Poll: Why are people leaving their jobs?

I left for other reasons as well, but it really shone a light on how management thought of ICs. Managers: proactively reward your ICs, don't wait until they're halfway out the door. I would honestly take a less aggressive adjustment in comp if it was done proactively, rather than waiting until I'm fed up and on my way out.

As a senior IC in a super-flat & growing org.. I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one.

Management administrivia I accumulate administrative things my manager doesn't want to do & pushes down I do unofficially own a part of the team Dotted lines of devs in my "team" that can be rolled in & out sprint by sprint

Customer success / product / architecture I collect customer requirements, translate them into stories & documentation I manage customer/manager expectations with status meetings & reports I project plan out 3 months of work with JIRA hierarchies/Gantt chart I design solutions given the requirements

Scrum I run our standups, sprint plannings, backlog refinements

Corporate citizenship I am involved in recruiting 5-10% of my week I run working groups / long running cross team tech org

Development I do IC work - directly assigned sprint deliverable tickets (analysis, development, infra creation) I need to accomplish

I've been looking at moving to a more official management role elsewhere so I can focus at being good at a few things instead of decent at all the things.

Instead saying "X left, we need extra budget to replace it" will often work.

It's idiotic and expensive for the company but what can you do.

I have been in this situation in the past and it's always the right move to walk if they won't come to the table when you ask politely.

The biggest différance is my 7-year-old will learn, while companies will continue to make the same mistakes.

I don't hint because it's too confusing. I try to very politely offer options, where one option is me looking for another opportunity. It's not as though it's a secret to either party that's always an option.

Employer might not have even known quitting was on the table if there is only a hint. Be bold and direct to reduce miscommunication and you'll be the one standing with integrity.

There are a number of other things in there too. For example, you may not have the same priorities as the person you're negotiating with.

Spoiler: His advice is not to strong-arm, but to build trust with your counterpart.

It doesn’t mean that you will, it doesn’t mean that you should. It means you re prepared. And this can be a huge advantage.

Good for you!

This is something I always tell junior engineers who are looking for ways to negotiate for something (usually pay and/or promotions). Although it's very effective, negotiation by throwing a competing offer on the bosses desk usually starts a fire-drill up the management chain which gets you noticed in a not-so-positive way. It also leaves a lot of bad feelings all around.

I've basically given myself another year

Quality of life can be a considerable part of compensation, imo.

- the employee leaves anyways, since it's too late to change their mind

- the employee stays, but there's a loss of trust and loyalty

- the employee never planned to leave in the first place, and exploited your broken system

Valued Employees should be rewarded preemptively.

Agreed. That's like trying to take your money back once you see a river card that doesn't help you in poker.

Just doesn't work like that. Negotiate in good faith or accept the potential consequences.

I still write code but now its just for me to support my generative art. I still hear stories from my former team; not missing the nightmare at all.

Honestly, probably should have done it sooner if you could have.

As a 30-something, most of my peers are not planning to work past 60, and most are planning to retire in their 50s. Unfortunately that seems to be a privilege of a certain level of job income and not all of my peers will be so lucky.

So I chose compensation, but company culture and life balance are part of that too. There was a reorg about a year ago, and not long after that people have been complaining about how much workload there is, and how we're not given the tools etc. to deal with it. I gave polite responses to recruiters prior to December, in December I had my first phone call with an inside recruiter in 2 1/2 years. The other night I was programming at 10PM to make a deadline the next day and fired off two applications, maybe just because it made me feel better (although the positions looked good).

It's not just workload, if my workload was refactoring and learning the technology deeper I might not mind the hours, but it is a lot of meetings with multiple teams and a lot of bureaucratic stuff.

The workload/culture just increases or decreases the timeline somewhat. I am socking away enough money a month, I know the team and the stack and have the institutional knowledge (almost everyone on the team joined later). I would also prefer to spend a few months reading the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs to practicing Leetcode. But crazy workload and culture stuff speeds up my timeline - I am switching from SICP to Leetcode, and am more apt to interview at places "before I am ready". But if work calms down more I might push the timeline out more.

