'Great Resignation' Gains Steam As Return-To-Work Plans Take Effect (cnbc.com) 174
In what's been dubbed the "Great Resignation," a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs, and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com. CNBC reports: Most say burnout and lack of growth opportunities are what is driving the shift, Monster found. "When we were in the throes of the pandemic, so many people buckled down, now what we're seeing is a sign of confidence," said Scott Blumsack, senior vice president of research and insights at Monster. Already, a record 4 million people quit their jobs in April alone, according to the Labor Department. At the same time, there are more opportunities for job seekers -- with the Labor Department reporting a record 9.3 million job openings as of the latest tally. "The number of open jobs is higher than ever before, that's absolutely contributing to why candidates are putting their toe in the water to see what's out there," Blumsack said.
As Covid vaccinations gain steam, so are plans to return to the office, which is driving more workers to consider their options. In a survey of more than 350 CEOs and human resources and finance leaders, 70% said they plan to have employees back in the office by the fall of this year -- if not sooner -- according to a report by staffing firm LaSalle Network. Of the companies that are planning for office reentry, managing employees who want to continue working remotely is a top concern, LaSalle Network found. "If we see a wave of employees leaving, companies are going to have to figure it out," Reitan said. The report goes on to cite a separate survey from McKinsey that says 9 out of 10 organizations will now be combining remote and on-site working.
As Covid vaccinations gain steam, so are plans to return to the office, which is driving more workers to consider their options. In a survey of more than 350 CEOs and human resources and finance leaders, 70% said they plan to have employees back in the office by the fall of this year -- if not sooner -- according to a report by staffing firm LaSalle Network. Of the companies that are planning for office reentry, managing employees who want to continue working remotely is a top concern, LaSalle Network found. "If we see a wave of employees leaving, companies are going to have to figure it out," Reitan said. The report goes on to cite a separate survey from McKinsey that says 9 out of 10 organizations will now be combining remote and on-site working.
At my current employer (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm classified Flex and that suits me fine. If they re-classify me Office, I'll call my recruiters immediately.
Flex (Score:3, Interesting)
My employer sent out a questionnaire on how we'd want to be classified. Our team chose flex. Another team chose remote. So that's how we're working. I think it's the right way to do it.
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Monster.com (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm amazed Monster is still around. I gave up trying to find anything good on Monster.com over 15 years ago.
Re:Monster.com (Score:5, Funny)
It's still around. Their employees can't leave because they have to find new jobs, but they use Monster so they're stuck there. A benefit that doubles as an employee retention plan.
Re:Monster.com (Score:5, Funny)
I deleted my profile on Monster 10+ years ago. I ***still*** get pings from employers who say they found me on Monster. With one exception, they were all insurance companies looking for salesmen. The exception was a new, local supermarket, They were looking for shelf stockers and checkout clerks.
Mind you, I'm a Security Engineer and Architect with 35+ years experience. And someone thought I was a match for ***ANY*** of these positions ???? /boggle
Re:Monster.com (Score:5, Funny)
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I dunno, there are days when I think that I'd be happier stocking shelves.
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It might depend on the country you are in, Monster isn't bad for the UK market. Actually I found my last EU job on Monster I think.
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With some digging (extraordinary claims require extraordinary scrutiny): https://learnmore.monster.com/... [monster.com].
It seems that this is merely a poll by monster.com. I mean, even in a good year, 95% of those workers visiting monster.com are likely to be considering changing jobs (the other 5% were kids disappointed to find out the site was not actually about monsters). Not sure if the poll was self-selected or random, there are no details. The CNBC article seems to be taking editorial liberties that this is all
Sony surveys customers, finds PS5 top console (Score:5, Insightful)
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95% does seem excessively, unrealistically high. That's the kind of quota you get when Putin is confirmed as supreme leader in Soviet Russia.
Re:Sony surveys customers, finds PS5 top console (Score:5, Interesting)
If you talk to Russians he's actually pretty popular there. Sure, he's a repressive dictatorial asshole, but the economy and society is pretty stable and people aren't fighting for sleeping places under the bridges in winter like under his predecessor. My friends in Moscow said essentially, "We don't actually like him much, but all the alternatives are an order of magnitude worse so I'll vote for him again next time."
