I don’t know what exactly the truth is, but I’m one of the tech workers living in the Seattle area.<p>I’ll start off by saying that I work 60 hours a week, at least. My stress and anxiety levels are manageable now, but only because I found ways of managing them. They’re not reasonable though and most importantly, they’re not sustainable.<p>Based on the neighborhood I live in and my compensation, I am extremely privileged. I don’t have money concerns that my parents had. Most things that I might need, I can buy them without having to think too much or without putting a dent in my net worth.<p>But my job is not sustainable. So, I live way below my means and avoid any lifestyle creep.<p>I would like to own a home, a nice one. Not a $1M property that’s not even comparable to my parents home. Given my compensation and many, many years of savings, this would be reasonable. I looked at several houses over the weekend. One dump after another, going for $1.3MM at the minimum. One actually had an offer accepted, merely hours after we toured it. They told us the buyer offered $1.6MM.<p>But Seattle has become a lawless dump. The east side has started homes for $1.4MM where the inspection report shows you that you’re basically just paying for the land.<p>If I have to be a renter my whole damn life and can’t even afford a house, what is the god damn point? Yeah I get paid very well, but I am a pawn of people who earn significantly more. And it’s not that I’m just comparing myself, but even after all this work and money I can’t comfortably buy a house - then where does this leave the majority of this country?<p>I don’t know.
The "Great Resignation" has been fueled by anecdotes and a tiny upward tick in the underlying data.<p>If you go looking, it's not hard to find comments, anecdotes, and stories from people whose workplaces <i>did</i> experience some sort of large resignation event where a lot of people went out and got new jobs.<p>The common theme in those anecdotes is <i>always</i> that they were underpaid and/or mistreated to begin with. In some ways, the "Great Resignation" news stories being blasted all over the news gave a lot of people the final push they needed to go out and look for new jobs. Combined with the booming economy, it wasn't hard for these people to find better jobs. Once their coworkers realized what was happening, they also made the leap.<p>So in a sense, it does appear that small pockets of employers who were behind the curve are finally getting what's coming to them. I half believe the news stories about "Great Resignation" stuff became a self-fulfilling prophecy where everyone who wasn't getting a new job felt left out.<p>But if you look at any larger company data or at companies who were smart enough to keep pace with compensation and employee treatment norms, there isn't really a wave of resignations like the news stories suggest.<p>Overall employee turnover is slightly higher than normal, unless you also factor in the <i>decrease</i> in employee turnover during early COVID, at which point the running average of employee turnover is all that abnormal.
What an awful article. Two quotes to show how garbage this is-<p>> The great-resignation thesis seems strongest in America and Britain. In September a record 4.4m Americans quit their jobs (see chart 1). In the third quarter of the year nearly 400,000 Britons moved from one job to another after handing in their notice, also the highest-ever level.<p>> In other parts of the rich world, however, a great resignation is harder to spot.<p>So basically the premise of their title is that the "Great Resignation" doesn't count because it's primarily happening in two countries instead of in every country.
I just moved to another company late last month. Before I left my old company, multiple people were either quitting, or moving to new positions within the company, and as a result the company was having a rough time filling all their open positions. I know this is anecdotal, but I really don't believe that the Economist is right in this case.
I would have to imagine that tracks similar to the "K" shaped economy recovery. This means that lower pay physically based positions [retail, travel, food] have seen great amounts of people leaving those industries as Government stimulus checks have given people time and money to think about their jobs, many are also leaving the industry permanently if they can.<p>On the flip side higher payed professional positions are seeing some turnover but no where anywhere like the other lower paid sectors.<p>I know for a fact that the restaurant/food service situation is on full meltdown mode in Southern California. A few panda expresses have run out rice. Multiple Habit burgers have shut down due to lack of staff, eating out at restaurants have been the worse I have ever seen it as everyone is really new and it shows.<p>That being said I have been to a lot of places in the country this year(Utah, Arizona, Hawaii) and nothing is similar to what I've seen locally in southern California so it may track to how expensive California has become and could be people are quitting jobs in expensive areas and moving to cheaper ones.
Honestly, I'm not concerned if it "great resignation" really happened. My boss heard the news and I was able to leverage an offer to get a 50% salary increase.<p>This worked out well for me. The negative side-effect is that I am getting ghosted a lot on linked-in as my salary is high for the area and recruiters just stop responding when they hear what offer I would consider.<p>However, my next move is going to be to a tech company which will enable another 50% jump hopefully.
