“Great resignation” wave coming for companies • Hacker News Board

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#261

Post by poodler » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

dreen wrote: post #7

Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. edit: thank you…

Good on you. You will probably love it.

I’m about 15 months into my “gap year,” similar story (except no immigration). I traveled on the cheap, switched careers, found a new city I love (and is way cheaper), and settled down with my gf.

Word of warning: depending on what kind of friends and family you have, you might lose some people along the way. Taking a leap like that brought out a new side of people I thought I knew. Most were supportive, but some not at all. Focus on the “keepers” instead of the “haters,” stay positive, and enjoy it!

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#262

Post by slumdev » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

deanclatworthy wrote: post #247

slumdev wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't be surprised when you're competing against people from all over the globe, who will probably take a lower salary than you, who probably aren't entitled as you, and will bite at the opportunity. This competition mostly doesn't exist. The language barrier is too great, and working across time zones is something that most companies are horrible at, to say nothing of the legal/regulatory/jurisdictional challenges…

I don't agree. And you're looking at this from a very anglo-centric point of view. This will open doors for french-speaking Africans to work for French companies. For Brazilians working for Portugal etc. I've worked with skilled developers from all over the world, who speak more than good enough English.

The anglo-centric view is really a USA-centric view. UK firms, for whatever reason, don't seem to feel obligated to pay more than 50-60k GBP per year, and they still manage to fill their cube farms.

And the foreigners who speak more than good enough English aren't going to be sufficiently cheaper than I am, if they're also great software engineers.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#263

Post by screye » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

> Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs.

This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)

Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends.

> Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths

IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.

> "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.

Press 'X' to Doubt

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#264

Post by TameAntelope » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #66

I was looking around recently, particularly at startups, but then chose to stop. Here is my reasoning: * I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange: leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of responsibilities. I wasn’t seeing this. * If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody wants a tool jockey. Th…

Regarding your second point, I think it's good to know what interests you, but there's a lot of quality ideas out there that don't have hard tech components, and if they invent hard tech problems to keep their engineers interested, they're probably not going to last very long.

IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside.

To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution becomes the fun part.

Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. :)

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#265

Post by kasey_junk » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #195

ISO-morphism wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nit: I think you meant Fargo, ND rather than Fargo, SD. For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely responsible for anything above that. [1] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-en...

You can’t really just compare average salaries in different metros, because there’s major selection bias. The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. Less talented workers tend to heavily flow towards low COL markets, because they’re less to achieve a high enough productivity differential to justify the high cost. This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engin…

Having worked in everything from backend systems for sleepy banks to hedge funds to the hottest pre-IPO valley darlings, anecdotally you are dead wrong.

If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#266

Post by Arrath » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #151

trentnix wrote: post #136

> "I don't envy the challenge that human resources faces right now," says Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University. Maybe part of the problem is sitting right there in plain sight. Looking back, virtually every work frustration that led me to start looking elsewhere was nothing that HR could (or should) fix. In my experience, the degree of HR's influence over company culture, hiring…

HR is mostly there to cross t and dot i in case company runs into legal issues.

Its all there in the name. We're resources, to be marshalled and managed by HR for the benefit and protection of the company. HR doesn't care a whit about us employees beyond the extent of any liability we might leverage into suing the company for.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#267

Post by thrower123 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

deanclatworthy wrote: post #213

Listen, I am completely on board with giving employees the right to choose the remote situation - but don't be surprised when you're competing against people from all over the globe, who will probably take a lower salary than you, who probably aren't entitled as you, and will bite at the opportunity. Furthermore, what are employers meant to do with their workplaces when employees are half-in, half-out with the office…

People keep saying this, and companies keep trying it, and it keeps not working very well. You try to cheap out with remote developers, and you get what you pay for. Sometimes it works, because the guy who sowed has already done the up and out to another company by the time it's time to reap.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#268

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #90

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless rent and mortgage payments somehow evaporate, there won't be some massive wave of resignations The prediction isn’t a massive wave of unemployment. It’s people switching jobs. They will still be earning money, just perhaps elsewhere.

There might be a bump as a few employers try to capitalize on the work-from-home to get good talent. ...but in the long term, employee performance will be better in the office, and so most employees will end up back at work. The thing the that the article misses is that the vast majority of CEOs want all employees back in the office.

[deleted]

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#269

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #182

lotsofpulp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When he finished and got back into work he realised that his break very similar to a female employee taking maternity leave. I have not met a single woman who would compare maternity leave to a travel leave and a “great” time. Infants are a ton of work, and between recovering from the birthing process (a vaginal tear with a few stitches is considered one of the best outcomes), learning how to breastfeed, only sleep…

My interpretation of the post you're responding to wasn't that the experiences were similar, but that the work culture responses and company infrastructure for handling extended absences worked the same way for him as they did for mothers. I think the point was that if there are good systems in place at a company for maternity leave, that maybe people can use those same system to take non-maternity time off.

Yes, that's a good point! However, the biggest risk to employer is the employee using those systems to try out a new employer and then resigning just after the sabbatical.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#270

Post by jokoon » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

jonfw wrote: post #141

jokoon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all jobs are equal in term of necessity. Food, shelter, electricity, water, you don't need a lot of people to work those jobs. Punishing unproductive people and encourage them to work in fast food or other wage-slaving do not make sense. The main argument is UBI.

Here's the pro fast food take. There are productive people working jobs that have massive necessity, and they need to eat. The least somebody who isn't productive can do is help feed them.

There are not many such people, and everybody knows how to cook. Ready to eat meals are good enough, collective food preparation is good too.

Not to mention fast food is generally of poor quality.