Yeah, mod me down, I don't give a fuck.
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The Sleestak are a slow moving people, be prepared to wait a bit before they respond.
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By 'Lizard People' I assume you are referring to the ancient Greek classification system for human personalities.
Wow, that's an even more insane assumption than that the government is covering up alien lizard people.
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By 'Lizard People' I assume you are referring to the ancient Greek classification system for human personalities. The considered psychopaths to have lizard like minds in relation to their social behaviour, being likened to the behaviour of reptiles rather than a mammalian social species.
Citation needed.
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"So, it says here you have 5 years experience being shot out of a cannon. What made you decide that you want to work for our circus?"
"Well, I have these really horrendous headaches at the end of the workday. I would prefer to work for a circus that has a medical plan."
"We don't have any actual openings for human ammunition at the moment. Would you be willing to consider cleaning up after the elephants?"
"Oh sure! Anything where I can keep my feet on the ground sounds great!"
Considering != actually going to change (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people are dissatisfied with work. There's an old joke that goes something like, "'I'm dissatified with my job. Is there a support group for people like me?' 'Yes, it's called everyone. We meet down at the bar.'"
Prepandemic lots of people were considering changing jobs without doing it, for a myriad of reasons. While I have no doubt that there are more changes being made now than prepandemic, I seriously doubt that anywhere close to the kinds of numbers discussed are going to actually do it.
For myself, my employer is offering a bonus if we remain through October, for everyone that was employed prior to March 15 or thereabouts of 2020. They announced this only fairly recently in part because of the budgeting and red-tape involved, but I have no intention of changing jobs before then, and on top of that the director of my department is both allowing us to work from home if our duties allow and is helping to create policy for the organization as a whole.
Is the statistic offered valid? (Score:2)
Your comment only makes sense if the report doesn't show a far higher propensity to leave than was the case pre-pandemic. If however the statistic is a measure that has shifted over time, then your dismissal is ill grounded.
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Lots of people are dissatisfied with work. There's an old joke that goes something like, "'I'm dissatified with my job. Is there a support group for people like me?' 'Yes, it's called everyone. We meet down at the bar.'"
Wait, which bar? I'll be there in 30. Never mind that it's 9:30 AM, I'm already on my fourth meeting today which means it's afternoon.
Prepandemic lots of people were considering changing jobs without doing it, for a myriad of reasons. While I have no doubt that there are more changes being made now than prepandemic, I seriously doubt that anywhere close to the kinds of numbers discussed are going to actually do it.
As others have written, 95% seems high. I mean, I'd like to be 3 star chef, I daydream about it on weekends. I'm not serious about it. No matter how appealing it sounds to quit and go backpacking, I'm not going to actually do it.
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Pre-pandemic I had actually intended to retire in April or May and then we would travel this summer, but now I'm staying at least into the fall when most people are vaccinated and things are closer to normal.
Not all devs... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, for those who DON'T:
1) Have tiny infinite-energy-infused heathens who are out of school and driving you crazy
2) Have significant others who think because you're home then you're available for projects
It's awesome to work at home.
For those who prefer to slog it out in traffic and sit in Cubicle Hell because it's better than sitting at home and dealing with your family . . . .
I understand. . . .
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1) Have tiny infinite-energy-infused heathens who are out of school and driving you crazy
Where do the kids go if you're working in an office? And why can't you send the kids there and stay at home yourself?
The pandemic forced kids at home and work at home to happen at the same time for many people, but the two do not need to be. A lot of my colleagues worked from home before the pandemic, they would take their kids to school in the morning and then return home to work.
The pandemic didn't introduce home working for them, but it did bring a lack of school which caused a disruption to their work.
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Where do the kids go if you're working in an office?
At our house.
And why can't you send the kids there and stay at home yourself?
They're already there.
Some of us are still single-income households.
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For younger kids, that place would be daycare. Yeah, about those, most of those are closed.
Where are most daycares closed? Our daycare opened back up last August, and that was in an area where the schools didn't open back up until this April. Daycares have been open for a while.
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And that's the point, if you couldn't work from home then you couldn't work *AT ALL*.
If your work is less efficient, it's not less efficient because you're at home, it's less efficient because you're also having to look after the kids.
