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Fudge Sunday - Ramble On

May 29, 2022 by Jay Cuthrell

This week is a quick look a back at the “great resignation”.

Note: After a solid year using Revue for this newsletter, new formats will arrive in the coming weeks (and months) from a new provider after we migrate everything over.

Led Zeppelin - Ramble On (1969)

Getting Informed

It’s a pretty good bet that if you are reading this issue you have a LinkedIn account. So, you’ve probably seen this graphic in your LinkedIn feed appearing more often:

But… why does the cherry fall off?

If not, use faceted search for “starting a new position” sorted by recent dates. See what I mean?

Aside: Why can’t LinkedIn just make this a page in navigation like “/recent-job-changes” or something similar so that I don’t feel like the last one to know? But I digress…

The leaves are falling all around 🎶

For context, a year ago, I tweeted the following stats from my LinkedIn network well before the peak of the “great resignation” meme. My theory was, and continues to be that hiring by the hyperscale cloud service providers was and continues to be about talent sequestration from incumbent Enterprise products, sales, and operations companies.

My peers at hyperscale cloud service providers by 2021

A year ago, 160 of my peers had joined the hyperscale cloud service provider talent pool. This trend was and continues to be supplied most commonly at the expense of the top companies in my LinkedIn network (stack ranked):

Dell Technologies
Cisco
VMware
Red Hat

Today? I’ve watched even more of my LinkedIn network join the various hyperscale cloud service providers.

That talent sequestration model has seen ~24% growth 😳

AWS -> 59 -> 83 = ~40% growth
GCP -> 44 -> 52 = ~18% growth
Azure -> 30 -> 35 = ~16% growth
OCI -> 27 -> 28 = ~4% growth

But let’s widen the aperture for the “great resignation” a bit. After all, not everything is centered on the world of IT.🤓

The time has come to be gone 🎶

As to why this pattern appears in my LinkedIn, that’s unlikely to be a story that would fit in a single newsletter. However, there are some interesting statistics being shared in recent weeks in a variety of forums online.

For example, take a sample from the zeitgeist of tweets for “great resignation” min_faves:1000 sorted by time and see what insights were opined by others in months prior.

Ashley Mayer

@ashleymayer

The Great Resignation is just the tip of a far more interesting iceberg.

12:42 PM - 2 Nov 2021

Breya Johnson

@TheBlackLayers

The moment they framed this pandemic as the “great resignation” i knew where we are now would happen. This framing of some type of leisure unemployment movement as if folks weren’t shifting to caring for family/friends, helping community, losing people, losing their homes, etc.

12:03 PM - 28 Dec 2021

Stacia Levy

@StaciaLevy

@kathies01 @elektra6618 The part of “no reciprocal loyalty” is something younger workers have caught on to.
That knowledge in part drives the Great Resignation.
Good for them for catching on early.
Know your employer is not your friend.
But the catch for them is at-will employment works both ways.

1:21 AM - 19 Jan 2022

Donald Sull