> I am almost certain it can be explained by people being worried in 2020 so much that they sticked to whatever job they had.
I think that’s a major contributor. Anecdotally, I think burn out is another factor. Many of my co workers left, not because they would have left in 2020 anyway, but because stress and workload increased significantly. Even when the overall workload didn’t increase, many of my coworkers (including myself) were glued to our screens - working non stop into the evening, with no sense of boundaries. And for many of us, work life balance was already whack. COVID WFH just pushed it off a cliff.
I’m highly paid and enjoy the nature of my work, but every couple weeks I think about resigning. Honestly, I’m tired. I am highly paid, privileged, and have a wonderful boss, but sometimes I feel like a cog in a machine. My boss cares about me but my company just sees me as a replaceable resource. And that’s not to disparage my employer. It’s just the reality of working in corporate America.
> It’s just the reality of working in corporate America.
I think it's just the reality of working for someone else, and the longer you do it the higher the chance of
> I feel like a cog in a machine
becomes. There's a lot that comes with getting older, such as hindsight. Lots of things felt different when I was first experiencing them, vs after 40 (we'll say) years of it. You see things differently, because you know more through direct experience that can't be taught.
Have you considered exploiting work-from-home by outsourcing your job (not necessarily overseas, but to another eager body that you're able to vet face-to-face)? If you're replaceable to your company and you can find a replacement more easily and competently than your employer can—something that has to be true if the truisms that most of HN accepts are actually sound—why not replace yourself and benefit from it at the same time by skimming off the top?
We had some 'new colleagues' try this in the past months; the problem is, in a team setting, it is incredibly hard to pull off depending on your work. These were (we parted ways obviously) developers and in a team setting, you, as the fraudster, would need to be on top and deep into the details of everything your 'staff' delivers. When we pop on zoom to talk about work, you cannot come across as not knowing, intimately, what you did. And that is where it crashes; you will be busy keeping up reading chats between your 'staff' and your 'colleagues' and reviewing source and doing calls. You'll be defending mistakes your staff made as if they are your own etc. If you survive longer than a few weeks of not getting caught, I think this is a good way to burn out fast. Of course if you tell your company, you are going to create a small new consultancy outfit and they can hire this company from now to do your work and your employer agrees, that is another and quite a good story. That is how many start out. And then it is expected that you make profit on staff as that is suddenly your job.
I think that’s a major contributor. Anecdotally, I think burn out is another factor. Many of my co workers left, not because they would have left in 2020 anyway, but because stress and workload increased significantly. Even when the overall workload didn’t increase, many of my coworkers (including myself) were glued to our screens - working non stop into the evening, with no sense of boundaries. And for many of us, work life balance was already whack. COVID WFH just pushed it off a cliff.
I’m highly paid and enjoy the nature of my work, but every couple weeks I think about resigning. Honestly, I’m tired. I am highly paid, privileged, and have a wonderful boss, but sometimes I feel like a cog in a machine. My boss cares about me but my company just sees me as a replaceable resource. And that’s not to disparage my employer. It’s just the reality of working in corporate America.