👔 Your Weekly Pitch: Why people are threatening to quit if recalled to the office
After COVID, some think remote work is worth more than the job itself
Written by @alexc_journals, a journalist who also quit her job during COVID
A 6 minute read
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THE LEDE
Rumblings in the recruiter world say employers are having difficulty hiring and retaining talent without offering the opportunity for remote work, if not fully and permanently remote work.
We spoke to the workers willing to flip some tables and quit entirely if they’re made to go back in office.
And boy were there a lot of them.
Names have been changed to protect source anonymity.
BEST PITCH TEASER
Guiding Question
How will people respond if they’re asked to return to the office 5 days a week after COVID?
The Answer
A ton of people say “Hell no. And you couldn’t even pay me to do it.”
The Deep Dive
Rarely in a story do you ever find the perfect interview.
Well. We found him.
Charles, a Senior Technical Recruiter from Atlanta, Georgia, was our inside man on the increasing trend of workers—not just asking, but demanding—remote work as a permanent fixture of their jobs.
“I am regularly connecting with top-notch software engineers… who are looking to leave their current companies almost exclusively because their employers are beginning to recall them back into the office.
Lots of folks have made significant life changes… and don’t see any reason why they should have to come back to an office when it’s been clearly demonstrated they can fulfill all of their professional obligations while working from home.
IMO, we are going to see a serious trend in job seekers moving to companies who have fully embraced remote work, and those not in tune with that are going to face losing significant percentages of their workforce—which will be a huge issue for them, because these are highly skilled workers with skill sets that are not easy to replace.
I can tell you that the market is so extremely hot right now, that I’m turning away clients left and right who aren’t able to cater to [remote work]. Obviously, they can meet a lot of things (strong compensation, unlimited PTO, equity/stock options) but the number one thing is commitment to a remote workforce. If you don’t at least have that, it’s not worth me spending my time on, because even an otherwise competitive offer will get beat out by another company who is willing to commit to work from home for all employees.”
Charles. A Senior Technical Recruiter from Atlanta, GA.
Charles's perspective was echoed by the dozen people we spoke with, all of whom had either already quit their jobs, were about to quit their jobs, or were certain to quit their jobs if they were recalled to the office even a few days a week. Often, not even higher paychecks would make going back into the office worth it, contributing to the trend of a tightening labor market with worker shortages.
“I never want to work an office job again. It would take a fat, fat salary to get me to go to the office every day. I'm talking like 250-300k/year not including bonuses and stock options. I don't need that much more money—I need to save 2 hours a day commuting, I need to get some exercise at lunch, I need to switch my laundry and do my dishes in between meetings, I need to fart in peace, and I like to work in sweatpants.”
Martin. A Cybersecurity Consultant from Philadelphia, PA.
Some people referenced work from home as a way to prioritize their own health, particularly in states with lower vaccination rates.
“[Work from home] provides a guaranteed safe and secure space for me to work… Some employees by choice are not vaccinated, and truthfully despite the company as a whole doing just fine from home for the last year, the fact that we aren’t given an option while many companies are still fully remote through the end of 2021 makes this feel very forced. I started picking up more calls from recruiters than normal and turns out I’m massively underpaid and didn’t know haha so if I could get a raise, and work from home full time, I think that would be the magic combo to write up a resignation”
Michael. A data scientist from North Carolina.
Other employees see permanent remote work as an opportunity to make a positive impact on their larger communities and even engage their environmentalist side and reduce their carbon footprint.
“I believe that leaving companies that prioritize profits over societal well-being, in terms of ecology, mental well-being, health from motor pollution, and hazard from auto-accident is good… I'd say with all of that I think this is probably the best thing that's happened to me in a while... I will not regret leaving the company, especially if its leadership shows such an incapability of fully enabling its workforce to perform at its best because they don’t trust them.”
Alfred. A programmer from Memphis, TN.
One of the underrated benefits of remote work according to our sources was the possibility of self-improvement. With more time at home, people could invest in skillsets they otherwise wouldn’t have the time to, and often these skillsets directly improved their abilities to execute their jobs.
Plus, considering the wave of people willing to leave their jobs for the chance at 100% remote work brings up another angle to this story.
Unionizing.
While clearly informal, this might be the first time in decades we see this kind of employee pressure coming from the bottom up across multiple industries, not just tech.
“I always compare it sort of to these unionizing movements—where all of the workers have decided, well, we need these conditions in order to work. And so management is in a position where they say, well, we either got to fire this whole team, which isn't really possible, or we can just let them do this.
[After quitting] it felt completely different than what I expected. I expected it would be hard and I would feel bad afterward. I would, you know, sulk, I guess for some time, but I felt kind of like… there's this part in the movie Aladdin where at the end he releases the genie and the genie's cuffs come off... And I had a feeling like my soul is healing from being in the corporate workplace… I feel free.”
Jim. A web developer from Iowa.
Free to work on themselves. Free to prioritize their health, their children, their pets.
Now, it’s easy to assume that full work from home culture is only in the interests of the employees, at the detriment of the employer.
But that’s not the case, and employers seem to finally be getting on the bandwagon.
“[Fully remote work is] also infinitely better for the employers as well (even if they can’t see it sometimes) Many companies are looking for very niche combinations of skills, and in the past, were geographically limited to candidates in commuting distance from their office. Now, they have the entire country, or even world, available to them, and that will only make their engineering teams stronger, and therefore give them a better product.
The primary tenet of capitalism is the free movement of labor, and the forced national experiment in working from home during COVID has made that a reality. If any organization isn’t savvy enough to see that, they are going to be doing themselves a massive disservice when it comes to attracting premier talent now and in the future”
Charles. A Senior Technical Recruiter from Atlanta, GA.
News peg
People are beginning to be recalled all over the country to return to their offices on a regular basis and quitting to find remote work is a decision countless people are considering right now. If the responses of our sources (and there were many) are any indication, then we should see mass movement in dozens of industries as people lateral to firms offering full work from home.
This is particularly key because it’s now the most valuable thing a company can offer, sometimes above salary, benefits, bonuses, and equity.
Why this story is worth pursuing
If this “quitting after COVID” wave continues, this will be the biggest cultural workforce change we’ve seen since arguably the information revolution, if not the industrial revolution.
Diverse sources worth interviewing
We found a dozen sources overnight willing to speak candidly with us through Reddit. Don’t be afraid to use forums to find your sources:
Speak with someone inside a recruiting company, particularly a tech company, like Insight Global. They’ll be able to speak to not only the movement of the hiring market but the decisions they see employees making on which jobs to take and what they are weighing when they make those decisions.
PUBLICATIONS TO PITCH TO
The Atlantic, Culture
Narrative long-form is their bread and butter, and this piece is perfect for thoughtful long responses from great characters making some life-changing decisions.
Culture desk contact: culture@theatlantic.com
Vox, The Goods
The Goods is where Vox explores how we inject our culture and psychology into our economic choices. This story is all about our decision-making process and how the way we weigh work is shifting, so it’s perfect for their audience.
Contact: meredith.haggerty@vox.com
Slate, Business
Slate has been covering the culture of work shifting throughout the whole pandemic, and in fact, recently put out a very similar story on how workers would take pay cuts to stay at home. This would make the perfect follow-up piece to pitch.
Business desk contact: jonathan.fischer@slate.com
OTHER PITCHES IN THIS SPACE
Some people want to continue remote work for comfort, but some have made it an irreplaceable part of their lives. What demographics of people are less likely to return to in-office work after COVID? Mothers? Those with elderly parents? Those with new pets? Those who moved to the middle of nowhere where it’s cheaper and they have more space? What does the data say about who is most likely to put up a fight to keep working from home?
If some industries start to keep workers fully remote regularly, like computer programmers, will the average industry pay per worker decrease as an explicit trade-off for that benefit? What do economic experts say, and will this upset traditionally lucrative fields in the tech industry?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
The ethical pitfalls of "Made in the USA"—How California's Garment Worker Protection Act puts pressure on ethical fashion manufacturing
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Remote work is worth a pay cut, workers say
May unemployment report: economy adds 559,000 jobs as unemployment rate drops
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