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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'

#121

Post by LeifCarrotson »

slumdev wrote: post #118
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…

My employer administered questions regarding how many days per week the employees wanted to spend in-office versus WFH. Zero days per week in the office was not presented as an option.

How many days per week do you want to spend in the office versus work from home?

(A) Seven in office

(B) Six in office

(C) Five in office, seven evenings plus two days WFH

(D) Please replace me

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

#122

Post by standardUser »

onelastjob wrote: post #31

My opinion is that we need to move to four day work weeks and each day should have six working hours. Knowledge workers are wasting their lives at work when they could get the same amount done in fewer hours.

We (a smaller company) have had half day Fridays since early in the pandemic. This is great, but I wish I could convince the powers that be that those 4 hours on Friday are the least productive hours of the week, and that giving an entire day off would be vastly more beneficial than the half days. I'm on the verge of looking for a new job, but if we had every Friday off I would plan on sticking around a long, long time!

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

#123

Post by superfrank »

onelastjob wrote: post #31

My opinion is that we need to move to four day work weeks and each day should have six working hours. Knowledge workers are wasting their lives at work when they could get the same amount done in fewer hours.

> Knowledge workers are wasting their lives at work when they could get the same amount done in fewer hours.

I'm curious what job you have. I'm a SWE who is in the process of moving into a manager role. As an IC, I am 100% certain that I could get the same amount of work done in a 24 hour work week. In fact, I was probably working less than that already and still meeting my deadlines and getting great reviews. As a manager for the same team, at the same company, I am now working a full 40 and there's no way I could cut 40% of my hours without a massive drop in output.

I'm not against a 4 day work week (in fact, my manager is talking about trying it out in Q4 for our department), but not everyone is an IC knowledge worker. There are plenty of roles where time does directly correlate with productivity, which is why this discussion is so complicated.

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

#124

Post by cratermoon »

pattyj wrote: post #120
cratermoon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When something critical comes up The problem: everything looks 'critical' to folks with a greedy and selfish streak who rise high in management and have their pay tied to the quarterly stock price. That's how we ended up with 24/7 support and "five nines" availability. I'm old enough to remember that banks opened late and closed early, didn't operate on weekends or holidays, and if you didn't get your paycheck cash…

The greed and selfishness of my managers are significant factors in determining who I want to work for/with. And why I'm so grateful I can work with people I am friends with outside of work. But I understand this is difficult, even impossible, to know during the interview process.

> during the interview process

I think assuming management is greedy and selfish until proven otherwise is a good way to approach interviewing. Negotiating compensation will give lots of clues. Ask for more money, or a different TC structure and see what happens. For comparison, ask for something that doesn't cost anything.

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

#125

Post by netr0ute »

Ma8ee wrote: post #47
netr0ute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are few jobs that can become life goals, most are boring. That's because the big tech megacorps raised the bar in order to attract the best workers available so they could grow to have the "eliteness" that you see today. The problem is, there are only so many Apples or Netflixes with this kind of strategy so everything else looks boring in comparison.

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.

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

#126

Post by [deleted] »

cratermoon wrote: post #92
logosmonkey wrote: post #48

Pay me well, provide good benefits, allow a flexible work schedule where I can work when I want to and still get day to day life stuff done and hire enough people so I can consistently work only the 40 hours you are actually paying me for. My current job does that and I love it. When something critical comes up I'm happy to work over a weekend to hit a deadline because I know my manager will comp me back time when I…

> When something critical comes up The problem: everything looks 'critical' to folks with a greedy and selfish streak who rise high in management and have their pay tied to the quarterly stock price. That's how we ended up with 24/7 support and "five nines" availability. I'm old enough to remember that banks opened late and closed early, didn't operate on weekends or holidays, and if you didn't get your paycheck cash…

[deleted]

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

#127

Post by VelkaMorava »

newfriend wrote: post #88
srswtf123 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry, but what's the alternative exactly? How about not exploiting people? > Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Seems to work for the very wealthy , celebrities , and so on. Why, precisely, isn't this acceptable for everyone? I'm not against people working. I'm against the wealthy callously exploiting people for grins while they, I dunno, race into space?

Care to explain how I'm paying for the "very wealthy, celebrities, and so on"? Who says they're being callously exploited? Because some company's founder now has hundreds of billions, that entitles random warehouse workers to share profits?

> Care to explain how I'm paying for the "very wealthy, celebrities, and so on"?

Sure.

1) Look at financial crisis of 2008 and the banks bail out. I have always been taught there is no such thing as a free lunch in economics. Well, apparently you can overleverage yourself, profit insanely on it and when it finally goes tits up, you cry a bit and yell "too big to fail". I have always been taught that risk is the basic principle of capitalism. If your idea or product is bad, no one gives you money for it, you run out of money and go bankrupt. Obviously not if you are a bank or military contractor (looking at you, Boeing).

2) One of the biggest company in my country, owned by our current prime minister Andrej Babiš... oh sorry, it is owned by 2 trust funds which are indirectly owned by Babiš. Anyway, that company is currently asking for 123 million CZK in subsidies. This is a company with a turnover of 161 billion and 3,8 billion CZK profit. Why are they asking for subsidies? Can't they use ~3,24% of their last year's profit?

3) Continuation of previous point, except in US terms. You can strong arm government into giving you subsidies, otherwise you are gonna leave the city / state / country and it's gonna lose jobs. See here for examples: https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents

One of the biggest recipients is Tesla. On this note I find it absurd that tax money collected from normal people is paying for a billionaire's wet dream. Notice how I said normal people. Because the rich have ways to steal... damn, sorry - evade... dang, I did it again. Avoid taxes is what I meant. https://itep.org/55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-t...

4) Look at coronavirus V-shaped recovery. It was apparent airlines are gonna be in a bit of a trouble, becaues of the... oh yeah, the global pandemic which put lockdowns in place. Anyway, airlines bought back stock and then asked for bailouts. Which they of course got. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2020/03/18/amer...

I have stopped caring for explaining how you are paying for the very wealthy. If these examples above didn't sway you, nothing will.

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

#128

Post by axguscbklp »

iammisc wrote: post #94
irrational wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting how different people are. All those things you list are reasons I would want to quit a job. I don’t ever want to work in an office ever again.

You must understand that this attitude is the minority. Most people like their workplace because they like the people there. My dad worked in pharma sales for 30 years. Do you think he cared to sell the drugs? I mean... in that the drugs were helping people, he was happy. But his reason for going to work everyday was talking to his colleagues. To this day, he and his old colleagues still visit each other, still party…

Are you sure that this attitude is the minority?

I can easily go have fun with people outside of work, so I have no incentive to put up with the annoying parts of office work just to get to interact with people.

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

#129

Post by laurent92 »

kodah wrote: post #113
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…

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.

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

#130

Post by selfhoster11 »

mgh2 wrote: post #63
evan_ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life isn't improved because others are suffering.

Sure, it is not. Maybe you are not using your talents properly. Consider a change in career to help others, maybe then you will find meaning and fulfillment...

Changing away from a career in tech could be a one-way operation. Future employers may read a five-year foray into an unrelated type of work as a negative, and make it harder to find a job similar to what you did before.
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