2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies
- Reference: 1742819631
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/03/24/2_in_5_techies_quit/
- Source link:
The findings come from a survey of 26,000 plus staff that operate in 35 markets, including 2,548 respondents in tech, and fly in the face of more and more corporations issuing return to office mandates and demanding long working hours.
Vodafone: Be in the office 8 days a month or lose bonuses [1]READ MORE
Amsterdam-based recruitment biz Randstad, which commissioned the research, says 40 percent of the tech people it polled said they resigned due to hardline policies, and 56 percent threatened to seek an alternative if their requests for flexibility were ignored.
Almost three-quarters claim remote work boosts a "sense of community" with colleagues – versus the average of 58 percent across other sectors – and 68 percent say they'd trust their employer more if they were more easy going on hours, the intensity of the work and the place where they can work.
Graig Paglieri, Randstad Digital boss, said the "IT sector has shown that personalized work benefits and flexible options are essential not only for attracting top talent but also for retaining them in competitive markets. Policies should align with organizational, team and individual needs, ensuring a flexible and tailored approach."
[2]
In a separate survey of 1,060 recruiters across 21 markets, some employers seem to be acknowledging requests for flexibility. More than a third say businesses now accommodate different working arrangements and introduced policies related to this in the past year, while 81 percent think this helps create equity at work.
[3]
[4]
The sentiments reflect the findings from Pew Research's American Trends Panel in January, where nearly a half of the 5,395 randomly selected US adults said they'd [5]walk if their bosses told them they could no longer work from home .
Not all tech bosses are listening to their staff, however. [6]Amazon , Meta, [7]Google , Elon Musk's collection of businesses, [8]IBM , [9]Dell , and many others are demanding staff come back into the office.
[10]'Return to Office' declared dead
[11]HR expert says biz leaders scared RTO mandates lead to staff attrition
[12]Hybrid working? Buckle in, there's no turning back as survey takers insist: You can't make us go back
[13]91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship
Reasons given for the shift in the post-pandemic policy to return-to-the-office include better innovation from in-person work, helping younger staff to learn the culture and the job better, and improving productivity.
It all depends in which field of tech someone operates – there is little point, for example, in a software engineer being asked to work on site. There are, however, studies that show [14]productivity does not take a hit from home working, no matter how [15]paranoid the bosses can be.
[16]
As for the demand from Google co-founder Sergei Brin to work [17]60 hours weeks , with at least five of them in the office… the less said about that, the better. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/10/vodafone_be_in_the_office_memo/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z-GPsqSgyqAaltn_yHkz8gAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z-GPsqSgyqAaltn_yHkz8gAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z-GPsqSgyqAaltn_yHkz8gAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/15/shove_your_mandates_people_still/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/20/amazon_mandates_return_to_office/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/wfh_google_clouds_offices_empty/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/11/ibm_software_tells_workers_to/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/dell_sales_staff_full_rto/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/03/return_to_office/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/hr_say_biz_leaders_scared_rto/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/03/hybrid_working_survey/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/25/amazon_staff_return_office/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/02/return_to_office_mandates_do_not_boost_profits/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/microsoft_highlights_productivity_paranoia/
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/cxo&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z-GPsqSgyqAaltn_yHkz8gAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/10/vodafone_be_in_the_office_memo/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
They don't say if the "community" is work colleagues, or friends and neighbours. Both are important.
Re: curious to see how they arrange it so that WFH boosts "a sense of community"
Tech also attracts alot of people with neurodivergent qualities.
Such people don't actually get on well in face-to-face or communal environments, but having the team available to chat online, from their own safe space is more of a feeling of community to them.
As usual, bosses need to look past their own wants and viewpoints.
Re: curious to see how they arrange it so that WFH boosts "a sense of community"
Totally agree, it enables people who would otherwise not have any sense of camaraderie to fit in.
Bearing in mind that FOSS projects work as online communities it seems a very reasonable statement.
Interesting
My employer has my place of work as my address, and and everyone in my team is non local, so getting to an office is not always easy. Likewise the clients. More often we are remote and again, within out company not many on a project can easily head into the same office.
I do miss meeting people or being in an area with others do a similar role as you often hear things and can help or even take a mental notes. Chatting is often done getting drinks - to which there are a lot of those and indeed, wasted time. A drinks run at home maybe to the kitchen or even from a flask - but quick
Of course, no travel so I will work longer at home as I do not spend at least 90mins a day travelling.
I used to think that for juniors it can be hard, especially when learning the ropes, but we have new intakes all the time and we have now got an internal academy going where they are expected to do some training themselves from a vendors training process, some additional training on topics we are setting that are specifically designed to test knowledge areas and also build up an overall project. The later stages involves them doing a lot of collaboration. All the while those of us who are involved are effectlively "on call" for this so if they are stuck, want to run something by us, we are there ready.
