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Ask HN: Are you part of the Great Resignation, if so what's your story?

24 points by ak_111 ↗ HN
Did the pandemic influence you to be part of the "great resignation", i.e did it motivate you to take an early retirement, work less (go part-time) or even have a major career change (become a farmer, go to med school...).

This phenomena remains the most puzzling macro trend and doesn't seem to be a US-specific one (it is also very visible in UK and European data[1]) nor does it seem transitory so far, so it would be interesting to get a tech sector snapshot of what is driving it.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/30/economy/great-resignation-uk-australia-europe/index.html

55 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] thread
badpun
It did. But recently, with Russian aggression, inflation and looming crisis, I've become the part of The Great Coming Back.
ak_111
It is indeed expected that if asset prices collapse, the Great Unresignation might become a thing and in a very ugly way.

An alternative more rosy scenario is that the Great Resignation becomes even more entrenched leading to a radical change in society such as 4-days week becoming normalised or mass support for UBI.

giantg2
Why would 4 day weeks become a thing? Why would UBI? I see the trend snapping in the "unresignation" direction before employers or society start the UBI or 4-day path.
WWLink
Yea some employers are already getting uppity like they expect the unresignation to happen lol.
ak_111
4-day week would be a thing for example when employers out of desperation for not being able to find workers start enticing borderline great resigners by 4-day week (so you get all the benefits of full time employment: health insurance, pensions,...). But this is assuming workers continue to have the upper hand.
giantg2
Maybe, but it seems most industries couldn't do it without a massive increase in workforce, but worker shortage is what they're trying to fight. Unless the entire industry switched to a 4 day week, I don't see it working out for most. I'm mostly thinking about places ties to central things like the stock exchange for banks, or that need 24/7 support like police and nursing, or where manufacturing wants the machines to run close to 24/7 to be economical efficient (since we struggle to compete already with LCOL abroad).
ak_111
Even if all your employees worked 4-days week doesn't mean your business opens only 4-days week. You simply ensure the amount of workers who are off on Monday is the same as the number of workers that are off on Friday. You only need to increase headcount by 20% if you make all your employees 4-days week. Which is a lot but not a "massive increase", especially you will be paying them 20% less each.
frankbreetz
maybe the four day work week as a way to entice people back into the workforce, but there is no way UBI is going to be helped by the great resignation.

You know all those people who just quit with no plan, they need money now, let's do UBI. Seems like a hard sell

ak_111
Why did you quit in the first place?
badpun
I dislike software jobs and am biding my time in the industry. I though I have enough money to retire early, but now, in the new reality, came back to save a bit more before I leave for good.
mxuribe
I'm always curious to hear what industry/focus area you are/were considering to go to? I often half-joke with my partner, that maybe i will stop working as a technologist and become a motorcycle mechanic. So, what direction are/were you thinking of going to?

EDIT: I should clarify that a job like motorcycle mechanic shoud not be perceived as a demaning job as compared to a technologist role...Rather, this is one job that i legitimately have an interest in...and one reason is becauase i feel that i can leverage my problem-solving skills but also the part of my brain that involves using my hands in a different way than typing and/or pulling network wires, etc. Side note: I owned a home for 22 years and learned along the way that i like "working with my hands". :-)

badpun
I didn’t have a clear direction. That was partially the reason I came back - it’s easy to listen to siren call of money when there’s little else pulling in the opposite direction. I currently have enough money to do nothing till I die (assuming I die before 90), but that doesn’t sound very satisfying either.
mxuribe
> ...I didn’t have a clear direction...

Yeah, that's one issue that i have as well. While, yes, i mentioned motorcycle mechanic as one option for me, i have other directions which i can take...and just can't decide. Sadly, i lack the cushion that you made for yourself, so i feel like whatever directions i decide, i'll have to be careful, lest i get to my latter years a tad too poor to stop working full-time, etc. ;-)

jollyllama
I hear all these stories about people quitting like that, but how are they paying/how did they think they would pay the bills? I'm very curious.
iExploder
A few people I know inherited couple of apartments, its not so hard to live off rent from couple of properties here in Europe, you can get a part time job if u really need to supplement your lifestyle.
ak_111
This is the mystery, precisely why I wanted to ask the question. Some of it is due to asset prices going through the roof (real estate in some western countries have doubled over the last 3 years).

