The Great Resignation 2021-2022

The number of headhunter calls and emails I get are annoying.

Though, we all got huge raises last year, so they get ignored. We are being well kept.

I keep hearing about these huge raises, but I don’t think many companies knows what huge means.

After years of no pay increases due to legislative nonsense and departmental budget issues, I received a 12% pay increase late last year.

However, thanks to the no increases for many years part, that wound up bringing me about. . . $600 over my inflation-adjusted starting income in 2011 :)

11 years of steady employment, netting $600 spendable dollars extra!

Yeah there seems to be a raise penalty the average loyal worker suffers for not switching to different employer.

It seems like it’s not just money but flexibility that workers want.

Slight tangent, but I failed at a fast food drive thru this morning because they were understaffed and not trained well. I wasted 10 minutes hoping to place an order, both at the intercom and then at the drive-thru window, before giving up. The guy ahead of me in line also gave up. I was going to spend $7. I’d gladly spend $9 or $10 for good service – I don’t go to these places that often. They need to raise wages.

Aziz Ansari has a great bit about fast food in today’s COVID worker-shortage world in his latest special. Worth a watch!

And probably offer their employees more backing against the shittier elements of their job. If I can choose between getting paid $15 to get yelled at by Karens because their mint milkshake wasn’t green enough and getting paid $15 to reshelve books at the local library and mostly be left alone, I know which one I’m taking.

There’s an aggressive hostility toward service industry workers that’s only been exacerbated by the full unmasking of the right’s natural sociopathy + generic pandemictimes fullbore crazypants shitassery. It’s not just pay keeping people from seguing back into these jobs that are desperate for employees and have virtually no standards.

Agreed. I also wonder if there’s not a significant feeling of despair and resentment among these workers because this kind of work feels like the apex of their careers? You get the fast food workers who are doing it as money during high school or college but who expect to go on to better things and the workers who limped through public school and have no marketable skills.

I’ve seen workers at these places who struggle with addition and subtraction. Your order is $4.23 and you hand them a fiver and fish for change and they punch in the five and come up with change of $0.73 and then you hand them a quarter and a nickel, and they are dumbfounded. It’s sad.

I mean hell, most people I know who don’t do math by hand day to day have trouble with basic arithmetic; like many skills, it’s very use it or lose it past the most simple level. I’ve worked a few years of service jobs through the years and most of my customers weren’t so hot with counting out change, either :)

Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a deep feeling of despair filling every waking moment of the unending hell of the working poor’s lives. But the reasons for that are more complex and largely societal.

:)

345

But… I feel this is a valid complaint! ;)

Yes, this is absolutely true. But switching employers is a big risk, even beyond the hassle of it–you’re taking a chance on a new manager, coworkers, job responsibilities, etc. So personally I’d expect there to be some increase necessary for switching jobs, or conversely, a penalty for not taking the risk.

At least, that’s what I tell myself as now I’ve been in my job for going on six years and am too lazy to change.

That used to be the case, but in a world of remote work switching jobs just means you’re connecting to a different Outlook/Slack server tomorrow. The friction of changing jobs, which used to potentially include moving, finding a job for your spouse, getting your kids into new schools, etc. is now gone for lots of occupations. You don’t even need to learn a new commute.

I disagree. There’s certainly less of a risk than before, but IMO getting a new manager, co-workers, job responsibilities, company culture, etc, still constitutes a big risk. And even before remote work, most job switches were still within your local metro area, I’d assume.

Well lets hope it doesn’t come to this.

I just had a lovely convo with my boss in which he waxed quite enthusiastic on the subject of how much better things are now, with the engineering talent they’ve been able to bring in since pulling the full-remote ripcord, than they were with “the idiots who built this thing originally.”

This tracks with my experiences at the company, heh.

Our office (Toronto, ON) is opening back up starting May 1 for 2 days per week. They’re doing two cohorts: Group A Monday/Wednesday, Group B Tuesday/Thursday.

The part that makes me shake my head is Friday. “The office will be open on Friday so all of you who want, can work at your desk that day, too!”

Like, anyone actually wants to commute and sit in a stuffy office with all that entails? It’s all just so tone-deaf…

10%

12345

Bock said he thinks workers will likely begin to want to come into the office themselves when they see bosses giving more promotions and opportunities to staff who are in the building over those who work from home. The new power dynamic will likely force reluctant employees to get back to the office when trying to gain favor with their supervisors.

Just like “smoke breaks” in the old days. If you’re not in direct sight of the middle managers, then you won’t get recognized.

This is exactly what my employer’s doing - while making exceptions for people hired in the past two years that aren’t local. They’re already bleeding high level technical talent to better paying, fully remote positions and I expect that’ll accelerate if this year’s raises are in the sub-4% range as advertised.

Personally I was ok being a bit below market with the known quantities of people I enjoy working with and not needing to get up to speed with a new company… but at this point I’d be doing myself a disservice by not seeing what’s out there.