Don't interpret this survey as "Most people's primary reason for leaving is compensation", because the survey does not ask this ;)

For me, I've always looked at the exchange of time for money. The problem with that is that you can't exchange money for time, only time for money.

Realizing this, I set work to 0. There seems to be a step function at 40 hours - the "full time job", but I haven't heard of many people that are successful in traditional software engineering jobs with a 20 hour work week, aside from perhaps those that work for themselves and have their project in "maintenance".

They may get more money if they change jobs. But they start looking because they're unhappy. So when somebody asked for more money, he'd start by asking what was bothering them.

The poll makes it pretty obvious that compensation is the biggest reason folks leave, and it's the thinking of the old generation who doesn't know how to retain talent (they do, but they keep throwing pizza parties / sending out merch instead). It's a real "it can't be helped" mentality around retention.

Motivators actively cause job satisfaction. Things like finding personal fulfillment, meaningful work, and other top-of-Maslow's-hierarchy stuff.

Hygiene factors cause dissatisfaction in their absence, but aren't standalone motivators. Salary probably fits in this bucket - if you learn that you're underpaid, you're likely to feel demotivated and look for work elsewhere. If you learn that you're overpaid, that can cause dissatisfaction too (feeling like you have to serve out the rest of a prison sentence until your shares/options vest is pretty common in our industry).

Compensation isn't everything, but if it seems unfair, it's absolutely enough to motivate people to make changes. I think we're seeing a reevaluation of labor market expectations with the whole Great Resignation thing, where those who are in demand are realizing just how demanded their skills are (and getting pissed off that they're undercompensated in their $current_job), and the old generation you speak of is trotting forward with their fingers in their ears, blinded by normalcy bias to the fundamental shift happening in front of them - a big labor market awakening.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory

This is a leading question to expand on why compensation matters. Personally, I fall into the group where I could probably make more but really like my group. So, there is risk with leaving (bad boss, toxic culture, too much work, etc) vs making more.

In other words, I think the results can only show motivating factors, but can't satisfy it as a sufficient condition for departure.

Retirement savings (and to a lesser extent because the numbers are way smaller, college savings) drive the need to accumulate 25x your annual expenses.

A publicly traded company I left some years ago had dozens of different little "things" they offered instead of better salary and/or better hours for the salary paid. They're now worth a tenth of what they were when I departed.

US companies pay 2-3x as much at the top end (if you relocate, probably less for remote). With that kind of gap it's pretty hard for pay not to be a major factor.

> There is a threshold where you have enough money.

You've answered your own question.

Related is the sustainability of work: I don't want to need high earnings past 40. I want to retire into a second career I'll find more fulfilling but which might pay dramatically less. Higher pay now is the only way I can achieve this.

I asked someone that in my mid 20's. He said "It's nice knowing I can support my family working at McDonalds if I have to." That stuck with me. Something fundamental changes in your life when you become debt-free.

This to me is the only legitimate criticism, and it really boils down to risk-reward.

If you're holding cash for say a backup fund, great! That's good security and everyone should aspire to that. But also acknowledge that with 6% inflation, you're actually losing 6% on that backup fund.

Inflation is insipid. You _must_ take risk with your funds just to not lose the value of it.

This certainly seems to be the case, but it's fustrating. I can think of no fundamental reason why it should be so. Other than speculators and govt policies backfiring to destroy the safety of alternative places to keep your money besides cash.

Then add to that the fact that you're taxed on `gains` for investment.

So buy an ounce of gold. 1 year later sell it for 6% more than you paid. Cool, beat inflation right?

Well, no because now you pay capital gains on something that isn't really worth more than when you bought it.

Inflation _is_ a tax...

> govt policies backfiring

Yeah sure, they're `backfiring`...

Go buy a house that will increase by >5%/year, but then don't pay it off any sooner than you have to.

Make the minimum payments, and invest in something that will return a stable 5%+ with your remaining income.

Just because the house itself increases in value, doesn't mean you should pay down the ~3% interest rate loan any faster than you have to.

And really, once you've built enough via this strategy, you should either invest in a more expensive house or buy a house to rent afterward.

