Tech Workers are NOT Quitting. They are Starting Up.

Two articles this week attempt to demystify the myth.

In The Economist, the phenomenon is explained thus:

The term is elastic, but in essence it makes the proposition that the pandemic has provoked a cultural shift in which workers reassess their priorities. People in low-status jobs will no longer put up with bad pay or poor conditions, while white-collar types scoff at the idea of working long hours. Some people have become lazier or feel more entitled; others want to try something new, or desire money less because they have come to appreciate the joys of a simpler life. This is, supposedly, leading to a tsunami of resignations and dropouts. There is just one catch: the theory has little hard evidence to support it.

And The Atlantic provides further analysis thus:

The great majority of this economy’s “quitters,” in the permanent sense of the word, are seniors. But they quit a while ago, and calling their decisions “resignations” is sort of weird. When a 70-year-old leaves a business she’s worked at for three decades, we don’t throw her a big resignation party. We throw her a retirement party. The pandemic economy—with its health risk of in-person work for the elderly, its economic shocks, and maybe even its rise in asset prices and savings rates—has produced a large number of early retirees.

The Great Resignation isn’t really about burnout. And it’s not really about what most people think of as resignations. To put it as concisely as possible: The Great Resignation is mostly a dynamic “free agency” period for low-income workers switching jobs to make more money, plus a moderate surge of early retirements in a pandemic.

In my world of high tech, however, a more interesting phenomenon is taking shape: tech workers are holding on to their jobs and starting companies on the side.

We recently ran a poll that speaks volumes.

The tech startup world has always been ambivalent about startups founded by part-timers. The refrain goes: You’re not really serious unless you quit and jump in with both feet.

I have never believed in this nonsense. And in 1Mby1M, we have always supported entrepreneurs who bootstrap their ventures with a paycheck.

It seems, the world is now catching up with us!

Related: 12 Udemy Courses on How To Build a Startup While Working Full Time

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash