Toxic culture is driving the great resignation • Hacker News Board

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#171

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #35

What was the old saying? People don't flee jobs, they flee bad managers? You can run a fast-food franchise, a pub, a hotel or any other front-line enterprise with skill and enjoy extremely loyal employees (at the cost of your profit), or you can run it like a hell on earth by extracting all profit you reasonably can. For a long time, the latter was the standard model across the hospitality sector, especially as union…

The hospitality sector is run the way it is due to the vast supply of labor that can and are willing to do that job, in conjunction with the weak minimum salary laws.

Wages and working conditions will get better if supply of labor is reduced and/or minimum salaries are increased.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#172

Post by pembrook » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #141

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real issue is that changing the companies always gave bigger raise in pay than staying in the company for most of the folks. Most were not changing jobs due to multiple factors like relations, not having to change house, comfort, good office, free food etc. Now this all factors have reduced a lot that staying in current company is looking even worse option. So till employers are able to retain using other…

"Pretty hard" is an understatement. In ten years, somebody receiving a 30% raise each year sees their pay go up by a factor of nearly 14. Over a 30 year career it is a factor of 2600. Somebody starting at 50k would end their career making 130,000,000 annually.

Thank you for hilariously illustrating how bubble-y the current moment feels.

If you think dramatically increasing compensation is going to continue in the next decade like it has in the last one, I think you might be disappointed.

Now that companies are comfortable with remote, HR departments are eventually going to realize that services like Deel exist, and that its not actually that hard to hire employees overseas.

Once job ads start removing the "US only" part from the requirements, comp is going to come crashing back to earth.

A remote worker in the US being paid 4-5X as much as a remote worker in Europe is a massive market inefficiency just waiting to be arbitraged by companies.

As the tech giants growth inevitably slows over the coming years, they're going to have to start looking more closely at their cost structure to meet investor expectations.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#173

Post by yunohn » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

odonnellryan wrote: post #163

yunohn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really important point that is always missing in these threads - execs at most companies (even at FAANG, but esp outside) make massive multiples of their average engineer.

I've said this before on HN: for a while I thought that execs were overpaid (generally, it is true!) until I worked with some founders and owners of companies who really did bring 10x or 100x the value I did to the company. It doesn't mean they did 10x the work, but they definitely brought the value.

Exceptions don’t prove a rule. There are engineers who are also similarly valuable - and they get paid well. But exec/manager/admin pay is always inflated, regardless of that value. I say this from personal experience and insight into salaries at various kinds of companies, FAANG included.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#174

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

One thing I don't get: don't people need money? Is there a huge wave of poverty and homelessness rolling in after the Great Resignation?

I get IT workers may have earned so much that they will be OK for a while, but the article specifically mentions other jobs like food workers.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#175

Post by somedude895 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #21

When you add covid, climate, the antiwork movement, lack of social progress, political drama, something has to break. There is high resentment towards capitalism and how it is being managed, and I'm not really surprised people are quitting like this, I don't even understand how can normal people hold all those jobs and deal with the stress etc. Personally I think advocating for a general strike would help "shuffle th…

> covid, climate, the antiwork movement, lack of social progress, political drama

> advocating for a general strike

With such a broad spectrum of issues, what would a general strike even call for?

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#176

Post by fallingfrog » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

It may be that what we are seeing is an increasing realization that the interests of the boss or managerial layer are at odds with the interests of the ground level worker. People are starting to stand up for their own interests, which if you are the boss, is troubling, hence a lot of pearl clutching about how "nobody wants to work anymore".

Writ large, I think people are also realizing that the interests of the CEO/political/ruling class are also wildly at odds with their own interests as well- although we seem to be very susceptible to being distracted by superficial culture wars bullshit and shiny things at the moment.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#177

Post by jokoon » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

somedude895 wrote: post #175

jokoon wrote: post #21

When you add covid, climate, the antiwork movement, lack of social progress, political drama, something has to break. There is high resentment towards capitalism and how it is being managed, and I'm not really surprised people are quitting like this, I don't even understand how can normal people hold all those jobs and deal with the stress etc. Personally I think advocating for a general strike would help "shuffle th…

> covid, climate, the antiwork movement, lack of social progress, political drama > advocating for a general strike With such a broad spectrum of issues, what would a general strike even call for?

Basic income.

It seems to be a silver bullet to a lot of problems.

Once you give a blank check, you can also remove a lot of administrative clutter designed to "control" and police the poor.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#178

Post by xiphias2 » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

throwaway9952 wrote: post #148

xiphias2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite often people fled with gold to other places, as the countries confiscated gold from people. US was trusted to hold gold in the world wars, but of course Nixon renegged on the gold standard. Right now people are starting to hold Bitcoin, and it's much harder to take away from them (flying out with a billion dollars of Bitcoin is trivial, as metal detectors won't catch you), so I'm optimistic that the transition…

As inflation continues to grow, Bitcoin is down close to 40% from its highs. I'm not saying you're flat out wrong about potential benefits to holding Bitcoin but a lot of recent value has been washed out from people selling, not buying it.

Professional investors who look at the sharpe ratio (return compared to standard deviation), can see that its performance is far better than any other asset in the world.

Generally in modern portfolio theory you can just decrease the asset in the portfolio if the volatility is too big for you (for example to just 2% of the portfolio).

I'm 100% in, but for other people I generally suggest it to be 5% of their portfolio.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#179

Post by odonnellryan » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:28 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #67

swift532 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I assume too much, but I think you'd be thinking quite differently if you had to consider buying your first home on the French riviera now, on something like a 60.000-100.000 euro pre-tax salary.

Isn’t that a very reasonable salary to be buying a home on? Especially at the upper end of that range.

Homes in that area are about 10x that salary - so no. Reasonable ends at 3-4x your salary. I would be surprised if you could get a loan if you're taking a mortgage out that is 8x+ your salary... but maybe you can in France? Not in the US!

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#180

Post by awakeasleep » Thu, Jan 13, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #169

gwd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think of "toxic work culture", is "failure to promote diversity" the first thing that comes to mind? Are people really quitting SpaceX and Netflix in droves because they're not sufficiently supporting minority / LGBTQ rights? If anything, doing some "window dressing" for "diversity" is probably a lot easier than actually changing toxic patterns of behavior of the existing set of employees. (And of course act…

Actually aggressively promoting "diversity" (like forcing people into diversity trainings) would count as toxic workplace culture to me.

This seems like a good post to remind everyone that diversity training exists because it shields companies from financial liability when found guilty of discrimination.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5184a20-085e...