If you sent your kids to daycare while working at home, that would be a better gauge of productivity.
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Well, err....it's natural?
I mean, the general norm throughout time, the female is caretaker of the children and the male makes the living...to a general exten
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Sounds like you need a new wife.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Funny)
Build an office in the basement and walk the steps down really slowly so you have time to think.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Go for a walk. I walk for an hour from my house after work and it's a much better way to unwind than commuting, and healthier too.
Yep, and considering it's the commute that's "winding him up", avoiding it entirely seems to make more sense.
I don't miss my commute, not one single bit. In fact, the more I think about commuting, the sillier and crazier the whole idea becomes.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what you're describing is a skill like any other though, I worked from home a lot before covid. Separating work from leisure is something I do just fine every day, despite working where I often play.
4pm comes round, I close my laptop, put it in it's laptop bag behind me and start playing video games at the same desk.
If you really want explicit separation do that, nothing says it's home time like spending the hour you would've spent commuting blowing shit up in a virtual environment, watching some Netflix, or replying to pointless posts like this on Slashdot.
There's no inherent reason a commute is required to create that separation over anything else, it's just a choice. I'd also dispute your suggestion a commute is useful for winding down, hardly anyone has a relaxing commute, stuck in rush hour whether crushed public transport, breathing fumes at the busiest time of day walking/cycling, or stuck in traffic so the idea that the commute is for winding down is laughable - it winds you up for the evening and leaves you often too exhausted to do anything else with the rest of your day. That can't be "better" by any sane measure.
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I have a more-or-less relaxing commute, I can read, play games on my laptop, or sleep on the train. And I have a mile walk between the train and my office that helps get me going in the morning and unwind at the end of the day and gets me going in the morning.
Even
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't you at least rather sleep in hour(s) later....time you don't have to travel or get ready and dressed for work, etc?
That alone is what makes it great for me...I just was up about 10 min before I have to be at work, walk across the hall and log on.
And I don't get the "uncouple from work" thing. I mean, close the laptop/shut off the computer....and bam, work is GONE.
I mean, it is the same thing as walking out of the building....when I had to do that, as soon as that door hit me on the ass on the way out, I had nary another thought about "work".
It's the same with working from home..you only think work when you are on the work computer and "on the clock"...you shut off that screen and work is over.
Easy peasy.
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Watching people has always been my favorite hobby, the bus ride and walk to/from work was frequently one of the more entertaining parts of my day. I've had to go into the office to test hardware recently, and driving to/from is nothing but drudgery. Next hardware project I'm going to start taking the bus again.
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How about those who use their commute to think about what they are doing that day, want the home to be home and work to be work, and to use their commute home to wind down for the day so when they get home they are home?
Why should you have to "wind down"? Your job and commute shouldn't be winding you up.
Why not spend time "winding down" in a comfortable chair in your living room? Just avoid the commute and cut out the middleman. In other words, why not just avoid the very thing that winds you up in the first place?
I can't speak for others, but I have no difficulty separating work and home, and frankly it's easier for me if I work from home.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5)
Consistently heard the same thing, WFH with kids at home from Covid lockdown or school holidays, is infact, so miserable many people would rather risk harm and go to the office. Sure says a lot about having kids.
It doesn't say much about having kids; it says something significant about how many of our institutions are necessary to enable families with two working parents. Schools and daycares and before school programs and after school programs and summer camps are all necessary for today's modern economy. If we want to go back to the 60-65% working age labor participation rate of the 1940's, as opposed to 80-85% today, we could get by just fine without these institutions. But 10's of millions of jobs in the US alone are dependent on having a place to keep kids safe from 8-6 when parents are at work.
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Most people today have never spent any time talking to their grandparents and great-grandparents. Prior to dual-employment households becoming common the stay at home parent was frequently bringing in income by doing home-work such as sewing, washing, selling eggs, carding wool, and the like. The "good old days" were never like what was depicted in the movies.
Re: Not all devs... (Score:3)
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What on earth makes you think you'd be "in charge" of your household. If you weren't an unmarriageiable neckbeard you might realise that a marriage is a partnership not a man in charge of little wifey kind of deal. Also if you think your kids will OBEY you, you're a moron. I don't have kids and I'm not that much of a dumbass.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can of course only talk for myself, and I am absolutely aware that I am probably not the standard case, but for me, that last year was one of the best in my life. I did not have to meet people. I did not have to leave my house. I could end every conversation by turning the pesky voice simply off instead of actually having to move.
