I have been intrigued by various articles that talk about The Great Resignation. Not quite as in the news as Critical Race Theory, but then I don’t see the right-wing talking much about this. Possibly because they hate the idea that workers have options?
If you’re ready to quit your job, here’s how to do it https://t.co/oT1vtRhV8f
— Businessweek (@BW) May 10, 2021
*The Bloomberg/ Business Week article is paywalled, but you do get a few free articles every month.
The article that first caught my attention last week:
‘Great Resignation’ gains steam as return-to-work plans take effect
Key Points: (CNBC)
° Instead of heading back to the office in the wake of the Covid pandemic, employees may quit instead.
° 95% of workers are considering changing jobs, according to a report by Monster.com.
° 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com.
Some excerpts: (CNBC)
After spending more than a year at home, some don’t want to go back to commuting, preferring the flexibility of remote work at least a few days a week.
Others are simply burned out from logging long hours while also balancing child care and remote school, sometimes all at once.
And nearly all employees are ready to see what else is out there.
“Either they’re unfulfilled from their jobs or their priorities have changed,” said Maria Reitan, founder and head coach at Jump Team, based in Minneapolis.
…
In what’s been dubbed the “Great Resignation,” a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs, and 92% are even willing to switch industries to find the right position, according to a recent report by jobs site Monster.com.Most say burnout and lack of growth opportunities are what is driving the shift, Monster found.
“When we were in the throes of the pandemic, so many people buckled down, now what we’re seeing is a sign of confidence,” said Scott Blumsack, senior vice president of research and insights at Monster.
Already, a record 4 million people quit their jobs in April alone, according to the Labor Department.
Axios also has an article on the same subject, but the numbers in the article are different.
“The great resignation”: Upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs https://t.co/josb2HmqCg
— Axios (@axios) June 14, 2021
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WaterGirl
We just put up an *Artists in Our Midst post featuring Steve from Mendocino, so here’s an open thread / politics post so there’s a place for conversation at the same time.
*We’ll be featuring one Artist in Our Midst in a post at some point every weekend, and we will make sure that’s paired with another thread for more general conversation.
Ruckus
I quit my job a month ago…….
Does that count?
debbie
NPR was just talking about people insisting on flexible hours post-pandemic, to the point where it’s expected that rush hour will be from 10am to noon. If I end up having to return to work, I will happily enjoy the 8am empty roads.
Walker
95% is not a realistic number. It must be limiting what it considers a worker. I would believe 40%
Mike in NC
Have not yet seen any articles on the Great Resignation yet. It’s hard to stay current with the indignation coming from wingnut media. It looks like the menace of Transgender Athletes has gone away already, but Replacement Theory sounds like it has some staying power (as in white people will be replaced in this country by non-white people, in a variation on the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). Tucker Carlson is laughing all the way to the bank.
MattF
An additional thought about those supposed ‘minutes’ from a Russian leadership meeting… I’ve been puzzled– if it’s disinformation, there has to be a motive, but revealing the minutes of a meeting that everyone more or less already knew about seemed motiveless.
However, now I think that the framing is significant– Putin is here seen as the master manipulator, the hidden force behind all the bad stuff that has happened in the US. This framing is clearly favorable to the Russians and seems to me to easily explain why the information, true or not, was released. There’s also unreleased information in an ‘appendix’, which is a pretty obvious manipulation.
So, now I’m convinced it’s a ploy.
raven
“a whopping 95% of workers are now considering changing jobs”
Sorry, I think this is silly. Anyone with a pulse and a job would always “consider” changing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Walker: yeah, that’s nuts
I think “considering” and “willing’ are doing some dang heavy lifting there. Unless it’s percentage of people who have accounts on Monster, which would make sense
trollhattan
Having had numerous layoffs and resignations, I recommend the second over the first.
This is my Bloomberg-worthy advice.
Spanky
@Ruckus:
No, that’s not the Great Resignation. That’s the Fabulous Retirement.
Welcome to my world!
MattF
@Mike in NC: The thing about ‘replacement theory’ is that it’s a pretty standard White Supremacist trope that appears to be moving into the mainstream, via Fox.
SFAW
Workers, wimmins, POC, furriners, lie-berals, wimmins, and so on.
Baud
@MattF:
It’s moving into the mainstream because too many white people are acting shitty and making the theory attractive to decent people.
Suzanne
I already changed jobs in May. I want to continue working remotely for a bit longer. I kind of love it. Piece and quiet. Getting more sleep. Healthier lunches. Working out instead of commuting. Less mandatory fun with colleagues, less sexual harassment, less bullshit.
JoyceH
I’m honestly feeling downright enraged about the state of the pandemic. The pandemic tracker I follow had the nation as a whole down to 4 cases per 100,000 just a few weeks ago, and now it’s back up to 11 per 100,000. And Florida is *49* per 100,000! As an outsider, I’m just BAFFLED at the actions of the Florida governor and legislature. Are there actual reasons for their pandemic actions other than sheer malevolence? Not allowing businesses to ‘discriminate’ against the unvaccinated OR to mandate masks – so if you want to remain in business, the state is going to require you to expose yourself on a daily basis to the unmasked and unvaccinated? WHY?
smith
@MattF: Another possible motive might be that various investigations are uncovering solid evidence the the Trump businesses are basically Russian money laundering operations, and Putin would like to make it appear that his interest in TFG is primarily poltical and not financial.
