As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'
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When I saw what the pandemic was doing to nearly every professional office worker, I figured it was just a matter of time before the resignations started flooding in. Everyone had a whole year "pause" to reevaluate if their lives were organized around their goals, and for millions, the answer was no. There's no putting this genie back in the bottle.
> My thesis is that if I focus on enjoying the journey, everything else will follow.
I wrote:
> I don't have a single big project in mind for my sabbatical... I do have a single overarching theme, however: joie de vivre. Everything that I do, even the mundane stuff (especially the mundane stuff), I'm going to focus on enjoying it fully. How you do anything is how you do everything, as the Buddhists say. I have come to believe that the person who can enjoy whatever they're doing and make that joy contagious will actually end up accomplishing the most. Yet even if I don't accomplish anything, I'll still be joyful, so what would it matter anyways?
Imagine having all the time in the world, just thinking about everything. Your whole life.
What would you do?
Realistic UBI proposals wouldn’t exactly provide a comfortable wage. They’d provide just enough to get by on the basics, if that. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be helpful, but it does mean that it won’t be an attractive alternative to work for anyone who isn’t comfortable staying poor forever.
UBI would still be a safety net, not an attractive alternative to working. The idea that UBI would enable people to become free of work and follow their dreams for free has been greatly exaggerated. It’s just not possible to tax enough to pay everyone high UBI wages. Safety net wages, maybe, but it won’t be a fun living situation to depend entirely on UBI.
I think creating a significant class of people with reduced buying power in the US will actually lower prices here, as at least some companies decide they don’t want to miss out on that portion of the market just to soak the rest of the Americans for even more money.
Of course that’s expressing a lot of faith in capitalism so it’s entirely possible, even likely, that it would somehow make the entire situation even worse.
What I see are bored young males hanging out and getting in fights, not a whole generation of people learning cuneiform in their newfound free time.
The Value Adding Class will have privilege thrust upon them in the form of paying for those young males to hang out and get in fights.
Ive had the dubious honor of knowing more than one kid who was never going to have to work a single day in life owing to who their parents and grandparents were. They tend to end up chemical addicted for the most part.
Idle hands do the devils work.
Fwiw, I don't mind working at all, but in an ideal world, my work would be varied and my hours would be of my choosing. Sure, you can get that if you freelance, but most corporate jobs want 8h/d 40h/w, at least, and is that how anyone wants to spend their time on earth?
If anything existing basic income experiments have revealed the opposite:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/stockton-ca-gave-residents...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/what-did-...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/richmond-califo...
Giving a small number of people an amount of money below what they'd need to actually survive, with them knowing perfectly well it won't last forever has effectively zero in common with UBI. Give an entire contained population of people enough money that they can have all their basic needs met just with that money, and guarantee them it will continue for the rest of their lives, and I'd bet quite a lot that the results would be drastically different.
Also, not a big deal since you also provided two reasonable links, but many people will see that you linked motherjones and likely discount your comment entirely. It's on the same tier as OANN and breitbart.
By your own measure, basic arithmetic has roughly the same insight into the impact of UBI on society. As is judgement and diversity of life experience. As you say, empiricism on its own is nothing.
Sorry for my honesty, I have no filter.
The paycheck is pretty much all that is getting me out of bed in the morning, even if at this point I can't say I really need it anymore.
People absolutely fall in and out of interest in different types of activities. This is especially true of people who really jump into things with both feet.
I mean also maybe not, but I find it hard to devote time to things I know I am interested in because I work 9-5, 5 days a week. I spend time with my partner of an evening and have housework and exercise to take care of and after all that it feels like there is very little time and like I don't have a lot of energy to learn new skills or pursue hobbies, so what I end up doing is the things I know I like but that are not draining. Ultimately I spend a lot of time reading or playing video games or goofing off on reddit.
Even taking a week or two off isn't necessarily a good indicator, because you won't say, go and buy a bunch of paints and an easel and go "right I'm finally going to get stuck into painting" when you only have two weeks off and know you won't have time for it once they are up
It reminds me of this meme: https://i.imgur.com/dRvwSsI.jpg
Now I agree about needing some variety, so I would probably get a PlayStation too.
Like this: https://viewfinderfox.com/first-post-vaccination-excursion-i...
But all the time.
Most people are probably low in talent and motivation (because lacking talent is demotivating).
There’s always an option. It might entail a more extensive change and change is hard, that’s for sure.
In my opinion, burnout is a problem only faced by people who can afford to do so. I am not saying everyone doesn't face burnout, they probably do, but not everyone can afford to take a sabbatical, dip into savings, indulge in a hobby etc. There are many people who don't earn as much as a silicon valley engineer, have low savings to dip into, and perhaps even have/inherit debt - Making rent and being able to afford essentials takes priority to dealing with burnout in such situations.
Taking a year off is definitely not the norm
If you want to live a un-average life, you need to have un-average priorities and sacrifice. Few on HN should be living paycheck to paycheck.
Check out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover for a starting model. And yes, you'll have to sacrifice now to benefit later.
But you have to understand that consumerism is pushed down our throats from all around starting at a very young age. Dave Ramsay doesn't just come into your consciousness like advertising does, and unless one is close to someone who is very anti consumerism and advertising you will likely be subjected to an onslaught of messages aimed at your subconscious that you are completely ill-equipped to fight.
I think many people in these comments are speaking on behalf of the general population who does not have the luxury of taking a year off.
This comment of yours drips with privilege.
Edit: I was introduced to dave Ramsay's work in my 20s by a close friend who was wealthy and had businesses and homes. He volunteered with some organizations to provide financial literacy classes. I was lucky to have been given that reference.
When you fly, the emergency briefing tells you to put on your own mask before helping others. In lifeguard training, you're taught to keep yourself afloat before the victim.
If you don't have your own finances in order, your opinion on others' finances is just noise and about as valuable.
Not necessarily. It's called empathy. And your lifeguard story makes no sense.
This is also biblical - take the splitter out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of another's eye (paraphrasing).
> Most people pay $100+/month for cable, eat out multiple times per week, have thousands of credit card debt, and an unexpected $400 bill would ravage them.
