company just said we have to come back full time in the office. This is even after we've had record revenue months.

I would be totally fine with hybrid, but they said they investigated that and decided against it (don't know why). I'm looking around at my alternatives, but the pay is just not there for both hybrid and remote. So I dont know where all this demand is, unless it's the same demand that's always there when they won't pay people anything. I may end up taking a pay cut just to do hybrid/remote which is really sad, but my well being may be worth it.

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

#287

You know, I was just at Walmart, where they only had one cashier. I heard a group of people complain about how "no one wanted to work anymore" not one of them moved to the self-checkout line when a bunch of them opened up.

Those people probably wanted to pay with cash. Walmart self-checkouts[0] switched to electronic payment only[1] when the national coin crisis hit in June 2020[2].

[0] https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/06/30/new-checko...

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Walmart-self-checkout-register...

[2] https://www.frbservices.org/news/communications/063020-feder...

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

#288
post #60

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…

People have been saying this since I was in high school post dot com bubble burst. “Don’t get into IT or software development it’s all going to be outsourced.”

[deleted]

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

#290
post #131
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to sound like a know it all, but I managed to save a lot of money living in a big city in a grad student stipend, which is about $25k. It can be done. I spent very little biking, cooking from home, buying used, having roommates, not drinking, not buying much. There are exceptions like kids and chronic health issues but most people could save a lot more money if they wanted. I say this without judgment, p…

This really needs a time frame. $25k in a big city means different things depending on era. The curves of wage growth, cost of living, and wealth disparity didn't start to diverge so wildly until the 2000s. This took a lot of people by surprise and people whose experiences diverge by era aren't always aware of how quickly things changed for other people. Someone who graduated in 2005 will often have a completely diff…

I graduated college in 2012, grad school the following 6 years.
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