In November 2021, as many as 4 and a half million people in America decided to leave their jobs or not to return after companies had called them back to the office. A phenomenon that continued to manifest itself also in the following month and which was immediately defined by the term "Great Dismission". For Americans what happens to them is always "Great". And how could it be otherwise? In Europe, where we are smaller, we are witnessing a very attenuated and contained form of this phenomenon. But it's here too. We ourselves experience it in our work and social relationships.
It is interesting to understand what drives some workers, who clearly can afford it, to leave secure, well-paid jobs with excellent career prospects. It is undoubtedly changing the culture of work and the way people evaluate work in relation to their life project.
Work has always been central to the life of people and nations, even founding. For Ricardo and Marx the only thing that creates value (not just economic, for the latter) is work. For Keynes, the ideal condition of a community is full employment, which all modern states pursue. If anyone was lucky enough to follow Home, you will clearly see that Nazism began to enter people's heads when the government in Berlin began to create jobs at a dizzying rate.
In the women's movement, access and equality to work has always been the number one priority. The cases referred to in the "New York Times" report, which we publish below in translation, are all cases of young women who have achieved a good job position in the "old" economy.
The experience of the pandemic convinced them to radically reconsider their expectations and gave them motivation. In this sense, the pandemic is truly a great event, a watershed. Perhaps its constructive side lies here if we see it in a dialectical context.
But who knows? One thing, however, is certain: the culture of work has changed after the pandemic forced everyone into a forced break which gave rise to many, too many thoughts. Luckily some of these are about to get better.
UNUSUAL CELEBRATIONS
For Gabby Ianniello, it was the blisters of the stilettos she wore to her job at a real estate agency that called her back to the office last fall. For Giovanna Gonzalez, it was those three little letters, RTO (Return to Office), from her investment management boss.
For Tiffany Knighten, it was discovering that a colleague's annual salary was more than $10.000 more than hers for a position of the same level.
They were fed up. They were ready to resign. And they wanted their TikTok followers to know right away.
“My mental health smiles back at me after leaving Corporate America,” reads the caption of the video Ms. Knighten posted in September 2021. She wore a hat that read “I hate this place” on it and we see her dancing to the beat. of "Thank U, Next" by Ariana Grande.
The attrition rate in America – that is, the percentage of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs – is historically high, but in the fall of 2021 it hit 3%. And you can see it well. People are celebrating their resignations in Instagram reels or “QuitToks.”
Many turn to the Reddit forum R/antiwork, where signups have soared. They gloat about being freed from their 9-to-5 job. They are tweeting screenshots of messages to their bosses boldly declaring their resignation.
“People keep telling me, 'Sister, I quit my job. Let's go get a drink,” says Ms. Knighten, a 28-year-old black woman who says she faced constant harassment at the workplace she left before going on her own with HER communications agency called Brand Curators. “Everyone is convinced and proud to say that they gave up what was not satisfying them”.
A LOUD OUTING
Executives are also joining in the public cheer over his resignation.
The head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, shared the announcement of his resignation on his platform at the end of 2022. “I don't know if everyone knows this, but I've resigned from Twitter,” Mr. Dorsey wrote, posting a screenshot of an email that concluded: “PS: I'm tweeting this email. My only wish is that Twitter Inc is the most transparent company in the world. Hello Mom!" Superb hello mom!
Once sharing the decision to leave a job was not advisable, or at least impolite. Career coaches typically advised their clients against disparaging former employers online. Recruiters often raised eyebrows at candidates who wanted to publicize negative experiences in their previous roles.
But after more than a year of pandemic ordeal, civil rights protests, and all the personal and social turmoil that followed these events, some workers are ready to reject stale occupational norms and vent their dissatisfaction.
“People are frustrated, exhausted, running wild,” said JT O'Donnell, founder of coaching platform Work It Daily. “When people are enraged, you see fight-or-flight responses. This is a struggle response."
THE BALANCE OF WORK
If outgoing workers think they can punch their old bosses without fear of alienating potential new employers, they might be right to do so. The labor market supply-demand curve is turning in their favor and employers are softening.
On ZipRecruiter, the supply of jobs with "no previous experience" jumped in 2021 to 22,9% from 12,8% in 2020. The share requiring a degree instead dropped to 8,3 from 11,4 for hundred.