There's also a cohort that might not earn a lot but is financially responsible, frugal and makes modest gains towards big goals e.g. education for kids, home ownership which can take almost a life time. There's a big spectrum from being poor due to being financially irresponsible and being lucky enough to be in their 20s, debt free and paying off a mortgage instead of rent (with help for college, down payment etc from family to have a healthy head start). Not everyone who doesn't have the means is in such a place because they are lazy or is financially irresponsible. Simply stating that most people are a certain way without evidence is just disingenuous and judgemental, perhaps exposes a bias more than anything.
Congrats. That's awesome and it's what we should strive for. Sacrificing sucks but doing it now so we have to do less of it later (or later generations have to do less) is powerful. Your parents setting that example for you - and you passing it down - is exceptionally valuable too. I grew up in similar financial circumstances without learning those lessons until much much later.
> There's also a cohort that might...
Yes, there are cohorts in all circumstances. That's why I said "most" and not "all."
It creates a simple fairy tale that financial success or failure rests solely on the individual.
It allows people to ignore wage stagnation, inflation, rising costs of critical goods and services, rising inequality, and fundament structural inequities with society.
Here's a more in-depth academic paper that provides data beyond unsourced colloquialisms if you're interested.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_lawreview/vol82/iss4/8...
It allows people to ignore that their choices are by far the biggest factor in what happens in their lives, and instead allows them blame society and take no responsibility.
People can make good/bad choices but the amount and types of choices a person even has available to them, is very dependent on pre-existing family success/wealth.
Jeff Bezo's kids will have more choices/opportunities than a middle class kid who will have more choices/opportunities than a poor kid.
Starving Syrian Refugess have very minimal choices or opportunities.
So your average middle class or poor person has some choices but is much more at the mercy of their ENVIRONMENT than Jeff Bezo's kids who can bend the environment to their will with money.
Your heels seem pretty dug into your belief's so there's a good chance I'm wasting my time by talking to you but whatever.
Looking at the comments here, it seems like people cherry pick anecdotes or statistics to support their beliefs about the distribution.
"65% of Americans are still paying for cable TV."
"According to cable cord-cutting subscribers statistics for 2018, the average viewer in the US can save up to $104 per month by taking the plunge."
Ref: https://techjury.net/blog/cable-tv-subscribers-statistics/
"According to Zagat, if you are like the average American, you go out for lunch and dinner 4.9 times each week."
Ref: https://us1035.iheart.com/featured/sarah/content/2018-01-09-...
Average credit card debt in 2020: $5315
Ref: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/consumer-credit-...
What are the demographics by age, geography for the people paying for cable tv, going out for dinners 5 times a week and that have $5k of credit card debt. You seem to be assuming they are all the same people, and you are assuming that correlation is causation.
Besides, even I indulge -
The link you shared about cord cutting statistics, if you read through the link, its making the point that cutting the cord was on the rise and in 2018 increased by 32.8% compared to 2017. In 2018 alone 33M people canceled their TV subscription. Seems like your data suggests people are increasingly doing what you want them to do, cutting the cord and saving money.
The link about people going out for lunch and dinner, it actually doesn't have any data in it. It appears to be a blog by a private citizen.
The link you shared about credit card debt, well that actually says that average credit card debt reduced by 14% from 2019 to 2020, while the avg fico across all generations increased. Seems like another trend that you wanted people to do. Surprisingly it also says that while avg credit card debt reduced from 2019 to 2020, student loan debt increased the highest of any debt category, by 9%.
Should I be concluding that people have been cutting the cord and saving money on cable tv, reducing credit card debt and investing in education? Or are we just cherry picking statistics to support a belief without really looking at the data.
I have a strange feeling that your sources are as poor as your ideas.
I know plenty of people with no cable, no Internet other than their phone, living paycheck to paycheck... This idea that poor people just need to stop wasting their money is propaganda used to justify starvation wages
You (and everyone else) really do own your financial life. There can be curveballs-- a catastrophic illness, for example-- but for the vast majority of people, having money or not is really a series of personal decisions made over a lifetime.
That’s not common, though.
Really though, the solution is to change jobs. Despite how it looks from HN comments, there are plenty of companies out there with good work life balance.
Painting this as a false dichotomy between staying in burnout-inducing jobs or dropping everything to become jobless isn’t helpful. There’s an entire spectrum of options that should be explored to change a burnout-inducing situation.
There are exceptions like kids and chronic health issues but most people could save a lot more money if they wanted.
I say this without judgment, people just have different priorities. I recognize my advantages, but I have more savings than most people in my family, despite probably having the lowest lifetime income.
Someone who graduated in 2005 will often have a completely different experience from someone who graduated in 2008 or 2009. People who haven't had to look for a job since the '80s are especially befuddled to learn "ask for the manager" leads to "there's an online application kiosk by the door, go there." Usually along with "we don't have any openings, but we keep it on file for 6 months!"
Another thread on HN helpfully has examples of people refusing to go along with it. I don't think they're representative.
This sounds impossible, unless maybe you’re not counting all spending as “ordinary costs”?
If you look at all the categories that are "non-ordinary" because most people spend no money on them, they are pretty obviously lifestyle flexes. For example, if you blow your entire paycheck on a bar tab, that is not classified as an ordinary expense because most people don't do that.
Subtract the median ordinary expense from the median income, you are left with more than $12,000 per year as a surplus. This is called "discretionary income", money you can spend on fun, hobbies, or -- relevant to this thread -- savings. If we restricted it even further to ordinary and essential spending, the income level that no longer generates any surplus is in the region of 15th percentile IIRC. That is still 20 million households in the US with no ability to save but that isn't the experience of the vast majority of households.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve publishes surprisingly detailed statics of what people spend money on and how income surpluses are used.
In America (and much of the world) this is the ultimate special circumstance. The idea of being able to consistently save significant amounts of money for YEARS is foreign to billions of people.
The headline and the anecdote in the opening paragraph of the article are somewhat misleading. The statistics about millions of people resigning aren’t from people choosing to leave the workforce or take sabbaticals.
It’s mostly people who are simply changing jobs due to the booming economy creating new opportunities and hiring pressure. Millions sounds like a big number, but in a country with hundreds of millions of people it’s only a couple percent of the workforce. Even during normal times, a million or more people resign according to these statistics, again mostly to change jobs.