This is awesome.
Yes, I enjoyed those last 14 months and I am absolutely devastated that they're coming to an end. My hope now is in the anti-vax and other conspiracy nuts to keep the infection rates up so I may get a few more months out of it.
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I did not have to meet people. I did not have to leave my house. I could end every conversation by turning the pesky voice simply off instead of actually having to move.
I don't think you're too unusual. Many people I work with are happy as clams (just why do we think clams are happy?) staring at Code all day. I love that too.
OTOH, it's driving me nuts that Bob/Hema and I can't duck into a conference room and scribble things on a whiteboard. It's so much harder to collaborate on-line versus face to face.
Now, if I could only convince my bosses that my team shouldn't be in California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Israel, and Bangalore, then we'll be making progress.
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Absolutely. As soon as I can go back in the office I would as well. Just to catch up with people. That doesn't remotely mean that I prefer to be in the office. I'll probably show up for a few weeks and then go back to working from home.
Re:Not all devs... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's going to vary from individual to individual, but I expect a lot of younger people will want remote simply because it's the only way they can afford to buy a house.
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Then again my preference for working from the office stems partially from my employer being a tad old fashioned so doesn't set up open plan offices unless workers specifically request it. Because o
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I find just the opposite, I get much more work done at home.
At home, I work when there's work - for the most part I can take breaks when I want and start early, finish late if need be, and only put the hours I actually work on the timesheet. And I don't feel like I have to look busy for the boss, but can work at my own pa
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I don't get that implication from most articles. What I've been reading is that there is a large contingent that does prefer work from home, and this is notable because 18 months ago that wasn't really an option. People didn't even know it was possible.
Plenty of people like the office and that's fine. I'm just sick of my company telling me that the ONLY place that a person can get good work done is in an office, particularly since my job as a programmer is 100% doable remotely. Even my meetings are better a
Chez Enrique (Score:5, Funny)
The way the economy is currently trending, fancy restaurants will have to restaff by offering waiters six figures plus a stock option and Silicon Valley class playthings in the break room. They will of course reprice accordingly, becoming even fancier.
Non-fancy restaurants will fold and be replaced by marijuana dispensaries.
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Yeah, there is a rash of restaurant owners around here crying about how they can't compete with unemployment. Newsflash for those assholes: If you think unemployment pays too much, then maybe you should try going on it for a year.
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One thing most will not talk about is that there was a labor shortage for those jobs in 2018 and 2019. This isn't new and like in Mississippi where they yanked the Fed subsidy away from unemployment ... the jobless rate was WAY under the unemployment being paid. In other words, MS just has a problem with filling jobs that no amount of punching downward will fix. It's an excuse by GOP'ers to just be dbags.
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My local vineyard was looking for someone to pull inventory out of their reserve and stock shelves. Kind of like a stock-boy at a grocery store but for a winery. He didn't have a job and wanted $30/hour. This is in Ohio and the cost of living is pretty low here. The guy who owns the vineyard barely makes this much after quantifying his hours put in.
In OHIO there is a requirement where you have to look for a job in order to keep receiving unemployment. So, people are asking for unrealistic pay in order to me
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In OHIO there is a requirement where you have to look for a job in order to keep receiving unemployment. So, people are asking for unrealistic pay in order to meet that requirement. Companies are also competing against the government's bonus....
This is also true in South Carolina. While required to fill out job applications, South Carolina lets you set your salary expectations and adds the amendment that a job offer can be declined on the basis that the company could not meet the salary expectation. The salary expectation needs to be within a range based off of previous salary. This helps ensure that the middle class doesn't start shrinking.
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The current bonus is $300 a week, equivalent to $7.50 an hour for a 40-hour week. Typical unemployment benefits are less than 50% of the person's previous earnings rate. So someone who was making $15.00 an hour before losing their job would be getting the equivalent of that in unemployment. Made sense before, in order to keep the economy going after the original cut-off date when so many restaurants and such were still closed, but will end
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You may not be aware of this, but they had a different way of dealing with this: They accused you of sabotage and you went off to a prison that makes high-sec in the US look like a vacation resort.