But this can't be the sole reason. For one thing it is hard to monetise asset prices to get cashflow. But the truth is it is one gigantic puzzle in the macro economics world and you just have to read some central banker transcripts to see how perplexed they are by the entire thing.

ChicagoBoy11
Usually the whole science of econ is predicated on trying to keep preferences fixed and then seeing how all sorts of shocks impact behavior. But, perhaps, COULD IT just be that this one time, with this once-in-many generational event, that people's outlook and perspective on their lives truly did change and preferences, all else equal, did in fact shift massively so people have been quitting/making less money/changing jobs?
robertlagrant
It could be, assuming the country is so wealthy that it can feed and house lots of people working less. But we are yet to pay back all the money spent on Covid, so it would be very surprising if this state of affairs remains.
ak_111
It could be, but this would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. A huge chunk of society suddenly changing their outlook on wealth and work-life balance and then committing to a radical new lifestyle as a result would be a major deal, like a country embracing a new religion.
giantg2
At least from what I'm seeing, most people are not quitting and doing nothing. The ones I've seen are taking other jobs. I had two coworkers quit my pervious team and took jobs that have remote options and higher pay (2x in one case).

I think we're seeing people take early retirement (and some increase in mortality/disability) and the higher than usual vacancies they're leaving create an effect where people get hired or promoted into those spaces. The ones who get promoted then leave a vacancy at the lower levels for other to jump into. The increase in wages over the past couple years is enticing people jump around, which I believe is creating a lot of inefficiency (along with potential burnout), which is leading to companies increasing headcount to try to make up for it, while exacerbating the labor supply issues.

But who knows...

Mezzie
I quit my salaried job and now I work at a lingerie store.

The staffing issues at the lower level of society mean that the wages are actually going up - I make 15/hr and could ask for more. (I don't plan on staying long term so I probably WON'T, but I'd get it). Which is around 31k/yr compared to the 50k I was making (unlike most people here, I don't work in tech - I might change that, I don't know). It's doable short-term with some savings as a cushion while I mentally recuperate and lets me be picky about what I jump into next.

The types of jobs that are hemorrhaging people are office jobs paying in the mid 5 figures in my experience, and one component is that now those people can walk and pick up a job in the service industry and not completely lose everything. A 20% paycut is easier to swallow than a 60-70% one.

We've also gotten good at reducing our expenses.

jollyllama
Cool. Less stress, less hours?
Mezzie
Way less stress. I'm working part time for the moment and it looks like I'll have to get something else full time, bc my original plan for making it work fell through. But if I ran out of money in the meantime, I could easily get full time hours at my current job.

And it's a job I can leave at work, where I very immediately have an impact on people, and don't hate people after every shift. Before, I was working in political/civics communications.

Which is why I'm taking my time figuring out what to do next. I don't want to jump into another pressure cooker.

coutego
I don't know whether this is typical, but in my case I had 3+ years of living expenses in savings and no mortage anymore (*), so I decided to stop working for 1-2 years and just enjoy life.

In 2020 I was thinking in buying a bigger house at some point, but COVID made me realize that I can be very happy with a more modest lifestyle and that it's just not worth sacrifising my health and joy to have more money in the bank and/or a fancier house when I die. It seems obvious, I know, but it took a global pandemic for me to realise it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(*) I decided years ago to live well below my means and only buy a property if I could pay off in less than 8 years, rather than a fancy house that would require me to take a 20-30 years morgage. Best decision of my life.

baremetal
i changed careers and leveraged it into a business.
ak_111
Changing career from desk job to desk job and working full-time is strictly speaking not part of the GR, your macro impact isn't the same.
ulrashida
How do you mean? The opening of the referenced article is literally: "The GR is people saying, 'Whatever the situation is, I want better'".

How would quitting/resigning a job and moving to a new one that offers better aspects not qualify?

baremetal
you presume that i changed to a desk job.
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brailsafe
Close, but I decided I'd stick it out and try to keep the job. It took me __so__fucking__ long to replace the one I lost at the start of the pandemic, that I just can't risk or want to go through that again yet. Otherwise, I absolutely value free time over marginal gains, if I was rebuilding from zero.
jabroni_salad
I only know 2 people that have actually opted out of working and for both of them, they are married and made that change for childcare. Personally I took an opportunity to upgrade my title & pay and so have a lot of people in my LinkedIn.

