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The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

gallup.com

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Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#141

Post by samirillian »

Funny to think about this as a kind of passive revolt. COVID-19 response: failure, no exit, trapped; BLM: failure, no exit, trapped. Amazon unionization vote: failure, no exit, trapped. Going full remote, working from your castle instead of theirs, feeling the "great resignation," a large percentage of the population suddenly realize, perhaps because everyone is so very online, and very online people often care a lot about the proletariat, that their employers are so fucked without them. And then you realize this formula:

> Replacing workers requires one-half to two times the employee's annual salary. So, it costs $9,000 a year to keep each disengaged worker and between $25,000 and $100,000 to replace them.

Does the right-libertarian dream merge with the Marxist dream, and everyone "gets wise" to what this calculus means for wage and equity negotiation, if we just keep holding the line, that we know what we're worth, what our time is worth to place Facebook pixels on websites, and we won't work for less.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#142

Post by daxfohl »

k4ch0w wrote: post #33
mindvirus wrote: post #8

I 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.

Yeah, I basically just want my family to take a vacation while I stay home and chill for a few days.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#143

Post by pattyj »

cratermoon wrote: post #124
pattyj wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The greed and selfishness of my managers are significant factors in determining who I want to work for/with. And why I'm so grateful I can work with people I am friends with outside of work. But I understand this is difficult, even impossible, to know during the interview process.

> during the interview process I think assuming management is greedy and selfish until proven otherwise is a good way to approach interviewing. Negotiating compensation will give lots of clues. Ask for more money, or a different TC structure and see what happens. For comparison, ask for something that doesn't cost anything.

Sure. I was thinking about large enough companies where you may not be negotiating directly with your day-to-day workmates.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#144

Post by flavius29663 »

planet-and-halo wrote: post #106
flavius29663 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're the only firm providing stability, your investments in that in the short term might make you less competitive on pay You're contradicting yourself here. Above you were saying that the way to keep employees is to give them proper raises, and thus enhance stability. How come greater stability equals less competitive pay?

Yeah sorry, I was writing it on the fly right before a meeting and just dumped my thoughts out. I think I was thinking something like this: If you spend money internally on promotes, you'll have less money to compete in the market for new hires. Therefore you might get some indicators that things aren't working, for example you might lose out on desirable candidates in the short term. Also retention might be a laggin…

> you'll have less money to compete in the market for new hires

Why would that be the case? We already established that the company would pay industry level salaries to new hires and existing employees alike. Moreover, because you have less turnover, you need to hire less, so you have less wasted money on hiring and training.

All in all, I just fail to understand why companies don't value existing employees more. I think it's the fact that they take advantage of people's aversion to change and interviews. They rely on people NOT going to interviews.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#145

Post by mrRandomGuy »

slumdev wrote: post #118
oxymoran wrote: post #37

Interesting 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…

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

AKA "we spent way too much on the lease for you to just work from home pleb"

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#146

Post by shadowwolf007 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #40
srswtf123 wrote: post #24

I 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.

On the flip side, the only time I've ever felt like my work was fulfilling and valuable was when was under-compensated and insanely overworked (like 80 hours was a pretty reasonable work week).

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#147

Post by axguscbklp »

iammisc wrote: post #135
axguscbklp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that this attitude is the minority? I can easily go have fun with people outside of work, so I have no incentive to put up with the annoying parts of office work just to get to interact with people.

Well you have to work, so it's better to do it with people you like. Obviously, if you didn't have to work, you wouldn't work just to see office mates. But if you do have to work, slogging away in a common place with friends is more compelling than sitting behind a computer.

>But if you do have to work, slogging away in a common place with friends is more compelling than sitting behind a computer.

Not for me. When it comes to work, I would rather sit behind a computer at home and talk with my friends on another computer at the same time than sit behind a computer at an office and talk with my friends there in person.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#148

Post by g_sch »

Can anyone make heads or tails of the chart with the survey numbers? I'm having a hard time understanding how "Engaged/Disengaged" maps to the question they ask ("To what extent are you currently looking for a different job than the one you have now?"), why "Not Engaged" (which would presumably be a superset of the "Actively Disengaged" group) has lower numbers than "Actively Disengaged", and why no combinations seem to sum to anywhere near 100%. Extremely confusing all around!

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#149

Post by boston_clone »

superfrank wrote: post #123
onelastjob wrote: post #31

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.

> Knowledge workers are wasting their lives at work when they could get the same amount done in fewer hours. I'm curious what job you have. I'm a SWE who is in the process of moving into a manager role. As an IC, I am 100% certain that I could get the same amount of work done in a 24 hour work week. In fact, I was probably working less than that already and still meeting my deadlines and getting great reviews. As a m…

Based off my interactions with my current management and my previous role where I straddled the line of IC and manager, the biggest identifiable time suck has always been meetings. Too long, too many, not well-enough defined agendas (or no agenda at all!), no action items, etc. Does that sound accurate? I'm curious as to where else the time could go.

I also do believe that this is somewhat intentional; to keep people too busy to think freely and effectively, so that a status quo is maintained.

Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'

#150

Post by MR4D »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #121
slumdev wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

How many days per week do you want to spend in the office versus work from home? (A) Seven in office (B) Six in office (C) Five in office, seven evenings plus two days WFH (D) Please replace me

(E) I have COVID and am going into the office to screw the company over.

Will be interesting to see if this choice happens.

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