In some parts of the United States, there are significant gaps between job offers and job seekers. Nebraska, for example, has 69.000 vacant positions and 19.300 unemployed people. He choices that once might have hurt a job seeker's prospects, such as taking time off to care for their children, are no longer a problem today.
"I've been in this job for 25 years and this is the tightest job market I've ever seen," said Tom Gimbel, head of LaSalle Network, a nationwide recruiting firm. “I have clients who are in such need of people that now they look at everyone's resumes”.
A NEW CULTURE OF WORK
Some hiring managers have gone so far as to take what they previously considered a risky step – such as hiring someone who criticized a former CEO online. The rationale is to take it anyway, rather than leave the position vacant for too long, possibly resulting in staff burnout.
“In the past there would have been downtime in the organization if a business relationship didn't end on amicable terms,” says Melissa Nightingale, co-founder of Raw Signal Group, a management education company. “Now the big focus for organizations is less on risk to the individual job and more on risk to the workforce.”
Executives are more understanding of layoffs within their own ranks.
Bosses used to see departures as a betrayal, like "getting dumped in high school," according to Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University. Now, they understand that employees are restless. Klotz noted that there has been an increase in the number of employers offering a year's leave to quitting workers, meaning that resigners can choose to return at any time without losing their previous benefits.
But some workers aren't worried about slamming the door behind them when they leave.
A NEW BEGINNING
Ms. Ianniello, 28, has a long cahiers de doléance regarding the style of her work history. When she worked as a marketing activity coordinator in Manhattan, she'd wake up at 4:45am to her iPhone alarm saying “you did it, baby,” then fix her hair before hitting the road of 45 minutes. Her days were made up of sad lunches at her desk and the hunt for “the latest e-mail”.
In February 2021, with $10.000 in savings, he put an end to it. In July, he posted a TikTok informing his followers that he had found a new sense of bliss. Ianniello, who also starts a podcast called Corporate Quitter, said:
“It's almost like the dot-com bubble, when you created your account on the American Online (AOL) instant messenger and were an early adopter. With the same sentiment one becomes part of the Great Dismissal".
Some career coaches sweat a cold in the rush to go public with resignation stories. Many have noticed that HR managers, even desperate ones, seek out candidates on social media and regard posts about former employers as anathema. Others have noted that the current labor shortage, with the workforce declining by around 3 million people, will not be permanent and that at some point, there will be more jobs available than workers.
A NEW WAY OF LOOKING FOR WORK
“Those kinds of things come and go,” says Ms. O'Donnell, adding, however, that she is alarmed by some egregious violations of workplace rules: there are people who leave their jobs without even bothering to give two weeks notice , as it should be: “There are some people who disappear. They just never come back. They don't answer any phone calls."
Workers seem to care less and less about the advice of career coaches: they are looking elsewhere for guidance, especially in online communities. TikTok has hundreds of videos with the hashtag #quitmyjob, including some that purport to give moral support to people considering quitting.
Ms. Gonzalez, 32, who left her investment management role in Phoenix in June 2021, said she had been hesitant to go public about her experience because she didn't want former colleagues to feel judged by viewing the video. But she also thought her followers might feel inspired by her experience of her being that of a first-generation American she judiciously saved up $20.000 to afford to leave a secure position. .
“I feel like Kourtney Kardashian but I need some time off the hamster wheel to focus on myself,” Ms Gonzalez told followers on her TikTok account, adding: “I am sharing this with you guys not to brag , but to show you that this is possible”.
And concluded "It's decades of motivational posters, but in reverse: Anyone can be a quitter" (there are decades of motivational posters, but in reverse: anyone can decide to quit).
And so it is.
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From: Emma Goldberg, Public Displays of Resignation: Saying 'I Quit' Loud and Proud, “The New York Times,” Dec. 4, 2021
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Emma Goldberg covers the future of work for The New York Times. Before joining the editorial team of Business, you served on the editorial board of the newspaper. She has received many awards for her work including: the Newswomen's Club of New York's Best New Journalist Award, the New York Press Club's Nellie Bly Award and the Sidney Hillman Foundation's Award.
