My god, man. I think we could have a much more fruitful conversation right here on Hubski considering that myself, c_hawkthorne, steve, goobster, NikolaiFyodorov, WanderingEng, and viceroy have recently transitioned jobs, back to school, or actively interviewing elsewhere, all within recent months. That’s like half of the active user base on Hubski.
On top of that, my wife resigned from her teaching job in early 2021 due to a tragic personal event. She’s back out there looking at making up to $10k more working for an educational staffing company — fully remote. What a great labor market for job seekers.
I took my drug test Tuesday! I should get the written offer once that and the background check go through. I fit what the article is talking about: I'm in the 30-45 group, and my job and experience is probably sufficiently "tech." I am deeply curious what the response will be when I resign. I personally think they're screwed. Not "collapse of the company" screwed but more "will need to contract out at a much higher cost as well as rehire the position to get less work done" kind of screwed. They've been trying to cut budget, and someone is going to have to go ask for more money during a time when they're being told they'll be receiving less. If I was a bookie I'd give strong odds that my department VP (who I know fairly well; we both ride bikes, and he gave me swim advice years ago) will call me, and pretty good odds that his executive vice president boss (who I know well professionally) will also call. A lawyer friend's office buddy is in the same place as me with a verbal offer and just waiting for the written one.
I've been subtly moving more of my responsibilities off onto other departments. For example, our hardware needs professional installation. So instead of writing the Installation & Training Plan myself for each bid, I've asked the Installation Team to provide the plan and a description of their process. And just today, I reviewed a piece of software that can strip out all the list of Requirements in these bid docs, and creates an Excel matrix. So I can hand that to the primary salesperson for the account, and say, "Answer these questions for the bid, and show which product meets each requirement." That's 90% of the work off my shoulders. So when I leave... maybe the company will be in a better place...? Distribute the workload across the full sales and training teams, and then they send their final docs to the InDesign guy in Marketing to do the doc layout... and then the loss of me and my skills is less of an impact on the company overall. Makes me feel better about leaving. Now I just need to figure out if I retire, or not. And THAT'S going to be crazy to consider...
I've been trying to hand more things off or at least cross train a bit, but people keep coming to me with the old problems because they know I'll give them a straight, clear answer they can act on rather than an ambiguous response that doesn't address their need. My frustration is we have a major change being pushed on us, and after a year plus of gaslighting me over the problem and solutions it's all pushed on me to deal with. I can do it, or more accurately I could have done it if given the resources and support a year ago. And the flip side is I don't think anyone else can do it. I'm usually not so self confident, but it's a problem that requires a certain creativity in engineering not many have. It's a problem that needs to be worked from both ends. Others could drive down the technical challenge but end up in a dead end. And others know what the solution looks like but have no ability to create it. Marrying the two together is harder, and it's what they'll struggle with without me. I've been here seventeen years. I figure if I can get the same run in the next company I can retire then.
My history is a long series of 2-3 year stints, until recently. My previous job I was at for 4 years, and this one is coming up on 6. I'd hoped to ride this out for the next 10 years or so, and then retire early. But... yeah, that's not gonna happen. I've been here seventeen years. I figure if I can get the same run in the next company I can retire then.
And that's step 1! Not "who do we need to ensure we keep," and not "are people unhappy!"
My company - and our parent company - engage in this quarterly employee satisfaction surveys, which are anonymous, and ask actually important questions about the job and work environment. Because... Three years ago, it surfaced at an all-company meeting that employees were not happy, and were scattered and had no specific focus. The company meeting kinda derailed into a discussion about employee happiness. My contribution was, "What do we do? Who do we serve? Where is our North Star that guides us in the right direction, when we have a question about which road to take?" The CEO grabbed onto that idea of our "North Star", and ran with it. The entire company basically stopped for about 2 months as we brought in outside facilitators to drive brainstorming and discussion sessions around employee happiness, the direction the company was going, and what our "North Star" should be. Those results were codified in TWO WEEKS into a series of actionable items that the whole company voted on, and ratified by like a 94% margin. So in one quarter, the company came up with new vision and mission statements, a set of 6 core principles that defined how we do business and who we do it for, and revamped the break areas, and all of the cubicles across the company (400 employees). It was the first time in my 35 years of working that I have seen a company take employee feedback to heart, and make meaningful - sweeping! - changes across the board. Every year we place in the top handful of "Best Places to Work in Washington State", AND our work vibe and mojo has extended all the way up to our parent corporation, which is a 150-year old German company. Our CEO now sits on the Board for the parent company. (Partially due to the types of products we sell, and how we sell them, but also as a leader in corporate culture.) Pretty cool, overall. But I'm still leaving.