WaterGirl
@Walker: I can see 95% in a casual “I am open to doing something else and I wasn’t before” kind of way.
oatler.
“Nobody wants to work.”
-Heraclitus
‘
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
It’s company policy that you will have awkward socialisation with your co-workers, and you will like it!
Kent
I’m in education and there are definitely a lot of 60-something teachers who have basically been hanging on via inertia and to get one more year of credit onto their pensions. After this past year a lot of them are hanging up their caps and saying it ain’t worth it. Substitute rosters have also been decimated as a lot of those are elderly retired teachers who are picking up a little income on the side and coming to the conclusion that it ain’t worth it.
Now is probably not a bad time to get into education for a young teacher. I expect a lot of churn over the next year
The problem with teaching of course is that you are at the mercy of the most MAGAt parents in your classes. And God only knows what diseases they are sending their kids to school with these days.
ET
I work for a federal agency which a high percentage of people at or past retirement.d They haven’t left because they are under the old CSRS system that rewards longevity, but also because they love their job and the overall mission of the employer.
My corner of the agency has at a number of people in the category and one has announced her retirement at the end of the month and three others are in the same boat. Two of them will likely retire once more people are brought on. The pandemic meant they could work, do so from home, so they stayed but I expect many more will retire because why would they come back and deal with everything if they don’t have to. Add to that, we have a large public facing component and all of the new (and temporary-ish) COVID procedures in place are complicated and some are just tired of the complicated (and new at the end of their career). None of us are looking forward to the problem/entitled visitors who will come.
Nina
@ET: I also work at a federal agency with lots of people who could retire tomorrow if they wanted to. It leads to management being reeeallly careful around some people. Hopefully it will also lead to us staying in work from home mode for some time to come.
JoyceH
@Nina: I saw an article in the paper saying that the federal government was going to be a lot more flexible about work from home post-pandemic. I wonder how that’s working out in real life? Seems to me that a lot of the insistence on having people come in to the office is based on managers who like to be able to Survey their Domain. “All of this is mine!”
different-church-lady
Right now there’s a bunch of MBAs thinking, “Wait, who the fuck gave the employees any say in how the world works?!?”
The Thin Black Duke
@JoyceH: They’re willing to let ten of thousands of people die than admit they were wrong. There’s a reason why Pride is the first deadly sin.
NotMax
The savings on pants alone are worth it.
:)
Ruckus
@Spanky:
Thank you!
Hope you are enjoying yours, I’m still getting used to the concept of not working. I believe I like it!
ET
@Nina: We had A LOT of people on the high risk list. A lot.
Generally the employer has been good about what we need and procedures but we can’t work from home forever, and many of us aren’t in jobs where we can telework as much as they would like once we began opening up. Sure, a lot of what we do is done on a computer but during the lockdown the office wasn’t open to the wider public, and now it is, so 100% of our job is not conducive to working from home more than one day a week. Heck even that is an issue if enough people in the section retire/leave.
Feathers
@JoyceH: The federal government has agencies which are largely work from home, so there are models of how it can be done. The Patent Office, for one. Patent examiners are trained in DC area, on probation for two years and have to work a certain number of hours at HQ, but after that can work anywhere in the country with broadband. You come into the office periodically. The Patent Office supplies the entire tech setup to put the home office together. It’s all classified, so you have to also have an office that can lock.
Agencies who want to go remote can look at how the Patent Office has distributed its workflow. Admittedly, each examiner has their own workload, which flows upward rather than laterally, but I’m sure other places have this too.
Seriously, if you have a technical degree (i.e. with Calc 2), consider the Patent Office. You have to be in DC for the training, fairly nearby for the probationary, but after that you can live basically anywhere with a schedule you completely set yourself and a great salary. Friends from home have done it.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
It’s actually pretty simple (as are it’s proponents), to own the libs.
It goes like this, Own the libs – win!
I didn’t say it’s a good plan or one with a long term positive side for it’s proponents but still – own the libs!
Phylllis
@Kent: We saw a number of retirements this year, and I think we’ll see more after 21-22. Particularly with the SC legislature making it impossible for schools to have mandatory mask wearing, no matter the conditions. That’s as of now though.
Also, we’ve had more ‘changing profession’ applicants this year, mostly 50-ish folks.
ET
@JoyceH: I can only speak for my corner of the federal government but what you said may be a part of it but for us, we have a large public facing component that needs staff (though they never really took a look at how to change that to facilitate teleworking). With that said, there are definitely some managers (not mine thankfully) who don’t trust staff (which says more about them than the staff) who think if they can’t see you working, you aren’t.