To put it in perspective: The normal turnover rate is in the 1-2% range (monthly) and the current post-COVID spike is in the 2-3% range, which is consistent with a booming economy. That means only about an additional 1% of workers are choosing to change jobs each month, which isn’t exactly the upheaval this article makes it sound like.
1. Even though the economy may be booming, that doesn't have to mean job changes aren't also driven by re-evaluation of priorities. The two may be complementary.
2. I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. I work with multiple people all in the process of looking for new roles. People that I would not have expected to leave - "heart of the team" kinds of people. This is after 4-5 devs (in a department of ~60) already made the choice to leave for other opportunities in the past few months.
Some relevant details: large SV-based SaaS with excellent financials, regarded as a good place to work, etc.
I also am noticing this around me.
Years ago I did the startup thing for 5 years, grinding really hard for someone else (mainly investors) to make a ton of money. Burned myself out, quit with no plans, and ended up consulting as a freelance dev from then on. Realized I'm much happier with this arrangement, with the ability to take months off and travel if I want. I could make more money at a large corporation, or if I didn't take so much time off, but honestly I'm much happier.
That's all to say, today I have two separate coffee dates with engineers at my client's company, both wanting to ask me about how they can do the same thing as me. One is a senior engineer that leads a department. The other is a very talented engineer. These are not the only people that have approached me wanting to setup time to talk about the same thing. This is at an SF based company that seems to really respect their engineer's time, provides high salaries, interesting work, etc.
I get the sense that at least for this niche of highly skilled, highly paid, in demand roles people are wanting to trade for more free time in their lives. I totally don't blame them, as it's what I found myself moving to 7 or so years ago.
Currently interviewing with several recruiters. One will definitely give me a higher salary than I can expect from my company, if they ever decided to give raises again (this year's annual review came and went and other than having me fill out a self-eval four months ago and hearing nothing since).
I even kept quiet in meetings for upcoming projects recently where I was told by other people in the company "You better not leave, we need you for this!" Not my problem they don't have "Hit by a Bus" redundancy in place.
It's also 50% more workers, if I'm reading that right, which seems like it's potentially a big swing/change.
As we subconsciously blend anecdata from HN into our mental models, remember that we self-selecting to visit here commenting are already extreme outliers.
Weight our in(group)sights accordingly.
Even some of the people who thought they wanted remote work are realizing it’s not always as fun as it sounds.
We read a lot of headlines about how the future is remote work and the HN bubble is full of people claiming they’re never going back from remote work, but I’m not seeing a huge shift toward remote work in actual job listings.
I worked remote pre-COVID. It anything, it feels harder to even land interviews for the few remote job opportunities because so many people are competing for a similar small number of remote jobs now.
2. Those peers and their companies usually have had remote work forced upon them. See what it's like in a less traumatic time when people can work out of cafes and public spaces, maskless.
As psychologists worry that the coronavirus pandemic is triggering a loneliness epidemic, new Harvard research suggests feelings of social isolation are on the rise and that those hardest hit are older teens and young adults.
In the recently released results of a study conducted last October by researchers at Making Caring Common, 36 percent of respondents to a national survey of approximately 950 Americans reported feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time” in the prior four weeks, compared with 25 percent who recalled experiencing serious issues in the two months prior to the pandemic. Perhaps most striking is that 61 percent of those aged 18 to 25 reported high levels.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/young-adults-...
I'm excited to go back to work in-person. Working with my colleagues gives me a great deal of joy throughout the day.
1) If you don’t have kids (socializing with other parents).
2) Don’t go to church/synagogue/etc (church attendance in decline)
3) Do not live where you grew up. (People chase opportunities in other cities.)
4) Aren’t in school any more.
Neighbor friends are also possible, but it can take many years for people to become comfortable enough to be friends, and due to #3, there’s often not enough time for that to happen before people move.
Half my friends are from work and half are parents. They’re not super shallow friendships but also not soul-level deep, either. Deep friendships were left behind from college days.
Changed jobs to negotiate a permanent remote situation and am not going back.
I think it’s fine for some people to want to be on office, but think that a lot of work in the tech area should have the option of remote - and frankly would be better remote first with in-office allowances instead of vice versa.
1) Look at your hobbies 2) Find people who share those hobbies
Plenty of opportunities exist whether through meetup, BumbleBFF, local postings in cafes/on lamp posts, etc. (this is true of cities, remote destinations may be more difficult but thats the tradeoff of living around less people I suppose)
If you can't find groups for your hobbies, try starting them! Doesn't have to be a permanent leadership role, but if you get the ball rolling others will likely come and BOOM you've found potential friends.
If you don't have hobbies, look into volunteer groups. Rewarding and often extremely kind people who will value what you bring to the table.
Hope this helps!
Now I also happen to not like alcohol or smoking which really reduces my chances of meeting someone my age to 0, because I don't go out to parties and such. Not that it was even possible during COVID-19.
I'm happy that I at least have supportive parents, siblings and family. But I think there are a lot of young people in my situation and many of them only have parasocial relationships, for example with Twitch streamers and YouTubers.
Homeoffice has been hard with all the distractions home has to offer and I really do miss eating lunch with coworkers. I'm going to start studying at university this fall so I'm optimistic that I might make some friends there.
They probably are feeling a lot like you.
Some of us have been stuck in single rooms with no family or social contact for over a year.
Exercise groups - Illegal meeting up with other people - Illegal dating - Illegal going outside without a valid reason - Illegal
Former friends with established families and large properties with gardens berate you for complaining, as its selfish, "people are dying!", but they travel for holidays, take their kids to stay with their parents so they can have a weekend getting drunk in their garden, etc that sort of thing. Not friends anymore.
Also most people who I considered friends before, it turns out are just acquaintances. People I've known for 10-15 years who it turns out don't care about my wellbeing, just see me as a guy they did activity X with, went to events with, etc. A whole lot of that. Also lots of people do not like the fact that I questioned the rationale for the lockdown measures, questioned the data ( as in wanted to know what the actual data was), etc. They did not like it AT ALL.
