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In Booming Job Market, Workers Are 'Ghosting' Their Employers (washingtonpost.com)
A notorious millennial dating practice is starting to creep into the workplace: ghosting. Employers are noticing with increasing frequency that workers are leaving their jobs by simply not showing up and cutting off contact with their companies [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; syndicated source]. From a report: "A number of contacts said that they had been 'ghosted,' a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact," the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December's Beige Book, which tracks employment trends. National data on economic "ghosting" is lacking. The term, which usually applies to dating, first surfaced in 2016 on Dictionary.com. But companies across the country say silent exits are on the rise. Analysts blame America's increasingly tight labor market. Job openings have surpassed the number of seekers for eight straight months, and the unemployment rate has clung to a 49-year low of 3.7 percent since September. Janitors, baristas, welders, accountants, engineers -- they're all in demand, said Michael Hicks, a labor economist at Ball State University in Indiana. More people may opt to skip tough conversations and slide right into the next thing.
While you may feel like a boss by not giving a notice to your former employer, there's a strong possibility it will come back to bite you in the arse when it's time for references.
Has anything changed from 6 months ago when we saw this story?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Or that new job you're trying to land might try calling your old position and find out you ghosted them when you left. Then the new company will be less likely to hire you.
Okay maybe this is me, but it's completely normal to ask the people interviewing you to hold off on contacting your current employer until a written offer is made. I've never had a company that I went to work for that didn't honor that. What the hell kind of shitty jobs are you thinking folks are going to apply to, because if they trust you that little walking in the door, it's probably best to just walk away anyway.
Additionally, right to work states. Being in a right to work state means the employer or the employee may terminate the position at any time for any reason or no reason at all. So you literally have States that promote ghosting as being completely normal.
> You think that shit does not get around?
It's very easy for a young employee to think that the industry is just an endless field of hot-swappable engineers and developers. Especially in certain markets (SF, Seattle, etc.) I hear there are thousands of nearly-identical openings. Never forget that it's very possible for that list of thousands to go down to a couple hundred, right after a massive tech company dumps 50,000 engineers onto the street in one shot (HP/HPE/CSC is a perfect example, or the mass firings at Microsoft.)
People talk. The industry is smaller than you think. If you're in any sort of specialty that makes you less hot-swappable, the talent pool and list of employers gets smaller. Companies have no-hire lists and acting like a jerk either on your way in or out is a good way to get on them.
I've worked for companies that have given notice to employees that their jobs will be discontinued in n months. Re-orgs and the like. And I've never had a company escort me out on the day I turned in my two-week notice (at least without paying me).
You're right--I've had days when I've come into work and I was laid off. Not a great day, granted. But at least they told me. Yes, the boss came into the conference room and said we were laid off, turned the meeting over to the HR person and walked out.
Ghosting is sort of the equivalent of showing up at the front door and finding the company is no longer there. Or, worse yet, not telling you you're fired and hoping you'll just figure it out.
The companies deserve it.
In the 1944-1974 period, the split between capital and labor was 50:50 (you kept half of the profit from productivity gains from your work).
In the 1974-2018 period, the split between capital and labor was 90:10 (you get 10 cents of the extra dollar profit your employer "earned" from your work). Frequently that was less than increased costs of living for employees.
Ghost away!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most people (80%) are employed by small businesses. That's a statistical fact.
Are you just making up numbers? Just calling it a fact doesn't make it a fact. The Small Business Administration says that small businesses represent 49.2% of employment and 42.9% of payrolls. Do you have a source for your 80% number? It seems like the SBA would have pretty good statistics on something like that.
Enigma