There also seems to be a bit of a blind spot about telework at the top levels of management. They didn’t really get how much of the work we do do, is stuff that can be done from home. The pandemic blew that out of the water. They are being proactive and taking the lead in resetting the telework discussion from some people but only if you prove it, to a more systematic look at who can do a lot of work from home and who can’t with the assumption that most people can do at least some. Basically they saw how much we did get done the last year and were surprised and glad.
Thankfully, they had started to move people to laptops before the pandemic (and had to rush out laptops during) and finally got a more robust VPN and better tools which greatly facilitated this change of discussion and assumptions.
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady:
LOL!
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
Tell us about pants in the middle of February. Oh wait…
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I can hear them wiping their tears with their hard earned diplomas.
I mean it has to be difficult to sit in a class and hear, “Fuck over employees!” for 2 hrs a day for a year and then walk out with a diploma that people think gives them special powers of understanding business.
mrmoshpotato
Follow up:
Replying to @Green_Footballs
This isn’t a partisan issue for me. It’s a piece-of-shit issue.
RepubAnon
@MattF: It puts the Trump – Russia issue back in the papers, thus distracting from the anti-vaccination and anti-infrastructure push from the Republicans.
Plus, as many have noted, it could also be poisoned bait, like the forged documents about rumors surrounding Dubya’s National Guard service.
MagdaInBlack
I am interested in watching what happens with employers ( like mine ) who choose or refuse to recognize this great re-assessment and re-alignment.
frosty
@Ruckus: @Spanky: I retired in Jan 2020 just in time for COVID. I’ve decided I like it, too. I stayed part time and I’m working about 4 hours a week which is nice because I’m still in contact with a couple of friends.
The biggest change is not seeing and talking to people every day. I’m working on reviving a social life (lunches, happy hours, bike rides etc). Once a week with someone seems like it will work OK.
Nina
We have some things that absolutely must be in-person accessible to the public, but a whole lot of what we do never had to be onsite. They had been worried about our aging office space recently, talking about refurbishing buildings. But honestly we don’t need those giant buildings for people who just sit and answer phones all day, or other desk/IT work. I don’t know what our newly installed leader thinks about teleworking, but I’m hopeful.
Aunt Kathy
These articles appear to focus mostly on white collar jobs. From the blue collar side, I can tell you that people are leaving the dist ctr where I work because the pandemic has been really good for business. So good that we’ve been working OT pretty much non-stop for the past year and a half. And the 2019 pre-pandemic xmas season was 60 hrs a week as it was.
Folks are burned out. Luckily, our proximity to major interstates means that there are dist ctrs every 50 feet. Or so.
So people are leaving for a bump in pay at other companies, in addition to either 3 12-hr sfifts, or 4 10-hr. They could technically be counted among the “quits” but they’re landing quickly elsewhere, for better pay & hours.
Jeffro
@Kent:
@Phylllis: VA has been in a pretty dire teacher shortage situation for several years now, to the point where the only folks to have to worry about getting jobs are the high school social studies teachers.
teacher pay and the perception of the profession are by far the two biggest factors, of course.
most VA teacher Ed programs now have bachelors programs so that it doesn’t take a masters to get your teaching license. also, most have good partnerships with the local community colleges so that students can do a year or two at those institutions first, then transfer over and finish out with a four year degree. But it will take time and funding to get the word out about that.
All I know it is, the school divisions are hiring just about anyone with a pulse.
Ruckus
@frosty:
My boss told me when I left that I am welcome back anytime, even one or two days a week. I was only working three days a week as it was! I had plans to retire 2 yrs ago, when I opened my last business at the start of 2006. As usual though, my plans have never really worked as dreamed up and one would think I’d have learned that in all those decades. And no, it has not always been my plan, there have been some relatively unforeseeable issues with nature and rethuglican presidents over the last 5 decades. Maybe I should have realized the second reason is rather more deadly than the first…….
James E Powell
@oatler.:
“Nobody wants to work.” -Heraclitus
“I just want to band on the drum all day.” – Rundgren
raven
@Ruckus: I’m having lunch with my former colleague next week. It was scheduled aftwer I retired but then shit went sideways!
Bill Arnold
@MattF:
I’m waiting for the full document before forming even a tentative opinion about it.
BuzzFeed published the entire Steele dossier. For better or worse, people were able to analyze it.
James E Powell
@Kent:
Though I admit it’s anecdotal, I saw the same thing. Two teachers retired in the middle of the year. One more at the end of the year. All three said, in different words, I can’t take this anymore.
I am not ready to retire, but I feel like the year of staying home, distance teaching, etc., gave me a hint of what retirement might be like.
Phylllis
@Jeffro: We’ve had a dickens of a time recruiting at the high school level the last couple of years. These are the positions the folks who are looking to make a change are interested in, and I’m all for it. Give the kids exposure to people who’ve had recent ‘out in the real world’ jobs and experiences.
NorthLeft12
@Walker: Agree. That 95% is just not believable. I would not be surprised if it was closer to 50%.
