Why Millennials Are Leaving Six-Figure Tech Jobs

[GigiBronz]

Is this US thing only?

I am still a bit puzzled how people consider 65k-75k per jobs in London or lower outside but I would expect the culture to be a bit more relaxed in some of the places. Better work-life balance.

Most of the places that I've been were a bit more laid back except one (which had overtime at discretion so not actually an issue for me).

[edison]

I think it's happening in the UK too but perhaps less prominent compared to big US tech companies.

The video touches on some of the reasons why, especially work life balance/avoiding burnout and wanting to do something with a greater sense of purpose.

Purpose is becoming the main motivator for Gen Z, whose oldest members are around 25 now. Silicon Valley has always had founders with an inflated sense of purpose that they were doing something good to change the world but the reality is a bit removed from that. The image of big tech has also been tarnished after several scandals involving toxic work cultures.

Another increasing factor is wanting more control of one's working life and wanting to work for oneself.

Still, there are plenty of people from other countries happy to step in to replace them.

[courtg9000]

Bit long this one but worth it!

The video is very US centric but similar exists in the UK. Especially in London.

When I was doing business brokerage and running the business deals magazine I had a lot of readers and potential buyers of lifestyle businesses with budgets of up to £500k and sometimes more who were families (Husband & Wife - mid 30's to early 50's, kids still at home) both in good jobs in London with the likes of Accenture, Deloitte, Credit Suisse, HSBC, BP (£50k+ salaries each), who were looking to get out of this sort of life (also got quite a few contractors in a similar boat). All looking to relocate away from London and ditch their corporate jobs for a better quality of family life.

I actually did some research on the sector. I got quite a good response to some questions I put together. I posted it on my website. It is in the TLDR category though. The short version is 3 pages printed, the long version is 27 pages (not posted, but I have the document somewhere).

If we connected the dots from the most popular answers our buyer in this sector looked like this. They were both aged between 40 and 50 and had a household income of £150-200k or £75-100k each, they were co-habiting. They lived within 50 miles of Central London, worked at Canary Wharf in Professional Services and had manager grade or above jobs. They had 2 kids. They had between 250k and £500k to spend including selling the primary home and clearing primary mortgage. They paid for education and private healthcare. They had 2 cars. They wanted to move to the South West of England. They wanted to change career because of (joint top answer) quality of life and employer related stress.

In some cases we are talking about households with a total income of over £200k gross dropping to £50-60k gross tops.

Any lifestyle business I took on in the South West of England I could have sold 5 or 6 times over! I regularly got 20-30 enquiries for each one most from this sector.

In one particular week back in 2017 I got 100 enquiries from Accenture alone based on the website stats and the visiting network. On another occasion HR from one law firm called me to ask me if I had to talked to any of their staff and wanted to know who. They were of course told where to get off. The website had some visitors from their network and I had "one or two" chats with staff from there.

Having worked with all the examples of firms I give above, they do want their pound of flesh even from the permies.

Around the time of the end of lockdown 1 I got quite a few people asking if it would be possible to combine a WFH role with running a lifestyle business! Of course, my answer was that unless they were very lucky it was very unlikely to be able to pull it off therefore it was a non-starter!

[GigiBronz]

Bit long this one but worth it!

thanks, great contribution.

May I ask how the people did with the businesses? Were they succeed to in running them or sold them on and returned to the previous life?

[Andy2]

one of the persons in the videos says reason for leaving that ' as one project finished another started'
WTF did they expect. Looks to me some people joined tech but were not suited for it.

[courtg9000]

Truth is I don't know for each career changer I had on the books. I had about 250 respondents to my research and I wasn't the only broker available, there are lots of them. There were more than 250 of these people on the books. Its impossible to keep track of everyone as per my last comment on this post


Of those businesses I sold to the "London Career Changers" as far as I am aware those businesses are all with the owners I sold them to. I am still in touch with 1 or 2 and will be visiting one near Metz in France whoose owners have since become good friends when this covid malarkey dies down enough for me to make a trip to France without having to worry about a last minute dash to the Ferry.

When I moved to an advertising and lead checking model exclusively all end-to-end data effectively stopped as I only handled the very front of the deal.

When I shut up shop the database had over 20,000 people on it (a lot of career changers who were looking for various opportunities. A total of 9,000 business opportunities/adverts. I had everything from stock from £1/ unit to a Dubai hotel and resort advertised at £214,000,000 with a lot in between.

[SueEllen]

Found this article about burnout but not tech burnout from a UK perspective on The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-after-burnout

[LondonManc]

Sounds like my situation. As much as I enjoyed aspects of contracting, including the variety of clients, meeting new people, etc, I don't miss living out of a suitcase 4-5 days a week. Happy in a permie job that even when we're back in the office is less than a 15 minute commute door to door. Decent enough salary, good benefits, decent pension, etc. No overtime expected apart from key points of the year around project go-live support for clients, but that's the deal with most places where you're a key resource. Means that I can enjoy life now rather than hoping that I'll live long enough after I've retired and be well enough to fully enjoy the retirement. There were a lot of stressed looking people on CW, propped up by strong coffee and other stimulants probably.

[AtW]

WFH changes all this - those "lifestyle" businesses were hit pretty hard by pandemic and many might just be totally unviable: many of these people might be going back to Deloitte now...

[courtg9000]

WFH changes all this - those "lifestyle" businesses were hit pretty hard by pandemic and many might just be totally unviable: many of these people might be going back to Deloitte now...

I'm not too sure.
Some will have been whacked, true but I think a larger number are coming through it.
I see didn't see any returning stock between March and December. I won't know now of course.
As for going back to Deloitte. I'm not too sure. From my cohort employer related stress was one of key factors behind the exit. Having had the displeasure of contracting for those w******s I can tell you that they dish out "employer" related stress by the bulldozer load.
A small car load as opposed to a coach load me thinks.