Either you're talking about the 1980s, when everyone already knew that it was going to fold soon and nobody wanted to be the asshole to send someone off to one of those places for the trials after the fall, or you're talking out of your ass.
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What's you're talking about is the Western Marxists' attempts at explaining that problem away.
I have a old family friend who was a jurist in Soviet courts, specifically representing companies in those cases (she died over ten years ago of very old age). She had some utterly amazing stories just what kind of creative slacking she was tasked with getting fired. Everything from people stealing jet engine parts from military factories for their backyard moonshine machine to mixing chemicals in a chemical factor
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Re:Chez Enrique (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, you're obviously talking about the USSR style socialism, not communism in general, but Marx didn't just write "to each according to his need", but also "from each according to his ability". Expressions, BTW, which can be found in the Bible and were used by English colonists in Connecticut in the 1600s as part of their founding covenant, among other palces.
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Real Communism Has Never Been Tried take n, where n is an incredibly large number at this point.
Re: Chez Enrique (Score:2)
Massive scope for industrialisation combined with being resource-rich in times of increasing worldwide demand. The latter would increasingly compensate as the former stagnated, falling behind the West, with the shit really hitting the fan as these resources declined in value.
They had the money for military spending because they directed it there, neglecting economic development. In some ways it's comparable to Venezuela in the sense that everything was looking good so long as oil revenues propped it up. As
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Considering the quality of some of those joints, that can only be an improvement.
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Purely based on your spelling, I assume you pay a pretty penny to stay fed.
Nah, it's chicken feed.
Realistically, what's the normal number? (Score:5, Insightful)
95% is a big number, but I mean who doesn't think about leaving their job under even the best of circumstances?
What was the number under the control?
Distributed group for 15 years now... (Score:5, Informative)
I work in development at a major firm. We used to be part of something very small, but kept being bought by progressively larger companies. At each stage, the team became more distributed. Many of us have been working from home for up to 15 years now, and the majority have been at it for around 7 to 10 years.
Each company that bought us voiced concerns over our setup and it almost soured the deal a few times. But in each case it was just us after we were purchased, the rest of the company stayed the same office bound.
The pandemic was barely a blip to our teams, productivity wise. Most of us were already used to living on chat and IP meetings when we needed to brainstorm. We may be the only team in the country that didn't miss a step. The company seems to be pretty cautious thus far about bringing the former office workers back to the office.
The pandemic shows that it can be done and it can work. Sure, groups new to it had some bumps along the way during the transition, but that's to be expected. Now those bumps are behind us and hopefully everyone can see a new way forward.
For me to return to an office based job, with the commute, expenses, necessity to live near the place (we're all spread out to wherever we feel like living now)... that would be soul-crushing.
Any company wanting to compete for employee hires in the new world needs to get with the program. Workers who are able to do their jobs from home now know the reality is that it's not necessary to be in an office to get the job done, and it makes for a better and easier life for most.
All those companies who talk about work/life balance... time to live up to it.
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The problem here is that people who aren't coming back aren't the people who can work remotely. They're overwhelmingly people who cannot. You can't serve drinks, do assembly work or build houses remotely.
In the past, such work was undervalued by the society, because previously it was the "degree" that determined value. But now that such front line workers have been effectively out of work for a while and many re-trained to do work like yours, there's going to be a massive oversupply of "I want to work remot
Re: Distributed group for 15 years now... (Score:3)
Do assembly work, serve drinks, build houses.
Retrain as a software dev within 12-18 months.
Yeah, sorry, no.
Wouldn't worry too much here. Not every job applicant is actually valid competition for the others, even if they may be good enough to fill the statistics. I wouldn't worry too much above the above group if I was looking.
Disclaimer: I was a dev for ~20 years, and doing IT management and hiring for not-quite-a decade now.
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Skilled workers for house construction typically make a very good wage. Assembly workers in some fields do, also. And bartenders in upscale establishments make a great living after tips and taxes.
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2023 - The Great Firing (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, I did not know that my boss, who has never met me in real life, could fire me so easily and hire a cheaper worker from Romania instead.
