My opinion is that we need to move to four day work weeks and each day should have six working hours. Knowledge workers are wasting their lives at work when they could get the same amount done in fewer hours.
The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
31–40 of 264 posts
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#32> because the highest quit rate is among not engaged and actively disengaged workers. As opposed to what, exactly? What are you expecting to see? Highly engaged employees mass quitting? The situation described in this piece sounds fairly normal to me. People who aren't that fussed about their jobs, or actually dislike them, are always much more likely to quit. The real question is whether there has been an increase i…
I would argue that “not engaged” isn’t the worst thing in the world. The expectation that we devote our lives to work is one of the biggest things that dissolved during the pandemic. I am far less engaged at my job than I have been in years, which actually makes me better at it because I’m almost never stressed out anymore.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#33I wonder how much it has to do with vacations. Rationally I know I need a vacation, but I don't know what I'd do - and so I've taken long weekends here and there but never two weeks disconnected.
I stayed home and unplugged all work devices. I would just focus on your hobbies and improving your living situation or see your friends (Depending on where you live I know this can be hard for covid reasons). I took two weeks and I feel a lot better. Sometimes you just need to step away from the grind.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#3446% -> 48% That's not exactly a huge surge. Perhaps we're not seeing a big shift in worker attitudes, so much as we're seeing a big shift in what people are talking about right now.
Presumably they are only surveying people that are still employed so maybe that is the threshold at which people opt out.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
For employers it's game theory. If employees are commodities then it's better to keep the pay structure and have X amount of attrition than to pay everyone more to keep attrition low.
But if employees are commodities and companies can get away with thinking that way, that number is either inaccurate or everyone is getting it wrong.
I mean, I'm not these companies and I don't know the exact formula, but you'd be looking at things like the attrition rate, the cost of hiring, the cost of raises but also the value of wages across the whole market. There's some low-key collusion going on for sure (not necessarily outright collusion although some firms have been caught doing that too, but multiple firms all employing the same strategy keeps wages low for everyone). Now obviously developers do have enough leverage that they earn more than many professions, but it's obvious that many are under-valued.
If it truly were more expensive to hire than to give raises, more firms would be giving raises.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have a hard time believing this is accurate How does that follow? It certainly seems that spending $9K/year or less compared to coughing up 3 to 10 times that to hire proves that attention to retention is nowhere near that given to hiring.
But if it were accurate, wouldn't companies spend more effort on retention and engagement over hiring? This is a data point that I have seen claimed for years and years and yet companies don't act on it. Companies are either making a near universal error that has been well publicized at this point or the number is wrong and hiring is nowhere near that expensive. Amazon is a very data driven company. But they have no…
> But if it were accurate, wouldn't companies spend more effort on retention and engagement over hiring?
Retention and engagement are hard, complicated problems. The mindset that employees are interchangeable cogs with no real needs of their own—particularly psychological needs that have anything to do with the workplace—is still a very strong one in every sector of the American workplace. Even for those companies where management, as a whole, does genuinely understand that it benefits everyone to have engaged employees, if you ask 10 people "how do you keep employees engaged?" you'll get 12 different answers.
We're still just a few steps away from tenant farmers, sweatshops, and company towns. The fact that there's research that shows spending on retention is massively more effective than spending on hiring will take generations more to actually catch on amongst the American executive class...unless we can manage to pull together a serious union renaissance and demand the better conditions that will actually help everyone.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#37Interesting tidbit regarding Gallup: the Fortune 500 company I work for manipulates our surveys by asking general questions about the company and then holding the supervisors accountable for the results even if all of the questions are way out of their control. So they leverage the the employee-supervisor relationship to make it seem like there is more happiness and less discontent.
That being said, I find it hard to believe my company is the only one doing that, I even called Gallup about it and they did not seem to care. At all.
Imagine what the real numbers look like.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have a hard time believing this is accurate How does that follow? It certainly seems that spending $9K/year or less compared to coughing up 3 to 10 times that to hire proves that attention to retention is nowhere near that given to hiring.
But if it were accurate, wouldn't companies spend more effort on retention and engagement over hiring? This is a data point that I have seen claimed for years and years and yet companies don't act on it. Companies are either making a near universal error that has been well publicized at this point or the number is wrong and hiring is nowhere near that expensive. Amazon is a very data driven company. But they have no…
A few things:
1) Just like in Sales, on average it is cheaper _and_ marginally more profitable to retain an employee than to recruit a new one. This includes cost to recruit, interview, onboard, etc.
2) The exceptions here that throw off the average are those companies with strong inbound hiring pipelines (ex: Amazon will never have a shortage of applicants) that reduce the costs of recruiting + interviewing, and retaining high performers (e.g.: the cost of losing an upper-decile performer is much more significant.)
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#39> because the highest quit rate is among not engaged and actively disengaged workers. As opposed to what, exactly? What are you expecting to see? Highly engaged employees mass quitting? The situation described in this piece sounds fairly normal to me. People who aren't that fussed about their jobs, or actually dislike them, are always much more likely to quit. The real question is whether there has been an increase i…
I have some highly engaged coworkers who are in the process of burning out. I think they’re only still here because the entire company would crumble if they stopped.
Coworkers have commented that if we lose these people we are fucked, and I just keep thinking: can’t you see that they are already gone? You better make plans, because as soon as they go I’m splitting too.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#40I can’t imagine why people might be discontent… All that’s really being asked of us is to give up all our productive years in service to people with no ethics, to make them richer. People who are more than happy to use you up and toss your corpse on the pile when you die. Is that really too much? How dare you think you deserve something for your toils. Your masters have worked you incredibly hard — harder than you th…
Honestly, this sentiment is valid for most of the working class. But in our industry, it's not the majority of cases. I feel well compensated and not overworked.
Now, is my work fulfilling? No.