Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdhn | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

My team is full of lifers (everyone but me and the friend I got hired have been here >8 years), and only one person of the 12 of us left this year. My fiancee's company is in the process of losing the entire mobile team (Android/iOS, ~8 team members, lost 5 this year), but it's a dumpster fire with low wages, so them going down in flames isn't necessarily related to a broader movement.

I feel like you sorta added evidence to the idea that it is a broader movement. It’s not that everyone is just saying “I quit” - but those in bad jobs/bad teams/working for low wages are the ones supposedly making moves and I think your anecdotes align with that. Just say’n is all.

I think the broad movement is exactly people settling less for dumpster fires with low wages...

The trends of remote work and broader competition to find tech workers would make it much easier to get out of such a dumpster fire situation over the last ~18 months.

So perhaps the reasons for quitting haven't changed much, but the burden of jumping is lower so it's happening more often.

I would expect at least 200% salary increase in order to move to an office. That's why I declined a position at FB last week.

I thought FB offered remote work as an option to basically everyone now?

I don't understand this type of response. "I know my reasoning is faulty, but I believe it anyway..."

When there is enough anecdotal evidence, that is consistent, you have to consider that the researcher is missing something. In this case, there might just be a misunderstanding - the economist is considering all jobs, whereas this evidence is coming from experienced tech jobs. The evidence is multi-faceted - people quitting, more hits from recruiters, etc.

I mean at my job we only had 1 QA engineer leave out of all staff in engineering since COVID triggered lockdowns

I think you misrepresent the comment, which was more "I know an anecdote cannot prove this, but..." Believing something while being aware your experience isn't really proof is not "faulty reasoning", since the awareness doesn't tell you your belief is wrong. It just alerts you that you should be open to additional evidence. (Which is always true, but we have to prioritize.)

That’s a little disingenuous. They’re simply saying “I know my evidence is light but I haven’t seen any stronger envidence to support the counter argument”.

The “great resignation” will be more pronounced in different cities and professions. Eg I’ve noticed London based cloud engineers such as DevOps seem to be really affected at the moment whereas a lot of friends in other industries haven’t seen any change at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com