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Comment by yadaeno | Hacker News Reader

Pre-Covid much of my job satisfaction came from the sense of comradery of working on a team. Even as an introvert I enjoy interacting with coworkers, and being intune with the needs of the group and generally helping other people succeed.

When we transitioned to full remote, all of this was stripped away and I was left to focus purely on a product that on its own I was not passionate about (think ad-like product). I was met with a sudden loss in motivation, burnout, and decided to take 9 months off to pursue a tech unrelated hobby.

9 months after leaving, I have accepted a position with a 50% raise over to my previous job.

I think covid was a splash of cold water that's caused many of the people in my circle to re-evaluate how they spend their time. Tech workers are so in demand that we can freely change jobs so it follows that many people would availing that option.

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> much of my job satisfaction came from the sense of comradery of working on a team

I think this is a seriously undervalued factor and something I was completely unaware of.

I used to always judge job opportunities either by how well they pay, or how interesting the work is. But in reality, the social factor is just as important.

So some time ago, I was trying to hire my first employee. I paid a lot of money for job ads, and got very little applications. I offered the same salary as the other tech companies in my city, and I really tried my best to attract people.

I couldn't understand why people instead only applied to work for boring consultancies or even for an online gambling company -- why would people prefer such mind numbing or even morally questionable jobs?

I realized that the social situation at work is really important. When I met people who worked at the online gambling website, they weren't talking about the actual work; they just told me about their awesome boss, and how they had fun with their team mates, etc. It didn't matter how interesting my project was, nobody wanted to sit all day in an office just alone with me.

I think the OPs point was that the past employer effectively leveraged the social aspect to underpay. Now that there is a hobby outside of work, the latter is suddenly not a center of life anymore. The pay raise is the ironic reality of employers catching up with the real cost of labour.

That assumes that these social aspects are valued at zero. Money isn't everything in a job. Your compensation consists of the money, yes, but also everything else in the job. Good social aspect at work takes effort to build and maintain, so maybe, actually, those employers weren't underpaying at all. Again, money isn't everything.

Counterpoint: with basic human decency and almost every company following the same blueprint when catering to that social aspect, odds are in practice it really doesn't matter. Either you're an outlier socially and lucky to hit it without turning your CV into Swiss cheese, or you're more average and almost every company will cater to you the same way, so odds are high you'll fit in similarly regardless.

Good social aspect is still in the eyes of the beholder, and for people like me, this blueprint absolutely isn't beneficial. Nor is the risk of looking for an outlier culture worth the potential benefits, when that same outlier culture can be much more easily found outside work.

It assumes exactly the opposite of that. The underlying economic principle at work is that the social aspects of a job do have an equivalent monetary value, and now that they're gone, employers have to make up the shortfall by paying more in plain money.

Years ago, I remember someone talking about working in film. Ideally, you work on three movies a year; one for the pay, one for the script, and one for the people you work with. I've tried to keep this in mind when looking for full-time work and I think it lines up with what you're saying.

Consultancy might have a boring image, but the work can be extremely varied. I was at one of the big names and got to go behind the scenes at a major theme park, spend a night with police officers on blue light calls, watch open heart surgery in person, meet a lunar astronaut and eat lunch in a tv studio watching a live broadcast.

Wow, that sounds way more interesting that I've been led to believe! Did you just get lucky? What was your role?

I think you make your own luck for things like this. I was a technology architect which had the advantage of being quite broad in scope. I came to the company with a deeper technical background than some which helped, but I also built a specialism after I joined that was rare in the company. That meant if there was a need for that skill, I had a high chance of being asked to assist. And of course, when it came to change projects, choosing ones that held an interest helped. But for example, anyone who joined the project with the police force had an opportunity to join a shift, anyone who worked on the TV project could have lunch where I did, so it isn't all about the role.

I'll chime in since I also worked in consulting for a long time (still do). It depends a lot on what vertical you get pulled into, but I'd say it's 50% luck and 50% you putting in the effort to develop and prove you have skills (including social ones) to get staffed on interesting projects. Many consultants never see more than conference rooms and the home office, but the parent commenter's experience also happens quite a bit. It's worth noting that in my experience the more advanced you get in your career the more likely you are to work only in a specific industry.

Another introvert here, working fully remotely since before COVID. I couldn't imagine working on a product I wasn't passionate about and genuinely wanted to succeed. Most of my motivation is based around doing interesting and socially valuable work. This doesn't have to be groundbreaking, but knowing I'm helping put out some good in the world is a large factor in choosing and staying with a company.