This is all the consequence of inflation and easy money/loans, but the smart money move is to never pay off low interest rate loans. This is particularly true when inflation (acknowledged anyway) is 6%.

Using the 6% number, you're actually gaining (on average) 3% on a 3% loan just by using the cash.

The worst ever 20-year return for S&P 500 was +6.4% per year for the 240 month period ending in May 1979.

https://www.thebalance.com/rolling-index-returns-4061795

One is guaranteed, one is not. Markets are volatile. I lived through 2001 and 2008 as a working stiff, that shit can drop on a dime.

Right now, I have no debts. House and vehicle are paid off and I have an "oh shit" account that's pretty good. I can sit here as a hermit for at least a year or two, three if I really hunkered down and pinched pennies. It's a good feeling; one less thing to worry about.

Now if I put all that money into the market and shit hit the fan, not only would I not be willing to sell stocks due to their price plummeting, I would still have a mortgage and car payment. I'd be in this situation for 6 months to a year. Not a great situation.

Ensure your freedom / ability to live first, then invest heavily, IMO.

That 3 years of cash on hand would be better off in some kind of investment and if you're worried, supported by a volatility buffer.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sequence-risk.asp

Is this a serious question?

Money will always be a concern for the majority.

That said, I agree that once you've bought a house, you can cover your expenses and holidays, who cares about making more money. It's just not a very common position.

Some people will leave a low stress/low-moderate wage job for a high stress, high wage job, but end up with a drug habit/in a mental ward/jail and then wonder for years what the cause of the trouble was. I've seen it happen a number of times.

Look at the poll and think on this statement:

"The majority of people leave a company because they are unsatisfied, not because of compensation."

The poll statistically verifies the above statement as true. Its just divided in a way that makes you think compensation is the main reason.

Still what the poll does show is that compensation is a significant factor, more than ever before.

There's definitely a ratio of job satisfaction / money where more money won't cancel out a toxic work environment (there's no reasonable amount of money that would persuade me to work for certain companies or return to certain jobs) -- but generally, I'm in it for the money. That's why it's a job and not a hobby. I got a mortgage, a family, and retirement to think about. I generally write off my work hours as an investment in those things.

If I start a salary conversation with my manager about more money and they rejoin with "what's bothering you?" that's not gonna go well. Now I want more money and you're being dismissive about it.

When you've got 10 or 15 years exp as a dev in the big tech cities, in my experience you expect to be paid market rates as an automatic thing but also you accumulate money over your career so it gets to be less important; I at least far more want more interesting work and no shitty work relationships wrt boss or time expectations. Being paid market rate is just the start, and that's easier to clarify. It's much much harder to know about the work situations you will be going into. I'm currently thinking of quitting my job after my 1 year stock comes in. My company is way over-working me and although I'm well paid in a sense at market rates, the job is not what I thought I was getting when I came there. I really struggled with how to answer my peers when they ask me about working there. I gave a mostly neutral recommendation.

It's nice to think an employees's world revolves around office culture. Until Bright Horizons hand you that $4500 childcare bill (food not included, of course)

I could move to a lower COL city. But said job decided not to approve anyone moving to a remote location, we have to be ready for that return to office riiight around the corner

Its very rare to get 2x to 4x TC unless you switch to faang, which is not the majority at all.

It doesnt matter if it's the majority. It only matters on a per individual capability.

I am capable of FAANG and thus to keep me my employer(s) must both give me work w/ high value and compensate me accordingly.

You're switching the topic to be about you and your individual ability. You're obviously the center of this conversation. Good for you.

So what would 2,3,4x mean. Do you mean that much over your current salary, or over the 'market rate'. If someone paid me 2 or 3x my market rate as a principal backend infrastructure engineer, I would take it, but a year ago when I was interviewing, the offers from the big guys were not that different.

I feel like this quote is relevant, if slightly off topic:

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

i.e. You may run out of good candidates long before your competitors stop offering 20% more than you.

But, the honest answer to your boss's question: what bothers me is trading my time for money. My comp doubled. I can now afford to stop working in 3-5 years instead of 10+ years. I think this attitude has become much more common in the last 5-10 years.

So why would I bother jumping to a new job for a 10% increase?

I think the Great Resignation is really for industries that have had stereotypically low compensation, coupled with shitty environments. And I'm glad that people in those industries have a lot more leverage to make things better for themselves.

I think that's true for almost anyone--unless they're coming right up on retirement.

But there's a difference between semi-actively looking and occasionally responding to someone reaching out about something that actually looks interesting. Phone calls are rarely a bad idea unless they're complete wastes of time.

I grew up poor - and judge me however you'd like - but I'd put up with less ideal conditions if the pay was worth it.

Reminds me of in college when I was a waiter - I typically didn't mind a table's behavior if I knew they were going to tip well.

They are called golden handcuffs for a reason. I think for the majority of people, they will do this. I know I will.

If you worked at a company for a few years and they went ipo, that's a different situation.

Well, I also really wanted to write Elixir professionally, and now I am! :) So it's not 100% true that it was all about the money.

If I can leave my job right now and make 30% more than my current salary for doing the same work as my current company is only giving out 3%-4% a year max pay increases than I am a fool for staying.

Now, I kinda liked my job and team - but TBH it wasn't the most amazing role ever - let's say it was 7.5/10. If all things were equal or the difference was insignificant I would have stayed probably. I wonder how much I would need to love my job to have stayed regardless of having such a higher offer.

I run my personal finances like a business. Whenever companies say "we're a family" or "we don't want someone only focused on money" I hear "we only hire morons". I an cognizant of cashflow, taxes, I'm very heavily invested and I take all of it very, very seriously in terms of structure, diversification, opportunity, tax efficiency, profits. Like any business should! Income is my biggest revenue stream and therefore the most important factor for my success a/k/a the success of my business (which is me). If I leave I'm leaving for money.

My relationship with my employer is a business one. I don't understand why managers / HR think it's some kind of therapy one. Your manager wants to talk about feelings? I don't write contracts for fun and friendship, they are for business and employment is a business relationship. I have an actual life that I am living and this business relationship is about money it is absolutely not my whole life and I'm more than happy to take my skills elsewhere for more.

I cannot fathom someone getting so wrapped up in their job as their identity that they literally pay money to the company to do it (by staying in a lower-paying position) but I guess it can happen, e.g. people go work for Apple which notoriously underpays as well as being kind of a poor work environment, but people still flock to them due to brand reputation. I don't have feelings about the companies I work for. I have strong feelings about the code I write, I strive for highest possible quality given the constraints. But who I am is the person who writes that kind of code, not who I write it for.

I just left a job that I loved for a big raise. I have a policy of seriously considering applying for similar jobs that offer salaries well above mine. Turns out, I love this job too, but I get more money.

After all, why not? It's not like you have to take a day or two off to potentially fly out for the on-site these days. It's been years since I played the interview game, so I need to keep my skills sharp. And if I get a better offer at a company I'd like to work for, why not take it? If the offer's not better, I can politely decline.

"People don't quit a company, they quit their manager."

* Employee is happy (enough)

* Recruiter reaches out saying "we'll pay you your_current_comp * 2"

* Employee thinks "hmmm that seems **ing crazy, I wonder what's going on"

* Checks resources like levels.fyi or their network and realizes that they could _theoretically_ make (current_comp * 1.5), and probably pretty easily make (current_comp * 1.5)

* This leads to bitterness in some cases, or frank discussions of how to get paid more in others

I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing fwiw but it requires employers to anticipate comp issues as benchmarks change.

Ironically, it was one of the best jobs I ever had, but you can't actually pay for your newborn's healthcare with job satisfaction.

So money is very very important.

Most of the time things start from there and then the unhappiness snowballs to other areas of life

But when my pay is good, I am much more likely to push through the bullshit and get back to the good stuff. When the pay is bad, I start thinking about touching up the resume and sending it around.

The corollary is that if I know I’m severely underpaid, I’ll probably be out the door within a year even if I am mostly content with the job. I’m 7 years into my career and this corollary has proven correct for 3 job changes now.

If people are quitting successive jobs for incremental pay raises, it probably means they hate things other than their salary, but don't believe those things are going to improve.

Perhaps some people start looking because they're unhappy and then learn they're underpaid but I personally know many people that started looking because of money—not the other way around.

And yeah every time you get sad or suffering at your job you get the reflex to want to be compensated for the pain. Or you can even think of sabotaging the place a bit.

I actually left a fake job paid very well because of the toxicity.

I think get what you can get while you can get it and sock away as much as you can.

Sure, after a point, it's not about the money.

Job hopping is the new default for engineers, most people after a few years in the industry realise their value goes up every once and then and that they can leverage that to get a salary bump.

The immediate thing that caused me to start looking for a new job, most recently, was that I had a performance review / bonus conversation that went poorly (for me). It's a little hard to distinguish whether the thing that made me unhappy was getting the feedback of "We don't value the things you want to do with your career" or getting the feedback of "and, therefore, we will dock your pay." (In fairness to them, it's not clear the things I wanted to do with my career were in fact valuable to them.)

However, once I started looking, I discovered I was being seriously underpaid, and I really should have already been looking for new jobs. There's just a bootstrapping problem here - you don't know your market value until you start getting offers, and you have to start looking in order to start getting offers.

With new norms about talking about pay (this very website is a good spot, for software engineers) and sites like levels.fyi, I suspect I would have come to this conclusion a little earlier, on the basis of money. It's hard to estimate your market value but you now have a better idea of what the ballpark is.

(I suppose the other option is to continually be "looking," whether or not you have an active desire to leave. I know some people do that. But I personally find that exhausting.)

Sure, everyone wants to work in a good working environment, but I think the idea that "nobody left because of the money" is finally being put to bed.

The fact is that corporations and VCs have always realized that business is primarily just about the money, and their ability to get people to work for their "passion" has resulted in people getting underpaid. I'm always especially amused when people are expected to have "passion" when they're working at like a bank or an insurance company.

You work to make money. There are plenty of opportunities for hobbies and volunteering for passions. I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy what you do at work, but don't lose sight of why someone is paying you to do it.

At some point, you may get to the level where you're happy with your comp and happy with your responsibilities, in which case it might actually be best to stay around as long as you can. Not my cup of tea, but it's definitely something to think about.

In other words, good on you for looking around after a few years!

Starting all over again kinda sucks. The older I get the less I look forward to doing the hustle to gain cred in new orgs.

All that to say: you aren't wrong. If you're in that position and you don't want to leave, that's really the company's problem and not yours. Do your own thing! I support it 100%! (Not that you need my support, but you have it anyway!)

Luckily this is becoming less likely now that more companies are allowing remote work. I live in a relatively small city and have interviewed at every local company that interests me. My previous employer was by far the highest paying of all of them. I was able to find a remote job that broke my golden handcuffs by almost 2x.

I knew that I was looking for something else but I hadn't consciously realized it had gotten that bad.

    Am I happy with my job?
    Do I like my manager? My team?
    Is this project I’m working on fulfilling?
    Am I learning?
    Am I respected?
    Am I growing?
    Do I feel fairly compensated?
    Is this company/team going anywhere?
    Do I believe in the vision?
    Do I trust the leaders?

not respected, not growing, not strong trust.

learning - some, but I don't like some of what i'm having to learn (not terribly useful outside this project).

fulfilling... occasionally, but more often not.

It's not 'that bad' for me yet, but have been trying to watch out for these signs. I've been in your shoes - where it has gotten 'that bad', and often you don't realize until you're already there.

Good luck to you!

It's easy to use something like compensation or new challenges as a post-hoc rationalization for making a move too, even when the real reason you started looking is perhaps different and requires some introspection. As an example, you might not start looking because you want more money, but it's fairly socially acceptable to say "I left because I was made an offer I can't refuse" as a justification when you do actually leave.

Also our new company culture (we were acquired) is one of using a lot of contractor resources to quickly build something, and throw it over the wall to our permanent staff, its just not healthy for the team long term.

I favor iterative approaches that are tightly coupled to customer feedback. Compared to our current rapid build outs with long feedback cycles.

I think COVID exacerbated winners and losers. The gaps between companies offering opportunity and stale companies is growing. People won’t stay at a company that rewards 2 years of heads down pandemic work with “Due to current conditions, we can’t fund bonuses. Raises will be less than inflation, and we can only promote people when their boss leaves.”

When I told my boss about this, he said the usual friendly words about I need to do what I must and that he was relieved the problem was found. I nearly exploded when I read that and told him that high blood pressure is the symptom, the cause is my workplace. Got no good answer to that. I spoke to someone more senior than me and it seems hopeless to resolve this without leaving, so that's what I'm going to do. Leave, and start my own company.

I can't work for someone who lacks empathy and is dangerous to my life.

I don't think that's going to be less stressful... Good luck though!

I took 4 months off and will be starting a new job in a couple weeks at a company that appears to be well-run and staffed with smart people. Also for significantly more money, but that's just icing.

The market's been extremely hot the past 10 years. Anyone making a good tech salary and investing has done extremely well. I have enough to never work again. I didn't want to leave my team, but at some point your portfolio fluctuates every day by more than your salary and you have to ask yourself what's the point?

I had been working in a game development role, developing gameplay features. The position I moved to is developing service infrastructure for the game developers.

For a bit of history, my software career started at this company developing tools for the customer support department (I actually originally worked in customer support and my development promotion came about because I was developing tools for myself and my teammates). That went on for a number of years and I enjoyed it. I also did a bit of anti-cheating work, which I pushed for, so that was a good time too. Then I was placed onto this game feature role without any say in the matter.

I knew even before this change occurred that I don't care about commercial game development. I have plenty of amateur game development experience, but it's not something I have any interest in doing all day every day, especially when the motivation is commercial rather than artistic, and especially especially when higher-level decision makers relentlessly interfere. What I care about to the extent I can happily do it on a daily basis is making tools that make those around me more effective, pretty much regardless of what they're doing, because that makes the people around me happier.

So when I was asked if I was interested in this role, although I negotiated terms a little bit, basically I realized I had no actual leverage because just the work itself was such an appealing change to me. Incidentally I did get a substantial raise, but I'd made up my mind before that was even presented.

I also had some minor frustrations with the team I left, but I honestly think the team itself was on a promising trajectory, just the larger game development organization they were in (and my new team is outside of) was not. So I suppose in the "People don't quit jobs, they quit managers" frame, I quit the senior leadership of the game.

But while the compensation bump is nice, the thing that got me seeking was the company itself. After an acquisition by VMWare, I watched it deteriorate over a year or two. To make anything happen, you had to basically go into "hero mode" working tons of hours, etc. And then you'd see pretty incompetent managers, the kind that treat engineers like cogs, continue to get promoted. Oh, and add no real clear direction on the products themselves.

So I guess that's "company culture"? I think there's a lot of people in this bucket, where "too much stupid at the current place" plus "lots of opportunity" means it's time to look around.

Happy you found something that works for you, but you're overgeneralizing.

I'm not saying remote/no-remote is right for everyone, just talking about what works for me/the ones close to me, YMMV obviously.

I was so checked out at the end, I bombed a big project and was totally stressed over it the entire time. After that, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision while doing a post-mortem with my boss to resign (probably would have been fired anyways).

Haven't worked since May 2021. Worked on my own project for several months, but the burn out is real and I can't seem to get back to a spot where I am 'excited' about anything let alone coding, even for myself. It has definitely taken its toll on my wife and family, and I have started to look for work again although I know this just leads back to burn out feeling and feeling of failure, which I realize I was struggling with before I resigned.

I haven't been able to complete projects - personal, work, home, coding , non-coding - for a long time now and am struggling to figure out why and how to overcome (at this moment I am procrastinating putting up baseboards in our ALMOST finished basement with reading and replying to HN).

In the end, although it was in essence a selfish move that spans many of the options in the poll, I think I quit my job because mentally I needed a break from what I was doing and really don't want to do it for anyone else ever again. The biggest problem with this is that i waited too long to do this and now i can't find the motivation/drive/will/self-dicsipline to even do it for myself now due to extreme burn out.

