Slashdot Mirror
The Quitting Economy (aeon.co)
From an essay on Aeon magazing: [...] The CEO of Me, Inc is a job-quitter for a good reason -- the business world has come to realize that market value is the best measure of value. As a consequence, a career means a string of jobs at different companies. So workers respond in kind, thinking about how to shape their career in a world where you can expect so little from employers. In a society where market rules rule, the only way for an employee to know her value is to look for another job and, if she finds one, usually to quit. If you are a white-collar worker, it is simply rational to view yourself first and foremost as a job quitter -- someone who takes a job for a certain amount of time when the best outcome is that you quit for another job (and the worst is that you get laid off). So how does work change when everyone is trying to become a quitter? First of all, in the society of perpetual job searches, different criteria make a job good or not. Good jobs used to be ones with a good salary, benefits, location, hours, boss, co-workers, and a clear path towards promotion. Now, a good job is one that prepares you for your next job, almost always with another company. Your job might be a space to learn skills that you can use in the future. Or, it might be a job with a company that has a good-enough reputation that other companies are keen to hire away its employees. On the other hand, it isn't as good a job if everything you learn there is too specific to that company, if you aren't learning easily transferrable skills. It isn't a good job if it enmeshes you in local regulatory schemes and keeps you tied to a particular location. And it isn't a good job if you have to work such long hours that you never have time to look for the next job. In short, a job becomes a good job if it will lead to another job, likely with another company or organisation. You start choosing a job for how good it will be for you to quit it.
Good jobs used to be ones with a good salary, benefits, location, hours, boss, co-workers, and a clear path towards promotion.
Now, a good job is one that prepares you for your next job, almost always with another company
So what your saying is: Good jobs are now ones with a good salary, benefits, location, hours, boss,co-workers, and that prepares you for your next job either at your current employer or future employer.
This doesn't seem much different to me. Workers are simply taking more responsibility for their career development instead of just taking for granted that their company is doing it for them. Sounds like an all together better situation to me.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The only reason you stay at one job is that you have institutional-specific knowledge of that organization. Some of it technical, some of it social, some of it practical.
The company wants to retain you because the cost of on-boarding people is significant- That is there is ramp-up time to becoming fully productive and it.
Recent technology advancements and social changes have made workers more interchangeable. On-boarding is quicker. Less institutional-specific knowledge is needed. There are fewer reasons in more job situations to keep people on for long careers.
Silicon Valley and and the manufacturing districts in China go further to suggest that people frequently changing jobs brings an enormous benefit as ideas are shared and knowledge cross-pollinates.
Governments and companies should really look in to encouraging easy job mobility.
is when you already have one
People keep saying this but it's not my experience. I don't really know anyone who has this experience, actually. I've done engineering work for decades and I just ignore all this stuff and pretend it doesn't exist, and I find that it doesn't. We have 10, 15, 20 year anniversaries here all the time. ASIC designers that are as old as dirt, software guys that have seen it all, etc. etc. Sure there are business cycles like always, but the gloom and doom seems to be limited in scope as near as I can tell. /shrug
This is similar to why they say a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression is when you lose your job. In general, people in your situation are hardest by layoffs. Everything is well and good in the past X number of recessions you weathered without issue, but all of a sudden you hit the workplace with questionably marketable skills. That certainly isn't the case for everyone, but most people in your situation are in a very risky spot.
Ultimately it is all about risk tolerance. Someone who put 100% of their retirement savings in Amazon over the past 20 years may not see the need to diversify his portfolio. Someone who had 100% of their retirement savings in Enron might understand it better. Someone who worked at one company with non-transferable skills but made it to retirement age without a layoff is like someone who put their full 401k in company stock. It might work out, but it often doesn't.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
your 45-year-old self is one day going to be looking at CVs and put the job-hoppers straight to the bottom of the pile. [...] it's definitely still a factor, particularly for the kinds of employers who actually do try to take care of their staff and support long-term careers.
If the employers really cared for their staff and supported long-term careers, they wouldn't care if the employee was previously a job hopper. They would be providing such a great work environment, pay, etc. that the employees wouldn't want to hop any more.
