My own personal data point is that, with COVID, some tech companies are embracing remote work and suddenly I can enter a much wider and higher paid job market without having to relocate.
Companies that aim to get butts back in the office are going to have a huge brain drain.
One slight variation on remote: last year we learned which companies are loyal to, and value, employees. Plenty of companies released people preemptively, simply to make a couple of quarters look good.
If the relationship is going to be that minimally frangible, people will hesitate to relocate to a company town at great impact to their family, only to repeat every time a shadow crosses some book.
> If the relationship is going to be that minimally frangible, people will hesitate to relocate to a company town at great impact to their family, only to repeat every time a shadow crosses some book.
Most tech jobs are not in single-company towns, they are in tech hubs, which have a large number of alternative employers.
The fact that I hadn't seen my coworkers in a year made it easier to switch. No denying that. Loved my previous workplace, great people, great work. They went above and beyond in all matters. Would probably not have risked a move in normal circumstances.
Just a personal anecdote, I feel way closer to my current coworkers (who I've only met in person twice) than at my first job where I simply didn't have much in common with any of my coworkers. If you really click then you can get along online, but if you work with someone in-person, there's no escape if you don't like them.
Tech has the additional factor of companies using their billions of dollars sitting around unproductively to entrap their companies.
Some of the cloud companies acquire talent to keep their customers trapped. I have colleagues who are system administrators and are getting $500k comp as individual contributors, way in excess of their value. One bank junior vp type guy got a 3x pay increase, because he knew where the bodies were buried for a major cloud implementation.
I love how asking people why they are leaving is not on the list. Instead it's gathering metrics and data. If you treat people like numbers, that's sort of the explaination right there. Anything to avoid actually building a working relationship.
Someone on YouTube made an interesting point that what we’re seeing is people quitting jobs they would have left much earlier, but couldn’t because of the pandemic. Basically a lot of people deferred quitting in 2020 and now the 2020 batch is quitting with the 2021 batch.
Yes, the article you're commenting on already makes that point :)
It’s also possible that many of these mid-level employees may have delayed transitioning out of their roles due to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, meaning that the boost we’ve seen over the last several months could be the result of more than a year’s worth of pent-up resignations.
I gradually dropped out a few years ago. I worked my way up in tech, wearing many different hats, for about 20 years, to a three-page resume and being able to find a six-figure job at the drop of a hat.
But the trade-off was not getting enough sleep, and feeling like my life's energy was being directed to making the world worse, not better. My work amounted to improving the efficiency of profit-making of the business, and getting a small piece of it to keep. I worked in finance supporting applications to facilitate MBS. I worked in advertising agencies to facilitate the sales of harmful products like petroleum and sugar water. All in all, my conscience was not clean.
Then there was the stress of arbitrary deadlines. And the constant disappointment of shipping something written haphazardly and then retired after a couple of years, replaced by another pile of crap.
It was a great learning experience. I think of it as university, where you also do a whole bunch of useless and pointless busywork in order to learn the skills. But eventually, it was time to go and move on.
I live primarily fregan lifestyle now, meaning I avoid using money as much as possible, for both ethical and practical reasons. I am generally able to sleep as much as I want, meditate as much as I want, and refactor my code as much as I want. I am almost never in a rush, and I feel much calmer and happier.
I worked for a non-profit, and it was largely the same, minus the chasing profits part. The salary was lower, and perhaps the negative impact was smaller, but I did not feel a positive impact at all. It still felt like I was largely feeding and validating the same processes.
I don't know about others, but I just don't feel like I am designed for living the same schedule day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out, until I look back on it and wonder, where did all the time go?
And you know what, that feeling has gone away for me. I don't remember the last time I felt that "time is slipping away" feeling. In fact, I often feel the opposite: Things which happened just a day or two ago feel like several weeks have passed, and time has stretched out.
As someone who just started looking, here is personal reasons:
* Major layoffs early in COVID meant more work for everyone not laid off
* Being run to death to implement new must-have features to keep the business going with the new COVID restrictions (different businesses saw this in their own ways - needing curbside pickup interfaces being a common one)
* Getting further into COVID, starting to hear how great business is doing with massive unforeseen profits - but not seeing any of those profits in my paycheck
* Not able to get approval to get back up to pre-covid staffing levels means everyone is continuing to be overworked
I haven't seen an exodus from my company, but there must be a larger one - as I've had a huge pipeline of new candidates lately that is great.
Others have mentioned a few things you can do and they seem to match with what my company has done:
1. Review salaries, pay more fast, retain who you have, there's a razor's edge and although money isn't everything it will definitely help in the very near term while you figure out other retention approaches.
2. Go fully remote. A lot of people want to be in offices, but very few will actually go given the option _right now_ - our office is empty, even when it's optionally allowed open. Pay consistent salaries. Let someone else figure out that regional salary stuff when the dust settles.
Another thing that seems important, but may just be a trend at my company: get specific with career development.
People joining your company now want to know how you will care for them long term. A large reason in my opinion for the exits is that folks are not willing to accept a company treating them like a contractor perpetually. They want to be invested in, see concrete growth and advancement. This is harder to do at small startups, but it's important for people to feel safe/stable during a weird criss.
