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“Great resignation” wave coming for companies

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Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#731

I quit last June after 13 mostly consecutive years in tech. I haven't saved enough to be financially independent but I can coast for a while. Even at a company that seemed to have good work life balance, I couldn't take it so I have no idea how you FAANG folks do it. I don't know if I'm just not suited for the career or what, but working as a software engineer caused several stress related health problems that have e…

Work-life balance isn't bad at FAANG (not generally speaking at least).

i think theres a discrepancy between junior engineers who get abused/overworked and don't know any better, and the seniors who know that they can say no to things without any repercussions

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#732
post #197
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…

I’ve not taken a gap year or heard of anybody else that has either. My peers and I are all 1-2 jobs out of college, and we’re all terrified of having a gap in our resume. Apparently this concern is overblown, but we all seem to have learned it from our parents.

[deleted]

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have the option of going back to work if shit hits the fan. Maybe it'll be harder to find a job, or to find one that pays as well as before, but that's pretty heavily tempered by the fat nest egg you have. It's a pretty big misconception that by "retiring" you're permanently cutting off all abilities to produce income ever again. It's easy to see "oh if a wealth tax is introduced, you'll run out of money by 50…

As browsing any discussion on recruiting and interviewing with illustrate, hiring is already fucked up, and adding age plus a multi year gap would make getting a new job quite hard, let alone one that matches the compensation one has today.

If you stayed active in relevant circles, perhaps doable given personal contacts.

But I agree in general. If someone retires at 40 and realizes 5-10 years later this isn't working out, that's a pretty big uphill climb for conventional professional employment.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, those companies seem to be more successful than others with "more relevant" bars.

Google actually admitted their 'elite' leet code interview process didn't actually help the outcomes... This is the first link I dug up about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...

That isn't about the leetcode interviewing.

That's about the microsoft-era actual riddles, like "if you were reduced to the size of an ant and put in a blender, how would you get out?"

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#735
I guess I'm part of this wave. Just these days I struggle with the decision if I should rather (a) quit my job without having found a new position yet or (b) keep working while applying for new jobs. (I'm located in Germany)

Pros of early quitting: (1) I'm not learning anything anymore in my current job. The earlier the better... (2) My current job is subject to 3 months' notice, so I'm definitely free from October onwards (3) I hope this gives me some extra motivation to work on data science projects in my spare time

Cons of early quitting: (1) Obviously no income anymore from October onwards unless I have found a new job. (2) From October onwards, it might be hard to find a new flat as the landlords request to get evidence of a regular income

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is worth noting that software salaries are artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas developers. Because it's been tried before and for the most part it was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project after being outbid a year earlier by a…

Overall I agree with you, and my experience has been similar, but I think the comparison with outsourcing is not correct. I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested entities whose incentives did not align well. Not necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding were bad. Back to the guy in Argentina -- I imagine that he/she is actually in a…

> I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested entities whose incentives did not align well. Not necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding were bad.

It failed because the intent was to cut costs and they got what they paid for. The successful ones were genuinely trying to expand their engineering talent pool and quickly figured out that the cost savings were a marginal benefit that made up for some of the extra overhead of international accounting and management. Quality engineers are one visa lottery away from Western salaries so the local median salary is often completely disconnected from what a FAANG might pay for a decent engineer, which is a rude awakening for anyone trying to cut costs without destroying the quality of their output. On top of that, the people most likely to make it a smooth transition are also the people most in demand (arms race!) and competition for them helps evaporate any savings for the business.

The guy in Argentina is in a great position to get hired to work remotely for an American company, but I don't seem him as competition regardless of how good he is. It's an arms race so my employer's competitor can't replace their team with Argentinians because that down time will give my employer time to crush them (which we learned in the 2000s). They can hire an extra team of Argentinians on top of their existing head count but if they do that my employer will be pressured to hire a team of Brazilians. Before you know it, both companies are hiring even more local teams to help manage the flow of work between their existing local teams and the outsourced ones.

There's more work and money to pay for it than there are people to do it. Until that changes, we're not the ones competing, the employers are.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#737
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on return difficult?

Job searching with "stranger" companies becomes harder. But if you leave enough coworkers who want to work with you again at each job, you can always find jobs through them.

Yep, makes sense :-)

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#738
post #429
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on return difficult?

> Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on return difficult? I am not the same person you asked the question to, but I guess if you work on a couple of hobby projects and actually release those in your break year, you won't have holes in your CV.

Good point. I guess it depends on what kind of break you want...

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#739
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.

We don't need a lot of people to provide food, shelter, electricity and water for 7.6bn people? What about clothes, cars, furniture, electronics, schools, hospitals, medical equipment? "The main argument is UBI." - is that it? UBI will solve everything? Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved. As I said in my other comment, I am not saying that the current status-quo is right. I think ther…

> What about clothes, cars, furniture, electronics, schools, hospitals, medical equipment?

Not all jobs are unnecessary, but there are jobs that are more important than others. There are a lot of jobs people wish they would not work or that they think nothing would change if they did not work those jobs. Just read about David Graeber and his book, Bullshit Jobs.

Just imagine all the workers in fast food. Look around and you will see a lot of people working jobs when they could spend time at university instead. You only listed the best jobs. People who work in insurance, sales, fast food, uber drivers, food delivery, clothing shops, etc.

> Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved.

That's already what happens when there are bailouts. Giving money to people instead of giving it to the banks makes more sense.

I'm not saying that everybody should quit their jobs, I'm just saying that once you raise unemployment benefits, you will see a lot of wage slave quit their jobs and nothing will change.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am honestly very bitter about Americans glorifying the European system while happily taking home 2/3rds of their 100k+ developer salaries and enjoying much lower prices of everything. With regards to insurance: - in some countries (UK, Sweden) - the insurance is contingent on having a social security number, so the coverage is pretty much universal for residents, but people coming from other EU countries will still…

> I am honestly very bitter about Americans glorifying the European system while happily taking home 2/3rds of their 100k+ developer salaries and enjoying much lower prices of everything. I agree, although I think the ignorance extends to Europeans as well. Europeans are often surprised to hear that American software professional salaries are ~60% higher than European salaries even after adjusting for taxes, healthca…

How difficult is it to work remotely in a different country? I’ve thought about doing this but it seems like it’s be a lot of hassle with my employer and navigating local laws in Europe.
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