The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent' • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by chousuke » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

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…

There's nothing wrong with 24/7 support and high availability; just pay people to do evening and night shifts and compensate anyone who gets called to help with an incident outside normal working hours.

Night shifts can be pretty rough, but back when I still did shifts I sacrificed a couple nights around new year once and added a good chunk of money to my usual income that month over a few days due to getting holiday compensation (double pay) plus night shift compensation and that got doubled again for being an emergency substitute for another person who'd gotten sick.

You only get problems when social manipulation is used to pressure workers into providing that level of support without appropriate compensation.

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

#162

Post by agent327 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

myWindoonn wrote: post #115

agent327 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? >Yes? Surely you understand the logistical problem this brings: if you get given free shit, there must also be a party who is giving free shit. Let's say you live on an island with just one other person. You are both entitled to free shit, but somebody has to put in the work to get the shit. Should the other person work to get his own shit and your shit, or s…

Sure. Let's ask for something easier, then; let's only have free stuff which is already in abundance. We aren't living on a remote island; we are living in a society which already has lots of extra stuff which could be given away for free. For example, how can an all-you-can-eat restaurant stay in business if they let everybody eat as much as they (rationally-economically) want to eat, and labor has to be paid? If fo…

On my hypothetical island, pretty much the only thing in abundance is sand. Everything else you have to work for. Who is going to do that work?

Your problem is that you don't see that all that "abundance" of food was grown by people, transported by people, prepared by people, and served by people, and none of them are your slaves. If they had the chance to get their own free shit without having to do all that labour, they totally would. But then who would remain to do the work?

The all you can eat restaurant stays in business by charging enough for meals that they can be reasonably sure that you'll won't eat more than the food is worth. However, that doesn't reduce the value of the food to zero.

Let's try another thought experiment. In my experience, all you "shit should be free" types assume all value flows from the state. That's wrong; it flows from individuals that are taxed by the state. Why don't you, as an individual, open an all you can eat restaurant where people can eat for free? Why not be the change you want to see?

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

#163

Post by mohaine » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

throwaway75787 wrote: post #138

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…

Surveys set up by the likes of "Great Place to Work" and similar are nothing but HR and PR fluff. It's set up to be spinned and covered up.

This. You can only win with quite a bit of work which a company without issues will not put in.

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

#164

Post by planet-and-halo » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #144

planet-and-halo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sorry, I was writing it on the fly right before a meeting and just dumped my thoughts out. I think I was thinking something like this: If you spend money internally on promotes, you'll have less money to compete in the market for new hires. Therefore you might get some indicators that things aren't working, for example you might lose out on desirable candidates in the short term. Also retention might be a laggin…

> you'll have less money to compete in the market for new hires Why would that be the case? We already established that the company would pay industry level salaries to new hires and existing employees alike. Moreover, because you have less turnover, you need to hire less, so you have less wasted money on hiring and training. All in all, I just fail to understand why companies don't value existing employees more. I t…

It's all relative, though. If you increase salaries for retention, it has to come out of some other pot. Maybe that isn't your new hire pool, but you're going to see a negative metric of some kind somewhere. Now don't get me wrong, I still think it's better in the long term. But my point is that you'll get some kind of negative signal by pulling back funds elsewhere, and a firm at that point has to have the discipline not to freak out and stay on course.

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

#165

Post by zeku » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #123

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 m…

Could you give me some productivity tips? I would love to become better at managing my time. I seem to always be able to fill my 40 hours and still feel like I didn't accomplish enough.

I'm a SWE working on a small team.

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

#166

Post by _dw7s » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

newfriend wrote: post #91

claudiulodro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should you be given free shit simply because you exist? Yes? > Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. > No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. > Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organizati…

None of these things indicate that I should be forced to pay for someone who doesn't want to work.

I would gladly pay taxes to cover someone who isn't able to work for one reason or another. Because you never know what life gives you. In an unfortunate turn of events, that person can be me or you. I would NOT pay taxes to subsidize Bezos's business so that he can have his space cowboy adventures. That's just the latest and most popular. But the same applies for the 2008 bailouts, Covid stimulus bailouts, corporate tax cuts, corporate tax incentives, corporations paying peanuts forcing people to strain the (already thin) social safety net (see how many fully employed folks are on food stamps) etc.. The latter is perpetual, business as usual and except for some people complaining (the 'radical left') it's regarded as 'the right thing to do'. The former has been beaten out of the American consciousness by decades of rightwing propaganda.

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

#167

Post by lanstin » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #157

mrRandomGuy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA "we spent way too much on the lease for you to just work from home pleb"

I honestly think it comes down to this in the majority of the cases. "Look, we have a two-years contract where we pay X thousand dollars a month for 100 desks and we have on an average day 3 developers in our office. After one year of lockdowns, we know our developers work at least as well from home as from the office, but higher ups ask us why we pay so much for an empty building, so we will force you come back to t…

Yeah I have been going in as requested but without my laptop. I am happy to chat but not going to pretend to do actual creative work.

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

#168

Post by rpmisms » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:55 PM UTC

samirillian wrote: post #141

Funny to think about this as a kind of passive revolt. COVID-19 response: failure, no exit, trapped; BLM: failure, no exit, trapped. Amazon unionization vote: failure, no exit, trapped. Going full remote, working from your castle instead of theirs, feeling the "great resignation," a large percentage of the population suddenly realize, perhaps because everyone is so very online, and very online people often care a lot…

> what our time is worth to place Facebook pixels on websites

I felt this in my soul. I just left my old job (which I liked) to go fully remote for a weird little shop in Florida. They're actually embracing remote culture and keeping employees engaged. Makes the soulless toil a bit more bearable.

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

#169

Post by ithkuil » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

chousuke wrote: post #161

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…

There's nothing wrong with 24/7 support and high availability; just pay people to do evening and night shifts and compensate anyone who gets called to help with an incident outside normal working hours. Night shifts can be pretty rough, but back when I still did shifts I sacrificed a couple nights around new year once and added a good chunk of money to my usual income that month over a few days due to getting holiday…

I think GP's point is precisely that once you normalize something that used to be a special case requiring extra compensation, it's hard to make the case that you need to get paid extra for your extra work, since it's, well, no longer extra?

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

#170

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

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…

It's a really good thing for banks and grocery stores to be open more, though. There's a big difference between trying to squeeze more hours out of a salaried worker vs. hiring more people to cover more shifts.

For support, it depends on whether you're hiring more people (good), offering optional on-call time for extra money or reduced hours (probably fine), or forcing people to be on-call on top of a normal work week (bad).