Young people proudly announce their resignations on social media

For Gabby Ianniello, it was the blisters of wearing high heels every morning to work at a real estate agency that called for employees to return to the office in the fall. For Giovanna Gonzalez, it was those three little letters, RTO (Recovery Time Objective), from her boss in investment management. For Tiffany Knighten, it was finding out that a teammate’s annual salary was more than $10,000 higher than hers for a similar role.

They were upset, ready to resign. And they wanted their followers on TikTok to know that.

“My mental health welcomed me after I left corporate America,” read the caption to the video Knighten posted in September, where she was seen wearing a hat that said “I hate this here” and dancing to the music of Ariana Grande “Thank U, Next”.

The job-leaving rate in the United States — the percentage of workers who leave jobs voluntarily — is historically high, reaching 3% this fall. It is also exceptionally visible. People are celebrating their layoffs in Instagram videos or “QuitToks”. They’re using Reddit’s R/antiwork forum, whose subscriptions have ballooned this year, to brag about being free of their jobs from 9am to 5pm.

“People would say to me, ‘Sister, I quit my job. Let’s have a drink,'” said Knighten, a 28-year-old black woman. She said that she faced minor assaults constantly at her previous workplace, and left to run her own communications agency, called Brand Curators. “Everyone likes to say with pride that they left what didn’t suit them.”

Even CEOs are adhering to public firing statements. Twitter boss Jack Dorsey shared on his own platform that he was stepping down. “I’m not sure everyone knew, but I resigned from Twitter,” Dorsey wrote, posting a screenshot of an email that ended with “PS, I’m tweeting this email. My only wish is that Twitter Inc. be the company. most transparent in the world. Hi Mom!”

There was a time when publicizing a decision to leave a job could seem inadvisable, or at least inelegant. Professional advisers have traditionally advised their clients not to criticize former employers online. There has always been a group of workers who quit loudly, but recruiters often shunned candidates who publicly disclosed negative experiences in their previous roles. After more than a year of pandemic hardship, racial justice protests, and the personal and social turmoil that followed, some workers are ready to reject outdated professional norms and speak out.

“People are frustrated, exhausted, short-tempered,” said JT O’Donnell, founder of job placement platform Work It Daily. “When people are like that, you see radical reactions. That’s a combat reaction.”

If the quitters think they can fight back against their former employers without fear of alienating potential future employers, maybe they’re right. The supply-and-demand curve in the job market is working in your favor, and employers are becoming less demanding. The percentage of posts on ZipRecruiter that do not require prior experience has jumped to 22.9% this year, from 12.8% in 2020. The percentage that requires a high school diploma has dropped from 11.4% to 8.3%.

Some parts of the United States are seeing significant gaps between job offers and those interested — Nebraska, for example, has 69,000 unfilled jobs and 19,300 people out of work. Experiences that could once harm a job seeker’s prospects, such as taking time off to care for a child, are being forgiven.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and it’s the tightest job market I’ve ever seen,” said Tom Gimbel, director of national placement firm LaSalle Network. “I have clients who are so lacking in workers that they now take on people who had gaps in their curriculum.”

Some personnel managers have come to feel that what they once considered a risky hire—for example, someone who accused a former boss online—may be safer than letting the understaffing linger for too long, resulting in burnout.

“Before, people might have stopped to think about what it would mean to their organizations if a working relationship didn’t end on wonderful terms,” ​​said Melissa Nightingale, co-founder of management firm Raw Signal Group. “Now the big focus of organizations is less on the individual risk of that role and more on the broader risk of a workforce understaffed.”

Executives are also more sympathetic to the resigners in their own ranks. Bosses used to view the pranks as betrayals, like “getting rejected from high school,” according to Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University. Today they understand that employees are restless. Klotz has noticed an increase in employers offering one-year leave to employees who leave, meaning they can decide to come back at any time with the old benefits earned.

But some people aren’t worried about slamming the door on their way out.

Ianniello, 28, has a long list of complaints about his former corporate lifestyle. When I worked as a marketing coordinator in Manhattan, I used to wake up at 4:45 am with the alarm on my cell phone, then brush my hair and take a 45-minute train ride. His days were made up of sad office lunches and sending out standardized emails.

She left in February, with $10,000 in savings, and posted a TikTok over the summer telling her followers that she had found a new sense of happiness. “Right now, resigning is the best thing to do,” said Ianniello, who started a podcast called “Corporate Dismissal.” “It’s almost like the dot.com bubble, when you created your email name and you were one of the first adopters. You guys need to be a part of the Big Resign.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves