Slashdot Mirror
More Tech, STEM Workers Voluntarily Quitting Their Jobs (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: New data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests that more tech professionals are voluntarily quitting their jobs. In August, some 507,000 people in Professional and Business Services (which encompasses tech and STEM positions) quit their positions, up from 493,000 in July. It's also a significant increase over August 2014, when 456,000 professionals quit. Voluntary quits could be taken as a sign of a good economy (Dice link), hinting that people feel confident enough about the market to jump to a new position (likely with better pay and benefits), if not strike out on their own as an independent. For tech pros, things are particularly rosy at the moment; according to the BLS, the national unemployment rate among tech pros has hovered at under 3 percent for the past year, although not all segments have equally benefitted from that trend: Programmers, for example, saw their unemployment rate dip precipitously between the first and second quarters of this year, even as joblessness among Web developers, computer support specialists, and network and systems engineers ticked upwards during the same period. If there's one tech segment that hasn't enjoyed economic buoyancy, it's manufacturing, which has suffered from layoffs and steady declines in open positions over the past several quarters.
I have seen ads for jobs as desktop techs, asking for a masters degree in engineering.
Costco starts out at $20.00 an hour. Walmart truck drivers make $82K a year. I see ads for developers, asking for a degree, and five years experience, for $14 an hour. I see ads for interns that require five years experience.
I have seen ads for jobs as desktop techs, asking for a masters degree in engineering.
That should clue you in that the company doesn't want to hire American workers.
Pay us well and treat us well, and we won't keep job-hopping.
People tend to job-hop when pay is rising the fastest. It is during recessions that they hunker down and stay loyal.
To be fair, it's when pay is rising fastest *in other companies* that that people tend to job-hop, yes?
Are we really extrapolating a trend from a single month-to-month increase? Sure, 493,000 professionals quit in July and 507,000 quit in August. That's actually a pretty negligible change. All the more so when you consider that 510,000 quit in June and 516,000 quit in May.
Indeed, from the report itself:
So once again -- lies, damn lies, etc.
Breakfast served all day!
Sometechcompany has contintuity and visibility. The Company writes policy, press releases, public relations statements, etc. So, year after year after year, The Company keeps reiterating how great they are, and how unappreciated they are.
The techs who have worked for The Company in the past and the present have no such outlet. Their reasons for leaving aren't publicized. Two, or six, or twenty people might know your real reasons for leaving, but none of it is publicized. Outside of your immediate freinds and associates, no one knows how shitty The Company has been treating you.
And, it is the job of HR to ensure that your reasons are twisted, perverted, and/or hidden from public view. Often enough, it would cost your freinds and associates their jobs to make any attempt to set the record straight.
So, when all is said and done, The Company just gets away with whatever the hell they please, and you have no recourse other than leaving.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Get off your high horse. I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering just after the Enron crisis unraveled and the dotcom boom went bust. Even though I spent each day applying for every technical role imaginable, I ended up working at Sears for a few dollars over minimum wage. That lasted almost six months until I took a job several states away from my home in Dallas. Many tech workers who are unexpectedly laid off face a unique challenge of being very good at one particular specialty. Even though they can be just as effective with a very different role, employers often seek out a candidate that exactly meets the job specification. So someone with four years experience designing 10kW power supplies will be deemed under qualified or an unfit match for a job requesting five years experience designing 2kw power supplies. A second candidate with ten years experience designing power supplies ranging from 1kW to 10kW would be deemed over qualified. The company then justifies recruiting a candidate from a third world country that will work for whichever wage keeps him employed and allowed to remain in the country. The fact that no one understands his emails, and he has to repeat what he says two or three times before anyone can make out what he's trying to say doesn't seem to matter.
We definitely should bring in talent from around the world, but often times in STEM fields the H-1B visa holders have a very narrow skill set and are expected to work extreme hours for low pay. But it gets the message across and keeps the rest of the STEM workers from demanding too much. Of course when today's technology is made obsolete the H-1B workers are sent home rather than retrained. But by then there are millions trained on the latest trend and they import replacements.