Nobody is quitting because jobs are more competitive than 5 years ago.
This looks like yet another WSJ hit piece on the lower classes. The company management isn't to blame for people getting fired, it's the workers (who perform) not quitting.
Those pesky workers make it so hard for a company to always look like the good guy. They really are always the good guy, obviously.
I would add that this creates the problem, which I think most tech companies have forgotten about: if you try to attrition out staff and the market is competitive, you'll only attrition out your best employees.
Last place I was at everyone was starting to get really frustrated with the way management was handling projects and all but one person on my team wanted to quit. The problem is that the talent on the team was largely so-so. I was the only one that found work and left, but that only served to further decrease the morale of the remaining members who felt both more trapped and now without coworkers they liked. Across the org I noticed pretty much every other team started to experience similar issues.
attritioning out staff is one of the dumbest strategies imaginable- it's not a good job when the market isn't competitive either because your highest performers are STILL going to be the first go and you can't even replace them.
It never works but companies always try it and then HAVE to do a shady layoff just to rebalance their teams.
WSJ can’t help but write hit pieces, I think they are paid for.
Firstly workers should be grateful to waste hours of time commuting to office jobs and shouldn’t be allowed remote jobs, then the next meme is “silent quitting”, the current meme is “workers aren’t quitting enough (sub text: bosses are running out of ways to instil misery and stress)”
The WSJ writes hit pieces because they know exactly who their audience is (the business wing of the Republican party and the Republican wing of the business community) and if they didn't write hit pieces, said audience would lose interest.
>also includes the crypto-Republican wing of the Democratic party.
Yeah, or, as it's better known, the Democratic Party leadership.
It's just neoliberal capitalism with token social concerns as trinkets (Dems), or neoliberal capitalism with token convervative concerns as trinkets (Reps).
Guess these companies better stop spending so much on avocado toast and fancy coffees. It's hard times for everyone but I'm sure they'll manage somehow.
As an assclown that recently quit without something lined up because “don’t worry honey, I’m a rock star” I’m definitely finding it harder to find a position >= last salary, similar roles this time strong. In fact salaries overall seem like of down lately (for like staff/architect/senior roles).
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By increased work quotas.
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
"Please come back to office to have all those water cooler conversations that bring unbelievable creativity... Oh you cannot? Such a shame... Please feel free to leave."
One life lesson I learned the hard way is that even if you're stuck in the most toxic workplace imaginable, never quit your job (unless you have an offer elsewhere).
Fight back. Make them fire you. Don't start smearing shit on the walls or watching porn during meetings, just do the job so poorly that keeping you there is an expensive headache.
I once worked for two scammers and generally try to be a good employee. Yet the workplace abuse became intolerable (wage skimming) and eventually I'd had enough, so I left without having anything else lined up.
Big mistake. The recession hit, it took me a year to find another position, and the entire time I was ineligible for unemployment because I voluntarily left. If I had just said fuck you, put my feet on my desk and printed copies of random documents found on network shares all day, I could have been freed up to find a better position on their dime.
Layoffs invite unemployment claims, which increases their insurance premiums. "Waaah, people aren't quitting" is a bunch of whining execs wanting to reduce headcount without the PR or financial consequence of continued layoffs.
Lest we continue to wonder what the real reason behind the mandatory RTO and other recent policies designed to make working intolerable or unfeasible.
Next up will be pointless bureaucracy, time-tracking, bean-counting and other inane traditionally-punitive measures employees will struggle to keep up with...the insanity of which makes people jump ship like rats fleeing the Titanic.
> Make them fire you. Don't start smearing shit on the walls or watching porn during meetings, just do the job so poorly that keeping you there is an expensive headache.
what is the point exactly in doing job poorly and make them fire you>,,
To be able to file for unemployment, and best case they give you a severance, or at minimum pay you for your vacation days. It will depend on your circumstance, but there are certainly benefits.
Question: Why would "not quitting" be a headache for employers? I thought in the US you can just fire people you don't want anymore, instead of waiting for them to quit. Makes no sense to me.
First, and probably the largest motivator, is that if you fire someone without cause they will typically be able to collect on unemployment insurance which would increase the employers premiums each month.
Second, nobody likes to fire people especially if they haven't done anything wrong. Also, layoffs like this hurt the moralle of the remaining workers which could turn into too much turnover.
Having someone quit is usually preferable to increasing costs and hurting moralle, but that will not stop businesses from doing what they feel the need to do.
You forget the legal ramifications of firing someone. If they are a protected class - POC, women, disabled, etc. - it can mean a large headache in the form of a lawsuit, or a complaint to a labor board. Many companies have run into this when attempting to separate someone who advocated for unionization.
> Many companies have run into this when attempting to separate someone who advocated for unionization.
Just to quickly clarify on this, firing someone for advocating for a union is illegal regardless of their protected status, employee organization is itself a protected activity.