Although I have to admit that I don’t have any experience with lower paid service jobs which I understand is where the real turnover might be being considered.
lowtechcyclist
Another Federal government worker here. My agency recently lost a substantial chunk of space to another agency that’s moving into our building. So since we were all teleworking anyway due to the pandemic, the agency’s decision was, ‘you can just keep on working from home while we redo the remaining space to squeeze you all into it.’ So by the time we have an office to return to, we will have been out between 2.5 and 3 years.
Obviously, this is an unstated but strong endorsement of the notion that we can all do our jobs sufficiently well from home that they can extend our absence from the office for another year and a half and things will continue to be just fine. But there are definite rumblings from the upper echelons that once we do have a building to return to, we shouldn’t expect the option of full-time telework to be a given. Which makes no sense at all, since that’s what they’re requiring us to do for the next 15-20 months.
On the flip side, anyone whose home workspace really doesn’t work that well for them is stuck with continuing to work from home, just to save the government some money.
Martin
Well, as it happens, I’m quitting/retiring this week. Just made the decision yesterday.
My work conditions are great, I’d be able to continue working from home 4 days a week. But a year and a half of covid has revealed to me that I’m not getting out of my job what I need, that my depression and anxiety would be greatly diminished if I didn’t have the job, and I can afford to quit/retire. It also revealed that I don’t aspire to things that I need the income to attain. I don’t dream of a bigger house or a boat or a ferrari or whatever.
I’d say covid was an important catalyst to the decision, but not directly instrumental to it. It distracted me from the habit of an 8-5 job, which my brain was predisposed to continuing to do, as all habits are. It allowed me to reevaluate my priorities. I’d known for some time there were some fundamental drivers in my life contributing to my depression and anxiety and it allowed me to understand what those were. And it helped me to recognize that ‘hey, I’m wealthy enough to do this’. Having a number of colleagues die from Covid has also caused me to reassess my priorities. I imagine that’s true for a lot of people. I think a lot of pundits and analysts underestimate the cultural impact something like this can have.
Anyway, I’ve made the decision, but not implemented it yet. It’s still pretty terrifying because my wife and I are very much in the category of ‘you can’t have a large enough rainy day fund’ and this is a decision that yes, in all likelihood this is as large as it ever will be, let’s hope to hell it’s large enough. I blame Reagan for that.
I will also say that having a working exchange is critical to being able to make this decision. If I didn’t have a guaranteed and generally affordable option for health insurance for a family of 3 pre-existing conditions, there’s not a chance in hell I could do this. I think that impact is under-appreciated.
So yeah, I’m soon to be part of the workforce non-participation rate that everyone tells us indicates that the economy is much shittier than it actually is.
zhena gogolia
@James E Powell:
What’s pushing me toward retirement is all the “portals.” You can’t do anything without a portal — hire a student as a TA, make a poster for a talk, etc., etc., etc., and they all have different setups. It’s driving me round the bend
ETA: Not to mention that in hiring said student you have to use the term “onboarding.”
Martin
@Phylllis: Yeah, that’s a consideration for me. I miss working closely with students. I have degrees in physics and math, and extensive skill in programming and statistics.
I’m also a recognized expert on college admissions.
lowtechcyclist
@James E Powell:
Here in Maryland, I wouldn’t blame middle- and high-school teachers if they hit that wall this past year. After Gov. Stupid opened the schools up again this past winter, the teachers had to teach simultaneously to the kids in their classroom, and the kids who continued to attend remotely. I don’t even want to think about what their lesson prep must’ve been like, let alone how it felt every day in the classroom.
Omnes Omnibus
In Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File, the protagonist was asked what he wanted to be as he was leaving the army, he answered “an idle rich man.” I have always thought that a valid choice. Unlike many here it seems, as long as I must work, I don’t mind going to an office to do it. The change in location and the chance to interact with other people is a good thing for me. I also have never minded suits and ties. Feel free to pelt me with rotting vegetables for being less reclusive.
Phylllis
@Martin: I found myself saying Yeah! reading this. I had planned to retire five years ago, but my previous superintendent asked me to stay until she retired at the end of the 19-20 school year. The new superintendent asked me to stay until we finish consolidation with our neighboring district, which will be the end of the 22-23 school year, which had me thinking I might as well work three more years until age 62 (May of 2024), as I’d always planned take my SS then. But I cannot do three more years, and I can get along fine on my retirement check until I’m 62. I’m tired, and work does not hold the charms for me it once did.
sdhays
Semi-related: I had no idea this was happening, and the blatant media blackout is disturbing: Coal miners are on strike in Alabama.
Ruckus
@Aunt Kathy:
That other side, blue collar work, a lot of that can not be done remotely and has often had an overtime work ethic, which in my opinion as one of the guilty parties actually paying a lot of overtime, really was wrong. My last job we worked 8 hrs a day, with an hour for lunch, and it was dramatically more productive. Now of course the checks didn’t reflect overtime but the fact that people didn’t look like they’d been dragged thru something at the end of each day was a pretty good exchange and the boss paid well so it all worked out in the end. There was only one employee who had been there less than me, and I worked there for 8 1/2 yrs. That one employee? His first job, he’d been there about 3 yrs when I left and didn’t seem like he was going anywhere, anytime soon.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
The bad news is that the portals won’t go away with retirement. Seems like all the doctors’ offices have portals now that they expect their patients to use. The good news is that they won’t be omnipresent in your life anymore, unless your health is really crappy.