The rhetoric in tech has been that you need to change jobs every few years to keep a competitive pay because companies will reward your complacency with uncompetitive raises. To me it just seems like a lot more people are buying into that now than previously.

ak_111
I think all the behaviour you mentioned is not part of the GR. Changing desk jobs or getting new title/promotion doesn't have the macro impact I am talking about. It is more about people quitting desk jobs for entirely different sector (farming, nursing, RE development, day trading,....) or just radically cutting out time they work.
clpm4j
I've had a few close friends quit and essentially retire at the age of 30, and it's only possible because they have wealthy families who gave them early inheritances - it's really quite amazing how rich some people are.
randomopining
How much money do they have? Yeah it's crazy. But tbh are they even enjoying life without anything hard to occupy their time?
clpm4j
No clue in terms of dollar amount, but enough to buy nice houses in San Francisco, drive nice cars, and no worries about eventually having kids and sending them to private schools. They seem pretty satisfied but who knows behind closed doors.
ulrashida
Absolutely. I worked more or less happily at a company for nearly 15 years and had hit a comfortable spot where pay was good enough, responsibility was okay, but there was a soft ceiling above me in terms of progression. I had come to terms with it and thought "meh, this is fine, I'll semi-coast 10 years to retirement".

The pandemic opened up the possibility of remote work for a company overseas in a completely different field. I chewed on it for nearly six months but ended up taking the jump. My previous employer was totally shocked, even going so far as to offer an on the spot promotion (during my resignation phone call) they had been dangling for about a year. Now I'm earning more and stretching myself again -- it was 100% the right call, although a bit less stable.

This would have never happened without the pandemic both creating the possibility of change (remote work) and the flash point of stress over a year or two that made me wonder about something different.

x86x87
It's mostly the Great Reshuffling.

People figure out that they don't have to accept crappy working conditions and the COLA raises they got are not covering the inflation. Some quit figuring that they'll take a break.

Employers had to offer better pay/work conditions to attract new people. People that left told everyone. People that stayed figured out they were paid peanuts compared to the newbs. Welcome positive feedback loop.

leifross
My partner and I are both sick and tired of feeling like our purpose in life is to make rich people richer, and we reached the age where we realized there is no glory in corporate life, only a endless hamster wheel.

So we quit our jobs, sold our house, and bought a sailboat that we are working on making fully independent with solar and a watermaker. We still need money though. In the short term we have a cash buffer, in the long term we are hoping to do two things, optimize our cost of living and increase the revenue of the side business. If we are unable to balance the needle within three years, we will start taking on freelance assignments.

ak_111
^ This is textbook Great Resignation. Wild to imagine the consequences to society if 20-30% embrace this for a prolonged period. Curious what is it about the pandemic that triggered this?
Mezzie
My hypothesis is that a lot of people were willing to work for the system when they believed the system could protect them from bad things. Covid upended this sense of security, since the system was not capable of handling it and/or guaranteeing protection, so people re-evaluated the social contract and whether promises to them were being met.

I also think that it kicked people in the pants and made them realize they had no idea how much time they had left. Confronting their own mortality made them realize what they actually wanted out of life.

It was weird for me to watch, because I was diagnosed with MS in 2016 and went through a personal version of that, just to come out the other side and watch everybody else have the same crisis.

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nonameiguess
I'm not sure there's much of a phenomenon begging for explanation. As the article itself says, this is a more of a great reshuffling than people just deciding not to work any more and mysteriously managing to not go broke. US labor force participation was 63.4% immediately before the pandemic shut down and it's 62.1% right now. That isn't a drastic difference and roughly in line with long-term downward trends. Whatever excess drop that truly represents is likely explained by some combination of excess deaths, early retirements, and second income-earners that didn't really "need" to work but either did so anyway because it was sufficiently worth it or they had nothing else worth doing, and they changed their minds.

You're not going to find out the exact breakdown with a self-selected sample of a few hundred Hacker News readers.

As for an explanation of why churn rates went up so much (that is, people are quitting jobs at a much higher rate even if they largely are not completely leaving the workforce), that seems pretty easily explained by the move to remote work. I'm not meeting your criteria here because I didn't change industries, but as soon as it became possible to work for a Silicon Valley software company paying much higher rates than any local company without being required to relocate, I absolutely did that. Labor has far more options now that they aren't limited to only working for companies with an office within commuting distance.

bluedino
> labor force participation was 63.4% immediately before the pandemic shut down and it's 62.1% right now.

How is that possible when it seems like every place is hiring? It's obvious that retail/restaurants are short-handed, but every manufacturing company in town is hiring. Every week there are articles in the news talking with business owners about how hard it is to find people, people accept the job and don't start, they quit after two days...

clusterhacks
In my area of the US, I have a suspicion that undocumented workers left the area during the pandemic. But it is just anecdotal observation - I don't have an special source of data to support that. Lots of "heard a story from a friend" and just noticing how easy it is for high school students to get jobs almost immediately versus 2018-2019. Around here, 16-year olds are walking into food service/retail and working the next day . . .

A few years prior to the pandemic, my brother shared a story from the medium-sized manufacturing company he worked at. A rumor started that an "ICE raid" was going to occur sometime during the week. Something like 1/2 to 2/3 of the factory workers didn't show for work over the next couple of days. Even assuming it was less impact than that, it seems to say that a significant number of factory floor workers were in some kind of position that caused them to fear ICE.

I am . . . bearish . . . on trusting news articles about this topic. There are just so many incentives to shape articles to get clicks . . .

kamranjon
Pandemic hit, I had been working at an online education company as a senior engineer. New CEO begins to implement dark patterns- launches “free” degree programs to “help those impacted by the pandemic” that starts charging you after first free month, but at same time makes it impossible to cancel your subscription through website, even sets up a whole call center system to shuttle people into. Become incredibly demotivated by how our company misled struggling young people into a difficult situation. Do my best to pitch new ideas and sort of remedy the situation but am left with a terrible taste in my mouth.

Get shingles from stress, working insane hours as I am now working from home, no work/life separation. Company had absolute insane micro service architecture, to the point of being a parody. Fires every other week, people jumping on at all hours to dive into why service X caused service Y and Z to fail. Hundreds of services owned by just handful of teams means your days are filled with meetings discussing impact of plans on other services, just so far from being agile, juniors all the way up to your best engineers are caught up in bureaucracy.

Then my mother gets highly aggressive brain cancer, I’m going to her doctor appointments with her, trying to help figure out her options. Work no longer matters, I can’t even pretend to care. We discover she will die within months, ask company for family medical leave, they give me three months, but she is still alive after this time so I quit. We go on a road trip together, it is nice but also she is seeing her limitations, lack of balance, failing eye sight, it’s sort of dawning on her that the end is near. She got medication to end her life and dies in her living room with her three children and her brother and her husband there.

I break my arm badly, need surgery, no longer have medical coverage, over 10k dollars spent on cobra + deductibles. Would have been in worse place if cobra wasn’t still available. After watching my mother concerned about thousand dollar brain scans with insurance and my own issues now have small glimpse into insane inequity in medical system within the states.

My partner quits her job and we travel across the United States for 3 months for relief and in search of cheaper land to maybe build a farm. The US is beautiful but nowhere is really that special compared to where we are from (our biggest take away is more how similar everywhere is). We travel to Europe for 3 months, visit her family and come back. Travel back across the states to the west coast with goals of starting a company and getting a house.

Want to work part time but cannot get a loan without salaried position. Starting back where I left off again, entertaining offer for much smaller startup hoping to start with better work-life separation and exercising every day, staying active and taking regular breaks. Life is overwhelming but exciting and we look forward to having a stable home and income again.

