Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gallup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 264 posts

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

#151

Post by norov »

mgh2 wrote: post #43
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…

This is a consequence on a shift in society's values and culture: https://m-g-h.medium.com/why-we-are-dispensable-7a577eba4f3e

That article cannot be read unless you install their app or create an account.

A shift in society's values indeed.

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

#152

Post by basseq »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #14
MattGaiser wrote: post #6

> $9,000 a year to keep each disengaged worker and between $25,000 and $100,000 to replace them. Given how job tenure has plummeted over the years, I have a hard time believing this is accurate. Does anyone know a place where retention efforts come anywhere close to hiring efforts?

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.

The "$9,000 to keep" figure is the cost to keep a disengaged worker on top of their salary. This is the 18% of lost productivity against a $50k average salary. (Which suggests $50k of value creation in a given year dropping to $41k.)

The article doesn't address pay as a way to increase engagement—and thus decrease attrition. Indirectly, the article suggests that increasing pay wouldn't actually have that much effect, with the real benefit coming from managers "who give workers a sense of purpose, inspiration and motivation to perform".

Mathematically, you would need every 2% of average "retention" raise to yield a 1% drop in retention rate to break even, notwithstanding that 18% productivity drop.

Put another way, it's not about employees being commodities. It's about (generally) pay-for-retention programs NOT ONLY failing, but in the worst case negatively affecting those people who are engaged by forcing them to continue to interact with disengaged people who decided to stick around a little longer.

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

claudiulodro wrote: post #105
agent327 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? >Yes? Surely you understand the logistical problem this brings: if you get given free shit, there must also be a party who is giving free shit. Let's say you live on an island with just one other person. You are both entitled to free shit, but somebody has to put in the work to get the shit. Should the other person work to get his own shit and your shit, or s…

I believe the "through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State" line covers that situation.

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by dbsmith83 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #58
newfriend wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but what's the alternative exactly? Force people who do actually work, produce, create, etc to pay for people who think working is beneath them? Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? If you don't want to work for someone else, then start a business. If you don't want to work at all, then figure out how you're going to live. No one is forcing you to do anything.

> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Yes? > Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. > No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. > Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organizati…

I think you misread the whole thing you posted. It literally talks about the right to work and the right to leisure with respect to reasonable working hours. I don't see any right to just sit on your ass and consume things.

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

#155

Post by bwb »

Question, how much of this is American culture of working people 50+ hours with no life balance? I wonder if everyone had 4 weeks paid vacation and strict 40 hour weeks how much of this would be occurring.

That doesn't fix bad bosses or bad culture in an organization. But at least it means you are not in that environment 24/7.

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

#156

Post by lotsofpulp »

cratermoon wrote: post #92
logosmonkey wrote: post #48

Pay me well, provide good benefits, allow a flexible work schedule where I can work when I want to and still get day to day life stuff done and hire enough people so I can consistently work only the 40 hours you are actually paying me for. My current job does that and I love it. When something critical comes up I'm happy to work over a weekend to hit a deadline because I know my manager will comp me back time when I…

> When something critical comes up The problem: everything looks 'critical' to folks with a greedy and selfish streak who rise high in management and have their pay tied to the quarterly stock price. That's how we ended up with 24/7 support and "five nines" availability. I'm old enough to remember that banks opened late and closed early, didn't operate on weekends or holidays, and if you didn't get your paycheck cash…

>The problem: everything looks 'critical' to folks with a greedy and selfish streak who rise high in management and have their pay tied to the quarterly stock price. That's how we ended up with 24/7 support and "five nines" availability.

I think it was because customers preferred to patronize banks and stores that were open longer hours, and so they won business by selling something customers wanted. Similarly, I thought customers liked 24/7 support and five nines availability (especially for internet and electricity).

If labor prices go up, then maybe those perks will be scaled back because customers will not be able to afford them. I already see fast food restaurants around me no longer open before 11AM and after 7PM.

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

#157

Post by serial_dev »

mrRandomGuy wrote: post #145
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.

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

I honestly think it comes down to this in the majority of the cases.

"Look, we have a two-years contract where we pay X thousand dollars a month for 100 desks and we have on an average day 3 developers in our office. After one year of lockdowns, we know our developers work at least as well from home as from the office, but higher ups ask us why we pay so much for an empty building, so we will force you come back to the office as soon as we can, even if we don't save any money with that and most likely decrease our efficiency and employee satisfaction."

I live in Germany and that's more or less what's happening at my company as we speak. Nobody complained about our performance or said they wished the company would enforce "work from office" rules, yet, they already try to slowly increase the days where we need to work from the office.

In my opinion, once a month in the office is great for chatting and connecting with people, but when it comes to work output, it doesn't move the needle, it's actually a day lost to the business.

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

#158

Post by Jetrel »

bscvbscv wrote: post #11
cblconfederate wrote: post #3

> To engage workers, managers must fulfill the 12 essential elements of engagement Hm. There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. And with a years long pandemic and uncertain future, to work or not to work? Work for what purpose? No level of engaging is enough if people can see through the ruse. If anything i d expect more people to go solo

> few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. Humans have been doing "boring" work their whole lives for millions of years, it has never been a problem. The problem is that people are working for organizations that are DOING HARM to them and their people. Not only is their work not productive, it is destructive. Not only is their work meaningless, but it endeavors to undermine meaning itself.

Yeah. This right here.

The problem with corporate america isn't that the work is boring; it's that for most jobs it's actually evil at some point in the pipeline. (To use a metaphor - you're still morally culpable if you're carrying boxes of bullets to the soldiers doing the actual killing). Almost no matter what industry you're in, whether it's shoes, or batteries, or electronics, you know that somewhere on the other side of the world, actual slavery is providing materials and labor for what you're selling, and you really wonder why we can't all mutually agree to make that illegal.

There are very few professions (often stuff like medicine, teaching, etc) where someone can sit back and think "yeah, my day job is a net positive for humanity".

It's hard enough to cope with when something is a decent "material good" on its own - like if you're selling shoes (virtually all of which get made in sweatshops), at least you have the pride in the fact that shoes are a necessity. It sucks that slavery was involved in making them, but at least you know people are getting genuinely good clothing out of it.

But when you don't have that - when you are, say, working in market analysis or advertising, and you realize your job isn't actually making anything or filling any material need - or even just bringing people joy, yeah, it's a bit worse than being meaningless. You're flushing the best years of your life down the toilet to make a little more money for some private equity firm. Great.

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

#159

Post by valesco »

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.

What if the interviewer is looking for a true teammate and is put off by your attitude, and thinks you are greedy and selfish, a mercenary? You lose that good job with a test that lumps together the best and the worst actors.

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

#160

Post by lotsofpulp »

planet-and-halo wrote: post #46
Mikeb85 wrote: post #14

Earlier 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.

I think I finally figured part of this out. Like you said, employers treat workers as commodities. This worked out great for them in the short term, as they saved money by not giving raises etc. In the long term, though, workers started realizing they often had to go back to the market to get meaningful pay raises. Now you have a situation where workers are switching as often as every 12-24 months, and the thing not…

>In the long term, though, workers started realizing they often had to go back to the market to get meaningful pay raises.

This has always been known. There simply was less demand for the labor that some workers were selling to get meaningful pay raises. Now that those supply and demand curves are shifting, especially in favor for those at the bottom of the pay scale, they have the option of selling their labor at a higher price.

I am curious how it turns out in the next few decades as lower birthrate effects cause younger, lower paid workforce numbers to decrease. Especially if it is not offset by labor from immigrants.

Post reply on HN