If a business ever does get into hot water over something this, I would very much advise against saying to a judge, "no, our decision to fire had nothing to do with discrimination, we were merely retaliating against an employee for organizing."
Only in "at will" states, and usually then, only when your company is small enough (like <50 employees). And even then, you still have to be careful to not give a reason. If you give any hint of a reason, the employee can sue for it.
Only Montana is not at will, and their population is negligible.
And the reason can be as simple as “no business need to continue employment”. And you can sue for anyone for anything at anytime, but it does not mean you will get anywhere, except losing money on court fees or lawyers.
The only direct monetary cost to employers is increased unemployment benefit insurance premiums due to having more previous employees collecting unemployment benefits.
Bosses who want to cut headcount without layoffs can do so by just not replacing people who quit - if nobody's quitting, that's not possible.
Things like training schemes might have been sized on the assumption you'll have >100 open positions in a year's time, when these 100 trainees finish the scheme. Firing them instead is not good for anyone involved.
Bored star employees can't move teams if other teams don't have open spaces.
And some people think constant employee movement stops teams becoming 'stagnant' as job hoppers sometimes bring in experience, ideas and methods from outside.
It's a headache at a population level. Given a 10,000+ company, they will have plans for X% retiring, Y% leaving, Z% college hires to replace them. Most HR departments I have worked with track "regrettable turnover" - how many high performers are we losing.
Answer is media companies need clicks to earn money, so they pump out garbage articles proposing nonsense premises to increase likelihood of people clicking on it.
Last year, there were a number of high-profile lay-offs in the tech industry. Companies used those not only to get to "lean" staffing levels but also to get rid of underperformers en masse.
If you happen to have survived those, but aspire to just coast for a while, this is a great time for you.
Budgets remain fairly constrained, which means that if a manager needs to let someone go because of lackluster performance, they're probably not guaranteed a back-fill. Thus, unless the employee's performance is so poor that it would be better to fire them and let their seat go unfilled, coasters are in a pretty safe position ... at least until the next round of layoffs.
Bingo! You will not get fired unless you literally are adding negative value. If you're doing work that adds value you'll be around until the next rif at least
Pet theory: real wages in tech have dropped since pandemic levels, so for the first time in years staying in your job (provided you got it a few years ago) is better financially than switching. The sector was pretty accustomed to constant churn, so this sticking with it is pretty unusual.
I'm seeing old co-workers on linkedin that got caught up in this, they switched during the pandemic, some to positions and salaries I assume were inflated from knowing them previously. Once the layoffs hit they started looking for jobs with the same title/salary and there's was nothing.
I'm one of those who didn't switch, I thought I was making a mistake, now? New hires are coming in and being offered a little more than pre-pandemic pay. Below what I'm making now for the same position.
The great resignation was actually the great reshuffling where people just exploited the heck out of the market to get better paid jobs. Now they are surprised that people don't want to give up those higher paid jobs and return to shit pay?
I want to see a reality TV show (not really, I don’t watch TV) following those US bosses WSJ talks about trying to survive in Europe. They seem to have headaches when people leave, headaches when people stay, headaches when people mention unionizing, headaches when people use their sick leaves. In an environment where at-will employment gives them the upper hand.
Maybe they aren’t too fit for being bosses after all.
The number of articles reaching absurdity. Has it always been this way and I am just more aware?
1. People are paid too much
2. No one wants to work
3. They are quiet quitting/lazy girl jobs
4. We have lower unemployment than ever
5. Everyone's getting laid off
6. No one is quitting
My theory is that this type of propaganda has always been around. What happened was that before the pandemic people were conditioned to keep their heads down and pretend everything is great. Dissent was a pipe dream. With the shock of the pandemic now the "drones" are no longer playing nice which leads to the overlords turning the propaganda machine to 11 and the absurdity of shit pieces like this from wsj or hbr
To be fair, it does feel like a lot of the quotes in the article are also kind of looking at this through a joking "first-world problems" angle. But that doesn't mean it's any less comical to read an article where bosses now complain that their employees are too loyal.
Even written in a joking manner, it's kind of galling after being told for years that the problem with young workers is that they job hopped and nobody liked that to now see the WSJ ask, "why aren't you hopping jobs more?" It's just so transparent that no matter what the workers do, it's going to be treated as wrong. The WSJ doesn't actually want any specific behavior from workers, it wants something to complain about.
> At Pitney Bowes, where the attrition rate is also down year to date, the shipping and mailing services company has had a few instances in which it hired an intern, expecting a vacancy to open in the company, only for the existing employee to remain in the position.
Did anyone even look at the graph at the beginning of the article? Quits today are at the same level as just before covid and higher than at any point between 2001 and 2018? WTF are they even talking about?
OT: this thread is nowhere on the first 15 pages, I had to user the search to find it (I saw the title on the frontpage just before refreshing but after that it was gone). What's the logic ? Is it ghost flagged or something ?
