> Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs.
This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)
Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends.
> Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths
IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
> "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.
Press 'X' to Doubt
I appreciate the alternative perspective and productive-pessimism, but anecdotally in my immediate social circle of engineers, 5 have changed jobs - all for substantial upgrades, and not 1 of them was for a job that required office presence or downgrade in quality of environment.
The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.
Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment).
Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.
> FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries
This has been the case, according to my colleagues who are older, since at least 2003 ;-)
And yet, they still persist on presenting leetcode riddles that have very little relevance to the job being interviewed for.
If they were hurting that much for devs, you'd think they might lower the bar a little by not requiring a years study of leetcode.
If I am running the company, I would MUCH rather operate short-handed than "fix" my recruiting problems by lowering the bar.
You don't have to agree with the bar the companies are using, but that is the bar they have converged on, and one that plenty of people are capable of passing.
Would much rather compete for those people.
This is all contingent on said leetcode riddles actually helping with candidate selection. If they aren't, you've just limited your pool of potential candidates for no reason whatsoever.