Now restrictions might be lifting in the future, I am faced with the situation of being without a social circle. A social life of nothing. The only people I speak to are my colleagues, and that's how it's been for quite some time. Again I emphasize that it has been illegal to even try to change that, and socially taboo enough to question this and say that this is making me miserable as fuck that any existing friends have abandoned me, lots of blocked contacts on whatsapp (there's this impression amongst many that questioning the lockdowns, asking for data, saying this is not good you personally makes me a republican conspiracy theorist nutcase, etc).
How do I rebuild a new life when my ability to trust other people is lower than I ever thought it could be?
I have no family to lean on for support.
As far as I am concerned I might as well be a secret Jew in 1944 Berlin for the level of trust I have for other people now.
>As far as I am concerned I might as well be a secret Jew in 1944 Berlin for the level of trust I have for other people now.
Holy persecution complex, batman!
Millions were dying and being asked to wear a mask, social distance and wash your hands was too much of a sacrifice for you? You may want to take a hard look at yourself.
Still have the kids though :) so cant really go grab coffee that early. I am sure most of the problem is me not figuring it out but I am pretty much at a loss, I work remotely, have younger kids that I have to take to school and pickup, feed etc. Finish work at like 6 then kids until 9. So weekdays are out. Then weekends seems like there is always something to do or I am just exhausted and feel bad abandoning my wife and kids to go do something.
I know I am the cause of my own issues, just not sure of the solution.
I mean, we've been through major lockdowns/curfews/personal freedom restrictions, lots of people got sick, lots of people died, most non digital entertainment ceased to exist, most sports couldn't be practiced...
imho you can't pin point "remote work" as the main cause of why people felt miserable in the last few months
My office is in Manhattan. It's been my observation that few people that work in Manhattan actually live in Manhattan. Nearly everyone I know of dreads having to go back to the office, and one of the primary reasons is because of the nightmare commute into the island of Manhattan via the various clogged up chokepoints.
Mainly: my co-workers who have been at the company longer than I weren't very helpful with onboarding me! We're a little company, so documentation of a bunch of our software is non-existent and the specialized hardware setup we have has a lot of quirks I had to slowly teach myself the last year. I'd hit lots of problems that'd take 5 seconds of their time to diagnose and fix and I'd end up stuck for over an hour while waiting for them to answer a Slack message - or they'd randomly drop offline.
So there I am, working in my bedroom in a new job wondering if I'm a needy little snowflake not digging hard enough or whether the people I work with are just unhelpful because... reasons (still haven't met them in-person since my pre-pandemic interview). After a year I think it really is the latter, but it made me grumpy my early months here.
That could be a possible source of resentment from newer, younger employees. Set us up for success!
I still prefer working from home, but I did commute to the office for a happy hour recently. It was nice to randomly get coffee with the CTO in the morning and hang out with new friends in the evening - none of the "unhelpful" people showed up! :P
No pointless work "morale events"; no wasting hours a day on commute; ability to do something useful while a build is building, like putting in a load of laundry instead of just reading HN while waiting; and spending a lot more time with my GF as she is also WFHing.
I suspect you are speaking only about people who are unable/unwilling to put effort into the "life" part of "work-life balance" and thus depend on the "work" part to give them what "life" gives to all others: companionship/friendship/fun/purpose
Before I'm barraged with "what about people in the service industry!?" I do confess, I'm not sure what the argument would be - indeed, some people are perhaps only working part time at those positions, perhaps maybe around that 15 hour figure. But for those who work full time in the service industry, I guess I'm not sure what there leverage could be - raising the minimum wage perhaps? But that argument is age old and I've heard pros and cons both for and against. Also, in a country like the US where are social programs are far behind most of places like the EU for example, it's especially hard to argue or expect anything to actually become a reality for some of those service jobs. I guess only time will tell.
Not sure we're duped by the 40 hr / week idea so much as we're slaves to our desire for consumer goods. That and housing is very expensive now which means more work to pay for it.
The few things that people buy with debt then rises in value. There is also no interest in building more housing because that would result in lower single family home property values.
You have to consider that it's the bank that is paying for the house. As the owner you only pay the mortgage, whose monthly payments are limited by how much people can afford in the first place.
Property value is the biggest component of home prices in many desirable areas. Increasing current low-density home building won't change that, but increasing density would help with affordability. Problem is that many in the US still have low density housing as their housing goal.
As a current status quo most jobs which would accept 15 hour weeks and more employees are lower valued and lower productivity ones. More retirement hobby jobs as a model than even something to sustain a spartan lifestyle. Higher paying and higher productivity jobs tend to be scarcer.
What a powerful question and distillation of what society is facing. I will think about this.
It's important to remember that everyone also had a one year traumatic experience. Physically confined for a year with the threat or reality of unpredictable agonizing death to you or loved ones in the middle of an absolutely insane US political situation is going to take a toll on people.
There's this media narrative that the past year gave everyone this beautiful moment of clarity about how to live their lives. There is some truth to that. But it's also true that it's given people a whole shit load of psychological damage to work through and I wouldn't be certain that all of these people making radical life changes are 100% in their right minds.
I think we're going to see a lot of lifestyle churn over the next few years as people deal with what they went through but any one who claims that the current rapid velocity of any particular pendulum is somehow a straight linear projection is lying to themselves. I look forward to articles a year from now about this "unexpected movement" of people going back to in-office jobs, or working longer hours at shit jobs because they burned through all of their savings, or just wanting more financial stability.
I don't think we can make many reliable extrapolations today based on the aggregate behavior of a huge number of psychologically traumatized people, while the trauma is still not even over. Articles like this read to me like someone during the Blitz seeing victory gardens and confidently predicting that after WII every Londoner is going to become a farmer.
I'm not saying that things will return to any pre-COVID state, just that after the shock we've been through, the entire interconnected spring-mass system of our lives has in no way settled down into a stable state yet. Shit is still chaotic.
I was interviewing recently and almost everyone is at least partly remote, with a huge number of 100% remote. Even people that I know don't like the idea are bending and giving two or three days remote.
