2 In 5 Tech Workers Quit Over Inflexible Workspace Policies (theregister.com) 48
Two in five tech workers quit in the past year due to inflexible workplace policies around hours, location, and workload intensity, with most citing a desire for remote work and greater autonomy. The Register reports: The findings come from a survey of 26,000 plus staff that operate in 35 markets, including 2,548 respondents in tech, and fly in the face of more and more corporations issuing return to office mandates and demanding long working hours. Amsterdam-based recruitment biz Randstad, which commissioned the research, says 40 percent of the tech people it polled said they resigned due to hardline policies, and 56 percent threatened to seek an alternative if their requests for flexibility were ignored.
Almost three-quarters claim remote work boosts a "sense of community" with colleagues -- versus the average of 58 percent across other sectors -- and 68 percent say they'd trust their employer more if they were more easy going on hours, the intensity of the work and the place where they can work. Graig Paglieri, Randstad Digital boss, said the "IT sector has shown that personalized work benefits and flexible options are essential not only for attracting top talent but also for retaining them in competitive markets. Policies should align with organizational, team and individual needs, ensuring a flexible and tailored approach."
Almost three-quarters claim remote work boosts a "sense of community" with colleagues -- versus the average of 58 percent across other sectors -- and 68 percent say they'd trust their employer more if they were more easy going on hours, the intensity of the work and the place where they can work. Graig Paglieri, Randstad Digital boss, said the "IT sector has shown that personalized work benefits and flexible options are essential not only for attracting top talent but also for retaining them in competitive markets. Policies should align with organizational, team and individual needs, ensuring a flexible and tailored approach."
I did that once. (Score:4, Insightful)
I wanted to keep working there and they didn't want me to - and they were really inflexible about it. :-)
[Worked out for the better for me anyway...]
Nearly half would walk but only 2 of 5 did (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly half of the respondents said they would walk according to the article, but only 2 out of 5 did. This means 10% chickened out.
The problem is, not everyone has F.U. money in the bank to walk, or they don't have any confidence that they would find a better job while working the current one. That 10% probably thought it was too much of a risk to quit.
Over the course of my career (now retired) I've seen workloads increase dramatically at all of the companies I worked for. More and more companies expect salaried employees to work more than 40 hours a week on a chronic basis, with manufactured deadlines just to make some manager look good so he gets his stock options. It used to be that overtime was only required in those situations where the company had something to lose (like a big contract). Nowadays, everything is treated as that large contract even though if the deadline is missed, nothing significant happens to the company.
So getting back to not treating everything as an emergency and only requiring overtime for those "true emergencies" would go a long way towards resolving a lot of this.
The problem is, as more and more companies see other companies abusing salaried overtime, the more incentive they have to also start doing it.
The only way I see to resolve this is to impose uniformity on the working time of salaried employees through reform of the 1938 Federal Labor Standards Act. Yes this is regulation, but some regulation needs to be in place to prevent a race to the bottom. There ought to be a limit on average working time over several weeks for salaried employees that all employers must follow.
Reforming the FLSA will level the playing field so that companies all have to play be the same rules. Europe has already done this with thier "Working Time Directive"
Of course, with the current regime in power, none of this will see the light of day.
go union! (Score:1)
go union!
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Well, yes, essentially.
Most unions include good legal help and advice. Whatever the problem they've likely seen it hundreds of times.
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Nearly half of the respondents said they would walk according to the article, but only 2 out of 5 did.
The headline is tricky. At first, I read that 40% of all currently employed people quite their jobs due to a desire for WFH. Of course, that's obvious not true. So, it's 40% of people who quit were motivated by WFH. How much WFH mattered compared to other factors is unclear. Traditionally, a less than desired boss, compensation, and promotion have been the main reasons to quit. It would be interesting to see if a desire for WFH is just a secondary reason for quitting or if people actually quit due sol
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This wasn't just IT, it was workers in general. For areas like finance, HR, accounts, legal, and others (except perhaps the dudes at the receiving dock), they are not hunted prey like IT people. Bob from accounting actually has to go from a word to the wise, quick chiding, meeting with manager informally, meeting with manager semi-formally, meeting with manager formally, meeting with two managers, meeting with HR, warning about it going onto his HR record, another warning, a permanent warning, and eventua
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There is no such thing as an unemployed lawyer
There are tens of thousands of unemployed law school grads. Unemployed, or working in a lower paying profession that doesn't require a law degree. One of the big complaints of law school students is the way law schools, even good ones, scam them with the promise of unlimited high paying law jobs ("Go ahead, take out that student loan, you'll be awash in money and pay it off!"), when the reality is, in some areas, half of of law school grads end up abandoning legal careers because there just aren't anywhere
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Even the third tier law schools, once someone has a bar membership, there are always niches for them. It may not be a senior partner of Dewey, Cheatham, & Howe, but there is always some public sector opening available. Some lawyers even find a recession-proof seat in IT because they can turn legalese to policies.
