SPAC merger
Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
521–530 of 773 posts
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#522What you are seeing here with the labor market is essentially the same thing we are seeing with real estate. It is a liquidation and recapitalization into a higher asset class. People selling their homes, cashing out and using their equity to get a larger home with a larger basis for appreciation.
Similarly for the labor market, employees taking their experience and recapitalizing into other roles with better benefits and pay.
What you see is effectively a greater polarization between those who do well and those who don’t. See amazons de facto policy of give the top tier best benefits, raised and comp and to hell with the rest.
So where do things end up? Well, the rich get richer. Ultimately everyone moves up since there’s such a demand for (houses|labor). However as we see with first time home buyers, it gets harder, those who are paying more end up demanding more.
Furthermore there is a never ending supply of labor which is why companies like Amazon are not taking this as seriously as you’d expect. There will always be H1b de facto slavery which creates a large inventory pool. However the “housing” is effectively top tier employees which command top dollar.
Ultimately I don’t think the system changes except for the best of the best. Because as always it is very supply constrained.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too many roles / too many hats is far too common and why I find it hard to stay anywhere more than 4-5 years. As a senior IC in a super-flat & growing org.. I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one. Management administrivia I accumulate administrative things my manager doesn't want to do & pushes down I do unofficially own a part o…
> I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one. This is also me. Except I really like it. But I'm not sure what to do about it, it can reflect super poorly on a resume for some reason. "Oh, your applying to be a Senior Engineer? Look at all this product management and developer manager experience on your resume, you must not really be…
I'm in a similar place, although I'm not really seeing any resume problems. Maybe my resume focuses entirely on my technical side. But on my previous project, I often spoke with stakeholders, helped our ever changing product owners, but I also worked on every aspect on the application (even infra, though that's really not my thing), guided juniors, decided the direction of the application, etc.
But that was only one project, so it doesn't really show up much in my CV. The main problem that recruiters have with me is that they don't know if I'm front-end or back-end, but I consider that a pointless distinction. I pick up whatever needs to be picked up, whether it's a single technical focus or everything else. (I'll even do infra if I really have to, though I'd rather not.) I like the diversity, but I also like to adapt to what the team needs.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#524One of the good things that I think happened from the pandemic is that more and more people are realizing that tying up your identity and sense of self-worth in your job is a bad thing, that's why I'm very glad to see compensation so high on this list. Sure, everyone wants to work in a good working environment, but I think the idea that "nobody left because of the money" is finally being put to bed. The fact is that…
To expand on this, when can we stop asking “so what do you do?” as one of the first things when meeting someone for the first time?
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#525I left my very good job in the bay area and relocated to a "quality of life" city and am taking a some time off now.
As a manager of a large team, COVID definitely made the last couple of years hard. If not for productivity, then certainly for team cohesion. It's like the famous Milgram experiment; it's just easier for people to behave in unsympathetic ways when everyone else is just a face on a screen. I also noticed that (IMHO) the 'wrong' people kind of took over the attention of the org. In person, the pillars of the org were the desk locations of the strongest engineers and mangers that helped guide the team. In this new world, the pillars of the team because the people who were the most social on Slack, creating channels and commenting everywhere. Maybe I'm getting old, but it felt like a bad culture shift.
So, I answered 'company culture' but it's really a mix of a lot of things--my framework is always 'what am I going to get out doing this job for the next few years'. If answer isn't something really important, I'm out.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#526Rather 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 dec…
Thanks for writing about your experience. It's kind of nice to see some wisdom being dropped about the current/long term affairs of what makes many company experiences very similar. It seems extremely difficult to find something that breaks the mold. And congratulations on retiring! What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests.
Thanks.
What do you think you'll do now? Given that you're wholly self-taught, I would assume you would dive in to your interests.
I have one personal Open Source project that I will likely continue to slowly enhance (I was its only user, and I used it at work, so less need for enhancement going forward). I have some other stuff (CGI Perl) which I run on my home server, which I'll probably enhance. And a few related things I'm thinking of starting work on (in definition phase right now). All very utilitarian stuff just for me. I've sent (had accepted) a tiny PR or two to a project I used daily, but I doubt I'll get more involved than that.
But that's looking at the SW Dev side of my life, which has dominated my time for the past 30-odd years; drawing back from that (continuous learning engagement) while understandable (in the sense that breaking any 30-year-old habit is tough, and if no longer being employed in the sector, what's the point?), makes sense. I need to find other things beyond tech stuff to spend time on; home repair is a probable direction, and auto repair too. I did that stuff to some degree always, but always because I was a cheapskate who objects to paying beaucoup for what I (these days anyone capable of watching Youtube can figure out how to) do, and do to my own satisfaction (perfectionism) level (vs. accepting what a contractor is content to deliver).
Besides that (which won't consume much time), traveling (by motor vehicle) the western USA with a lot greater frequency is on my agenda. I'm not sure what else might happen; I'm open to opportunities, but not really to frivolities... fortunately now I'm in no rush to achieve any goal.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#527My 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.
I just left my job at one FAANG for another FAANG. I felt like I was under-compensated and talked to my manager, they said "well, go get another offer and show you're worth more". I went and got an offer that was nearly 60% higher and at a higher ladder level. My manager and director tried to retain me, but upper management "did not want to play that game", which I guess is a nice way of saying I'm not worth that muc…
This time, upper management was right and your manager was a fool. Once you have another offer, you're already halfway out the door. Encouraging employees to find other offers before they get a raise is encouraging employees to leave.
If you want to keep them, just give them the raise.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Except that it isn't. Assume you are a superstar of some persuasion and you earn $100M/yr. Is a 20% raise a lot of money? It's not! Sure, it's an extra twenty million dollars , but what could you possibly want to buy with that money that you can't already purchase? At some point $100k --> $100M the math changes. That point will be different for different people.
A nice yacht, a sports team, your name on a building .. there's always something.
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#529Rather 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 dec…
You could be a consultant/contractor instead, not have to go through the leetcode gauntlet, and not buy into corporate culture BS - go in, do the work, rinse and repeat, and switch clients whenever you want
Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?
#530Earlier 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.
Negotiation was one of my favorite classes I took in college, I think it should be taught as soon as possible. I must say applying it in real life under stressful conditions has been much harder than in the classroom! At the end of the day I think a lot of companies don't operate from a standpoint of both parties coming out fairly, which just leads to mistrust in the end.
It was one of my favorite classes too!
I remember that BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) was the most important factor (but the least interesting, it can't be improved as a skill). If the figures of employees switching jobs are as high as they say, that means either lots of impossible negotiations (misfits) or lots of negotiation failures.