On the restaurant-type work, I'd say a bunch of people have been given a breather from the treadmill, and they're using it to look around. I see this as mostly positive, but it does suggest that a lot of people are completely swamped, working all the time, spending everything. The little bit of credit they got from the pandemic payment has unlocked a great reckoning with the labor market. Previously if you didn't like your job, you were screwed. Somehow find time to interview/upskill, or somehow jump the gap with your savings.
I'm in the UK and not seeing any of this.
As counter anecdata, I am in the Netherlands and I am (now, as much as before) receiving calls for job opportunities from UK based recruiters. They are for the majority concentrated around London, Oxbridge, Bristol, Manchester. Depending on where GP is based in the UK, the landscape and opportunities can be quite different.
Irrespective of the politics and bitter emotions, London's VC funding scene is arguably the closest we have in Europe to SV/Seattle/NY and it will continue to play a role in making the UK relevant in the tech scene.
Of course, one could criticize generalizing based on that one data point, but that's a different thing altogether.
How you can deny that is politics and bitter emotions is literally beyond me.
But let's for the sake of it accept that "it's your own fault" is what was meant by it anyway. That still doesn't imply bitterness.
If parents explains to their child not to run with scissors because they might hurt themselves, the child does so anyway and ends up hurting themselves, and one of the parents says in-between consoling their child "but do you see how you only have yourself to blame for it, if you decided to do this anyway after we warned you this would happen?", then that might not be the most considerate timing for sharing a harsh truth, but there's nothing bitter about the statement.
Why remove large groups of skilled engineers in your businesses domain and have to retrain again, because of a political change. I can understand a company with a manufacturing base doing this (due to import / export regulations changing), but this makes no sense in software.
I never considered this type of roles before because it was sort of a given in my head that they would want US based candidates for taxation reasons.
Have you seen a big change regarding this, from US based companies?
Multi-nationals now seem to post most jobs as “remote” which means global. A smaller number is “US-remote”. Usually this is not for tax reasons but for business or security reasons if dealing with the US government.
Hiring remotely is easy for these companies as they usually have a subsidiary already in country. But even if not, there are now agencies that take care if things like taxation etc. I believe remote.com might be the one most known but it is certainly not the only one.
I found there's loads and loads of US firms that are happy to take Europe based candidates.
I work at CrowdStrike. Fully remote. Amazing compensation, team, work.
We're hiring too :)
I may be naive, but I guess this office-work-exodus would result to improvements in office spaces in general to attract devs (or other employees in tech). This would also make it easier for people who are looking to move to the US to find office jobs, since the competition is less fierce. Am I off mark here and too naive?
Among my coworkers I have an average commute time, and I loose 10-12 hours a week driving to and from work. I figure if I was being paid at my normal rate they'd need to pay me between 25-45%[1] more money just to come in.
[1]- Used to be that workers weren't exempt from overtime pay. At time and a half, 12 extra hours over 40 would be the equivalent of 18 hours. That is 45% of a normal 40 hour work week. (10 hours at non-overtime pay is 25% of the work week)
Second part you have a point. This is the best time to move to the US on an H1B. If you're an int'l student, this is the time to look for that office job that will hold you till a green card.
Same thing for long commutes, they’re terrible.
But still companies keep building new cubicle farms in downtown cores. Maybe office workers are just done with this stupid shit.
Noise could be a little much, but people were generally polite and quiet.
My next job was literally a desk in the middle of the floor. All the prime employees had desks that went along the edge of the wall, forming a horseshoe and, when they ran out of room, they started putting desks in the center. So i was basically working on a stage in front of 40 people. It was awful, but I never slacked off! (well, i went for walks a lot)
For the most part (in my area), the only reason companies have moved downtown is because the city has given them sweetheart deals to be there. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of workers commute into the downtown area, because it's not a desirable place to live.
Of course there are wealthy cities and suburbs, but if you want a walkable commute within reason, <15 minutes, you pay a premium.
[1] including Africa, the open ocean, space, Papua New Guinea, a jail cell....
Employees often equate their own job satisfaction by the differences between how their managers treat themselves versus how they treat the people under them. When you have your own office with a door and a white board and have a company card to expense your meals while your devs are working with their headphones on because of the noise level in their cubicles, you're going to have a problem.
There's a lot of jobs, but there's also a lot of work to do for every application. Applying takes effort.
In practice, the money has never materialized because our sector took a big hit and much of that promise was tied to incentives based on the company's success. I can't really blame anyone for this, but that's strike one as far as job satisfaction goes.
Second strike, I love writing code, and I don't get to do that a lot anymore. I'm listing these "pre-existing conditions" because I believe it's common for us quitters to have other areas of dissatisfaction that hadn't been enough to drive us over the edge by themselves.
Third strike, while my company does not support WFH after Covid, I did get to experience at least a partial WFH program, and it was absolutely wonderful. There's a problem though: I would absolutely like to continue working from home, but I also want to work on my own projects, on my own terms, on my own schedule. A traditional full time job is not compatible with that.
So I put in my notice for the end of this year, to allow current company projects to come to a conclusion and/or hand them off. I want to stress that for a man in my age group, with no significant savings or other safety net, this is extremely scary. It's just that this Angst is outweighed by the thought of staying on the treadmill hoping for an eventual reward that may never come and seeing the little time I have left drain away.
For us WFH is an option because it boosts productivity: People often end up working later.
Leading a high-performance team, I should be able to do team-wide things as a reward to boost morale and combat burn out.
Yet here I am, seriously contemplating leaving.
I'm sorry you are in this situation. I applaud your self-awareness, and suspect you have enough skills and discipline to turn this around in the next few years. You may never get to the point of having millions tucked away for retirement, but do hope you can get to a point where you do have 'significant savings'. I'd measure that by your measure of 'extremely scary'.
My wife and I have no kids, so 'saving' has been somewhat easier 'by default' than some of our peers. That said, it's not automatic, and I know plenty of folks who are high earners who will manage to spend it all without 'significant savings' to speak of.
It's kind of obnoxious to even admit this, but I always assumed I'd be a successful person at some point down the line. This was of course utterly ridiculous and led to some really bad decisions. It was exploitable by other people, too. My work made a few people rich, and while I was always compensated for my time, I never got a proportional cut from the outcomes. But it wasn't a bad life, and there is still some fuel in the tank :)
But you won't ever starve or have no place to sleep and your health will generally be taken care of, albeit not always in best way possible (ie dental care).