Odd that the article doesn't even mention the labor participation rate ("the number of people ages 16 and over who are employed or actively seeking employment divided by the total noninstitutionalized, civilian working-age population".<p><a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp" rel="nofollow">https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/participationrate.asp</a><p>A quick look at the Fred chart shows that the US is nowhere close to regaining pre-pandemic levels, and that this comes amid a multi-year decline:<p><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART</a><p>Although the reasons may not be clear, the resignation itself has some pretty good evidence.
I've seen around 50% attrition this year in the ML department I'm in.<p>The reasoning:<p>- People want to leave the cities<p>- People want to spend time with family<p>- Racism, sexism and exclusion is becoming unbearable (largest single factor I've seen)<p>- Forcing medical procedures (second largest single factor I've seen)<p>- Salaries are becoming very competitive with the inflation and job switching<p>- Companies are re-gearing to be more online and that means more tech opportunities<p>Every time someone leaves I ping them and ask why. Personally I'm curious. Many have purchased farms and have moved to the middle of no where. I generally think they'll miss the cities, but there's a pretty significant move of tech people out to the country.
I left a FAANG just last week. I'd say for a mix of work-related reasons and also because I just wanted a break in general. I wouldn't say it was "COVID" or some specific reason but I'm sure it contributed.<p>Edit: Also, FWIW roughly 4 people left my team in the past year (since Oct 2020) before me. A couple went to new jobs, a couple did not and just resigned without plans (me too).
I’m not going to comment on the evidence, but I can say that my previous manager was very quick to support the ‘great resignation’. It was a very convenient excuse to deflect from her terrible management.
I don't think a significant proportion of people are actually leaving the workforce permanently, but something major is shifting in the US: workers are demanding better working conditions and pay, and taking less bullshit.<p>I think there are probably 10% of the worst employers in the country who just can't hire right now - from a mixture of bad reputation and unwillingness to pay (rising) market wages. There are better jobs out there - so workers are going to where managers treat them with humanity.<p>Check out reddit.com/r/antiwork - this subreddit has grown extremely rapidly over the past ~6 months. It feels like a movement is bubbling. I wouldn't be surprised if we see widespread labor marches and strikes in 2022.
Does it really matter if it's "real" or not? The original article says it's not for equally tenuous reasons in my opinion: e.g. it's only happening in the US and GB which apparently means it's not "real" if it's not happening literally everywhere.<p>Further, I think highlighting the collective power of workers and people generally leaving shitty jobs, bosses, and companies for greener pastures is a good thing. There's a million ways to Sunday that this phenomenon could be localized or sliced (certain geographies, any number of socio-economic or demographic lines, industries, even specific job titles etc. may show increased worker turnover). If people are leaving customer facing service jobs because of anti-mask nut-jobs, low pay, lack of autonomy in hours, and general staff shortages I don't exactly blame them. It also doesn't mean that this turnover would be visible in high-earning tech jobs.<p>I hate being conspiratorial, but who does this narrative benefit? Obviously employers (and probably the majority of the subscribership of The Economist).
To add more data points, I also just quit my software engineering job last week to go to a place with a better product and better pay. I think one of the commenters was right on when they said it was more about the "last straw" and incentivizing people to look for other jobs and that there are a LOT of tech jobs that offer remote work now.
Does anyone have a good understanding of how this narrative got started and took off? We've always had narratives outpacing facts (in hopes that the facts could be nudged into catching up), but I wonder to what extent social media plays a role in driving these stories now.
I think that there is some sort of resignation. Judging by my experience in a global bank in Europe, people are very willing to leave and they do. Even HR is changing: 2 years ago, people who left were officially bid farewell, while now HR tries to conceal these news.<p>What has changed? LinkedIn. People get hit on via LinkedIn a lot. And this caused a landslide. New hires vs resignations is negative.<p>This might be different to especially the USA, but I believe that headhunting for jobs now has finally arrived in Europe. And that is a huge factor. Beforehand it was tough to recruit people via headhunters. Now this can even be automated to a certain extend.
Total anecdotal evidence but it seems that in tech a lot of people are quitting/changing jobs or looking at it. It seems like big co's have tweaked their comp packages a bit to front load equity packages and avoid those crazy comp numbers you could get in the past and that and various news stories have made people more willing to leave.<p>Some companies may also be doing a bit of downsize without layoffs and others have done layoffs and reigned in comp in a way that leaves the remaining people looking at their options.<p>Overall it seems like a good time to be hiring, especially as a startup/pre ipo company.
What are you going to do after you quit? I've seen a lot of turn over, but it's not like anyone started working in the first place because they wanted, we all work for money, so I never really understood the great resignation idea, what happens next?<p>A great turn over where people that weren't happy try to find a job they are happy with might happen, and honestly that sounds great for everyone.