I loathe that term with the heat of a thousand suns. Always glad to have company.
Phylllis
@Martin: Check into alternative certification programs with your state’s department of education. Especially for Career & Technology (Vo-Tech, for fellow olds among us). CTE is built for bringing people into teaching from other careers/industries.
frosty
@raven: Same here. All through my first retired year I was missing seeing my co-workers. But thanks to COVID they were too! We all have some catching up to do.
trollhattan
Uh oh. This is what triggered most of our north and central California megafires last year.
They were spectacular, so there’s that.
Ruckus
@raven:
More like shit in a whirlwind than just sideways but yes, the amount of stuff that everyone had to put off has been stunning.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: Hell, I’m in my late 30s and i have the same experience as you. The last year has really cleared up what is and isn’t stressing me out, and it’s the job. I’d like to find something new (or just quit and work something with defined hours and no take home work), but I’m not yet in a place where I can do that financially.
My boss gave me a big raise this year and my first clue that I was done is that I didn’t care much. Will probably stick it out for awhile just for the pay and benefits but boy howdy do I sympathize with my workers.
Martin
@Phylllis: One of the big realizations for me was that none of the work that I did, that I was most proud of, did my institution care about. It wasn’t going to be preserved or protected, so the foundations I felt I was laying down, and willing to put in additional hours/effort to achieve, wouldn’t really have the impact I had wanted them to have.
Some of that is me being too optimistic, but some of it is that the institution isn’t the same one I joined 3 decades ago. They were still figuring things out, trying to find their place, and I could do a lot for that, but now they’re much more mature and risk-adverse. My window to change the world was there, and I jumped at it, and I can see some of my biggest achievements statewide, but that window is now closed, and I’m just not interested in the job of making sure things don’t get worse, at the expense of them never getting better.
This is a really well timed thread for me – I’ve needed to get some of these thoughts out.
trollhattan
@sdhays:
“Warrior Met Coal”? WTF is up with that? Was Coal impressed with Warrior? Did they hit it off?
CaseyL
I work for a university medical school/medical center, in the academic offices, not the clinics. We’re headed back to the office full time in September. They gave us the option of continuing to WFH 2 days per week, which I grabbed. I’d be happier coming in less frequently than that, but staying home 2 days per week ain’t bad.
I find there’s simply more I can do in an actual office. At home, my workload depends on what I get via fax and email. A lot of time, there simply isn’t anything I can be working on (I’ve been making up for that by responding to faxes and emails well after official working hours). And in-depth research (like accreditation procedures for one of our programs) is much easier to do in the office, since I have more dedicated workspace and DON’T have two kitties demanding attention.
I’m very fortunate: after many, many years of bouncing around trying to find a good fit, I have a terrific job with terrific people. I’m also only a few years from retiring, which makes me even less likely to be looking for something different.
frosty
@Martin: Congratulations! Hope the rainy day fund works out. We had state and county pensions which aren’t a lot, but along with SS means we can afford the premium cat food for dinner.
So far the 401Ks are doing well so we’re traveling and catching up on deferred house expenses.
Best of luck!
Martin
@Phylllis: Yeah, I know them well. I designed a few teaching curricula in my day. My strongest contribution would probably be college prep advising, though. I know every admission requirement in CA, wrote more than a few of them, have worked with every CCC, CSU, and UC. And I’ve probably read 50K – 100K college applications in my career.
And the conventional wisdom, at least as far as getting into a CA public is concerned, is pretty fucking wrong.
Phylllis
@Martin: Are we having parallel careers? I’ve been with my district twenty years and I swear we are ‘implementing instructional approaches’ this year that we tried & subsequently quit with back when I started.
Plus, while the ARP funds will help us help kids, I do not have the patience to deal with vendors coming out of the woodwork who are claiming to have the miracle cure program in a box that will boost achievement.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Another Club Fed employee here who could “retire tomorrow” and who supports a ton of fulltime, remote people who could also “retire tomorrow”.
Most of them have stated they’re leaving as soon as international travel restrictions/risk are eased. Most of them can’t go soon enough.
Our agency has been bleeding edge for the last 5-7 years on fulltime, remote “alternative duty location” work so this actually wasn’t much of a stretch.