It may not be the same way for everyone, but in the high school I came from, all the ones who went to law school, even state law school, are pretty much set for life. At the minimum, legal te
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Indeed. And once you have done that a few times, you will have that money in the bank as well. IT people are hard to get and critical for enterprise success, and even the determined denial of the C-levels and higher-up managers cannot hide that anymore.
Remote work (Score:5, Informative)
It has worked pretty well for us. There have been some problems - at first we did hire some folks who couldn't really function without being around people. We also had some in-house fraud issues from a couple bad hires; some security assumptions made when we were smaller didn't work anymore. But over time we adapted, and the caliber of the folks we hire improved dramatically once we weren't forced to compete with other Bay Area companies for talent, instead pulling from anywhere.
On the negative side, I think remote-only companies are bad for people starting their first job. There's a shitload of work environment context and interpersonal experience they just aren't getting. I've noticed a couple young people we have who just don't understand open-floor plan office etiquette, for instance, which is trivial by itself, but I wonder what other things more experienced people take for granted aren't transmissible by office-osmosis now. And that's before you get to all the company-specific culture and knowledge that's hard to define but is vitally important. I don't know how you provide that when there's no office.
On a personal level, I've worked from home for five years now, and would find it very difficult to go back. It is a difficult thing to put a price tag on, and I come up with different answers at different times, but I think it would cost something like a 30% premium to get me back to an office full time. For me, it is a really great perk that is worth quite a bit.
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There is certainly an element of not being taught the company lore when first taken on, even for people with experience. You can mostly adapt though, as any contractor will tell you.
Maybe that's one of the big worries they have - people will see that contracting is fine and switch to it, getting paid better and setting their own terms.
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Maybe that's one of the big worries they have - people will see that contracting is fine and switch to it, getting paid better and setting their own terms.
That is certainly a factor. If the serfs find out they are not serfs, that is bad for the serf-holders. And being able to switch jobs much more easily (which is one effect of WFH) makes that worse. Come to think of it, this may be a major reason for the back-to-the-office moves: Show them who is boss. I just think that does not actually work anymore and the assholes doing that are just reducing their access to qualified people.
Re:Remote work (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed a couple young people we have who just don't understand open-floor plan office etiquette
Open floor plan etiquette is as follows:
Pretty simple to understand. The question is, what do employees do once they know whether upper management respects them or not. Some will meekly accept it, others will quit. But then there's a group that will continue to accept the paycheck but return just as little respect as they are given.
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There's a lot of etiquette in online chats too: We're still teaching the concept of nohello to quite a lot of people.
Our company culture got completely obliterated by a merger, so that's out too.
Tech work is a thankless task .. (Score:1)
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I enjoy the work and it pays well. but I'm out when either of those two conditions cease.
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That's quiet firing, isn't it
In other news... (Score:2)
In other news 2 in 5 tech workers replaced by AIs.
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It's amazing how oblivious most people are to the quiet quitting phenomena.
Re:2 out of 5? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is nothing but an infomercial. Randstad is a company that mainly emplys people in assembly lines and cleaning crews, and then mostly for people who are unable to get a job by themselves. No sane IT professional would work through them, knowing Randstad will always work to maximize their own profits and minimize your income, so I'm curious who the respondents are. If an entrepeneur has an interesting project, would they try to find a 10x engineer through Randstad? Randstad should stick with their core predatory business, or even better, die out.
Oh (Score:2)
It's a trade-off. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want flexibility, right to work and being able manage your workload, there's a very simple solution to that. Start your own company as a contractor.
However, you would soon realise that you'd be spending half your time managing clients, looking for work, worrying about cashflow and doing paperwork. All of which will result in you working 12 hours a day; more, not less.
It's a trade-off, and I'm personally thankful for being an employee - having someone manage the boring aspects and provide me with a constant stream of work. Sure, you've got to give up some of your own independence and the people who pay you have the ultimate say, but that's the price of working fixed hours and having a dependable salary.
