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Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

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Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#321

Post by citizenpaul »

ericmcer wrote: post #174
xenihn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still too many managers who don't understand one of their primary responsibilities in a market that favors employees: making sure that their best engineers don't leave. The job market won't always be like this, but you'd think that they would have figured it out by now during the current run. It's been nearly a decade at this point, and the pandemic has tipped things even further in the favor of the people…

I have been surprised how emotionally unaware many of my managers are. They are engineers who moved to management and seem to think reading a bunch of books on management will make them adept at the social skills needed to read and adapt to individuals and a teams emotional state. Compensation is huge but good software devs are all making enough to where a 20-30% swing in either direction isn't going to make or break…

20-30% ?? What kind of money are you assuming most people make. at anything over 100k a year that is a lot of extra money anything less and it is probably needed. It could simply be used to retire a few years earlier if nothing else. It could pay for vacation. It could pay off a vehicle. It could pay down a mortgage or appraisal gap in this market.

A 20% raise is huge at any income level.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#322

Post by ethbr0 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #282
daenz wrote: 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…

I was playing a board game with my 7-year-old niece recently. She negotiates the same way most companies do. She holds the line firmly until her bluff is called, and then backtracks quickly once it's too late. The biggest différance is my 7-year-old will learn, while companies will continue to make the same mistakes.

I highly support playing negotiation and/or lying+consequence board games with children. The skills are lifelong, and the stakes are much lower than when they have to exercise them in the real world.

Coup [0] and Love Letter [1] are both easy entry and quick play examples.

Also, I got in the habit of making my kids negotiate their own payment for household tasks. With agreement based on the skill with which they do so. ;)

[0] https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup

[1] https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/129622/love-letter

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#323

Post by Xcelerate »

phkahler wrote: post #180
foobarian wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you pay off your house when you can keep the cash in an investment account making > 5% APR vs. the house loan which presumably is in the low 3s.

>> Why would you pay off your house when you can keep the cash in an investment... I asked someone that in my mid 20's. He said "It's nice knowing I can support my family working at McDonalds if I have to." That stuck with me. Something fundamental changes in your life when you become debt-free.

Yeah, but if the market crashes while you’re still overpaying your mortgage, now you’re out of a job AND potential savings that you can’t get back. With even inflation outpacing mortgage rates now, I’m not certain in what situation—even from a risk perspective—it makes more sense to pay down a mortgage more quickly than necessary. (With current rates at ~3%. Obviously in the late 80s it made sense to pay the house off as quickly as possible.)

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#324

Post by cableshaft »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #113
daenz wrote: 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…

I'm in the same situation but I don't really know what to do. I've been trying to extricate myself from a lot of stuff but the way things are structured it doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to just focus on one role. It looks like a lot of openings are offering a fair amount more than my current salary as well. The only thing holding me back at the moment is that I really like the people I work with.

Maybe by leaving you'll indirectly be helping them get the push they need to start look for something better themselves.

I know I dragged my feet but eventually enough people left that I was like, "Alright I have to find something new" and I ended up with a much better role and compensation as well, and probably should have left earlier. And I also like the people at the new place too, and keep in touch (somewhat) with my old coworkers.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#325

Post by saturdaysaint »

Kids. We have 2 toddlers and are expecting again. Both of us had parents who were teachers, which meant their working hours lined up perfectly with our school hours and holidays. Raising multiple kids is pretty tough if you don't have that luxury! Tracking doctors, dentists, caretakers, after school activities, etc was exhausting, and for virtually all of these you need some kind of backup plan. Especially with a third child, there would be virtually no way for us to handle,say, a COVID wave. My wife is high earning and our tastes are pretty humble.

At one point, this might have been a hard decision, but COVID and a child on the way feel like we've had an extra nudge in this direction. The labor market is so tight and my specialty is in enough demand that I feel like I could jump back into my field in another few years if it makes sense for us.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#326

Post by justsocrateasin »

I left my job last April entirely due to compensation. It was also due to life balance, but I was willing to sacrifice some life balance in exchange for higher salary.

I was working 60+ hours a week and on call three nights a week at a consulting firm doing engineering. My manager told me I was doing a phenomenal job and the entire year-end review cycle agreed - I scored higher than 95% of my peers and told I was "invaluable" to my team. Most of that was less because of my engineering skills and more because I was just pouring my life into this job.

Then, I got a 2% raise (yes, 2.0%, about $100/month). meaning I was still paid less than everyone who had just been hired. Many of those new hires weren't even engineers! I quit pretty fast for an 80% raise.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#327

Post by lordnacho »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #113
daenz wrote: 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…

I'm in the same situation but I don't really know what to do. I've been trying to extricate myself from a lot of stuff but the way things are structured it doesn't seem like I'm going to be able to just focus on one role. It looks like a lot of openings are offering a fair amount more than my current salary as well. The only thing holding me back at the moment is that I really like the people I work with.

You'll still like them after you leave. It's often nice to have a network of people you no longer work with.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#328

Post by cagey »

Rather than quit or retire, I lingered in hopes of being laid off (letting my high pay level, ageism and existing "we don't need Senior Engineers; we have really smart management to do the thinking ahead etc. for the junior engineers" attitudes run their natural course). I "achieved" being laid off 4 months ago at age 58 and collected a nice (9 months' pay) severance package as a precursor to (this month) finally deciding to retire.

I still loved (and was/am capable of) doing the work, but having gone another few rounds of "Leetcode interview process" in the past few months, and having realized that I've reached the end of my willingness to tolerate what seems to be near-pervasive "Agile cargo-cult ceremony" (and everywhere, "Agile is whatever we decide it is") and (less pervasive but still frequently encountered) technically clueless headline-chasing (micro-)management in the presence of increasing active monitoring/collection of (remote) employee activity metrics and pervasive exhortations (mapped to KPIs) to "deliver innovation!" and "do it together!". Why run the Leetcode gauntlet (which seems to closely resemble Final Exams Week from my Uni days, with the same intense cramming prerequisite) only to land in a team/management circumstance of uncertain quality (bail out and do it again?)?

Likewise I've realized that maintaining my W2 income via FTE at my age and position would mostly serve to raise my tax bracket and preclude me from taking minimally taxed withdrawals from my IRA starting in a few months (these have to be taken sometime, and the less taxation, the better).

The process of "letting go" of my working career and adopting a true retirement mindset has taken me at least the past 4 months (I might not be done with it yet), because I do really love and have excelled at the hands-on work (and being self-taught and very motivated to stay abreast of much of what is changing for the better in SW Dev, I've been operating in long-term independent self-study mode for my entire career, turning this background process off is proving challenging).

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#329

Post by alar44 »

Work from home.

I worked at an MSP and we were remote for a year. Then when Covid started to pull back a bit they forced us all back to the office. To work remotely. From the office. Took me about 2 months to find a remote job with an extra $30k compensation.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#330

Post by TehShrike »

ethbr0 wrote: post #322
AlwaysRock wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was playing a board game with my 7-year-old niece recently. She negotiates the same way most companies do. She holds the line firmly until her bluff is called, and then backtracks quickly once it's too late. The biggest différance is my 7-year-old will learn, while companies will continue to make the same mistakes.

I highly support playing negotiation and/or lying+consequence board games with children. The skills are lifelong, and the stakes are much lower than when they have to exercise them in the real world. Coup [0] and Love Letter [1] are both easy entry and quick play examples. Also, I got in the habit of making my kids negotiate their own payment for household tasks. With agreement based on the skill with which they do s…

Cockroach Poker is another good bluffing game that 4-year-olds can play.
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