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I believe there are 2 main reasons why the young professional crowd is staying at each company for only about a year before switching to another company or going back to school.
(1) So much variety in pay and benefits between companies.
For example, when I was a contractor at a big tech company, myself and the other contractors were getting paid 1/2 to 1/3 of what the real employees got paid, for doing the same job. So why would I stay in that job if I could try to get hired at the client company or get hired somewhere else that pays more?
Think Costco versus WalMart, Whole Foods versus Safeway, etc. I could be wrong, but I think that in previous eras there wasn't so much discrepancy in pay and employee satisfaction. If you don't work for one of the notoriously good companies nowadays then you experience a lot of "green pastures" syndrome and want to leave your company very soon.
(2) The internet makes people more aware of their future earnings in their field or at their company.
For example, let's say that you're Joe Schmoe in the 1970s, a reasonably ambition man who got his first accounting job at Company X for $50,000/yr. He has no idea how much room for growth he has, where he's going to be in 5 years. So it's easy for him to go to work 9-5 every day with the hopes of moving up the ladder.
Nowadays, Joe Schmoe just goes on the internet and Googles "accounting salaries" or "Company X salaries" and then he learns that in his field or at his company it'll be hard to crack 6 figures. So he either goes back to school or starts applying at a company where he can make more dough.
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People have always wanted to make more money and improve their financial situation. The difference I see now is lack of patience. Instead of staying 10-15 years working the way up with promotions, people get a job but keep looking for the same work for better pay elsewhere. There's really nothing wrong with that, as long as the person is smart enough to keep contributing to some kind of ongoing retirement funds. All of that hopping means little chance of working long enough at one place to eventually get a decent pension. Unfortunately, most 20-somethings don't tend to worry about things that far in the future.
Few companies are often pensions these days so there is even less incentive to stick around too long. Now that workers have to fund most of their retirements they have to find the highest paying job possible.
I say boredom and the desire to do something different after 5-7 years. The internet has allowed us to see what's possible. Pensions and fringe benefits kept workers chained to the same career field for decades. With nothing tying people to a particular field, going off to "try something different" becomes achievable.
Low pay, lack of quality internal growth opportunities, aka "promotions," and other things also contribute to job hopping. Look at retail. The turnover is astronomical! No loyalty from companies = no loyalty from employees.
In my previous company I saw giys who have been there for 10-13 years. They actually made less than anyone new who was just hired. It actually hurts their careers to stay with a company for more than a few years.
It's not just young people. Professionals in their 30s and 40s aren't staying very long either.
The longer-tenured employees I've worked with usually come across as either miserable, or they have an entitlement mindset and lets everyone else do their work and pick up the slack. One lady has been at my company for 13 years; she always complains to us about how much she hates it and wishes it will go out of business. When I ask her why she still works here, she never has an answer.
When I first started in the workforce my dad was appalled I would move from job to job every few years. It was the only way to get a large bump in pay and a promotion. Companies are no longer to their employees, so employees have no loyalty.
Few companies are often pensions these days so there is even less incentive to stick around too long.
Indeed, I've seen precisely such a trend in the defense industry, which until relatively recently still offered traditional defined-benefit pensions. Look at the big-3 defense contractors: Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop. Lockheed closed their pension (for legacy employees) this year. New-hires haven't been eligible for a while. I remember reading technical-reports from the same person from the same contractor for decades. What changed was the quality of the equations and graphics, as we went from hand-written to typeset to computer-generated. But it was the same author at the same employer. That is increasing rare.
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Originally Posted by Staggerlee666
In my previous company I saw giys who have been there for 10-13 years. ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by sandsthetime
...One lady has been at my company for 13 years; ....
It ceaselessly amuses me to read of testaments how so-and-so with 13 years of employment at one firm, is a "long-term" employee. I was hired at my institution in the early 1990s, and am one of the younger employees. I have a colleague who has been there since the Eisenhower administration; the first Eisenhower administration. Our largest hiring-wave (among remaining employees) was during the Carter administration. These folks remain working, because their Millennial children have boomeranged, or never launched.
There has been a major shift away from employers valuing the people who work for them and offering incentives for them to stay such as a pension, good health insurance, a formal training program, decent raises, etc.
Nowadays, employers pay peanuts for what once would have been solidly middle class jobs (think factory labor) and offer few benefits, don't properly train people, and don't hesitate to toss people to the curb like garbage.
What has resulted is a complete lack of loyalty on both the employer and employee side. They just use each other for as long as they feel, then move on.
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