Quick question, what would you like your legacy to be? What words do you want people to say when they speak about you and the life you lived?

I moved to the UK for a pretty awesome job. These last few years have led me to re-evaluate my priorities, and I'm moving back home to be closer to family and old friends.

Many of my international colleagues (especially European) have made similar decisions.

In IT if you are a good dev and keep youself up to date, it will be not hard to find a nee job.

But finding a new family will be a lot harder..

- spent 3y at prev job, which is typical interval where 1) learning starts to plateau, and you realize all the unchangeable constraints that block you from delivering things you'd like to deliver; 2) you are in company long enough that you're the reference point for dozens of things and people keep pinging you all the time; and you somehow end up in a box that you can't get out of; at the same time getting recognition/promotion is hard if you're in a large group of folks with similar level of exp and company is not growing

- salary-wise, recent market move has been bonkers, and getting a bump at $prev_job being even a slice of the current market rates was unimaginable.

- there definitely is a FOMO when you see all the new technologies that everyone seemingly embraces while your company does not (TypeScript! Github Actions! Cloudflare workers! and what not), and you start thinking you'll become unemployable soon

- trying to check out a slightly different kind of organization and under a different business model and different scale

- remote: due to covid everyone's been remote and will be for a while, but it was only semi-reflected in the prev company's way of working and it was not clear what will be the way forward; shifting to proper full remote / async gives me some kind of stability in how to think about work and life for a while, and makes it possible to move far away from the office if I decide it's worth it

My new job is fully remote, has very interesting work, and my compensation almost doubled.

I have already referred 4 of my previous colleagues to my current company.

Anyway, before this thing goes live, I see a few managers printing out pages of Excel sheets and arranging them on a conference table to validate the model with literally pencil and paper. They didn't know what a percentile was until I explained it.

I handed in my notice the Monday following that weekend. Sometimes, if you're not trusted to do a good job, it's not worth trying.

The worst part, is also the part that enables this, it is a 100% remote position. Having multiple small children at home can be a challenge (even there is a sitter), as well as spouse that mostly works from home.

Industries being affected differently, working arragements changing, and a big one being that during the pandemic many people were afraid to resign during a time of crisis and held on to jobs that they normally would have gotten rid of sooner.

Then of course you have the resulting inflation and price mismatches in the job markets and it's often easier to switch jobs than to negotiate higher salaries.

I don't think your poll options really allow you to capture the big picture.

Additionally, there was a lot of surveys and manufactured consent internally. It was all so silly.

I resigned in December with no new job lined up. I got tired of crying before my biweekly '1 on 1' meetings with her. It's crazy because before she came, I was doing great. Our previous manager was excellent. She was run off by a toxic co-worker in my department who was the most experienced (He would make her life a living hell through small bits of periodic sabotage).

This was my first job out of college (Information Security Analyst). The work I was doing was extremely tedious and didn't require any skill whatsoever - It was basically data entry & sending emails. I understand that the newbies have to earn their stripes, but I was approaching 2 years with this company, and I felt like I was crippling myself as each day passed. Shouldn't I have been performing risk assessments and reviews, and LEARNING? I have to grow so I can support the company, right?

The rest of my team (with more seniority) were working on projects with a lot of depth. Meanwhile, I'm sending emails to people for 30 hours per week (access reviews performed manually by sending hand crafted AD group reports for a company with 3,000 employees...). My technical skills (Networking, Linux/UNIX, Cybersecurity) were starting to atrophy due to lack of use. The company I worked at payed EXTREMELY WELL, but I looked to the future and didn't like the idea of being handcuffed to this one company due to my lack of growth.

I also believe one of my co-workers was trying to sabotage my work. He would feed me bad information (at critical moments) which would completely derail my project down the line eventually (despite him specializing in his role for 20 years) - I sometimes wonder if he was threatened by me (or maybe I'm just full of myself?).

Either way, it was a great experience for a while. But then it was awful.

Company culture as the #2 answer seems to add weight to this...

To be clear, there's no better way to value your employees than pay them well. But I think people's motivations here are driven by more than just $$$.