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If you really think meeting him in real life would have any effect on that, you either never worked in a large corporation where the boss you know has zero impact on whether or not you get fired, or worked for the average slave driver that doesn't give a fuck who you are, whether he never met you or knew your family from five generations ago.
Re:2023 - The Great Firing (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, I did not know that my boss, who has never met me in real life, could fire me so easily and hire a cheaper worker from Romania instead.
But can he? Does he have a business in Romania and the ability to manage an employee there? If so I suspect Romania matches your current timezone and you're Europe based, which means you are likely covered under employee protection laws of some kind and can't just be mindlessly fired too.
People assume that just because the world is global that it's trivial to simply hire anyone from anywhere. That can't be further from the truth. Now if you already have an office in Romania and there's no reason your specific task should be done from the USA then yes you very well may be replaceable. But is that new? What part of that makes it a "great firing"? Just because you've never met your boss in real life (I haven't, not in the past 6 years) what makes you a risk of being replaced? Are you not providing value to the company, or is your value determined exclusively by shaking your boss's hand? If that's the case, finding another job may be a good thing for you.
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Man, I did not know that my boss, who has never met me in real life, could fire me so easily and hire a cheaper worker from Romania instead.
But can he? Does he have a business in Romania and the ability to manage an employee there? If so I suspect Romania matches your current timezone and you're Europe based, which means you are likely covered under employee protection laws of some kind and can't just be mindlessly fired too.
People assume that just because the world is global that it's trivial to simply hire anyone from anywhere. That can't be further from the truth. Now if you already have an office in Romania and there's no reason your specific task should be done from the USA then yes you very well may be replaceable. But is that new? What part of that makes it a "great firing"? Just because you've never met your boss in real life (I haven't, not in the past 6 years) what makes you a risk of being replaced? Are you not providing value to the company, or is your value determined exclusively by shaking your boss's hand? If that's the case, finding another job may be a good thing for you.
Further more, how will your boss deal with customers trying to leave because the service has gone down the shitter.
I know a formerly, very well respected service provider that is having customer retention problems after "righshoring" to India. Not only are the customer having trouble understanding the service techs, the staff simply don't care. Most are already planning their next job (in India you must always be seen as moving, if only sideways) hopefully collecting a few certs along the way.
Bosses, as opp
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I LOL'd (Score:2)
It;s funny to watch management panic when they get trout-slapped by reality, and no way to gloss it over.
Guess I'm lucky I've been working in the trades since the 1980's.
You couldn't pay me enough to work in an office, my brain would fossilize.
Remote Work is the new Carrot to Dangle (Score:4)
Many folks have a taste of not wasting 2-3 hours of their life everyday getting ready and slogging it out with traffic to get to and from a building somewhere.
Once tasted, you will be hard pressed to entice them to return to the Cubicle and Traffic / Commute hell that was the normal pre-pandemic.
Oh, my goodness! (Score:5, Funny)
A slave revolt. Spartacus would be proud!
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A slave revolt. Spartacus would be proud!
Wait, are you saying you're Spartacus?
modern offices are shit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm among the people who will not return to the office full-time. 1-2 days a week is the max I will tolerate, and if the company wants to force more on me, they'll have my resignation letter in their inbox.
The main reason is that modern offices are complete shit. Open floor plans and other abominations that should've been aborted in their mother's wombs, shared desks, the whole MBA bullshit bingo suite.
If you work with your brain, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get anything done in modern offices. I used to have proper offices with doors and all, either shared with one colleague or by myself. There you can work. When you need to focus, you can close the door and people understand that as a sign to not disturb if it's not urgent. You can send your phone to voicemail, turn of mail notifications and get some focussed work done for an hour or two.
In the offices they offer now, that's impossible. Most of my colleagues in the last office before the pandemic brought headphones to listen to music, mostly to drown out the noise. Now, with people having enjoyed undisturbed home office work, I think most people simply realized how shitty their office environments really were - and why would you willingly return to a terrible place?
If companies were smart, they'd fire the PHBs and MBA-know-nothings and consultant-idiots and build offices that people actually want to work in !
Less people, more space, less disturbances (Score:2)
If the numbers in office fall a lot, and the chatterers cluster at one end, there's a fair chance that the workers will be able to concentrate more easily than in the past. But yes, it's going to be 'interesting'.
