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The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
181–190 of 264 posts
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
AKA "we spent way too much on the lease for you to just work from home pleb"
In government situations, the space itself is at a premium (not what it costs). If your org has a certain amount of space for use, other orgs will try to steal it from you. The amount of space you control is an indication of how awesome your org is.
There was this one org that had a few floors of a building for their use, but most of the desks sat empty most of the time. This came to the attention of a different org that was hard up for space. That had 2 people per desk at many desks. They got the "space manager" to take a look, but the target org got wind of what was going on and they called everyone to be in during that time. Those floors were overflowing with people when the space manager showed up.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
For employers it's game theory. If employees are commodities then it's better to keep the pay structure and have X amount of attrition than to pay everyone more to keep attrition low.
I think I finally figured part of this out. Like you said, employers treat workers as commodities. This worked out great for them in the short term, as they saved money by not giving raises etc. In the long term, though, workers started realizing they often had to go back to the market to get meaningful pay raises. Now you have a situation where workers are switching as often as every 12-24 months, and the thing not…
Completely agree. At this point I'm relatively convinced you always have to go "back to the market" to get a meaningful pay raise. Even if you switch to the product side or make 2-3 compensation incentives, you're likely not going to see that much of a cumulative pay bump - especially if you're not in the top 1% of engineers (which I certainly am not). Once you're in the 6-8yrs of experience range it gets a bit more drab unless you want to start your own gig - that is of course if making more money is in the cards.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#184My 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…
> 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 expect the following has at least in part occurred:
1. Your participation in "meetings" has increased significantly. Management tends to conveniently forget that interruptions have follow-on disruptions on focus. This is compounded by the Doorway Effect [0].
2. You don't trust your direct reports to handle the level of autonomy you had as an IC. You're being pushed by your management to provide status updates so you have to scurry around poking ICs.
3. You're still expected to have at least a portion of your IC output in addition to your management duties.
4. You've discovered the productivity of your team is a bell curve. Some can get work done quickly while others are much slower. This may be related to their skill/experience or their particular tasks.
5. You're pressured by management to split up work to deliver a baby in a month. This causes you to take on even more IC work to try to accede to such stupid expectations.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#185Earlier 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…
"Most people like their workplace because they like the people there."
Do you have anything to back that up?
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#186My 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.
I'd love to see companies warm up to nontraditional employment arrangements. I've always wanted to be able to split my time between different jobs; e.g., half the year in an office environment, then half the year doing something outdoors. I feel like breaking up the monotony would help keep things fresh all around and generally improve my wellbeing.
This kind of thinking is what's always intrigued me about freelancing/consulting. If I get bored of coding, I can take 6 months off and work an outdoor summer job, or reduce my coding hours to 20 hours/week and get a part time job at a coffee shop or something like that.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well you have to work, so it's better to do it with people you like. Obviously, if you didn't have to work, you wouldn't work just to see office mates. But if you do have to work, slogging away in a common place with friends is more compelling than sitting behind a computer.
"so it's better to do it with people you like."
How does that equate to me being able to interview everyone at an office while I am being interviewed to be hired?
What you are getting at is some mantra of just be happy with where you are at.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#188Earlier 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...
Why do you exhibit such rage towards fellow humans seeking their definition of happiness?
I know what its like to not know where my next meal is com8ng from, and I wouldnt be offended by anothers' journey for improvement.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 disciplin…
If you're correct, and it costs more money to keep people, then we are wrong: it's not cheaper to go for stability.
Maybe it's like in the prisoner dilemma: you can't go lower than the market peak because no-one will come to you, even if you offer more on average than the industry average. This way, we reward the job hoppers with the peak salaries. Peak salaries means over time the average goes up too. I guess it's how free markets operate.
Re: The 'Great Resignation' is really the 'Great Discontent'
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seen this before too. 1. Company makes unpopular decision (cuts a benefit, partners with someone unpopular, enforces some tedious process to make management life earlier) 2. Next poll season comes round 3. Shock, results are down 4. Declare an aggregate engagement measure as an action item which incorporates both the happiness metric but others such as understanding of company strategy 5. Declare the problem with thi…
simple solution == flat-as-possible org structure?
But once you make a formal structure flat enough, informal structures can start to solidify and dominate (think High School).
I always try to keep this in mind, Valve which famously has a completely flat structure, ended up turning into an environment where things like popularity and ability to dispense resources defined the practiced org structure. Be careful what you wish for.