mxuribe
My condolensces for your Mom. Plus, sorry about those other pretty difficult situations. My partner and i often wish to quit the "Rat race", but have a teen kid...so want to wait until they head to college. Of course, although we have a loose plan, i am fearful that we head off to some sort of cheaper living state in the U.S., work less...and then end up through some set of whacky circumstyances back to needing to find work that pays more...and by then we'd have aged a little more. Clearly, i'm just a nervous nellie...but its so tough and expensive in the U.S....at this point, i would settle for a cheap, modest home...where my partner can manage the smallest of gardens, where i don't have tio kill myself at a job to pay a mortgage, and a place that isn't too extreme in any way (don't want politically extreme people, don't want racists, don't want too many rich folks, no/low crime, etc.). When i talk to friends, i sometimes hear the suggestion of my partner and i heading off to live on our own farm in the middle of nowhere...but honestly, wqhile my partner loves gardening, we both also love pavement...Yes, having a walkable town is so important and so very fulfilling! Plus, we actually like to interact with other humans to a degree...so i think we may not be able to tolerate too much isolation, at least for too long.

Sorry, i didn't mean to make this somr sort of streaming conciousness message...Just watned to say sorry about your Mom, and kudos to you trying something different! And, of coiurse, i hope things work out for you, and wishing you the best of luck and opportunity!!

ivraatiems
I definitely reshuffled rather than resigned, but once I realized remote work was going to be my future, I quit my job for one with substantially better pay and benefits. I almost doubled my salary in the space of about a year (between new position + promotion after six months).

I was probably going to leave my previous employer eventually, but it would have taken longer and been contingent on many other things.

soared
I was on a (unofficial but agreed upon w leadership) sabbatical at the end of 2019/start of 2020 and was no longer there for me when I returned. I took a new role with a 40k pay cut so I could pay the bills. I resigned near the end-ish of Covid when I was able to find employment back on a more accurate career path (50k raise).
mxuribe
Yeah, i was hit by lay off near end of 2019, and then i floated unemployed for a couple months...taking my time to find my next job, thinking that i should be more careful, and not just rush to the next job. Not knowing what i wanted to do next. So, i reflected on things a bit, decided that i hated corporate life, so took a job - still in digital/tech - but with a non-profit...thinking, yeah, i can still "do tech" but now i'll help the world! I took a 25% hit to my salary with worse healthcare coverage (the non-profit was significantly smaller size of an org. so healthcare costs were much more expensive). Well, that experience sucked greatly! While i did feel good for a few projects, gained a few good friends, and honestly there are some great people out in non-profits who are both smart and well-intentioned...i did not have a good overall experience. Honestly, non-profits sometimes are just like the corporate world in many ways, but with much less pay. Clearly, not all non-profits are like that...but my experienced soured things for me...at least for now. Maybe as i grow older and/or find a better organized non-profit, maybe i will go back...but for now, no non-profit jobs for me thanks!

Fast-foreward 2 years later, and i'm now back in the corporate world (ugh!), but at least making about 15% more than when i was hit by lay off at end of 2019. So, nice increase in pay, healthcare is not as great as back in 2019, but not as bad as the non-profit...but of course not happy. I don't know where I will end up next, but for sure the corporate world and most non-profits are not for me.

tymerry
Yes, the pandemic motivated me to take an earlier retirement that switched into part time work, and perhaps a career change.

Wife and I had worked toward FIRE for a while. In 2021 it became financial viable. We have been transient in North America and Europe since October 2021. Our plan was to never work again, but some friends convinced me to take a contract job that is ~25 hours a week.

My motivations for leaving: New manager due to re-org, company's goals changed, non-necessity of work for survival, identity issues around career, pressure from family because I wasn't happy. All those motivations lead to suicidal thoughts. I have always done ux, design, and front end development. I think I am going to start a more traditional computer science education path because I find it enjoyable and could be fun for a second career.

scarface74
Not really a career change. But I got a job that allowed me to permanently work remotely. My increase in pay allowed me to “retire my wife” so she could pursue her passions and we decided to rent out our house, sell our cars, and be “digital nomads” staying in hotels across the US and flying everywhere while I work.
mikewarot
I'm likely counted as one of them, though it wasn't by choice, it was Long Covid.

At this point I can do about 4 stints of 15 minutes of physical labor per day, if I'm careful about it. I'm 1/12 as useful as I used to be, which is barely enough to avoid ending up in a nursing home bed.

gus-em
Retired at 61 after 30+ years.

Got pension, had "enough" pension, had "enough" of working and decide it was the time.

Feel quite sorry for my younger colleagues going to agile stand-up meetings that add to workplace strictures more than they create "fun energy".