Great Resignation and Programmers. Why companies should care

Great Resignation and Programmers. Why companies should care

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#GreatResignation is one of the boldest movements in the global workforce that is now hitting the industry hard with more people joining suit every day. And believe it or not, most people are very happy about it. Some companies rub it off as entitled millennials and gen-z getting out because they are too lazy to work 9–5 for most days of the week. But that’s just corporate bullshit to get out of taking the blame instead of owning up to their mistakes. The simple fact is that

Corporate greed forced us to work in conditions that people are no longer willing to tolerate.

Tech Industry during the pandemic

If there is one industry that has taken the least hit during the pandemic that is tech well of course only after food and groceries, but the latter is a necessity. Unlike tourism, automobile, or many others who took a major hit in 2020 the tech industry thrived thanks to the Internet. With almost everyone in the world staying indoors for months everything went online including education, shopping, banking, and all these meant more work for the IT industry.

Software engineers around the world worked tirelessly to provide all these online while creating new services and improving existing ones. And network engineers had a hard time preparing the infrastructure to accommodate everything going online. But the majority of work was done remotely which initially was a blessing for many, but later we realized the negative impacts of bringing work home as well.

Programmers were unsung heroes

Of course, Doctors and farmers were the biggest heroes during the pandemic. They protected our lives and put food on our plates when we were sitting in the comfort of our homes and nothing can be compared to that. But the “comfort” that everyone talks about wouldn't have been possible without the programmers who worked day and night to make sure that people’s lives are least disrupted even when they are sitting home.

Kids and teachers could still attend classes from the safety of their homes, thanks to online facilities like google classrooms. Families could stay connected with loved ones at least over video calls thanks to Facetime, Zoom, and many others who stepped up and made the services free. People were entertained with platforms like Netflix, Prime, or even simple multiplayer games like Ludo King which gave people a chance to have fun with people outside the four walls they were confined to. Many people may not think these are important now, but these simple luxuries were an integral part of our daily lives and helped us stay indoors and most importantly stay sane. And needless to say, programmers who wrote billions of lines of code kept these running 24x7.

Great Resignation and Programmers

Remote work was one of the prominent changes that happened during the pandemic. But it has always been there, it’s just that most companies were holding the cards when it came to when an employee could take it. But there are some other important facts that may have led programmers to join the movement and let’s take a look at some.

1. Flexibility

Flexibility was always something that most programmers wanted and many companies hesitated to provide it even when they could. But this was a very crucial factor when the pandemic hit in 2020. Companies that always had work-from-home options benefited from their wise decision to provide flexibility as they had a smooth transition to completely remote work. And companies skeptical about the whole concept had a very hard time adopting changes and many big corporates had to literally force at least half of their employees to the office at least for a few months while everyone was working from home.

Imagine having to go to work in a big office when the roads and foodcourts are empty and many of your friends working in other companies are comfortably working from their homes. This was the first trigger for many people, they started realizing that working for a huge company is not enough. At the end of the day if your company is forcing you to come to the office for a job that can be completed from literally anywhere in the world, then it’s time to reassess your choices and think above the ‘I work at XYZ’ pride. To be precise programmers started looking at more viable options.

2. Work Stress

I have often seen many companies writing “ability to work under pressure” as a requirement for many programming roles and I immediately think to myself “no, I am not applying there no matter how good they are”. If you think about it, every job has certain levels of stress associated with it for 90% of the people, and the rest just manages to stay away from it. But to describe the ability to work under pressure as a condition for a role, and pass it off as a highly positive trait is exactly what’s been wrong with our system for so long. If a company has an environment that requires its employees to work under pressure there is something seriously wrong with the way they operate, and I am glad people are finally realizing it.

Programming is not something to be done under stress, of course, some may disagree with me they like writing code under stress. I am a victim of that too, sometimes I am forced to work close to the deadline that the stress gives me ideas to write some code quickly and efficiently than what I would’ve done if I had ample time. But what many programmers don’t realize is that no matter how efficient it may seem in the beginning, not only is this practice bad for the project but also their mental health. Working under stress leads to compromised quality or simply put more ‘bugs’, than what a normal project should have. And it also leads to sleeplessness, fatigue, and other health issues when done over a prolonged period of time. People are searching for answers to why physically active and healthy people are losing their lives to a heart attack, but what they don’t realize and many doctors stress upon is that stress is one of the most important reasons behind early heart attacks.

