Yes, this is a good thing.
Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.”
Better headline: “Record number of workers switch to jobs with better working conditions, pay, and benefits.” We might also add “Employers forced to raise wages for others who remain.”
The media is deliberately misrepresenting these stories for the click-bait. People want to read stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves. But the reality is they're not quitting the work force, they're just changing jobs.
I don't read "quitting jobs" as leaving the work force forever, just changing jobs. How would that even make sense? People need jobs.
The way forward is to hire more people, pay people more, and give them more time off.
I've been thinking about making a similar move.
As someone who does know how to feel about those types, let me make a suggestion: Don't. That is to say, why does it matter to you?
Is it because you need their labor for your happiness ("who will make my fries/clothes/things I'm incapable of making myself")? Then it's not their fault you feel that way, and they don't owe that to you.
Is it because "work = a moral good"? Then you're wrong work is a thing people do because they have to in order to be able to acquire currency for the things they actually want to do. It has no inherent morality.
Is it because "Mindless consumption is a moral bad"? Of course, but only because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism.
The long and short of it is you don't lose much by people opting out of working. By that I mean the type of person who was going to put in the years of work dedicated to trying to cure cancer (or advance society in whatever way you personally feel would be the most valuable) is very unlikely to also be the type of person who is only interested in doing it because they "needed a job".
TL-dr: Hang the jerk who invented work on the Big Rock Candy Mountain.
(Edited for formatting/grammar)
I believe innovations come only from a productive society. The day we become wall-E characters is the day either AI has taken over or an Alien overlord has taken over. Then humans will go the way horses did - become pets and vanity objects. This also means the number of humans will go down the same way inevitably.
I am not going to take up the socialist vs capitalist fight, I am very wary of the impacts of a huge consumption only society.
From your previous post:
>>There's some argument about the definition of "work", since many of them might wish to do something that would be defined as work if they were paid for it by an employer.
So let's start asking questions about your perception: How many people who want to opt out of work fall into your 2 categories of "doing 'work'" vs "Wall-E Characters" and how many fall into the 3rd category (which you seem to be) of people who want "jobs"? Further, how many innovations do you believe only exist because people were forced to partake the a system that involves jobs and work? My best guess is that there are enough people who have the ego to believe themselves capable of creating and innovating to take care of the rest by doing so, even everyone had all their basic needs met and people could opt out.
I'm not arguing that everyone plug into the Matrix and let "big alien brother" keep us as pets. But if it's an option and people want to take it (while still allowing people like you to produce things), why is that bad? And why is innovation itself a moral good? Improvement =/= innovation.
I don’t know how you expect a pure consumerist class be able to exist alongside a productive class - sooner or later the productive class is going to want to distinguish itself, pushing the consumerists down far enough. The consumers are gonna want the latest gadget eventually - they’re not gonna be ok just with basic food / shelter, which’s going to only keep raising the bar of what the consumers are entitled to - which essentially means the society isn’t going to function. Nobody wants to keep paying for some no name set of folks to keep mooching off them and worse getting the same lifestyle for free.
So the only way I see a pure consumer setup working out is where you’re zombied out or made into a pet. Or I see that as the end result.
I think almost all the innovations exist because of hard work. My above point addresses why folks want their whole society to be productive - so everyone works / contributes the best they can. It could be a doctor / nurse / janitor / manual labor / line cook feeding them / day care employee etc.
Re why not allow for folks to become pets: I hate to Godwin this argument, but I don’t think our society is going to make peace with that ever. Even the existence of a higher race will change the equation completely up side down for us - forget about them harnessing humans as pets. There have been way too many lessons from slavery for this to be acceptable.
Re why is innovation a moral good: we either move forward and harness nature or it harnesses us. Just like how covid emerged - there are always new challenges. Eventual the sun is going to go nova - we need to be off this solar system long before that. However you want to think - be in short or long times, we need innovation. I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
Note: you might be referring to a very minimalistic homeless lifestyle when you mean a pure consumer sector, in that case - that exists now. We will continue to take care of folks who choose that (or unfortunately forced into it) with increasing quality over time, but that will never be looked upon as a positive thing. It is always going to be a something to avoid - there is always going to be a stigma and danger surrounding the same. I am hoping that’s not the argument you’re going for.
Sorry, I had been referring to a specific person and the tone of your answer made it seem like you were them. Didn't think to check the user names.
>>I think stagnation / advocacy for the same is actually a moral bad because it dooms humanity’s future.
You have a very short view on things. Eventually, it all ends. Humanity is doomed. The very universe itself has been in a state of decay and entropy since the Big Bang. Over the long term, humanity has a 0% chance of survival. We're just whistling past the graveyard.
Solving interesting problems is fun and all, but I don't really care to define my life around it.
Is this actually true? I've seen this numerous times over the last 8-12 months and it's always stated as if it's obviously true. But, why? Why would people have put off switching jobs until November 2021? Covid has been about the same in 95% of America since June 2020.
I think there has to be some other explanation, or at least some data to support the idea that this is all just pent-up demand being released.
A ton of people have had well over year of working remotely while slowly losing personal connections with their teams. At the same time, people are generally reluctant to entertain a job switch in a time of uncertainty. It’s not a stretch to believe that as people accept the “new normal” they finally decide to move on.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen some of this. Voluntary attrition at work tanked during the first year of COVID and then started to uptick in late summer and fall of last year.
I put off looking for a new job at first because I was worried about a Covid-induced major economic downturn. I didn't want to be the new person when my employer is figuring out who to fire[1]. I only pulled the trigger when the numbers rebounded (and the downturn wasn't a big as I feared, consumer spending was really strong).
