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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'

#171

Post by flapjaxy »

laurent92 wrote: post #129
kodah wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen our internal surveys go like this as well. They'll be critical on themselves with easy-to-solve issues but if it's something substantive then the polling will be very obtuse.

In my company (a famous company which builds trucks) they introduced those bullshit happiness surveys during Covid. So we coordinated so that the average of our marks were 1, 3, 4, 10, 5, 5, 10, 4, 3, 1, which is a Batman graph. Fortunately the “1” matches the first lockdown, but the managers are still wondering why the spikes at 10.

doing the real work right here!

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

#172

Post by dkn775 »

bjornsing wrote: post #65
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if you sacrifice enough in wages you can always have a fascinating job. And moving to a developing country can leave you with a roughly equivalent salary after adjusting for purchasing powe parity. I don't have hard data but that's what I've been doing for the last four years.

Interesting. So you do freelance/consulting work and are really picky about the projects you take on, or what?

Work for gov particularly police or some kind of job where you have to deal w social stuff. City gov is the best for this as you get a lot of flexibility

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

#173

Post by tripa »

throwaway75787 wrote: post #138
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…

Surveys set up by the likes of "Great Place to Work" and similar are nothing but HR and PR fluff. It's set up to be spinned and covered up.

I've said it before and I'd say it again with or without a throwaway: being certified “Great Place to Work” doesn't mean we're a good work environment, merely that we allocated >1 FTE to winning the contest.

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

#174

Post by lotsofpulp »

ithkuil wrote: post #169
chousuke wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with 24/7 support and high availability; just pay people to do evening and night shifts and compensate anyone who gets called to help with an incident outside normal working hours. Night shifts can be pretty rough, but back when I still did shifts I sacrificed a couple nights around new year once and added a good chunk of money to my usual income that month over a few days due to getting holiday…

I think GP's point is precisely that once you normalize something that used to be a special case requiring extra compensation, it's hard to make the case that you need to get paid extra for your extra work, since it's, well, no longer extra?

It depends how the labor supply and demand curves are moving. The case for extra compensation is that you will stop working there if you do not get extra compensation.

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

#175

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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.

> but I don't know what I'd do

How about "nothing."

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

#176

Post by ShroudedNight »

netr0ute wrote: post #125
Ma8ee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t expect a job at Netflix or Apple to be much more exciting than most other jobs. I thought they were attractive workplaces because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV.

> because of pay, perks, and because it looks good on your CV. That's what makes them exciting.

The pay and the perks can definitely make it more pleasant, but the thing that stands out is all those companies are operating at global scale. Working there, you will likely be routinely confronted with the awe-inducing scale and impact your work has on the daily life of almost everybody. In my case, for the people I already knew and cared for, I felt a sense of stewardship, and for new acquaintances, because they had already interacted with my work, they already provided me with a baseline of appreciation / professional credibility.

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

#177

Post by kazen44 »

Jetrel wrote: post #158
bscvbscv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 othe…

This disconnect between one's labour and the value it produces has been known for a very long time (Entfremdung). marx, hegel, Feuerbach all talked about it.

I think the main issue with modern corporate america is that too few people see the direct impact of their job. especially in pure office jobs without any technical inclination.

Doing boring work isn't bad per se, but it should lead to something that improves thanks to your labour.

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

#178

Post by bartread »

hinkley wrote: post #39
bartread wrote: post #20

> 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.

> I have some highly engaged coworkers who are in the process of burning out.

This is a real problem. I'm consistently encouraging my team to take time off as and when they need it, and to make sure they're only working their contracted hours: everyone running themselves into the ground is the last thing we need.

Also, if everyone's running on the red line the whole time you actually lose the ability to plan effectively because you have no idea what the world looks like when everyone is simply doing a "normal", healthy, sustainable workload.

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

#179

Post by namdnay »

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…

Hahaha you too? Saw this at a previous employer. Suddenly the Gallup scores became the sole responsibility of your direct manager. So guess what? One year later, everyone briefs their reports to make sure they don’t get in trouble, Gallup scores were through the roof, trebles all round for HR!

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

#180

Post by jjtheblunt »

Macha wrote: post #132
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…

Seen this before too. 1. Company makes unpopular decision (cuts a benefit, partners with someone unpopular, enforces some tedious process to make management life earlier) 2. Next poll season comes round 3. Shock, results are down 4. Declare an aggregate engagement measure as an action item which incorporates both the happiness metric but others such as understanding of company strategy 5. Declare the problem with thi…

simple solution == flat-as-possible org structure?
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