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I used to work in the AWS SOC, and it was the first time that I had seen an open floor plan that made sense. One person could say, "We had a bunch of NVRs go down in APAC, is anyone doing work there?" or "I'm going to be on this call with PDX50 for a while, someone else has to cover their alarms" and everyone knew what was up. That's a pretty limited example though, and the only one that I can think of in 25 years of office work.
Recent interviewee (Score:3)
I'm one of the privileged ones that develops software and can do it from home.
I've been freelancing in 2020 but found it difficult to get gigs during the lockdowns and the meltdown in the economy in my locale - a lot of smaller companies, that were my market, fell on hard times. So start of this year I've been interviewing for full-time positions.
I got the impression that there was much demand in my locale for developers (larger teams as opposed to single-person gigs). Also, most of the positions were WFH. "We were already transitioning to remote work before Covid" was a refrain I heard more than once or twice.
In the end I had 3 good offers in hand and opted for one that has ties with a large European company. (Only remote interviews, they even have laptops with cameras disabled for security, so it was more like a telephone conference.) We have to be remote-capable in any case because some of our team members sit on another continent. I surely find the WFH arrangement a perk (I live alone) and it will figure high in future work arrangements, as I like the flexibility in choosing where to live. Also, I love having the commute time available for weeding the veggies or go to the gym, etc.
Looking at our Scrum board I don't think I'm unproductive (even if taking a break for /. :-) ). Scrum master already mentions how much gets done since me joining. (Just more hands, but still.)
Other team members have already grumbled about not wanting to return to office. We seem to be doing just fine remotely. One person took off for his parents' home in another city when a fresh round of strict lockdowns was announced.
Of course this gig also has the European work balance mindset. I can't even book overtime. So I rather don't work it. I like to spend some extra hours when I'm "in the flow" with a problem, so often by Friday afternoon I find my week's hours filled, so I log off and take off for a free afternoon.
Summary: I think work in my domain is moving towards WFH, it will be a standard perk most companies will offer in the near future. And many that don't will find it harder to fill positions. And I'm all for it.
Sounds like good time to ask for raise. (Score:2)
Like others, I am skeptical about how many will actually quit. One threatens to quit a job many times before actually doing it...similar to divorces, going back to college, quitting smoking, los
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Not gonna happen. The MBAs will say "If you ask for a raise and get it, you'll just ask for another one in the future! Now where's my bonus check?!".
Pandemic gave low-paid workers a time-out (Score:2)
One problem of a lot of low-paid jobs is that they suck up so much of a worker's time that they don't have any to spare for looking for a different job or getting the qualifications for a different kind of job. The pandemic gave them a time-out from work and free time to take classes and go looking for better-paid positions. It shouldn't come as any surprise then that many of them have _found_ better jobs and aren't going back to the old ones. Also, 600k+ deaths removed at least a few hundred thousand worke
Monster.com? - who were they again? (Score:2)
Yeah, sure, I guess they still exist - but why would I trust a survey about the amount of people looking for work, from a recruitment company?
This entirely stinks of opportunistic media behaviour to me - send out media missives that so many people are looking for work, based on an internal study - to drive traffic to Monster?
I don't have the necessary understanding of what is happening in job sectors or countries other than my own - perhaps Monster.com is massive for some job roles?
As a tech worker, I don't
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3. Overtime is going through the roof and they try to get it under control that way.
4. Apparently when people are not in the office and have their own internet connection available, they start looking at job offers and notice that the grass actually IS greener on the other pasture.
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(1) is just wrong. Of course an empty building is a tax write off.
Not only that, but getting to deduct an expense to reduce taxes is still worse than not having the expensive. If you don't need an office, that's a lot of money saved... and that has been the case prior to covid as well.
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Who exactly are you talking about now? The managers? Yeah, they're pretty worthless, we've been noticing this now that we work from home, since they haven't been able to micro-manage us and wrap us up in red tape, efficiency has soared.
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There are states that cut off expanded unemployment benefits a month ago. They're having the same trouble finding workers as states that continued benefits.
Turns out "treat people like shit and underpay them" isn't the best business model for finding workers.
Re: Slackers (Score:4, Funny)
If you exclude Trump it probably goes up.