The Number One Reason People Leave Jobs — And It’s Not Money, According To Research
I turned down a $140K role because it reeked of inflexibility.
Julia Malinowska | Canva In January, a recruiter contacted me about a role that paid up to $140,000 a year. Of course, I perked up at that number, but I kept my cool and politely asked her to send me the job description.
My eyes scanned over the corporate-coded buzzwords: “Senior marketing role. Self-starting team leader. Capable of wearing lots of hats. Collaborative, fast-paced environment.Great benefits and unlimited PTO. Deadline-focused schedule. Culture-driven office with a hybrid policy.”
I sighed, clicked back over to LinkedIn, and typed out a message: “Thanks so much for reaching out about this opportunity, but I don’t think I’m the right candidate.”
Could I do that job? Yeah. Did I want to? Absolutely not. At this point in my career as an e-commerce writer, editor, and journalist, I’ve worked at enough startups and major publications to know exactly what those phrases meant.
- Senior role? Your team’s shortcomings are automatically your fault.
- Wearing lots of hats? You’ll handle whatever we throw at you, whether it’s in your job description or not.
- Great benefits and unlimited paid time off? Your stress levels will be through the roof, so get an EKG test on us (but you’d better find coverage if you plan to do it on company time).
- Deadline-focused schedule in a fast-paced environment? You work until you’re done. Also, you’ll never be done. Also, we’ll probably Slack you at 9:30 p.m.
- Culture-driven office with a hybrid policy? We don’t trust you to get your work done anywhere else — but don’t worry; our office has a ping-pong table and granola bars to drive home the fact that we think you’re a child.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a lazy person. Between my two part-time jobs, my multiple freelance clients, my essays, and my upcoming memoir, I get up every morning at 6 (yes, even on weekends) and often find myself working 12-hour days.
According to research, the number one reason people leave jobs isn't money — it's because they want to work on their own terms.
TetianaKtv / Shutterstock
A high salary is not the be-all end-all of job satisfaction.
According to Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, a high salary is not the be-all-end-all of career happiness. Not even close. Author Vanessa Van Edwards writes:
“When you ask managers why most employees leave their jobs, 88 percent of them believe money is at the root of most job turnover. Only 12 percent of employees leave for financial reasons. The other 88 percent boils down to job satisfaction.”
For me and countless other workers, autonomy is the key to job satisfaction — and there's research to prove it. A recent study found that 59% of workers prefer flexibility over a high salary. Roughly 77% would choose a work-from-anywhere policy over a fancy headquarters. As a result, when mandated to work a certain way or in a certain place, employees feel an immediate aversion to their jobs.
No matter how much they’re being paid, adults just want to make their own decisions. Choose when and where they work best. Build strategies that suit their brains. Collaborate when they need to, not because they’re being held hostage in a conference room.
Unfortunately, corporate America isn’t set up for workers to be flexible.
From the moment kids enter a first-grade classroom, they’re taught to follow instructions for eight hours a day, so they can be diligent little workers for someone else’s bottom line.
Thanks to this factory-model system, most employees lack basic autonomy. Out-of-touch CEOs and nitpicky managers call every shot, all with zero regard to people’s motivations and working styles.
As soon as Americans got a taste of autonomy during the Coronavirus outbreak, however, this model stopped working. Yet corporations still couldn’t let go. In an attempt to micromanage employees at home, bosses added dozens of pointless Zoom meetings to their teams’ weekly calendars, but it had the opposite effect: It made workers less productive and more averse to mandates.
Even though most people have begrudgingly returned to the office and studies prove three out of four meetings are a waste of time, this butts-in-seats control tactic hasn’t stopped.
Maybe that’s why companies are hemorrhaging employees.
In the past few years, U.S. businesses saw the highest employee turnover rates in history. Workers quit their jobs in record numbers, and some companies are still struggling to fill roles.
After applying to some open positions, my best friend is getting borderline stalked by recruiters. One left her over a dozen voicemails, even after she formally withdrew her application due to the company’s strict in-person work policy.
We keep joking that she’ll need a restraining order. Surprise, surprise: That job description looked a lot like the one I referenced at the beginning of this article.
I’ve been autonomous for almost a decade. I make my schedule. I avoid any non-essential meetings. I’ve worked from home since 2016, four years before the pandemic made remote jobs somewhat acceptable. Despite companies’ tone-deaf return-to-office mandates, I’ll never go back. Not for any amount of money.
Why? I get to work in loungewear next to my dogs instead of in a loud, open-concept office with security cameras in the breakroom.
I start my shifts at the crack of dawn, before the onslaught of emails, to utilize deep work and leverage my brain’s natural rhythms. I can do a load of laundry in between assignments and schedule a remote therapy session on my lunch break.
I choose to spend my time and money on sleep, sunlight, and home-cooked meals instead of bumper-to-bumper commutes, a wardrobe full of blazers, and breakroom birthday cakes. I’ll gladly take a pay cut if it means being treated like an adult who’s capable of doing my job without a babysitter.
Maria Cassano is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, Bustle, CNN, The Daily Beast, Food & Wine, and Allure, among others. She's in the process of publishing her memoir.