The team is also important, of course, but it's minor compared to the product as the way of working remotely is quite different from being in an office. To me it's mostly for the better, since everyone is focused on the product and not on some pointless team building events, company gossip or drama.

I hope you chose a more fulfilling industry than advertising. It's interesting that a sibling comment also mentions working on ads. I wonder what the breakdown of resignations per industry looks like, and how relevant remote work was in that decision.

>To me it's mostly for the better, since everyone is focused on the product and not on some pointless team building events, company gossip or drama.

It's very interesting to see how people look at relationship building with others. Many introverts on HN and Reddit see it as a mostly negative thing and equivalent people interaction and relationship building to drama, gossip, and forced friendliness.

I like making friends outside of work. To me emulating friendship in corporate environment feels cringeworthy and I literally see people forcing themselves into it. I also like to get out of the programmer environment as much as possible. I just don't like it, even though I'm a programmer myself.

I think there is a difference between team building through shared struggle (like new soldiers going through boot camp) and what hr comes up with as “team building activities” in the office after they went on Pinterest and searched for “team building ice breakers for meetings”.

At my workplace they came up with employee appreciation day. They make a slightly better lunch and they clap for you when you walk into the cafeteria. I much rather be allowed to leave 30 min earlier.

While I understand the pipeline where those ideas come from (management appoints one poor soul to quickly come up with something that looks fun on paper, is cheap, quick and doesn’t allow for any possibility of rule breaking), they don’t really help me bond with anyone.

What does help me bond is being part of a team with a great leader that makes everyone want to push in the same direction and makes us a unit. For that you need solid hiring that takes into consideration what team the to-be-hired person is going to be working with at a social level

That sounds like a scene from the office and I grimaced inside from the thought of someone clapping for me! Any of these forced fun activities are generally not actually fun.

One of my managers used to sneak around and whisper to people to go home early (like at 1pm) on days before holidays, now that was appreciated!

It is. The office is so accurate. All the way down to the donation campaigns and the toy drives and weird little events to hide that we are all in a gray cube away from the beautiful sun grinding numbers away

> Many introverts on HN and Reddit see it as a mostly negative thing and equivalent people interaction and relationship building to drama, gossip, and forced friendliness.

There is a difference between team building, workplace social dynamics, and genuine relationships. Thankfully, most of my coworkers recognize this. We work together as a team, the negative workplace social dynamics are at a minimum, and genuine relationships between coworkers don't exclude others or erode the confidence of others. Simply put, everyone behaves as professionals.

On the other hand, I have been in workplaces where the opposite is true. Team building exercises lead to cliques that reinforce certain relationships and erode others, coworkers undermine each other through gossip and use forced friendliness will conceal their intent. None of the relationships are genuine since you know that the drama will eventually lead to someone being in tears (sometimes in front of their coworkers) or leaving altogether.

For what it's worth, I have seen both situations arise outside of tech and both dynamics in play with both introverted and sociable people.

I recently landed a new job. I'm currently in the process of leaving my old job and awaiting my first day at the new one.

And I think this played into it. I was pretty happy with my old position, but I did have some small desire to find something new. What always kept me back was the fact that I liked the people I worked with.

But as WFH has sort of dragged on, I found that the social bonds have become a much weaker glue for me and there's a minor burnout coming from how stale it is working from home. The camaraderie that kept me at my job sort of faded away. The monotony and increasing apathy toward the people I was working with really pushed me hard into wanting some kind of change, and so almost on a whim I applied for a job at a company that I've been itching to work for. And I got it!

So I'm excited about my new job. I think it'll be more impactful and interesting work where I'm going to get to grow my skills a lot. And my compensation will be doubled. I should be happy that the circumstances forced the change, but I'm also a little uncomfortable with the feeling that it was an impulsive decision due to a mental state that has been caused by temporary circumstances.

Not working in tech but this seems to make a lot of sense. If you had a socially fulfilling job pre-covid then maybe you're wage didn't matter so much because being in tech it's probably pretty good. But being stuck at home it's hard to optimize for anything else than your salary when you're considering your employment. So if you're gonna sit and stare at a screen you might as well get as much money as possible.

I feel like im reading my own thoughts. The thing that got me into work was the people not the product. I also worked in ads.

This was almost my EXACT experience ad well. differences are I took 6 months off, wasnt working on an ad-like product, and my pay boost getting back into the market was 48% instead of 50%.

Similar struggle. Joined the company for a group of people, who all subsequently left. Stayed on for a year of diminishing financial and psychic rewards. Now looking.

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