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Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

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121–130 of 773 posts

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#121
I recently left a “good steady pay, low learning, low growth” company for a “risky pay, tons of learning, high growth” company.

I think COVID exacerbated winners and losers. The gaps between companies offering opportunity and stale companies is growing. People won’t stay at a company that rewards 2 years of heads down pandemic work with “Due to current conditions, we can’t fund bonuses. Raises will be less than inflation, and we can only promote people when their boss leaves.”

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#122
I changed jobs this summer. Went from a remote position at excellent Eastern European company with a good Eaten European salary to a remote position at even better american company with a good american salary, x4 bump. And I was choosing between several very similar offers, too.

A lot of people here are saying that compensation isn't that important, but you clearly haven't had your income increase 4 times when you're already 14 years in your career.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#123
I have enough money to be comfortable and even mid six figures isn't enough money to justify renting out my brain and creative energy full time toward solving someone else's problems.

If companies want experienced SWEs like me, you need to offer very part time positions. My maximum commitment is 3 days/week.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#125
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the old generation really bought into this, but the new generation knows it's a load of bull. The poll makes it pretty obvious that compensation is the biggest reason folks leave, and it's the thinking of the old generation who doesn't know how to retain talent (they do, but they keep throwing pizza parties / sending out merch instead). It's a real "it can't be helped" mentality around retention.

Why is compensation #1 though? There is a threshold where you have enough money and it's easier to work with people you know and like. So, what do they need that extra money for? As I mentioned elsewhere housing is currently the #1 issues I see here in Canada that people are focused on. If you are a front line person, making $15 at a restaurant, plus renting where housing costs $1m+, you are probably looking for opti…

The format of the poll biases the results. You can select multiple options, and compensation might be the one that most people have in common -- but not necessarily the reason why people are leaving.

In other words, I think the results can only show motivating factors, but can't satisfy it as a sufficient condition for departure.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#126

Some other people were taking advantage of work form home, and their slacking was pissing me off, so I looked. Then I got an offer which amounted to a 50% raise.

On similar note (but maybe not too similar): My work switched from being a in-office company to everything-remote. Productivity took a big hit because we were a small, tight-knit company, and people stopped talking with each other. Left it to take a job in a company that will never switch to remote-only. Much happier again.

It failed cause it took a team that worked in X way and made them work in Y way. Siloed work and faulty communication is an issue with in-person too, just differently.

Happy you found something that works for you, but you're overgeneralizing.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#127
Money and opportunity. I'll be leaving for 50% more pay and a company that's 1000x bigger than anything I could find locally. That means room for growth, knowledge, the ability to work in different areas and with more technology, and the ability to learn from the best in the industry.

The worst part, is also the part that enables this, it is a 100% remote position. Having multiple small children at home can be a challenge (even there is a sitter), as well as spouse that mostly works from home.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#128
post #54

I'll be departing my job at the end of the month. I had too many roles, affecting too many pieces of engineering, and my title didn't reflect my work. I needed to go down to a 4 day work week and have my title reflect my roles, but my manager attempted to call my bluff and essentially said it's not going to happen. I hinted about what my decision would have to be if these accomodations couldn't be made, but he didn't…

Giving raises and promotions only when people have outside offers invents awful behavior all around. Yet so many companies do this “just this one time…”

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#129

My old boss Eric Carlsen used to say, nobody left because of money. They may get more money if they change jobs. But they start looking because they're unhappy. So when somebody asked for more money, he'd start by asking what was bothering them.

~Nobody left because of money so long as the money’s reasonably close. This environment has made it so the money is often not close.

Someone can be quite happy with their jobs most days, be compensated at a historically very fair level, continue to get RSUs, etc. But, especially as a younger person or as someone with kids in school, etc. if Google comes along and says you can work remotely for 2x your current salary, that is really hard for most people to turn down.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#130
I got a new manager in Q1 2021 and she was super toxic. She was a terrible communicator and made me feel so bad about myself. Nothing was ever good enough. I never sent her something and received a "This looks great. Good job" - Everything was nitpicked. Why put forth effort when she will just tear down anything I create and tell me to rebuild it? Mind you, I am aware when I make mistakes, but the final straw was when I went above and beyond, did a super great job creating some documentation for her, and excitedly sent it to her thinking "She's gonna love this! I killed it!". She sent me back a huge wall of text essentially telling me to redo it (with a ton of comments added to the original MS Word document).

I resigned in December with no new job lined up. I got tired of crying before my biweekly '1 on 1' meetings with her. It's crazy because before she came, I was doing great. Our previous manager was excellent. She was run off by a toxic co-worker in my department who was the most experienced (He would make her life a living hell through small bits of periodic sabotage).

This was my first job out of college (Information Security Analyst). The work I was doing was extremely tedious and didn't require any skill whatsoever - It was basically data entry & sending emails. I understand that the newbies have to earn their stripes, but I was approaching 2 years with this company, and I felt like I was crippling myself as each day passed. Shouldn't I have been performing risk assessments and reviews, and LEARNING? I have to grow so I can support the company, right?

The rest of my team (with more seniority) were working on projects with a lot of depth. Meanwhile, I'm sending emails to people for 30 hours per week (access reviews performed manually by sending hand crafted AD group reports for a company with 3,000 employees...). My technical skills (Networking, Linux/UNIX, Cybersecurity) were starting to atrophy due to lack of use. The company I worked at payed EXTREMELY WELL, but I looked to the future and didn't like the idea of being handcuffed to this one company due to my lack of growth.

I also believe one of my co-workers was trying to sabotage my work. He would feed me bad information (at critical moments) which would completely derail my project down the line eventually (despite him specializing in his role for 20 years) - I sometimes wonder if he was threatened by me (or maybe I'm just full of myself?).

Either way, it was a great experience for a while. But then it was awful.

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