All these make a healthy work environment a very important and decisive factor for programmers who are finally realizing that there are many companies out there who put their people first, or at least in a better position than their current employer. More and more programmers are choosing healthy working conditions over high compensation or fancy title at a huge company.

3. Technology

It’s 2021 and technology is all about rapid change, and if there’s something that’s guaranteed not to change over the coming decade in technology it’s ‘change’ itself. Every field requires people to upskill once in a while to keep up with this industry but there’s no other industry like the tech industry that is so unpredictable and vulnerable to change. Right from the day we start writing the first line of code to the day we retire or give up programming it’s a constant race. One that requires us to watch out for new languages, frameworks, operating systems, and whatnot almost every day just so that we are not outdated.

The funny and interesting fact is that there are tech companies who don’t give much importance to this constant upskilling or keeping up with the latest industry tech trends. Companies may have many reasons to do it, but the most prominent one is always cost. The cost of migrating to new technology, cost of training employees in the new tech, or cost of time spent for this training which could otherwise be used to churn in more money-making projects. But what these companies don’t realize is that they’re headed for doomsday just like Blockbuster and Kodak who were victims of not adapting to rapidly changing technologies.

Programmers are now looking at the bigger picture or more precisely starting to care about their own future. Gone are the days when you needed a college degree to become a ‘software engineer’, anyone with a laptop and internet connection can learn even the most advanced concepts without spending a fortune on student loans. This has also led to more skilled programmers than ever entering the industry each year and adding this to the existing problem of evolving tech trends, it’s upskilling yourself or outrunning yourself. And if a company is not giving enough opportunities to learn pick up a new tech or switch to a more relevant one, programmers will now easily choose somewhere they have a better opportunity to learn.

4. Compensation

It may seem like an inevitable cause for resignation for almost everyone in every industry. But there may a particular reason why people are more concerned about compensation more than ever. Even though it was a free world before the pandemic, companies were always taking advantage of programmers and underpaying them. This was more of an issue in developing regions like Asia where many programmers were underpaid, while their employer made dollars to cents for the same work from the clients.

The change to this dynamic was already happening before the pandemic, as more companies started opening up offices directly in these developing countries instead of outsourcing their work to cheap contract companies. But the pandemic and completely remote work boosted the competition even more. Companies started caring even less about hiring people from the same region as their physical offices and rather started hiring highly skilled talents from around the world and offering them better compensation than local markets.

One more important factor that contributed to the compensation race is the rise in the number of successful startups. Corporates are not the only ones with money now, and they are no longer holding the cards too. Startups are getting tons of money from investors to penetrate upcoming business categories which give higher ROI. This gives the smaller companies enough financial leverage to lure in talent by offering a high compensation along with good work culture, perks that matter like parental leaves, mandatory vacations, etc along. And programmers now know that they have a choice rather than having to settle for the occasional free pizza or team lunches!

The movement is real and mostly here to stay

When the pandemic hit us in April 2020 the national unemployment rate in the U.S. soared to a record-breaking 14.8%. Fast forward another year and companies are struggling to keep their workforce together with more people wanting to leave their jobs for better workplaces or a career shift. Some popular surveys by major corporations say this is the result of people being too lazy during the pandemic and not wanting to come back to the office.

What companies need to understand is that this is not a random movement that went viral over TikTok or Instagram and is neither going to die quickly like an online trend. According to a report by Inc.com, 11.5 million workers quit their jobs in April, May, and June of this year. The report also says that half of the workforce with a full-time job is actively looking for a change. All these surveys point to only one thing, and that is the prediction that these numbers are going to rise to much bigger figures by the end of this year.

Well, that’s it for now. While some of the points mentioned here may not be true for every programmer out there, from a general perspective these are some of the factors that I have learned from my own experience working as a programmer/part-time recruiter and also my fellow programmers and managers around the world whom I have worked with.

One last thing I would like to point out is that while the article may seem like attacking corporates, it’s not a 100% generalized statement. Just like every other case there are exceptions where huge companies have transformed themselves from profit-hungry to human-centric. And there are also many smaller companies with toxic work culture who thinks just because they are better than corporates they are doing fine. But the truth is, people are tired of this and realizing that they have options now. I hope the #greatResignation will be an eye-opener for all employers around the world to constantly keep doing better.

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