Feb. 28, 2022
Bassel Alesh landed his dream job right after graduating from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—a hardware engineer at Apple, right in Silicon Valley. Although he was being paid a 6-figure salary, Alesh soon felt trapped. Then he quit.
Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has seen the highest quits rate in over 20 years. In only July, August, and September of last year, 12.7 million people quit their jobs—with a newfound belief that life is too short to stay in an unfulfilling job they weren’t passionate about.
Young people often try multiple occupations before settling on an occupational path, and then continue searching for the right job within that occupation, said Boston University Economics professor Kevin Lang.
“Some people who thought they cared about money will discover that they care less about money than they thought and leave [jobs like] engineering for teaching,” said Lang.
Exploring different options is a normal part of adulthood, but the pandemic has transformed this rite of passage into a more philosophical area of discovery. Work from home and COVID-19 restrictions have made one message all too clear: money isn’t everything.
Positions at tech giants like Apple and Google are some of the most sought after for young people in the industry, but turnover rates are the highest among every other business sector.
“There are reasons that [these types of] jobs are highly compensated,” Lang said. “Some require skills that are difficult or expensive to acquire, while others are unpleasant—many are both.”
Although his job sounded great on paper, Alesh soon found himself unhappy and feeling forced to work on projects he wasn’t passionate about.
“I think the problem is that at a big company, you just feel like a cog in the machine,” said Alesh.
Shivam Parikh, a 23-year-old infrastructure software engineer, echoed the same sentiment about the layers of bureaucracy involved in huge tech companies.
“I would want to be somewhere where not only am I providing value, but I’m also being valued by the team,” said Parikh. “[These types of] companies are not a place to do that. They’re not a place to be challenged.”
Employers seem to be aware that their working conditions fall short of expectation, and they offer bonuses or corporate perks in an attempt to keep employees at their company.
“They do things to keep you there forever,” said Alesh, who was given multiple stocks as an incentive to stay at Apple. But even that wasn’t enough for him to stick around.
According to a study, financial risk-taking tendencies are highest in young adulthood before greatly reducing in later life. The first couple of years after college provide the flexibility to try a career change without the pressure to have a stable career or support a family.
The question comes down to if an individual has enough privilege and finances that they have the ability to pursue a job that really fulfills them, said Boston University psychology professor Catherine Caldwell-Harris
Caldwell-Harris points to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the basis for decisions like Alesh’s—once all basic and psychological needs are met, humans desire self-fulfillment and achievement of their full potential.
“When you’re young, working a corporate job feels like a waste of time,” said Alesh. “People my age feel like in five or 10 years, we’re all going to have commitments in terms of family or whatever, and it makes you realize is this what I want to do, right now?”
Alesh took a look at his senior teammates who had been at the company for ten years and knew that he couldn’t stay at the company any longer.
They were miserable, and if Alesh were to try to guess where he would be five years from now, he believed it was right in front of him.
Caldwell-Harris said people “become chronically unhappy and grumble all the time” over time when they’re stuck in a job they don’t enjoy. “[They will] try to gain the system and do as little as they can on a job because they hate it.”
“It’s really demotivating—you don’t have to do much thinking to figure out where you’re going to be,” said Alesh.
He then took matters into his own hands and created a startup, with the aim of building his own app.
Alesh is following the wave of people quitting their jobs and shifting towards self-employment. Over the course of the pandemic, rates of entrepreneurship have risen, with data finding that toxic work culture was the leading cause of people quitting.
After working on the app for a year and nine months, unemployed, Alesh finally launched Spliti in the App Store. The premise of Spliti is simple but useful—it’s an app where you take a picture of a receipt and it itemizes the order so you can easily split the bill with friends through Venmo.
Although Spliti isn’t making money yet, Alesh is content with his choices.
“I feel a lot more responsible and attached to what [I’m] working on. If I’m not in love or passionate about the products, you know, then at least I would like to have some control or authority,” said Alesh.
Aileen Tran 