Also too, the offices I support over a six-state area, only one has an old-fart GS-15 manager who hates the current setup and wants everybody back in the office yesterday. He’s another one who could (and should) “retire tomorrow”. The rest are pretty low key about people coming back into the local, small offices.
sdhays
@trollhattan: I know, right? It’s like a name for a (horrible) romantic comedy.
raven
@Martin: I stumbled into my job building an online core curriculum and spent the best part of 12 years doing that. When my boss retired he said “this is our legacy”. The program is thriving and was before covid so I’ve got that to look back on. The rest is just trying to put myself in the position to enjoy what I have left. We talked about traveling before we gat another dog but, from the news on passports, I don’t think I’ve got time to wait.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Well, Ferraris are nice. :-)
Best wishes, there will be other paths should you decide to take one.
My office was split in two this year and my half was shoved into a far larger division where we comprise something like 5% of their roster. They seem committed to one-size-fits-all (i.e., none) policies and that extends to remote work. Which is fine given they do O&M work that literally is performed on site but has no relevance to the office staff. Tough.
While that’s their prerogative it sends an awful message and a ton of my coworkers have moved on. So, pondering….
It does not help that they also have people doing more or less what I do, where I was formerly a one-man-band working needed tasks of mostly my own design (the old find a need and fill it plan).
MisterForkbeard
@Martin:
This is a major thing for me, too. I work IT/programming and own the service that my entire company uses to function, and I report up through our Infrastructure/Operations team that mostly handles server farms and database. My work directly allows 11k people to function, and I have literal years worth of backlogs for each of my employees. The rest of the business is constantly requesting that my team be better funded – with one $30k/year employee in the philippines I can save $350k/year easily in productivity improvements for the rest of the company.
And instead I’m nickeled and dimed because management only really cares about not getting complaints. I’m literally told I can’t even accept budget transfers – I have people on the Sales team that will literally give me half a million dollars to hire people, but I’m not allowed to take it.
This indicates that my leadership doesn’t really care about the work I’m doing so long as they’re not hearing complaints from the other parts of the business. It’s enormously demoralizing.
raven
Here is the p®gram we built
eCore
Eljai
@Feathers: You’re right about the Patent Office. I’m a legal assistant in a patent law firm and even at my level, that kind of work is ideal for remote work.
Exactly. The powers-that-be in my firm have decided that we need to go from working 100% remotely to showing up in the office at least 3 days a week (even though the pandemic is not officially over). They say we need be there to collaborate and build relationships blah blah blah. I can tell you that nobody cares about my opinion and I can build my own relationships, thank you very much. Further, the firm I work at switched to one of those godawful open plans a few years ago, which is not conducive to, you know, concentrating. Personally, I think the big muckity-mucks have not enjoyed working at home and having to deal with their spouses and kids. Before the pandemic, they got to work in their plush corner offices and enjoy imagined deference from the lowly staff and they miss that.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I’ve only been at this retirement thing for a month and I’m liking the hell out of it. Yes it can get a bit boring some days, but all in all, it’s not bad. Do I have enough of a rainy day fund? I’ll have to see how many rainy days I get before I can answer that but I’ve seen it rain for the proverbial 30 days, in socal (yes it was only once in my life but still..) and I’m still here. There is more to life than working, as much as
we, most of us, need it to get to retirement. And yes that health care does make all the difference in peace of mind, especially if there are issues. It shows how much a lot of businesses give a damn about the health of their major asset, their employees, which is often not one damn bit.Martin
@Phylllis: I was reading CaseyL’s comment thinking the same thing. I won’t miss ushering any more accreditations through. They’ve been hugely beneficial to our institution, and would be easy if not for everyone constantly whining about them and refusing to do the very reasonable things they need to do.
I’m both a huge proponent of higher education, and also convinced that its collapse is unavoidable due to its inability to adapt. The current model will get replaced with something new to do the job, and I’m a bit tired of sounding that alarm, TBH.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve worked in my own businesses or in jobs that required being on site, just because of the type of business. Even during Covid, it was stay at home and not work, or work at the business. Because of the type of work I’ve done my entire life, there is no way to do it at home, it has to be done on site. First off no house I’ve ever lived in had 3 phase 220/440 volt power. And that’s just the start of it. So I understand going to work, and separating one from the other. There is good in that, even if it’s often outweighed by the commute.
Aunt Kathy
@Ruckus:
Yeah, I was just talking about that w/someone today. Workers would be more productive if they worked less. But this is America, so, that’s that.
Martin
That’s some of it.
One of the things we did at work a number of years back was to establish a set of measures for productivity. Not bullshit ones like lines of code written, or tickets closed, but things like foreseeable issues missed – things that had positive feedback loops and incentivized structural improvements. It made things like performance evaluations much less harrowing, but it also meant that I as a supervisor didn’t feel like I needed to observe their work. I could measure the results and didn’t need to bear witness that they were working, or doing it right (aka, the way Martin would do it) and so on.
And very few places take the time to work out ‘what really are we here to do, and how do we know when we’re going it right’. Instead, they fall into making sure the 40 hours are being booked and just assuming that if the hours went in, then the results are as good as could be expected.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I had two commuting jobs and when I the opportunity to work from home (for the last 15 years of my job) I was thrilled.
Raven
@Martin: All I can say is that it’s a shame to lose someone like you.