We are also now pretty good at working with their different skills levels and keeping them together on their academy journey - some may get more challenging challenges as a side shoot, others more help on specific areas. It is now working well for us, so I am now not so sure I believe that junioprs / graduates benefit as much as I did before
Re: Interesting
Younger people have lived a good part of their lives online and for them an online community is probably natural, while people in upper management belong to an earlier generation and can't get their heads around the concept.
When the next pandemic turns up - I believe there are serious efforts being made in the USA at the moment to allow a new dangerous virus to evolve - we'll be back working from home again anyway, so allowing WFH should be seen as precautionary rather than a privilege.
Reducing Headcount
The org I work for (large global corporate) have had a ‘soft’ mandate to be in the office 3 days per week. Most people do 2 which seems to work well enough, particularly as there’s only desk space for half the people assigned to the office.
They are now moving to a strict minimum of 3 days, no exceptions. Funny how they issued this order the week after the staff survey closed. They have weaponised RTO as a way to get people to leave.
There will be no support from HR. Managers (sorry I’m one :) ) will get zero support or answers to very reasonable questions like, there are not enough desks etc…..They were fully on the WFH bandwagon when they wanted to attract staff. But hey, it’s a corporate so what do you expect.
Re: Reducing Headcount
We had a similar edict recently, despite making a song and dance in the press about how WFH was revolutionary and our staff would be free to work from wherever they chose. For any questions, "speak to your line manager" - as a line manager, we looked around at each other in despair having had zero briefing or materials.
What's galling is that at least 1/3 of the community is exempt for some reason they put in place (maximum travel distance as the crow flies, having an office location that is a virtual "hub" will exempt you). We've been told it's to make us more effective and collaborative, yet my peer who lives 5 miles further west from me, is exempt and apparently capable of doing the same job as me, but remotely. Crucially, if I now move house to become his neighbour, I won't be exempt due to moving after the fact, so he'd wave to me from his window as I headed off to the office to join a Teams call with him.
Re: Reducing Headcount
It seems like the staff need to get together and use the desk shortage to weaponis RTO on their own account.
Quiet quitting
An RTO policy like Amazon simply means that everyone can aggressively quiet quit (potentially while looking for another job). That’s the outcome they didn’t ask for but are likely to get.
Get in for 9; leave at 5x. Leave your laptop at work. After all it’s company policy and you can not do work from home right. How light is your bag now? Don’t signup for BYOB MDM etc. you too can pretend to be what you thought a public sector worker is (public sector work is more Sisyphean)
And if you’re a mangler it’s potentially worse than that; going to the office means you can’t have privacy unless you goto one of the broom closets that they have available for privacy. Bad chairs, no screens etc. because sometimes managers do need to have difficult conversations outside of the hearing of team members. That is a HSE violation waiting to happen with bad backs and all that shit.
No desks
I really wouldn't have a problem (until I quit) just doing absolutely nothing when forced to come into an office that runs out of chairs, desks, and computers.
No I'm not going to come in early to make sure I have a spot. If I show up and don't have a space to work I'm perfectly happy to stand around 8 hours on the clock. I'd be happy to point out I have plenty of space at home to work from.
I musts say that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard though (these places with 'return to office' mandate without enough space for everyone they demand to come in.)
Re: No desks
You just need to get a bigger car and race the other employees to the office - it's just "market forces"
One thing which seems to be missing: the proportions of the 40% who quit with a better job lined up and those who just quit.
Management at those companies is just making excuses for keeping excess management on site and employed. Most of them should be fired as dead weight because they don't know how to manage remote staff. They're micromanaging jerks who need to have people on site so they can hover over them
A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/e07faba7-e63b-46a3-9e89-2d821ce91be9.jpg
Whilst I have not left my company I am moving to a different business area because the one I am in now are just too restrictive when it comes to their location strategy about which teams are in which locations and exactly what days each week colleagues have to be in the office.
My new business area allows me to work from any office and is completely flexible about which days I select in order to meet the 40% office requirement.
We are very specifically not allowed to work from a local office. Has to be 3 days in our ‘main’ office. One of my team lives a few miles from a local office but is forced to travel 1hr 40m each way instead. Even if they’re not meeting anyone. Ridiculous.
We require all our developers to work outside the cloud data center we use.
Since we have global dynamic redundancy zones - this does require quite a lot of travel
Including me
Well, not in the last year, but I certainly did quit a crappy corporate job because of that kind of thing and will never work for a giant evil corporation again.
It used to be that you could at least excuse it with 'well, it's stability', but no longer. Working for small businesses is so much better. Okay, there is the stability issue, and you have to make sure the owner isn't a twat first, or that would be replicating the corporate experience. I've been very happy working for small companies run by actual human beings.
I'm very much in favour of techs working from home, but I'd be curious to see how they arrange it so that WFH boosts "a sense of community". That's the only thing that's missing really and it's hard to replicate.