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

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#811

Post by jnurmine » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #198

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…

I left my job in May and I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail now. I saved more than enough for living in a tent for 5 months (admittedly the tent was expensive but I already had it). So far it's been great. I've met a lot of folks who are burned out and taking some time to think. If long-distance hiking appeals, I'd be happy to discuss it. Long-distance hiking isn't for everyone but

That sounds superb and I wish you good luck and lots of trail magic. The AT looks beautiful (I've only seen pictures of it in blogs).

Forests are wonderful. I grew up around forests, playing in them as a child. A few years ago while day hiking in a forest I came to a Sun-warmed opening in pine barrens from amidst taller pines. That specific scent of the ground and the pines etc., the heat and the wind -- all these, but mostly the strong scent, took me vividly back to my childhood. I remembered so many things as if I were there again, I saw these memories just flowing at me. For a moment, I was transported back to my grandparents place at a summer when I was 6-8 years old. I felt how much they loved me and what a good and carefree place I had been in.

For some time, I stood there in awe with my mouth open, trying to process what just happened. It was such a powerful influx of memories.

I don't know if you've experienced something like this, but I hope you will! Maybe some years from now your hike will come back to you.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#812

Post by erik_seaberg » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #680

akiselev wrote: post #574

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 think a presence in the same legal system is also a barrier. If you open a branch office and hire and manage them seriously, you can find a sharp team, but this isn’t all that cheap. If you try to write a small check to some contracting company with no reputation, they will deliver “tested” tarballs that are littered with syntax errors because they know suing them isn’t really feasible.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#813

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

maybelsyrup wrote: post #793

nightski wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't allocate all revenue to payroll. That's not how business or the economy works.

> That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't allocate all revenue to payroll. You may be right about this. In fact I'd wager that you are. But the problem isn't that part of what you said; it's this: > That's not how business or the economy works. You're probably right about this too! The problem is that, in these conversations, we usually just stop here. Whereas more and more, I'm finding myself asking "c…

[deleted]

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#814

Post by hutzlibu » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #137

hutzlibu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend traveling. See all the places, you want to see, with no pressure of having to go back to work by a fixed date, soon. Meet people, make new connections, chances are, you will find new opportunities to work, along the way. Bonus points, if you have all your stuff packed somewhere and not have to pay any rent. But it depends what you want, if you like your home, keep it. Have projects in your home ... There…

I took 3 years off, didn’t do anything other than read, watch tv, go to the movies, and walk/ride my bicycle. Never traveled once. Loved every minute of it. Doing nothing doesn’t get boring for everyone. And it’s my time not yours so who’s to say what a waste is? My biggest advice is to do what you want and don’t feel like you have to live up to some HN-gap-year fantasy. You might regret sitting in your apartment sur…

"Doing nothing doesn’t get boring for everyone. And it’s my time not yours so who’s to say what a waste is?"

You didn't do nothing for 3 years. You enjoyed your time, and you did things, so no, you did not waste it.

Otherwise I very strongly agree with, that you just should do, what you really want and not what others want.

After I decided to leave university, I planned a bike trip from germany to portugal. I wanted to do this. And I did it. But then, along the way, on the border to spain, at a nice place I stayed for a while ... I decided I had enough. Or I realized, that I had wanted this for a while already.

It was fun, but "accomplishing" my trip would have only meaning for my travel blog and the expectations of other people - but not for me.

I enjoyed the trip very much, but did not felt like moving further and spend the whole winter in the south. So screw other peoples expecations, I am doing what I want, so I flew back home.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#815

Post by maerF0x0 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

cruano wrote: post #752

maerF0x0 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how you learn. Personally I've alway been ultra self taught. Even in university would only show up for lectures if I didnt understand the material in the text book. Else I basically just followed the syllabus and got reasonably good grades. Some are more hands on though and prefer social learning ("show me how to do it..."). To each their own, but I personally learn faster when left alone than when someone…

It also depends on what you are learning. I'm sure a junior engineer would get by just fine if all they had to do was learn a language, but if you have to look at a 10-year-old system where only senior co-workers know the context for, I wouldn't blame them for needing some hand-holding.

yeah, in that case the Senior co-worker literally is the text book.

That being said, just reading the source code is under untilized these days. Engineers sometimes ask me how the system works, I send them to the repo. It's all right there, just have to learn to read the story it tells.

One risk is that often times the co-worker knows the business logic in "how it ought to be" not the reality of the underlying code. I've had engineers say "It works like X" and I have to say "well, only sometimes. The code says this..."

