Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#431

Post by HideousKojima » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #361

HideousKojima wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree for me. I'm starting a new job in less than two weeks, but the current job I'm leaving has been the best so far in my career. Wasn't perfect by any means but it exceeded most of my expectations by far. My new job is paying 60% more than my current job, that's my reason for switching and not much else.

If you were so happy why did you start looking for another job? People don't leave because someone gave them an offer out of the blue. They have to start looking in the first place and whatever triggered that search is what's important.

Because I'm trying to start a family and to move into a bigger house, and I knew that there were little to no opportunities for advancement/promotion at my current job. It's really not that complicated.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#432

Post by willcipriano » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

strgcmc wrote: post #339

steveBK123 wrote: post #266

Earlier 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…

TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc.…

For me it mostly depends on management staffing levels, if I'm in a standup with more management/business folks than developers I don't expect to spend a lot of time handling that side of the process, especially if we aren't in a place where we are stable from a technical perspective or have deadlines looming. On the other hand if I'm just directly reporting to a single person I'm much more open to lending a hand and pick up a lot of stuff.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#433

Post by CloudDeltaNine » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

2009-2019 I worked for a multi-billion dollar company as 1 of 2 DevOps Admins for their on-prem web hosting where we took the IaaS coming from the companies private data-center and added/managed the rest of the layers to offer PaaS/SaaS web-hosting solutions for all of the companies departments. The income was great but the life balance and respect from coworkers was awful. In 2018 the company restructured and began mass layoffs because some 3rd party consultants told them it would be good for the ledger. My internal team was shredded and the handful of web development staff we had were all promptly dismissed with the exception of the 2 admins and our direct report. Thousands of web-app instances previously supported by a team of 10 where now just 2 people's responsibility 24/7/365.

I quit and moved to the opposite side of the country for a change of pace at the end of 2019 then took a Help Desk job at a fraction of the pay. Unfortunately I was laid off from the new Help Desk job just a few months later as the pandemic closed down smaller retail shops.

Despite my decade of experience and constantly applying to remote positions throughout 2020-2021 I literally received 1 interview but declined their offer because of too many red flags during the interview conversation (remote work not actually remote, duties well outside my experience, major deadlines within the 1st week which made it seem like they were just looking for a scapegoat to blame some major management failures on).

I was unemployed and without income for nearly 2 years with the exception of a few months and a few hundred bucks from the Help Desk job until my life was literally saved by better-late-than-never Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. I used the money from that PUA to move my family back across the country.

Reconnecting with an old co-worker from the previous corporate job gave me a lead on an actual fully-remote position with a different local company and I started working for them just last month. My new salary is a 40% cut from what I was making in 2019 but the work-life balance actually exists and I am not being forced to wear "all the hats all the time."

I see (toxic) company culture, work/life balance, and flexibility all as major factors in my journey to where I am now but holy-fuck have I had a difficult few years to get here.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#434

Post by chris11 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #364

strgcmc wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc.…

Right, I'm rather experienced and make many multiples of 50k/yr, so its not really a compensation thing. It's more that it feels very ephemeral / tenuous as none of it is in an org chart or official. It is basically what problems management has to solve and what seniors are available at the moment. I am, officially in title and org chart an IC. In reality 10-20% of my time is IC dev work. 6 months ago it was 50%, 6 m…

I'm just a senior IC, and not at FAANG. But my employer does recruit from FAANG. 0%-20% sounds low for dev work, but the basic description looks somewhat familiar. We don't have project managers, and not all teams have product managers, so seniority can get you more of that work, and less dev work. I don't think ICs do managerial people management if you don't include mentoring. And I do know one or two directors who still code a lot. Maybe some FAANGS have senior positions with more IC dev work.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#435

Post by maxsilver » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #266

protonimitate wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me at my last company. I was over worked, wore too many hats, and was paid significantly less than my team mates who were more junior than I was (and had less responsibility). I had a handful of conversations that never amounted to anything. As soon as I put in my notice with a new offer in hand suddenly I was able to "set my price". I left for other reasons as well, but it really shone a light…

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 serious about coding, you aren't strong enough technically, the developers won't trust you"

"Oh, your applying to be a Product Manager / Product Director. Look at all this programming and tech experience on your resume, you are really just a developer, you should just be pulling tickets from JIRA/Asana/Linear, you probably wouldn't be able to speak in non-technical terms in front of customers/clients/etc"

(loop on repeat)

I've not heard of a job name/title/role that accurately represents this sort of work, even though companies generally seem to like it, if I can somehow get through their application process.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#436

Post by cjaro » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:14 PM UTC

staller wrote: post #381

I jumped from a small startup to a larger company in 2021 because I was getting bored with the work after a few years and felt that I had stopped growing. I needed a new challenge, and I have some goals that I recognized moving to a larger company would help me grow to achieve. I also wanted to be paid more because the amount of time and work I put in the compensation wasn't competitive. At the much larger company th…

That's the opposite direction I'm trying to head. I'm at a huge company (relatively, I guess - 300+ ppl, got acquired by a several-thousand ppl company) and I'm eyeing a startup. I hate how corporate and over-policied everything has become.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#437

Post by thereddaikon » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

Its the money. Everything else is just icing on top. My place just concluded its annual survey and from the fall out its clear that nobody gives a damn about the culture, or the environment or any other corp-speak terms, talk is cheap. They care about money and everyone thinks they are undercompensated. We also have poor retention in general and the general feeling is that its due to pay.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#438

Post by NotSammyHagar » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #310

dumbfounder wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steady growth is fine. The growth is not steady as of late, things have spiked in short order.

Tech companies are making record profits, more and more of the economy is being digitized and automated… there’s been a tech gold rush in the pandemic, giving tech companies the ability to compensate better than they did before.

Yeah, there's clearly no barrier to tech companies paying a good amount more, and still being incredibly profitable. The stock conversation is not that expensive for faangs for free but if the stock keeps going up. It's making it harder for regular companies to hire tech workers.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#439

Post by hysan » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #73

diob wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the old generation really bought into this, but the new generation knows it's a load of bull. The poll makes it pretty obvious that compensation is the biggest reason folks leave, and it's the thinking of the old generation who doesn't know how to retain talent (they do, but they keep throwing pizza parties / sending out merch instead). It's a real "it can't be helped" mentality around retention.

Why is compensation #1 though? There is a threshold where you have enough money and it's easier to work with people you know and like. So, what do they need that extra money for? As I mentioned elsewhere housing is currently the #1 issues I see here in Canada that people are focused on. If you are a front line person, making $15 at a restaurant, plus renting where housing costs $1m+, you are probably looking for opti…

> Why is compensation #1 though?

If you view this multi-answer poll from the opposite perspective, the question is, when would someone leave for a lower compensation job? I suspect that would be an extremely low number. Higher on HN because of the demographic, but still low.

Re: Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

#440

Post by rr808 » Fri, Jan 14, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

cagey wrote: post #328

Rather 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…

I'm a little younger than you but feel the ageism too. 10-20 years ago I had no problem getting jobs now I feel like the guy on the playground who's always picked last when choosing teams.