Speaker 1: It's Friday, December seventeen. I'm Oscar Ramires from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: We've been seeing a lot of action with the Great Resignation,
Speaker 1: as people quit their jobs for better opportunities. But people
Speaker 1: aren't just leaving their broadcasting it to social media and
Speaker 1: finding a community with others who have done the same. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: career coaches wouldn't recommend speaking ill of former employers online,
Speaker 1: but all the rules have changed. Emma Goldberg, reporter at
Speaker 1: the New York Times, joins us for more. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, Emma, thanks for having me on. You know,
Speaker 1: throughout the pandemic and the latter half, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about the Great Resignation. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: leaving their jobs, moving on. Hopefully it's bigger, bigger and
Speaker 1: better things. But what we're seeing in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases is these big public displays of these resignations, people
Speaker 1: broadcasting that they quit, you know, going out on social
Speaker 1: media and you know, letting everybody know, or you know,
Speaker 1: even videos of how they did it, different things like that.
Speaker 1: I know career coaches probably don't feel the best about
Speaker 1: those tactics. But you know, all the rules have kind
Speaker 1: of changed. So Emma, tell us a little bit about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's a great question. So I think, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: more and more people are starting to pick up on
Speaker 1: the fact that people are leaving their jobs. So the
Speaker 1: quitting rate, which is the percentage of workers who are
Speaker 1: voluntarily leaving their jobs, reached three this fall, which is
Speaker 1: which is really high. There was one and fourteen hospitality workers,
Speaker 1: for example, quit their job in August. But I think
Speaker 1: what's notable about this moment is that it's not just
Speaker 1: at the quitting rate is high. It's also really visible
Speaker 1: because people are blasting it on social media when they
Speaker 1: leave their jobs. To that point, right, uh, Or I
Speaker 1: mentioned the rules have kind of changed. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a lot of what career coaches would probably
Speaker 1: want or really wasn't what was happening a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: you never wanted to disparage the company that you left
Speaker 1: or a former boss or something, only because you know
Speaker 1: it might look bad for the next employer somebody espec
Speaker 1: Now with social media, right, a lot of employers go
Speaker 1: back and check those feeds. You know, if there's kind
Speaker 1: of signs of troublemaking or anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: they might want to steer away from hiring you. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Some of the career coaches that I spoke
Speaker 1: with are pretty weary about this trend because they noted that, um,
Speaker 1: first of all, the labor shortage is not gonna last forever.
Speaker 1: At some point, jobs are going to be in higher
Speaker 1: demands than workers and the others who that. You know,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether workers are in demand or not, bosses
Speaker 1: and hiring managers are still most likely searching people on
Speaker 1: social media before hiring them, and they're often going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit skeptical if they saw that person
Speaker 1: posting about a former employer or a former boss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for them, for the employers you mentioned also to
Speaker 1: you know that it's this tough balance, right, you know,
Speaker 1: do I hire a dicey person maybe, or do I
Speaker 1: risk the burnout of others in the company. And that's
Speaker 1: a key thing, right because these staffing shortages obviously put
Speaker 1: more pressure on the remaining employees. You know, if we
Speaker 1: if we keep that shortage and we keep that pressure
Speaker 1: up on everybody else, is the burnout worse? Rather than
Speaker 1: hiring somebody who might have posted something on social media
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. It's a tough kind of between a
Speaker 1: rock and a hard place for employers. But some of
Speaker 1: the experts that I spoke with said that at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, right now, what they're most worried
Speaker 1: about is these staffing shortages that are going to lead
Speaker 1: to burnout among their employees, and so sometimes they're willing
Speaker 1: to go for those slightly dicier hires, even if it's
Speaker 1: someone who, let's say, posted a TikTok ranting about a
Speaker 1: former employer or former boss or the piece you profiled
Speaker 1: Gabby n l O she left her real estate job.
Speaker 1: I think she posted something to TikTok so her followers
Speaker 1: could see how did her story go? Yeah, Gabby Um
Speaker 1: is a really fun voice in this piece, and she's
Speaker 1: someone who was working this really corporate job. She was
Speaker 1: waking up every morning before five am and then going
Speaker 1: on this commute to the office where she didn't always
Speaker 1: necessarily feel like she was getting um the fulfillment and
Speaker 1: the meaning and the benefits that she wanted. So February
Speaker 1: of the pandemics we quit her job. She had about
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars in savings and then she posted a
Speaker 1: TikTok about it um what I'm calling a quit talk,
Speaker 1: where she talked about why she decided to quit, and
Speaker 1: it really resonated with followers, and she ended up starting
Speaker 1: a podcast called Corporate Quitter that's kind of cheerleading other
Speaker 1: people who are quitting their jobs as well. Did you
Speaker 1: did she get another job? Or is the podcast the
Speaker 1: only thing she does right now? Because the only reason
Speaker 1: why I asked that is, like, you know, then there
Speaker 1: was no danger really in posting that TikTok if she
Speaker 1: changed career course, you know, she's making money elsewhere, so
Speaker 1: it would be interesting to see that part of it.
Speaker 1: I think you're pointing to something really important, which is,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, right now you have you have
Speaker 1: career coaches kind of urging people to make snabby choices.
Speaker 1: But then you have workers who are saying that over
Speaker 1: the past year and a half, they've kind of questioned
Speaker 1: their values, they've questioned what they want out of their
Speaker 1: work and out of their working days, and they've decided
Speaker 1: that they don't want to go back to corporate life.
Speaker 1: So if they're posting something that kind of slams shut
Speaker 1: the door behind them, they're not mad about that, and
Speaker 1: they're saying they've realized that they really want more agency
Speaker 1: and ownership over their careers, and in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases that means creative pursuits where it's actually to your
Speaker 1: benefit to build a brand by posting UM. They worsen
Speaker 1: even about quitting on social media, and to your point,
Speaker 1: you know, they post the stuff people are, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe tuning out some of the career coach guidance, you know,
Speaker 1: the things in that area, and they're finding a community
Speaker 1: on social media. They're finding guidance on social media from
Speaker 1: other people how they didn't and what they're doing next,
Speaker 1: and you know people take those cues and and use
Speaker 1: that advice as well. Yeah, that's exactly right. People are
Speaker 1: giving one another advice about how to quit. I spoke
Speaker 1: with UM a young woman named g G. Gonzalez who
Speaker 1: left her investment management role, and she actually uses her
Speaker 1: TikTok in part to kind of give people advice about
Speaker 1: how they can make similar moves to what she did.
Speaker 1: And I think what's an important point is that for
Speaker 1: all of these people who I ended up speaking with
Speaker 1: for the piece UM, the post that they make about
Speaker 1: quitting are actually a really important part for them of
Speaker 1: building their brands and allowing them to do the kind
Speaker 1: of creative work that they want to do. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of expanding their audience and um and and building
Speaker 1: and amplifying the platform that they have to talk to people.
Speaker 1: And and they're you know, they're owning what it means
Speaker 1: to be a quitter. To them, being a quitter is
Speaker 1: is cool. Emma Goldberg, reporter at the New York Times,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us, Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
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