What's Causing The Great Discontent
The tech industry in India has been turned on its head. Salaries are exploding, people are switching jobs like anything, and CTOs are pulling their hair out. This has been called The Great Resignation.
What’s causing this?
Like with any major social change, there are multiple factors:
Generational change: As someone pointed out on LinkedIn, in the 80s, people were glad to have a job, any job. They accepted whatever conditions came with it, in order to have necessities: a place to stay, a scooter, a TV, etc. Then the tech boom happened in India in the 90s. I remembered my dad complaining that his students who got jobs in tech are traveling by car while he has to take a bus. We started being paid an unimaginable amount of money. My first job in 2007 paid me ₹50,000 a month, which was higher than I could imagine. My mom thought we’ll have a comfortable life if we make ₹10,000 a month. Our horizons expanded from necessities to comforts: a car, a big house, air-conditioning the entire house, a washing machine, a dishwasher, and so on. Indians were no longer content with just getting by. We wanted to live at a level of luxury we could not imagine growing up, which became the new normal. But now, people’s expectations have changed yet again. They’re taking jobs with high incomes and the resulting prosperity as a given, and looking for meaning. And many companies that don’t offer that elusive sense of purpose are seeing attrition.
High expectations: As a result of being influenced by the American “you can do anything!” culture, people are finding the jobs they had earlier to no longer be good enough.
Expecting work to fit into life rather than the other way around: Earlier generations were willing to make sacrifices like working long hours to have a high-paying job. But now expectations have changed. People are defining the life they want and realising that work is just part of it, so work has to fit into life, not the other way around. For example, I want to work part-time, so I’m consulting.
Companies are losing credibility: Earlier generations respected companies: they put them up on a pedestal, and considered it not their position to question companies. But today, companies are losing trust. People are seeing through the facade and realising that companies are just a bunch of people bumbling around, making it up as they go along, rather than being well-run. People are also realising that companies are optimised for their own ends, not for being good places to work for the employee: Too many companies withdraw offers, don’t respond to applicants, keep them waiting for months, lie to them, pay unfairly1, cheat them by not honoring promises made2, offer one-sided terms, don’t respect people’s work-life balance, and view people as resources to be used and optimised rather than as people. People have finally caught on to this and concluded, “If that’s the case, let me optimise for myself, such as jumping whenever someone offers me 30% more.”
Hikes incentivise jumping: Companies give a hike when someone joins, but don’t stop to think that this incentives jumping, which is detrimental to the company. When I ran my startup, I wouldn’t offer hikes, except to people at the lowest salary band. I’d offer them a retention bonus instead, so the candidate would earn more with me than the other job, but he’d have to stay a year to earn it. I’d put this in writing on the company letterhead, say that the retention bonus will be given independent of performance, and sign it, so the candidate knows it’s a firm commitment. I don’t mind paying money, but I didn’t want people coming for the money. Many companies don’t do this. They instead get what they incentivise.
Exposure to different work situations: Many people have started a startup, or worked as a consultant, or worked four days a week. Once you step out from the protective umbrella of a regular job, you’re no longer scared of doing so again, and the old bargain of restrictions in exchange for safety isn’t as tempting anymore.
Quitting instead of resolving problems constructively: Many Indians don’t know how to resolve problems in a positive way. Instead of having an honest heart-to-heart talk with their boss, they complain behind other people’s backs. Or react emotionally. Or bottle it up till they explode in an un-constructive manner. Or react passive-aggressively. They don’t look at their manager as a teammate who wants them to succeed as much as they do. They instead just quit and roll the dice hoping for a better job next time.
In the sense of paying an employee more than another person despite considering the second more valuable, because the second is not a good negotiator, or used to be paid less earlier, etc.
To ensure fairness, managers should stack rank people (to the extent possible) and ensure that nobody higher in the ranking is earning less than anyone lower.
Sometimes these promises are a deliberate lie.