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#816

Post by geekster777 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #631

geekster777 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May not be enough to pull the trigger, but definitely enough to transition down to a part time or remote web dev gig in a low cost of living area. Once you have such a net worth secured, you just have to keep from pulling from it for a few years while it compounds. The big thing is that around 900k is when you get diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations. Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $…

I’ve never understood this logic. If you’re going to be working, why take a significant pay cut? It’s not like other lower tier jobs are actually that much less work; you’re working with less skilled people in general and often poor management. This is the coastfire philosophy and it makes no sense. You could work a a few more years at high-paying miserable job or an extra decade at low-paying probably miserable job.

I think of it more as I could work a few more years at my current high paying miserable job, or the same few years + 1 at a flexible (arguably less miserable) job.

For me at least, the goal has been to bank big cash early, then let the compounding do the heavy lifting towards the end. As I mentioned above, getting a 10% increase takes a lot more savings late in the game whereas the snowballing effect of compounding interest is stronger, so I'm coming out ahead just by staying afloat without dipping into my savings. I look at the work that appeals to digital nomads (pre-covid, this was work FAANG and other high paying jobs didn't widely offer), and it seems more valuable to spend some mobile years financing a nice adventure with the stability of a job that lets me work from home. It means a gradual transition to RE and that very little in my lifestyle should change once I pull the trigger. Personally I'm looking to reach FI /then/ transition to a remote/part time job as a way to reduce risk while offering some extra flexibility - everything I earn in that time should be gravy and it should allow me the freedom to travel and enjoy the experiences.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#817

Post by cmrdporcupine » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

I don't particularly want to be remote. I haven't enjoyed it at all. But it is potentially opening up possibilities for me outside of the area I live in.

I'd be open to the idea if I could find a company that did a better job of it than my employer has. I suspect many others are in the same mindset, and that greatly weakens the negotiating position of employers in our industry -- even for recruiting people who don't necessarily want to be remote.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#818

Post by pianoben » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #757

jjav wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I am running the company, I would MUCH rather operate short-handed than "fix" my recruiting problems by lowering the bar. Nobody is talking about lowering the bar, but of putting the bar in the right zipcode. An extremely high bar of leetcode testing is irrelevant to the actual job, so that's an irrelevant bar.

This may seem coldly logical but in the absence of my own researched opinions, I am evaluating the merit of the opinion about these interviews based on their origin: You have - companies that settled on this process, who have been able to attract top tallent that has cleared this bar. You have - employees of these companies that were able to clear the interview bar. And then you have - people who don't work for these…

Personally I suck at leetcode questions, but nevertheless have snuck in to some of these so-called "top-tier" companies. And let me tell you!

These questions have fuck-all to do with the actual work the happens there. Sure, you can usually find someone to tell you how much rainwater accumulates into a random bar chart, but I see as much brain-dead code at the top as anywhere else. As much great code, too, FWIW. Everywhere, the key skills that make for a successful IC are the same, and they definitely don't require implementing splay trees or skip lists from scratch and without references. 99% of the time it's shuffling bits around and using hash maps.

Honestly the people I work with who advocate the hardest for leetcode are the ones who had to grind hard and, evidently, want others to suffer too. As if a sane process would mean their own suffering was in vain.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#819

Post by nly » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #595

syshum wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 4% rule is viewed by many to be very very conservative, many are looking at 6-8% as a better base line. Of course if you are retiring in your 40% you may want to be pretty conservative...

Of course, it's easy to look at the last ten years and nudge the number up. Retiring in 40s is a pretty big decision. It's not impossible to re-enter the professional workforce in your late-40s or 50s, if things don't work out, but it will almost certainly not be easy.

Is it even possible to access US pension savings in your 30s or 40s?

In the UK tax advantaged pension accounts cannot be accessed until you're 55 (and 58 for my generation)

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#820

Post by maybelsyrup » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #786

Accujack wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year. Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have. It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.

Don’t get caught up in the fantasy that it’s stopped in any appreciable way. The hammer is just starting to fall as vaccination rates go up. This is the start of the first battle, not the second act.

Whether we look back at this moment as fantasy or the beginning of something truly changing won't be the result of some deterministic historical process. It's up to us. Call your congressman, your senator. Meet with coworkers and discuss this stuff. Post shit on the internet and challenge yourself and others to think differently. Go out into the world, even if individual actions are tiny or barely perceptible.

The key thing about the world is that someone made it this way. I have to believe that it can be made differently.