The Pale Scot
@JoyceH:
There is going to be a look at “how much is our middle management actually worth to us”. There’s a year of digital data that can and will be parsed, and management’s actual participation in making money will be measured
Ruckus
@Aunt Kathy:
A lot depends on the business.
I have worked in machine shops other than 11 yrs, out of 60. That 11 yrs was in professional sports and I traveled 30 or more weeks a year at that. So working in an office environment is not really mentioned in my resume. And working overtime was what most people did, partially because there weren’t enough trained workers not to. But it really does make a noticeable difference. Not even sure 10hr/4days is a good thing in the long run
One of the things I was going to say is that some businesses need a higher level of supervision. Not every day, every hour but in low quantity manufacturing sometimes there just need to be a fresh set of eyes to see a better way of accomplishing a task.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: I am not saying that the people who what to work from home are wrong. But there also are people who don’t want that.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: When we went virtual my boss quickly saw that he couldn’t do his job at a distance.
lowtechcyclist
@The Pale Scot:
Put ’em on Ark Two! :-D
At least in my org, it’s more the upper-level managers that seem to have their heads up their asses. Too long since they worked directly with nonsupervisors, let alone actually were one. Too many jobs under them that they have no idea what’s involved. Too much believing that if they require a change, it can happen, and they aren’t willing to hear why either it can’t or that it has serious downsides.
The Pale Scot
@different-church-lady:
It’s been an eye opener to me to see how the labor market is dealing/not dealing with the departure of the boomers. Being the tail end Charlie of the largest cohort affected my opportunities always, the early 80’s really sucked. I always believed it but never really thought about it.
sab
@Martin: Happy for your retirement, but your input with work experience dealing with Covid was invaluable this last year.
I quit my job in a huff in March 2020 when my employer wouldn’t take Covid seriously. I had just reached Social Security age. Surprisingly, they called me next tax season and asked if I’d work, so I did, remotely.
I loved not commuting, but I live in a small house with lots of animals and no office space, so working from home on my computer on my bed was not ideal. (At 67 the knees can’t sit cross-legged for hours on end.)
Don’t over-volunteer in your retirement. Competent people do that a lot, because they know they have useful skills
ETA I do not know how my employer will absorb new people without office contact. How do people learn the ropes? Most of my fellow workers were young mothers, and won’t be happy about going back to office full time. But new employees really need guidance.
Hoodie
@Eljai: My experience is that this is highly dependent on the individual. Some people are great at remote working, but they tend to be people who are highly organized, self-contained and have jobs that are easily compartmentalized. Other people seem to need more structure and/or have jobs that really are more productively performed in the office.
We have paralegals in our office who are night and day on this. Some are great when they’re in the office, but tend to defocus when they try to work remotely and their productivity falls off. There can also be equity problems that arise because the people who are in the office tend to end up doing little extra things – which can be important – that don’t fit neatly into the remote work bucket. That can cause some resentments to build up. There is also the dimension that people who work remotely can become socially isolated. We’re social animals, and out-of-sight/out-of-mind is a real thing.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
Who wants to tell our corporate overlords that the Great Resignation is what Atlas shrugging would actually look like?
sab
@Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA): LOL hysterically. Goimg Galt isn’t just for the overlords.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve done the opposite, I’ve gone from semi retired to actively working a retail job. Just at the end of my shift today, we had an attempted shoplifter. One guy goes in, buys stuff, the other guy gets his receipt and gets the same item and then tries to leave the store showing the other guy’s receipt. Store management knew of this scheme and the guy walked up to me, ‘here’s my receipt’, I said, shot it to the lady at the door. I also noticed my store manager outside the door on the phone with a guy not wearing an apron(turned out to be the store’s asset protection guy).
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
My students and some teachers always ask me if I miss working as a lawyer. I tell them I liked the suits & ties.
Barry
@Kent:
“Now is probably not a bad time to get into education for a young teacher. I expect a lot of churn over the next year”
I would urge a young person to go into education only if both (a) they are willing to relocate at the drop of a hat until age 30 and (b) they back up their Ed degree with one which will give them options.
Remember, most states are controlled by the GOP, who hate education and teachers, and who see no disadvantage for f*cking things up.
Eljai
@Hoodie: You raise some great points. There have been a small number of attorneys and staff in my office who have volunteered to come into the office this past year because they don’t have the ideal conditions for working from home. I’m kind of torn regarding work relationships. I do have some valuable work relationships, but I have been with this firm a long time and I’ve found it easy to navigate communicating with colleagues in a remote environment. But this can be quite challenging for new employees and those who thrive with more in-person contact. I guess I can see the case for having a hybrid office.
Barry
@NorthLeft12:
“Although I have to admit that I don’t have any experience with lower paid service jobs which I understand is where the real turnover might be being considered.”