48 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadThis looks like yet another WSJ hit piece on the lower classes. The company management isn't to blame for people getting fired, it's the workers (who perform) not quitting.
Those pesky workers make it so hard for a company to always look like the good guy. They really are always the good guy, obviously.
Last place I was at everyone was starting to get really frustrated with the way management was handling projects and all but one person on my team wanted to quit. The problem is that the talent on the team was largely so-so. I was the only one that found work and left, but that only served to further decrease the morale of the remaining members who felt both more trapped and now without coworkers they liked. Across the org I noticed pretty much every other team started to experience similar issues.
It never works but companies always try it and then HAVE to do a shady layoff just to rebalance their teams.
Firstly workers should be grateful to waste hours of time commuting to office jobs and shouldn’t be allowed remote jobs, then the next meme is “silent quitting”, the current meme is “workers aren’t quitting enough (sub text: bosses are running out of ways to instil misery and stress)”
Yeah, or, as it's better known, the Democratic Party leadership.
It's just neoliberal capitalism with token social concerns as trinkets (Dems), or neoliberal capitalism with token convervative concerns as trinkets (Reps).
Yeah it’s this.
As an assclown that recently quit without something lined up because “don’t worry honey, I’m a rock star” I’m definitely finding it harder to find a position >= last salary, similar roles this time strong. In fact salaries overall seem like of down lately (for like staff/architect/senior roles).
Fight back. Make them fire you. Don't start smearing shit on the walls or watching porn during meetings, just do the job so poorly that keeping you there is an expensive headache.
I once worked for two scammers and generally try to be a good employee. Yet the workplace abuse became intolerable (wage skimming) and eventually I'd had enough, so I left without having anything else lined up.
Big mistake. The recession hit, it took me a year to find another position, and the entire time I was ineligible for unemployment because I voluntarily left. If I had just said fuck you, put my feet on my desk and printed copies of random documents found on network shares all day, I could have been freed up to find a better position on their dime.
Layoffs invite unemployment claims, which increases their insurance premiums. "Waaah, people aren't quitting" is a bunch of whining execs wanting to reduce headcount without the PR or financial consequence of continued layoffs.
Lest we continue to wonder what the real reason behind the mandatory RTO and other recent policies designed to make working intolerable or unfeasible.
Next up will be pointless bureaucracy, time-tracking, bean-counting and other inane traditionally-punitive measures employees will struggle to keep up with...the insanity of which makes people jump ship like rats fleeing the Titanic.
what is the point exactly in doing job poorly and make them fire you>,,
First, and probably the largest motivator, is that if you fire someone without cause they will typically be able to collect on unemployment insurance which would increase the employers premiums each month.
Second, nobody likes to fire people especially if they haven't done anything wrong. Also, layoffs like this hurt the moralle of the remaining workers which could turn into too much turnover.
Having someone quit is usually preferable to increasing costs and hurting moralle, but that will not stop businesses from doing what they feel the need to do.
Just to quickly clarify on this, firing someone for advocating for a union is illegal regardless of their protected status, employee organization is itself a protected activity.
If a business ever does get into hot water over something this, I would very much advise against saying to a judge, "no, our decision to fire had nothing to do with discrimination, we were merely retaliating against an employee for organizing."
And the reason can be as simple as “no business need to continue employment”. And you can sue for anyone for anything at anytime, but it does not mean you will get anywhere, except losing money on court fees or lawyers.
The only direct monetary cost to employers is increased unemployment benefit insurance premiums due to having more previous employees collecting unemployment benefits.
Bosses who want to cut headcount without layoffs can do so by just not replacing people who quit - if nobody's quitting, that's not possible.
Things like training schemes might have been sized on the assumption you'll have >100 open positions in a year's time, when these 100 trainees finish the scheme. Firing them instead is not good for anyone involved.
Bored star employees can't move teams if other teams don't have open spaces.
And some people think constant employee movement stops teams becoming 'stagnant' as job hoppers sometimes bring in experience, ideas and methods from outside.
If you happen to have survived those, but aspire to just coast for a while, this is a great time for you.
Budgets remain fairly constrained, which means that if a manager needs to let someone go because of lackluster performance, they're probably not guaranteed a back-fill. Thus, unless the employee's performance is so poor that it would be better to fire them and let their seat go unfilled, coasters are in a pretty safe position ... at least until the next round of layoffs.
I'm one of those who didn't switch, I thought I was making a mistake, now? New hires are coming in and being offered a little more than pre-pandemic pay. Below what I'm making now for the same position.
It's shocking! Shocking I tell you!
Maybe they aren’t too fit for being bosses after all.
Even written in a joking manner, it's kind of galling after being told for years that the problem with young workers is that they job hopped and nobody liked that to now see the WSJ ask, "why aren't you hopping jobs more?" It's just so transparent that no matter what the workers do, it's going to be treated as wrong. The WSJ doesn't actually want any specific behavior from workers, it wants something to complain about.
That's a curious usage of the word "intern".