Wife has commented many times on the change in my personality, as I'm not ending most days furious and miserable.

Guess that's "Company Culture" for purposes of the poll.

This is assuming I don't even try to adjust my spending, push come to shove. I can probably last up to a year without a job.

I remain employed because frankly otherwise I'd be bored.

Once COVID gets under control, I think I'm going to probably live in another country for at least 3 months.

I think some managers never learnt to correctly judge workload and responsibilities. They we're rewarding those with minor responsibilities for achieving goals and harshly punishing those with huge responsibilities for minor misses.

This inability to judge workload and responsibilities was previously hidden by people's presence in the office giving bad managers a proxy but now the flaws in that management style are being exposed in the most extreme way. Entire teams are disbanding since as soon as one member of an overworked and under-rewarded team leaves the problem for that team is exacerbated.

"Managers don't know if you coded it right, but they sure know if you missed a deadline."

One item missing above is “People”. The people you work with directly on a day to day basis, including of course your own leadership make a huge impact in your work satisfaction.

Return to company I left 15 years ago because they didn't use a particular software I'm in love with (Houdini). Now they do AND I can work remote. I'm in!

I'm sad that it took a pandemic to take stock in my life, and I certainly don't think the family members I've lost were worth anything I may gain, but I'm glad to be where I'm at helping to push us ever forward.

If companies want experienced SWEs like me, you need to offer very part time positions. My maximum commitment is 3 days/week.

Some of the attrition was deferred because they would have left in 2020, but decided to wait.

To be honest, as soon as I realised that I was mentally checked out, the writing was on the wall. Neither a pay rise or a promotion would have kept me there for much longer because I would still have been carrying the legacy around with me.

There was no counter offer when I resigned. I suppose I'm grateful that we skipped the bullshit there.

A buddy had approached me a year or so prior to quitting with an idea and we developed and won an SBIR grant from NASA which ran the second half of 2021. The results weren't quite strong enough for commercialization, in my opinion. So I will be on the market in a month after more studying.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...

Here's an article from 2019 about it, but the situation is just no longer in the conversation because unemployment benefits (which ended ages ago) is an easier target than making it suck less to live here: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/23/721086615/in-this-town-you-ap...

The “working age” band has a lower end, but no upper end, so demographic bulges passing through retirement age produce LFPR drops.

[1] It'll probably end up being 8-9 months

Another reason - job is too easy and undemanding or there just isn't that much to do. I could have coasted and collected a paycheck (I did for a little bit) but I just knew that it's bad for me to stay there long term. I imagine this is some people's dream job though.

And more money of course is a factor. I once left a job that I really enjoyed doing for one that I suspected wouldn't be that great just because I could more than double my salary (it's not that impressive, I was just severely underpaid at the first job).

I decided to open my own company just because there is a horrendous management culture in the North America.

Last company I had worked about three years ago had a really bad management culture where managers were total talentless pricks. Now, that might be okay if compensation was crazy high but company also had below average industry wages.

I also figured out that you can pay people really low wages so long as you act decent towards them. I don’t have real employees at the moment but I got some contractors. I pay them insanely low wages, but I frequently praise them and thank for their work. So far I got really good results with this arrangement.

But people generally leave when the company stops being fun for you . I doubled my income at a job I enjoy after leaving another company and joining a startup and doing some freelancing in crypto / hyperledger software prototyping. I also lucked out since I was hired in 2019 and I paid all of my credit card debt and my investments made my net worth increase to $200k.

I'm personally making the switch to work three days a week and focus on my own project the remaining two.

I am grateful that it was relatively easy to find new fulfilling work. This seems like a good time to look for a job.

-> Leaving because of not learning stuff, Staying because of learning new stuff -> Bad compensation, good/sufficient compensation ..

Although I imagine there could be less positive reasons:

* Few job opportunities / ..

- present job is an unsustainable ~60+/ hours week, new jobs should be 45/50

- new job has higher salary, and better equity package, and company is at an earlier stage with greater prospect for the future and better industry

I am broke so this is risky for me

2. Company culture

Now happily self-employed :)

Demand is high, so workers can have higher expectations. Everyone is moving up or moving out.