What you probably meant was employers who enjoy taking advantage of comfortable risk-adverse staff, and in that case I agree they wouldn't want a job hopping employee.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
One thing that has accelerated this trend is the lack of upward mobility many workers find within their company. There is no bonus for being an internal candidate, and in some cases it seems to be a stigma (In one case I know of, a state agency requires extra paperwork if an internal candidate is selected for an open position, to prove they were better qualified). In these cases it's risky to wait years for a possible opening for advancement, better to search around as soon as you feel you are qualified.
The difference between today and 30/40 years ago is that companies are no longer loyal to employees. Hence, the logical step of employees no longer being loyal to companies.
Where I disagree with TFA is in the suggestion that you don't want certain types of experience, and he rattles off quite a bit. Much of which I would say is good experience and can look good on a resume as long as you were successful in that job.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
people are social animals. Stagnant wages mean people aren't changing jobs (and moving, don't forget the moving) to get ahead, they're doing it to keep up. Meanwhile social ties are breaking down as a result of all this moving around. As an added bonus it makes Unionization (and it's best buddy Collective Bargaining) damn near impossible.
Like the 'Sharing' economy the 'Quitting' economy isn't a win for workers. It's a bug, not a feature.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I started with Data General in January of 1977. Entry-level depot-tech repairing CPU boards by gate-ganging on an extender board. Within a year, I was taken on by Field Service because of my roaring success at the depot. Sure enough, I was quickly being sent to the worst on-going systems problems that no one else could seem to fix around the Southeast and got rave reviews. Each year, my manager would give me "the maximum raise allowed by company policy." About 3%. Aside from the jump in going to Field Service from the depot, that was it. One of our resellers decided to start up his own FS operation and asked me how much I was making at DG, so I told him and he laughed and said "Gerry, you're being robbed. I'll start you at double what you're making now.". OK, says I. When I handed my manager my resignation letter, he was shocked and wanted to know why I was leaving, so I told him about the offer to double my salary. He said: "Oh - no problem. We'll match that! You don't have to leave." To which I replied: "No dice! DG deliberately kept me working for MUCH less than I was worth and NOW they're willing to step up only because I got a better offer? Screw that! DG could have treated me right and I would never be tempted to even listen to another offer. What happens 2, 3, 5 years from now? Do I need to lie to another company to get an offer letter to wave in your face to pay me right? No - y'all don't really care about me so I don't care about you."
A lot of people quit because they're treated like shit. If companies fix that, they'll hold onto people better.
There's little reason for me to deal with corporate BS and micromanagement if I can make slightly less doing a much simpler task. I won't work more than 40 hours a week, and it's none of my employer's business what I do in my spare time.
I'd love to work for a place where I can build my skills and get a work/life balance. I'll invest in my employer as much as they invest in me. The sad fact is employers want top skills with shit pay, shit benefits, and shit treatment.
"Indeed. Churn is good. Job hopping employees bring good ideas and new perspectives."
lol It takes at least a year to begin to be competent in a new environment, another 3-4 to actually know which way the wind blows. With each employee who leaves the house knowledge gaps grow and grow. Sure, lots of change, most of it to solve problems you don't have with newer and buggier solutions while the legacy solutions nobody knows about occupy that server that everyone is afraid to admit they don't know the purpose of and which still does two or three things magically... a little churn later nobody will even know those get done at all. As fewer and fewer people have ever narrower understanding of your org all the while it still growing you'll eventually become crippled to the point where nobody can effect any sort of change because nobody knows enough about the environment and your bloated inefficient organization will be replaced by a startup.
Or, you could toss out agism and actually retain competent employees who already know your organization and grew with that infrastructure and the startup can be crushed under your weight and momentum.
It takes two years total to be "found out" as a fraud and terminated. It also takes about those same two years for good employees to excel. Exceptional people in either extreme are faster.
For me, when I see people that jump jobs every 18-24 months, I see people I don't want to waste my energy on; people spending 4+ years on a job are more interesting. Industries vary, but constant job hopping is a turn off.
If you are really good, after ~10 years you should likely be self-employed.