That’s why the restaurant owners are crying, because you can move around a lot, and after working in a kitchen or with customers, most other ‘blue collar’ jobs are going to be easy.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not going to pelt you with anything – there are things I really miss about the office. Being able to just wander down the hall and have a conversation with someone about a problem you’d run into, rather than having to set up a MS Teams meeting so you could share your screen. Seeing co-workers that you don’t currently work with but whose company you enjoy. Not being in my house nearly 24/7. Being able to run errands on the way home. Having a place – other than my desk at home which is tiny and was already overloaded at the beginning of 2020 – where all of my work-related stuff can be. (They’re trying to sell us on a paperless office, but that’s not a transition you can do overnight.)
Lord knows there’s a pile of things on the telework side of the ledger, too. For me, on the whole, it’s just plain complicated – if I had to choose between one or the other, full time, I’ll be damned if I know which I’d choose.
Platonicspoof
U.S. labor force participation rate from as far back as 1948 up to July 2, 2021. From St. Louis Fed.
Graphs not only show the small difference between now and pre-pandemic, but also provide context for what the trend back to normal looks like.
Also provides context for claims that “nobody wants to work anymore” (versus “many don’t want to work for peanuts and/or in unsafe conditions if they can delay it”).
Bill Arnold
@Eljai:
It takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to get to a full flow (/hyperfocus) state. In an open plan office, I get maybe 20 seconds (sometimes a few glorious minutes!) before being interrupted by a loud voice or motion in my visual field (my peripheral vision extends about 190 degrees.)
COVID-19 did a lot of damage to the attractiveness of open plan offices. Open plan offices are essentially optimized for spread of infectious respiratory diseases, in the name of proper stimulation for extroverts (especially the psychopaths being groomed for higher-level management positions) and hell for introverts (especially the hypersensitives). (Commercial real estate interests have been pushing not so subtly to repopulate their office space even though it will kill people.)
Anyway, started a remote job recently at a US government national lab (nothing classified and remote is absolutely fine; ping times like 45 ms are workable). The avowed plan is to try hard to retain flexibility for remote work; we’ll see.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Forgot to add; my goal when looking for work was to find a place where the work environment is not toxic and the people are very intelligent but not driven by greed and selfishness. I drew down savings to buy time to find a good work environment.
WaterGirl
@MisterForkbeard:
Wow, that sounds like a terrible work environment. I’m sorry to hear that.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
I’m an IT worker. Systems Administrator in the banking world. 2020 was a whirlwind. Ducked catching Covid, but came down with a respiratory ailment that caused me to tear a muscle in my back. Put me in bed for a while, during which I bought a house. Kinda surreal, now that I think about it.
Working remotely is an IT worker’s dream, in my time it almost never happened b/c management but in the age of Covid we were turned into miracle workers simply because we did something that we knew we could do all along
We’re back full time now; it’s good to see co-workers again and it’s good to leave the house for a reasonably safe work space. Everyone at my locations is vaxxed, those who “didn’t believe that the virus was real” snapped to real quick when the branch manager AND his daughter got sick and were hospitalized. So I suppose I was luckier than most.
The Pale Scot
@Eljai:
I use Bose noise canceling headphones attached to an iPod Shuffle that plays a rip of 11 hours of surf .
To download it use Firefox and get the “Video Download Helper.
I don’t hear a bloody thing
Rob
@Feathers: Thanks for mentioning this! I’m in the DC area, on a contract ending in a few months. I’ll look into the patent office for potential future employment.
quit
From the original post:
“If you’re ready to quit your job, here’s how to do it ”
The very idea that I need coaching from a mass-media site in order to know how to quit my job is so absurd that I have no way to make fun of it. You tell your manager “Two weeks, if you want it, otherwise I’m out of here as soon as I get packed up!” I did use up vacation once as well, for the two weeks.
Or, otherwise, you call the head HR person and tell them you’re done. Or tell a HR person you’re ready to retire on a date certain, if you’re of that age and seniority.
But needing coaching from Forbes, or Business Insider? Not so much !!
Eljai
@The Pale Scot: Thanks for the tip, fellow iPod enthusiast! A lot of the youngs I know listen to music on their phones, but I’m old school. :)
Barry
@Eljai: “Thanks for the tip, fellow iPod enthusiast! A lot of the youngs I know listen to music on their phones, but I’m old school. :) ”
YouTube Premium allows you to download videos onto you device. It is $10/month, and I love it.
J R in WV
@Martin:
Congratulations!!! Retirement is bliss…!!
James E Powell
Thread may be dead, but this twitter thread about the impact of the Kraft Heinz merger on employees really fits here.
The Pale Scot
@Eljai:
Bose QC25 Quiet Comfort 25
All the newer ones have Alexas or some kind of assistant which is a total dealbreaker for me. I don’t want to have a device that’s connected to the internet wrapped around my head.
I’ve watched enough Dr Who to know better. I aint gonna become no Cyberman, no fucking way.
There’s also a gadget for this particular model that gives it bluetooth. The sound is excellent.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Usually in the coal bidness “Met” refers to metallurgical coal, used in steel mills to charge blast furnaces. Usually high BTU, low sulfur coal, worth way more than steam coal used for power generation.
Though I don’t know for sure if Alabama mines met coal or not…