My wife's employer not only expected people to return to the office 100%, but they moved their headquarters outside of the city center to a cheap property near an airport since WFH began.
Then they announced a couple weeks ago that there was mandatory return-to-office orders for mid-October, and I overheard on the Zoom call from one of their execs "I really should be seeing more smiles over this news".
In the past month they have lost half of their workforce.
It's absolutely bonkers that some employers don't realize that they have to respect and accomodate their employees. The pandemic is teaching the most heartless of leaders an important lesson on the reciprocal nature of humanity right now.
I have hired over a dozen people so far this year, and interviewed a substantial multiple of that.
About half of interviewees, when asked what they are looking for in a new position, answer some variant of: my current/old job wants us to come back to the office full-time.
Of course it's hard to say how permanent this all will be, what things will be like in a decade. But for now, requiring on-site work is a significant disadvantage in hiring and retention.
Readit News
Companies that aim to get butts back in the office are going to have a huge brain drain.
If the relationship is going to be that minimally frangible, people will hesitate to relocate to a company town at great impact to their family, only to repeat every time a shadow crosses some book.
Remote people can have some defensive stability.
Most tech jobs are not in single-company towns, they are in tech hubs, which have a large number of alternative employers.
Some of the cloud companies acquire talent to keep their customers trapped. I have colleagues who are system administrators and are getting $500k comp as individual contributors, way in excess of their value. One bank junior vp type guy got a 3x pay increase, because he knew where the bodies were buried for a major cloud implementation.
I don't advocate for full office neither, a hybrid model like 3 days home 2 days office, or whatever combination of this I think is the way to go.
Also, a lot of people forget that the World is not comprised of just office workers. There are jobs that simply can't be done from home.
But the trade-off was not getting enough sleep, and feeling like my life's energy was being directed to making the world worse, not better. My work amounted to improving the efficiency of profit-making of the business, and getting a small piece of it to keep. I worked in finance supporting applications to facilitate MBS. I worked in advertising agencies to facilitate the sales of harmful products like petroleum and sugar water. All in all, my conscience was not clean.
Then there was the stress of arbitrary deadlines. And the constant disappointment of shipping something written haphazardly and then retired after a couple of years, replaced by another pile of crap.
It was a great learning experience. I think of it as university, where you also do a whole bunch of useless and pointless busywork in order to learn the skills. But eventually, it was time to go and move on.
I live primarily fregan lifestyle now, meaning I avoid using money as much as possible, for both ethical and practical reasons. I am generally able to sleep as much as I want, meditate as much as I want, and refactor my code as much as I want. I am almost never in a rush, and I feel much calmer and happier.
For example: Clean energy, a non profit, etc.
I don't know about others, but I just don't feel like I am designed for living the same schedule day in, day out, week in, week out, year in, year out, until I look back on it and wonder, where did all the time go?
And you know what, that feeling has gone away for me. I don't remember the last time I felt that "time is slipping away" feeling. In fact, I often feel the opposite: Things which happened just a day or two ago feel like several weeks have passed, and time has stretched out.
Dead Comment
* Major layoffs early in COVID meant more work for everyone not laid off
* Being run to death to implement new must-have features to keep the business going with the new COVID restrictions (different businesses saw this in their own ways - needing curbside pickup interfaces being a common one)
* Getting further into COVID, starting to hear how great business is doing with massive unforeseen profits - but not seeing any of those profits in my paycheck
* Not able to get approval to get back up to pre-covid staffing levels means everyone is continuing to be overworked
Others have mentioned a few things you can do and they seem to match with what my company has done:
1. Review salaries, pay more fast, retain who you have, there's a razor's edge and although money isn't everything it will definitely help in the very near term while you figure out other retention approaches.
2. Go fully remote. A lot of people want to be in offices, but very few will actually go given the option _right now_ - our office is empty, even when it's optionally allowed open. Pay consistent salaries. Let someone else figure out that regional salary stuff when the dust settles.
Another thing that seems important, but may just be a trend at my company: get specific with career development.
People joining your company now want to know how you will care for them long term. A large reason in my opinion for the exits is that folks are not willing to accept a company treating them like a contractor perpetually. They want to be invested in, see concrete growth and advancement. This is harder to do at small startups, but it's important for people to feel safe/stable during a weird criss.
My wife's employer not only expected people to return to the office 100%, but they moved their headquarters outside of the city center to a cheap property near an airport since WFH began.
Then they announced a couple weeks ago that there was mandatory return-to-office orders for mid-October, and I overheard on the Zoom call from one of their execs "I really should be seeing more smiles over this news".
In the past month they have lost half of their workforce.
It's absolutely bonkers that some employers don't realize that they have to respect and accomodate their employees. The pandemic is teaching the most heartless of leaders an important lesson on the reciprocal nature of humanity right now.
About half of interviewees, when asked what they are looking for in a new position, answer some variant of: my current/old job wants us to come back to the office full-time.
Of course it's hard to say how permanent this all will be, what things will be like in a decade. But for now, requiring on-site work is a significant disadvantage in hiring and retention.