So stop being an entitled prick and appreciate that it's not all about you and your perks. There are a lot of other people working hard to do the paperwork for you and to enable your skills and it'd be great if you showed some gratitude for it.
Do tech workers retire with enough $$$ ? (Score:2)
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If you keep job hopping, how do you retire ??
It seems to me that the constant job-hoppers are assuming that retirement at one company is for older generations only, so they don't worry about it. They seem to firmly believe that they will land in a job that will pay them enough to retire at 30 with all the stock options they will get. It will eventually bite most of them, but only after it's too late.
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If you keep job hopping, how do you retire ??
It seems to me that the constant job-hoppers are assuming that retirement at one company is for older generations only, so they don't worry about it.
I'm arguably in the "older generation", but I don't see how that matters at all. The fact is that companies no longer provide pensions[*], so there is no retirement advantage to be had by staying in one place. I did have a pension plan for a few years early in my career (at IBM), but that was converted from a defined benefit plan to a cash balance plan in 1999, and then to a 401k in 2004.
They seem to firmly believe that they will land in a job that will pay them enough to retire at 30 with all the stock options they will get. It will eventually bite most of them, but only after it's too late.
That would indeed be foolish. The right strategy is to save for retirement. Save a lot, starting early. 10% of your i
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I've worked for the same company for ages now (and might even stick it out until retirement) but I would imagine as long as a person finds a new job to hop to prior to quitting their current they'll do fine for money. Job hopping doesnt mean there has to be big gaps in employment.
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Lots of places have financial incentives that only mature once you've worked there 2-4 years though.
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Because job hopping is the only way to get a raise. Your 2.5% "merit" increase is never going to get you to retirement. The only way is the 10-20% bump you can get when you quit and go to work somewhere else.
Re:Do tech workers retire with enough $$$ ? (Score:4, Informative)
If you keep job hopping, how do you retire ?? Curious !
How would staying at one company help you retire? Pensions don't exist any more, so we have to save for retirement (ideally, but not solely, in tax-advantaged savings accounts like 401ks). The way to ensure you'll have plenty of money for retirement is to save a lot, and it's a lot easier to save a lot of money if you make a lot of money. To the degree that job hopping increases your income, therefore, it helps you to be able to retire.
Note that job hopping isn't a pure financial benefit, there are some risks. Many employers use stock or option grants that vest after a period of time to incentivize staying around, so you have to factor that in. Of course employers looking to hire understand that and many of them offer signing bonuses to offset the lost retention incentives. There's also the risk that if you change jobs too much, prospective employers may be concerned that you'll leave too quickly for them to recoup their investment in your ramp-up and training time.
But as long as you consider and manage the risks, if job hopping nets you a higher income, that'll just make it easier to save for retirement.
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Companies that offer pensions are few and far between. On top of that there is zero guarantee the pension fund will never be raided by the suits.
I don't buy the "sense of community" claim. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't buy the "sense of community" claim. (Score:4, Interesting)
How elderly are you? At the end of the day I want to be in my home. The last thing I want is sitting at a bar with people I already spent the day with.
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I suspect that what
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But you can still do those things, while remote, if everyone still lives in the same general area. We still do/did happy hours when everyone was mostly remote, so it was taking the only good part about being in the office, the excuse to go get drunk with coworkers and commiserate and bond, while not having to be in the office, and everyone was happy about it. Now that we have to be in the office no one is happy about it and we do even less happy hours so less actual bonding
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What you get remotely is a pale imitation of the bonds built through direct interaction. It's kinda hard to go out for a post-work beer with your colleagues if you're not working together. No office birthday parties, no community-building activities, no chit-chat at the copier... The claim is a load of nonsense, either intentionally or delusionally.
You are correct that it's not...but why is that important? Expect for a handful of extroverts and the type of people who are specifically paid TO build community, it's fake. We do it when we're forced to, and avoid it by any means necessary. I work for a satellite office of my company, and have missed every single corporate-HR "happy hour" that they schedule when they're in town checking on us for 7 years running.
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Still applies (Score:2)
The beatings will continue until the morale improves.
I've walked out on two companies because of toxic work environments. You can't trade your sanity for money.
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Good luck only getting access to 2nd and 3rd rated people or paying a massive premium. Also talk about being stuck deeply in the past.