‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#221

Post by bregma » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #133

CPLX wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For companies who’s entire value is the intangible human capital of their workforce Yeah no. The core value of these companies is the fact that they’ve managed to establish a monopolistic position within an important high-margin market segment and now find themselves stewards of a massive money printing machine. Yes, eventually, without a competent workforce they’ll start to face threats and crisis, but I think you…

Reminds me of Research in Motion.

Who are still around, calling themselves BlackBerry, and have not yet declared their return-to-the-office policy.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#222

Post by GavinMcG » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

ItsMonkk wrote: post #175

achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

I experienced all of these to a much better degree during college. Are you sure you don't just want to live in a city that provides plenty of shared spaces? Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise.

It's unwise to rely exclusively on anything, but if I'm going to devote half my waking hours to something, I'd better be able to rely on it to provide more than just money to spend on the other half.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#223

Post by sg47 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

There are always H1Bs to abuse. They are going to do the employers' bidding. I think FAANGs will be fine.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#224

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

Keeping in mind the job market has been essentially frozen for over a year. We will likely see movements both ways (company making redundancies that were on hold because of the pandemic, and people making moves they couldn’t do because of hiring freezes). So the numbers may have little to do with return to the office.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#225

Post by adflux » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #193

achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

Sounds like you need some hobbies. Most of the things you state I get from my hobbies. Do you not live in a place with climate control? At home I make the temperature decisions not the facility folk.

Spoken like a true 1%er

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#226

Post by handrous » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

> For companies who’s entire value is the intangible human capital of their workforce, this seems like a pretty big fucking risk to take.

Which are those? I'd say e.g. Google's value has more to do with incumbent market position. Google and others (Facebook, for instance) derive a ton of value from access to massive amounts of data and scale-required-as-table-stakes advertising revenue that make it damn near impossible to compete with them unless you're already an enormous corporation, even on some minor product that's not part of their core business. Arguably, exclusive access to and ability to leverage data is much of Amazon's value. Microsoft's, too, increasingly.

Granted they need some number of competent people to keep that going in much the same way that any business does, but "entire value" is significantly overstating labor's case here, I'd say. Their historical-data moats and exclusive visibility into valuable data streams are what make them so damn hard to compete with. It'd be more accurate to say that their users are their entire value, than their human capital (though still wrong, I think).

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#227

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #15

I’m honestly perplexed what the FANGs are even thinking in being so aggressive about pushing an end to WFH. Sure it could all work out fine for them. Maybe employees will grumble for a bit, then settle back into office life. But maybe it wont’t . There’s a very real possibility that you lose a non-negligible percent of your staff (disproportionately the most talented who have other options), handicap your ability to…

it's just supply and demand of labor. when there's a vast oversupply of talented labor, you don't need to cater to the desires of that talent pool. there's a long list of potential candidates that would love to work at a FAANG even if they have to go back to the office.

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#228

Post by topkai22 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

ItsMonkk wrote: post #175

achow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a single, young: I miss the office for.. - Free and convenient food. - Social chatter & engagement. - Making friends with employees who I don't know and connecting with new employees. - Work life separation (balance). - Proper workstation, climate controlled environment. - Sense of belonging - team outing, after hours beers.. - Intra and inter company sports and games. - Meeting potential dates. [Not me. Just em…

I experienced all of these to a much better degree during college. Are you sure you don't just want to live in a city that provides plenty of shared spaces? Relying on your employer for these items seems unwise.

Work, like college, provides directed activity and identity to bond over. Just having shared space isn't the same. Finding/developing institutions that provide that and aren't work is difficult and will take time

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#229

Post by nerfhammer » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #224

Keeping in mind the job market has been essentially frozen for over a year. We will likely see movements both ways (company making redundancies that were on hold because of the pandemic, and people making moves they couldn’t do because of hiring freezes). So the numbers may have little to do with return to the office.

Yea I bet it's just everyone who would have changed jobs anyway over the previous 18 months feel safer doing it now

Re: ‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect

#230

Post by redisman » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

null_object wrote: post #12

I honestly don't know whether these articles are over-stating their case, and neither do I know how typical my own experience is, but for some reason it bothers me that the tone of the HN discussion is so reflexively dismissive. I understand that a lot of people will respond to a question of whether they intend to quit their job with a 'you bet!' even at the best of times, but I'm seeing a lot of people quitting and…

It’s also not just WFH. Covid made many people think hard about their lives with all the extra idle time they had and traumatic and world changing events tend to do that. I left my job in February because I realized I wasn’t happy and could do better. I had just slowly gotten used to the insanity but covid snapped me out of it