Which are things I concerned myself with early on. I probably won't ever have to be homeless, but... health stuff - knowing that if I stop paying for 'insurance', regardless of how much I've paid in over... decades... I'll be denied things - that's still troubling.
The majority of people resigning their jobs are simply changing jobs, and the article doesn’t provide any evidence that people are changing to remote work in large numbers.
The biggest driver of the increase in job changes is simply the booming economy. We poured stimulus money into the economy at unprecedented rates and this has created economic booms at every level. Companies are scrambling to hire and wages reflect this, so people are taking the opportunity to switch up their careers and collect a pay bump.
Most of the business world appears to be snapping back to business as normal at a rapid rate, but with a booming economy pouring fuel on the fire. The media has been pushing narratives that COVID changes everything and that we’re entering a whole new world, but aside from companies adding a little more flexibility it seems most are eager to simply return to business as usual.
On the ground, I’m not seeing a massive shift toward remote work like I keep reading about in these articles. Yes, there are somewhat more remote jobs, but companies are largely eager to return to in-office work. Even many employees I know are eager to get back to the office because remote isn’t for everyone.
s/oom/ubl/
What stimulus are you talking about? Mortgage rates were laughably high by today's standards. Maybe the $600 bush tax cut? I remember some first time home-buyers programs, but those were largely in response to 2008.
I fear that many of the people demanding remote work now, will be surprised when (not if) the first layoffs come, and they find out that the person who's in the office every day is more awkward to fire than the remote person. Me, I'm always temporary, so I know this and am ok with it. I fear many of the people looking for remote work now think it will be just like office work, except they get to work at home. It's not. It's a much more tenuous relationship with your employer, and you have to always assume (e.g. in your budget) that you can/will lose your paycheck with little or no notice. If you're ok with that kind of perpetual instability, great, but I'm not sure most of the people looking for remote work now are aware of this tradeoff.
WFH is a hybrid between employee and contractor.
The second issue that still comes up is communication and culture. Successful cross cultural communication requires more clarity in messaging and tasks. It can work and can work well and deliver good quality at great prices, but the obvious savings are partially offset by the higher communication and management costs. Sometimes more than fully offset.
Here in the US, we pretty much outsourced our manufacturing to China.
This has always been the case (since after WWII), but this time, we did it to such an extent, that we have destroyed our domestic manufacturing infrastructure.
A number of folks made a lot of money on this, but a much larger number of folks have really taken it in the shorts. Arguably, a lot of the troubles we've had, over the last decade, have found a root cause in this.
It's no secret. Pretty much everyone knows this, but the will to do something about it is weak.
It's been my experience, that when the pain gets great enough, the change will come. That's not always a good thing. Change like that, more often resembles an amputation, as opposed to a disinfectant swab and some stitches.
Automation ended the vast majority of high-labour manufacturing. What was left was only economical to do without automation at extremely low labour costs.
In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation.
> In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation.
I agree. It will be slower than Japan and Korea, because China has a much larger population of poor folks that will work 996, but, one day, we will see a very different China.
It will be a consumer powerhouse. If you think America is a consumeristic society, just wait until China becomes mostly middle-class. There's a reason why so many corporations are abasing themselves so much for entry into the Chinese market.
I think the "global class structure" we have today might be the peak of history.
The relevant calculation:
Annual US Energy Consumption per Capia: 7,000 kg oil equivalent. China: 2,000 kg.
So you're looking at +5,000kg per capita * 1.4bn people annual.
So you'll need to add that energy capacity to the world, ie., a c. 10 trillion kg oil eqv. -- it's not clear we can do this.
I'm not sure how to factor density into this.
Basically the small group of younger workers are going to have their wealth siphoned off to support the much larger older population who doesn’t have financial means to support themselves. Not a big deal when it’s 5 workers to one retired. Huge deal when it’s 2 to 1.
The expectation is that will stall growth for decades. China will be richer, but stuck in a lower income range until they come out the other side.
It’s an interesting theory.
What do Foxconn and TSMC (and 100s of others) do then?
* - first relevant factory operations in 1988 and 1987, respectively.
Is this true? I am under the impression that the US still has loads of high end manufacturing, it's just the low end stuff that no longer exists and even then it's partially due to automation
Exactly. High end has higher margins, and a simpler distribution chain.
It isn't worth it to do the small stuff here, but the small stuff is a really big deal. There are many American households that have nothing made in the USA. China knows this quite well.
Nobody wants to offshore to India anymore because the business culture at the big body shops is totally unethical by western standards and there’s just an expectation of getting swindled on QoS; so people only ship low-value jobs like customer service over there. And even those are moving to South America for time zone reasons (and the business culture more closely aligns with the US).
Turns out cultural differences around work, communication, etc between the US and India/China are pretty massive. I seriously doubt that these went away in 2 decades.
Also, your argument around standard of living and education would actually be more proof that outsourcing would not work. It is no longer as financially beneficial.
That being said, you're also right, past failure doesn't mean that it can't ever be successful in the future.
What about France? Minimal cultural differences, and you still get massive savings when it comes to paying salaries.
That being said, yes there are other options. Eastern Europe is more and more popular for outsourcing, so is South America. Honestly, I'm maybe dead wrong but when I compare the mentality two decades ago (ie let's minimize cost by any means, who cares who writes the code? it's just code) and today, I truly see an equivalent to the "not invented here" syndrome.
Unless I'm wrong somewhere
A $100k salary in the US also means the employer is paying $7650 in payroll taxes, typically some amount of money for health insurance ($0-$30k depending on the employer), maybe paying for office space, etc, etc.
A €40k salary in France means the employer is paying (if I read https://www.activpayroll.com/global-insights/france at "Social Security in France" correctly) somewhere around €21k in payroll taxes, plus whatever other benefits/administrative/etc expenses they have. I assumed the "family allowance contribution" of 3-5% is paid by employee, not employer, but I'm not sure.
That's assuming that €40k is the gross wage and not the "wage after employee side of payroll taxes". I don't know what the French custom is here in terms of what the salary numbers mean.