1. Or my personal nightmare, getting a downturn while serving notice and the new employer change their mind about the offer while jobs evaporate all around.
This is a prime example of one of the main reasons I stopped reading/watching news some years back - the media thrives on click-bait and negativity, and I just don't need that in my life.
Here we have something happening that many would think is good - huge numbers of people switching jobs. Instead, all the focus is on only one side of the job switch, which exactly as you said is purposely misrepresenting the facts with the express purpose of driving traffic.
The way to fix this issue isn't to stop consuming news, it's to pay for the news that doesn't use click bait.
Obviously it's worse in the Internet age but honestly I don't think it's new. You think back to the sensational headlines that the newsies were shouting out on street corners and it's really the same thing.
* well, of course some do, but I'm talking 'real' news here
Power of analytics optimizing for the metrics.
Kinda seems to me like profit being at the center of everything is the problem
It also seems to time well with the antiwork movement, which in my opinion exists as a "correction", like we'd see in other economic paradigms, sure it's probably heightened by current inflationary pressures, but it seems worker pay, especially service-jobs, is deeply needing a steep increase.
Is this part happening? Are those who remain getting raises or just the new people hired as replacements? Heard a lot about that.
The explosion in VC capital has been primarily driven by a reach for yield among institutions, endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds. All of this money is extremely sticky, and once allocated will take 10+ years to de-allocate. So really the only way we see private equity funding collapse is if public equities quickly crater, forcing endowments to rebalance to stay in their allocation mandate.
And that could possibly happen, given how rich public equity valuations are. But the reality is the modern Fed is never again in our lifetime going to let nominal stock prices fall by 35% or more like they did in 2008. The traumas from the GFC are simply too ingrained in the current generation of central bankers and policy makers.
If push comes to shove and equities hit a bear market (20% drawdown), the Fed is going to turn the liquidity faucet to max. The forever war against Covid gives them a convenient excuse. In the scenario, you'll probably just see the Fed let inflation run hot at 10%+ for a few years. Again the Covid transitory narrative gives the cover.
Also, where else would they invest this money?
2. It could lead to companies re-evaluating whether all their projects are worth it. Anecdotally, I have heard of some automation projects being cancelled as manual workers in other countries are cheaper.
If you look at the job market as a commodity where companies are on the buy side and workers are on the sell side you could say that the price of the commodity spiked suddenly. Whenever that happens I'm usually wary of the corrections that surely follow.
That could mean mass layoffs in the future when companies realize the commodity isn't worth that much. It could mean business closings due to lack of purchase power to compete. It could mean inflation to adjust the purchase power.
Again it's all speculation. And it's derived from risk tolerance. If you like risky investments it makes sense to try to capitalize and sell your labor for the most you can. I can't blame you.
Office workers (including SWEs) in general benefited a lot because WFHing made the logistics of interviewing around significantly easier.
A lot of my old department at my previous company jumped ship for places that offered significantly more pay (specifically, tech companies) or better WFH policies. More people left in the span of a few months during the summer of 2021 than I recall leaving during my entire tenure there (7 years).
The main reason I stay in my job is that our department is pro WFH.
WFH policy is as conservative and hostile as ever AFAIK.
Speaking for myself, grinding leetcode in 2021 was very difficult because I was close to burning-out (very little outdoor recreation, blurred lines between work hours and non-work hours which resulted in me frequently working 9-11 hours per day (with breaks). I think it would have been easier pre-covid.
With in-person schools and daycares closed and the kids at home, there was no "downtime within working hours" - cue the working late at night after kids had gone to bed to make up for it (and the subsequent near-burnout experience).
Also, my recruiter told me they were seeing record-high post-screen interview cancellations by interviewees during COVID times - but perhaps their numbers were not representative. My suspicion is that there was a massive mental health disaster that was mostly hidden from view[1], and software engineers were not spared.
1. I wasn't even aware of my mental state until I started grinding leetcode and recognized the tell-tale signs of burnout as I had experienced full-blown burnout before (my self-motivation was reduced, but not yet gone)
When giving the raises, I've been saying "This raise is to keep our pay competitive with the market, and will not affect your regular annual review" (we also give raises to people annually)
I get that some employers, particularly in small businesses like you describe, might be committed to such fairness, but most employers in my experience have been perfectly content and even fight back (as in, "well, if you had a competing offer...") if the employees start comparing numbers.
Fairness itself has nothing to do with it.
It has everything to do with avoiding employees getting mad when they here the new guy makes significantly more, which leads to conflict, which leads to unhappy employees, which leads to poor productivity.
Perhaps "fairness" is the wrong thing to call it. More like "do things to retain good employees". Usually "being fair" falls into the "do things to retain good employees" category.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...
This is the new norm and it's extremely short sighted and inefficient for most employers. If your cost of living increase (or combined "merit increase") is below inflation your company is doing something wrong.
But the long-term impact for workers is positive in most ways. "The Great Realignment" feels more truthful.
I don't see why that has to be necessarily the case from that data.
2021 also saw the introduction of vaccine mandates for many jobs, we saw sectors like healthcare, accommodations&food services, and logistics struggle to fill their labor demand due to the pandemic;
> Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000).
+159,000 people quit accommodations and food services, yet;
> Job openings decreased in several industries with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services (-261,000)
The sector lost more jobs than people quit, which points into the direction of people not willingly quitting for a better job, but people not finding jobs in the sector, at least with the terms they want, due to lost jobs in the sector.