The case for staying put at your current job
A conflicting viewpoint
A few days ago, I wrote a story about why now is a great time to change jobs if you are looking to do so, and 2 qualities you should be displaying to give yourself better odds at getting the one you want.
However now I would like to give you the other side of that argument, for the sake of helping you to make a more informed decision. It seems that in today’s day and age people are very quick to take advice from random people on the internet, without having any idea of how well informed their opinion is and doing little to no research of their own on both sides of an argument.
I believe that as a society we will go much farther when we learn to start formulating our own opinions after doing a little bit of our own research about a subject. Our attention spans have gotten so miniscule though that it makes it tough to do that, even getting this far into this story would be a monumental accomplishment so great job on making it to here!
So now let me present my argument as to why now is a good time to stay at the current job you have.
The first thing you need to understand is what is happening in the broader economy. The reason why this is important is because the state of the economy makes it more or less challenging for businesses to operate, and if it is more challenging and expensive to operate your business then one thing that will take a hit is current and new staffing.
When COVID started, this entity called the Federal Reserve (aka the central bank of the United States) wanted to prop up our economy, and they did so by printing a substantial amount of money in little to no time, and dropping the federal funds rate to 0%. What this meant for businesses, was that money was going to come in fast and cheap. This largely led to the SPAC frenzy we saw last year as there was so much money available, people were willing to throw some at these new companies going public since they saw less risk down the road with the current monetary policies in place.
Fast forward to today and we are now starting to see the effects of all of that money being artificially pumped into the economy. Inflation rates have soared as I’m sure you noticed if you did anything like get gas, groceries, take a trip, literally anything. Because of this, consumer spending is getting much lower in every sector as people decide to focus more on maintaining only the cost of living.
One of the Federal Reserve’s primary objectives is to preserve the value of the dollar. If that fails to happen then we end up like some 3rd world countries where a garbage bag full of paper money is just enough to buy a dinner at a restaurant. They are in the process of doing this by implementing Quantitative tightening, which in a nutshell means they are taking money out of the economy and simultaneously raising the federal funds rate.
So what does this mean for the companies you are trying to get a job at? Well all of a sudden it is becoming a lot more expensive to operate, and you have consumers spending less money on your goods and services. This especially affects companies that rely on debt to keep the ship afloat, as higher interest rates means borrowing money is more expensive (the same logic behind why a 6% interest rate on your mortgage costs you more per month than a 3% rate). As I mentioned earlier a large portion of a company’s budget is its payroll, so they are beginning to dramatically reduce the amount of new hires as well as layoff staff that they do not see as very essential, for one reason or another.
Wouldn’t it suck to quit your job, only to not be able to find another, or worse, get hired then soon after get laid off? This is reason #1 for staying put now.
You also want to consider the current cost of living. It is very expensive to get a new mortgage now, which means it doesn’t make sense for a lot of people to buy a home. But people still need a place to live right? So that means that demand for rent is going to be higher. And with increased demand comes the ability to increase prices and still have people give you their money, so the housing situation seems a little bleak now. The hope is that higher interest rates over a period of time will cool demand off enough to start dropping home prices, which would get more people buying and less renting and hopefully normalize the housing market again.
Food and gas/energy prices are also weighing heavily on consumer’s budgets, so you need to consider being able to pay for that while you are out of work looking for a new job. An extremely wise rule of thumb is to have 3–6 months of living expenses saved up before you do anything drastic like quit your job. Please don’t make the mistake of waking up super motivated to quit one day, doing it, and then having to rack up a bunch of high interest credit card debt just to survive.
So, reason #2, costs of living are very high right now. It won’t be like this forever though, so we just need to ride it out for now.
Finally, it is extremely important to consider your mental well being. Are you ready to take on the stress and potential anxiety of job hunting for an undetermined amount of time? Not only that, are you ready to learn a new system/product, blend into a new culture, and potentially work new hours? And if you have a family, are you ready to expose them to this risk and stress as well?
Thanks to a plethora of reasons over the past few years, stress levels are rapidly rising and don’t seem to be cooling off anytime soon. You need to have the mental fortitude to withstand the ebbs and flows that come from being unemployed in a time of great uncertainty. Is the payoff worth it? More than likely it is, otherwise you wouldn’t be thinking about changing jobs. However you need to understand and accept that there are likely going to be more bad days than good where it feels like not much progress is being made. Accept it as part of the process and keep moving forward.
Reason #3 to stay put, it may be better for you and your family’s mental wellbeing.
I hope this gives you a better set of conclusions to draw from, so that you can come to your own well educated decision. The best way to truly make progress is to educate yourself so that over the long term you can set yourself up in a great position.
If you decide to change jobs I wish you all the best, but I know for sure if you make the proper small daily decisions that over time they will add up to monumental positive changes in your life.