Anyway, the employer cost of just that €40k salary plus the obvious payroll taxes is $73k or so (with the payroll taxes and current exchange rate). Obviously still smaller than the $108k for US salary plus payroll, but not as much smaller as it seems at first glance.
Also note that in the US it's normal to work longer hours for more weeks for that money than it is in France for the French salary, though the effect is actually not too great if the US job is mostly 40 hrs/week, 2-3 weeks vacation, etc.
The difference in pay is not just due to proximity and will likely persist to some degree.
“Don’t get into IT or software development it’s all going to be outsourced.”
All of those places have salaries that are a fraction of the typical US salary. US salaries are incredibly ridiculous on the global stage. And all of those places with actually good developers
The overall labour cost is similar.
American developers are just lucky that they live in a low-tax society.
I'm sure there's a lot of variance, but I don't think "outsourced everything" will be practical for most software businesses that place importance on quality of service.
Outsourcing can be great for developing a green-field new initiative, but at some point the in house folks are going to need to learn the new codebase so they can fix bugs, scale, and keep the lights on.
How is it overpaid? Engineers provide a lot more value than they are getting paid. If anything, people abroad are underpaid.
Both can be underpaid, ya know?
I welcome outsourcing though. I do quality work and know what it's worth and can advocate for myself. Any foreign worker who can do the same is welcome.
I think that it's too small. Consider the swathes of time that are examined in history books.
It all looks amazing and fast moving when you are living it, particularly when you are younger.
Is it growing exponentially? Personally, I'd say that changes at the margin are becoming smaller. I think that the difference between 1940-1980 is much greater than 1980-2020.
As an aside, it's funny how static music has been for years. There are numerous bands that sound like they would have been reasonably successful in 1970 (and visa versa). 1920 vs 1970 is a whole 'nother issue.
I vehemently disagree with this, but agree this is veering off topic, so I'll leave it at that.
The only stuff I've found which felt in the ballpark of spot-on were:
1) https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-great-weirding This was a fascinating series of essays that generally walks through why, after "Harambe" in 2016 or whenever, things seemed to have gone off the rails towards something new.
2) Cypherpunk movement's source docs. If I could bold, underline, and highlight this, I would. I have never read any group of literature/essays, especially with publishing dates in the 1990s, that more felt like a post-mortem on the 2014->2021 craziness than cypherpunk docs. I had actually wondered for a while where this core movement went, but the quick answer I've come to is cryptocurrency/e2e messaging projects absorbed a lot of it, and then the the writing often took a turn for the crazy/non-PC in the final 10 yards. But, they so accurately diagnose the growth of virtual communities and their pseudo-governmental influence, digital economy developments and all the second order effects, and so on and so on. If you're looking for people who really saw what was coming, this is the group. One of the good reads: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~wex/panoptic-paper.html
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l...
I'm sure the landscape is different for people already set in their careers or making some decent money, but everyone making minimum wage got to see how little $10/hr actually is.
At any rate, a lot of people I know that quit have already found or started looking for a different job. Most people aren’t looking to keep living off the system so much as they are looking to find a job that doesn’t pay them _and_ treat them like dirt. Social services companies around here are literally offering $1000+ referrals because they can’t keep group homes staffed or run any community interactions. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that it’s not just about the handouts, it’s about people realizing how atrocious their working conditions were and not wanting to put up with it anymore.
I found a new position that pays way more than my old one and is fully remote. I was even told by the recruiter that I could be a digital nomad and travel wherever, bring my company laptop with me, work during the day, and explore whatever city I'm in at night.
Not having to commute during the pandemic has done wonders for my mental health, and I simply can't go back to working in an office. If I couldn't find an all-remote position, I would've just quit my job, broken my lease, moved back in with my mom, and lived like a bum in her spare room.
Funny thing is, my boss actually fought for us. He knew most of us were going to quit if we had to go back, so he fought like hell with upper management and HR to negotiate an exception for the team. The day I got my offer at the new place was the day he told us he got an exception where we'd be allowed to work from home most of the time (except for monthly one-on-ones and biweekly meetings with an internal customer). I still took the offer though (and I've already started the new job), because a) it pays so much more than the old job, b) I have a senior title now, c) fully remote 100% of the time plus being able to be a digital nomad is better than having to go in for certain meetings and not being allowed to leave the metro area, and d) I was told that, at the old company, if any of our performance was found to be insufficient we could be pulled back into the office as a punishment at any time, which just screams "trap" to me.
"I love my iPhone, but I worry about health insurance." as I've heard it put here on HN.
Ironically, the Soviet system fell from opposite. Expensive wants, cheap needs. Everyone saw the West getting cheaper and cheaper consumer goods and central planning failed to keep up.
Now we get to see what happens.
But before then, housing, food, clothing all were cheap and available. The food was simple, the apartments small and the clothing dull, but it was all there and for very little cost.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R0006014...
But they liberalized their economy in order to compete on the consumer goods boom in the West. That desire for consumer goods had a big role in destabilizing the system.
And today, the converse desire for cheap staples and necessities in the face of intense asset inflation may be destabilizing our current system.
Yes, there was generally clothing in stores. Whether there was clothing in your size (no matter what size you were; pretty much all normal sizes tended to be hard to find in practice) was a big gamble on any given day.
When you say "apartments were small"; I just want to make sure we understand that we're talking about things like a family of 4 living in a 16 sq meter room plus shared access to a small kitchen (this is personal experience here).
And note that if we're talking about smaller towns or villages the situation was different yet again: more living space, but running water might be a real problem. Heck, consistent hot water was a problem even in reasonably large cities.
The 80s brought their own set of problems, but it was not all rosy before that, by a long stretch. Saying "it was all there" elides the fact that what was there was quite poor quality, especially compared to what was available even just across the border in Romania, much less Western Europe or the US.
Land values going up is how the system is rigged. That has nothing to do with your money.
What will politicians do when the people whose votes they want care less and less about those things? In a perfect world, they might start selling themselves on measures that matter which aren't about how much money someone made.
A small cultural shift in the west away from economics as the religion of the masses would be, in my mind, a silver lining to this whole, awful pandemic.
I think society has to invent new kinds of work* or introduce UBI. There's too many people toiling away in low wage jobs which will never escape and will have to work until 68.
You would have thought that a job that nobody wants to do would pay more than one that is cushy.
* Getting rid of manufacturing has gotten rid of a huge amount of jobs that provided stability to our economies. Now all our economies are service economies. We can't all be shopkeepers. What are people meant to do with their lives?
Life is more important than work. I'd like to see labour have more leverage over capital.
I think that a lot of the stressors were there, before COVID, but the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back.
As an older software engineer, I find the statement that "everyone wants devs" to be fairly amusing. I'm rather grateful that I don't need to work for a living. Instead, I'm working for free. I'm glad to have the tools that are available these days, and the means to afford them.
It has always been my dream to work for free.
I am fairly good at what I do; largely because I love doing it. I consider it a craft, not just a vocation.
If no one is interested in paying me for my work, I’ll do it anyway; except on my terms; and that makes all the difference.
In fact, I love doing it so much, I don’t really want to go back to working for others.
It’s kind of too bad. I would have been happy to work for a lot less than most, as my retirement was assured some time ago, but that’s all water under the bridge.
I'm hoping I'm done by my early 40s (mid thirties ATM). I have a target amount that should afford me a relatively well off life just off interest. The moment I hit that number I'm stepping off the treadmill.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/21/american...
Yet only after the government support gets withdrawn will we see how the diverse actors in the private economy sectors restore their eternal "games". To be continued...
oh?
maybe we should have left "creative destruction" to play out. after all a pandemic is a known business risk.
From where I'm standing it's... pretty much everyone else who rails against large scale bailouts. The libertarian crowd is more on the "see where the chips fall" side of things while the more left-leaning/progressive groups didn't appreciate govt money going to businesses instead of to workers directly.
I know this is a very unpopular opinion here on HN threads about this situation. And all power to the people who love remote work.
But out of all the engineers I know personally and of all the people on my team and most of the other Googlers I've talked to off record personally in the last months... I'd say about 85%, 90% of them are eager for return to office.
So let's not assume homogeneity of opinion. Remote work is not for everyone. It may not even be the preference for the majority of us.
How much of that is because of productivity, how much is for social (i.e. non-task-oriented) interaction, and how much is getting away from the place where you also have to do your own cooking and cleaning and possibly deal with kids? I'm guessing productivity is the least of these reasons, for most FAANGers. After all, they self-selected to be in such environments.
Personally I work at Apple, so I’m not getting the choice, but I am close to my vacation cap, so I’ll be “forced” to take a day off every fortnight; you can bet that I’ll be using an “in-office” day for that, so I’ll be working 5 days of every 10 in the office.
I've personally never much enjoyed my trips to the Googleplex. :-) I like my own office much more.
It's all fun and games at first. "Look, I can work from home in my underpants!" Then after a while you realize you're just sitting there alone in your underpants.
Do you not stare into a rectangle on-site? Do you prefer to additionally go through soul-sucking commute?
I’ve decided to take a longer commute now (30ish minutes) but it’s not a big deal because it’s in a place where I was going many times a week anyway and had to do the commute then too. Also, it’s going to be hybrid now and isn’t 5-days/week probably.
>how important it is to be physically present with coworkers and a realization of how much the office actually does offer in terms of productivity and morale boost.
This depends on your home situation, but with mine I wouldn't say the office is more productive. But the frequency and richness of interactions you have with coworkers in person is a world apart from being remote.
Immersive telecommute VR when?
I would be totally fine with hybrid, but they said they investigated that and decided against it (don't know why). I'm looking around at my alternatives, but the pay is just not there for both hybrid and remote. So I dont know where all this demand is, unless it's the same demand that's always there when they won't pay people anything. I may end up taking a pay cut just to do hybrid/remote which is really sad, but my well being may be worth it.
I am not going back.
Most of the teams I have worked with that required on-site presence didn't have the culture I'd be comfortable with anymore: too many meetings, open plan office space with ridiculously cheap and uncomfortable chairs and no standing desks (or only for permanent employees and not us dirty contractors). Most importantly, once COVID hit, it turned out none of that office stuff mattered for productivity anyway.
Europe was lagging behind in terms of remote work but one of the few positives of 'ro was the evening out of the playing field. And, once offices open, whether or not the contracts still offer remote work will be a great filter for potential clients.
I am just not sure that being remote automatically solves the work-life balance problem. I know I am prone to spending the entire day at my computer and it's something I have to work on.
(But that is a very different narrative). Damn you NPR.
From their text:
>” So when his employer began calling people back to the office part time, he balked at the 45-minute commute. He started looking for a job with better remote work options and quickly landed multiple offers.”
If anyone believes in these values, we offer a flexible, remote-friendly lifestyle, with two meetups a year at cool places like Bali, Greece, Costa Rica, Barbados, and adding new ones as time goes on! So if you're a developer looking for a new way of working in the decentralization space, feel free to reach me at developers@earthwallet.io!
This is such a tired line. It's like reading, "So and so company who just got caught doing shady shit really takes shady shit seriously and we intend to fully investigate the matter. We fully respect so and so and this and that."
I'm not saying you are doing shady shit, but it reads as the same phony stuff as any PR drone has been regurgitating for the last 40 years.
If you're 100% remote or 'remote except a couple of optional team building events' or 'remote except come into the office once every month or two', I would be very specific and say so, and not just say 'remote-friendly' or 'remote-flexible' (even just saying 'remote' is starting to be suspicious), because those terms seem to have morphed into a signal that the opposite is true.
Also, if your company was remote before the pandemic, you should also say that, because that gives me reason to believe it will stay that way, instead of being another bait-and-switch "we're 100% remote!...for a few more months".
Also fantastic opportunity to make more money for those who continue to work. Salaries for them could be higher.
Great for offshore workers especially in tourism countries that suffered big decline too!
Not against the guys who want to take a break at all.
It’s just a good opportunity. Just as it was during the pandemic when people took the time to learn new stuff.
[0] https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2020/06/30/new-checko...
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Walmart-self-checkout-register...
[2] https://www.frbservices.org/news/communications/063020-feder...