Cindy Ngo knows her story isn’t unique. A nurse since 2014, her experience working through the COVID-19 pandemic completely depleted her, she said, and she was burnt out. So in April 2021, she quit.
The stories of what many are calling “The Great Resignation” aren’t hard to find, especially in the Bay Area. In October, 4.2 million Americans quit their jobs, down 2.8% from a record high of 4.4 million in September. There isn’t one reason for their departure — everything from burnout to lack of childcare to a desire for more work flexibility all have been cited in people’s decisions. To better understand these historic numbers, we talked with Bay Area workers about why they decided to quit their jobs in the past two years.
When San Francisco shut down in March 2020, Ngo said she was terrified she would bring the virus home to her partner from her job. Even though she wasn’t working on one of the designated COVID-19 floors of SF General, they were living in a tiny apartment with windows that didn’t even open. Plus, the hospital was understaffed. “We were overworked. Even on my days off, they would beg you to work,” she said. “But I kept saying, ‘I’m not going to leave my job. Everyone is losing their jobs.’”
Meanwhile, she felt isolated from friends and family, many of whom were able to work from home and protect themselves from the virus.
By January 2021, she said she couldn’t take it anymore. She got serious about making a change and started to think about what she loved to do. In the last year, she and her partner had moved out of that small SF apartment and into an Oakland home that Ngo had been really enjoying decorating.
“I just fell in love with design,” she said. “I tried to [work both jobs]. But I just had to rip off that bandaid to pursue a more creative career.”
She quit her job as a nurse in April and decided to create her own business, where she sources her own home products and amplifies the stories of female creatives in the field. “I think a lot of people are resigning because they realize they don’t want to go back into an office,” Ngo said. “…I feel like I have more control over my days.”
For nurses in particular, she thinks many are quitting because they feel like they can’t provide the quality of care they want to when they’re under this amount of stress.
While a pandemic may not sound like a great time to start a new business, more than 4.3 million businesses were created in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — almost 1 million more than in 2019 and a record high. Lifelong San Francisco resident Michelle Mak’s new venture is part of that number. After taking maternity leave, she was about to go back to work as a manager of an ecommerce brand when the pandemic hit in March 2020. Uncertain about the new virus, she was concerned about finding child care for her baby and returning back to work safely.
During her son’s early months, she had found a void in the market for a product she wanted for her baby. While she was still in the hospital, Mak saw nurses track the baby’s feedings and diaper changes on a whiteboard. Mak found printables online, but not the whiteboard she thought would make her life much simpler. She couldn’t believe it didn’t exist — so she decided to take the leap and try to create the product herself.
She didn’t go back to work. “I made a really tough decision to evaluate what’s necessary in my life,” Mak said. “It was a big shift for me to prioritize my personal life over my career. I had this guilt.”
She said her sales are growing, and she’s already starting to design her next product. “It’s still early but I find so much joy in connecting with other moms and living a more fulfilled life,” Mak said. “This is the first time that I feel like I have some kind of success and balance in my life.”
One study from Credit Karma found that half of American workers said the pandemic made them reevaluate their job or career. For San Francisco resident Rohan Kadam, he could no longer tolerate devoting all his time to work. He was a banker at JP Morgan Chase, working in the finance industry since 2011, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to work a 70-hour week before the pandemic hit. He said he had no time or energy to pursue anything outside of his job.
He quit in late 2020 and started a blogging business. “I really enjoyed my corporate career but with the pandemic, I started working from home and that’s when I got some additional time to dig into some passions…I was loving my 9-to-5, but I would always binge-watch success stories on YouTube of people making money online and people living remotely. It really intrigued me.”
He said he learned a lot from how-to videos online and now makes most of his revenue from affiliate marketing and ad networks. He even sold one of the websites he started earlier this year. “The pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for me,” Kadam said. “I hardly got any time before the pandemic to invest my time and energy into things I cared about.”
The best part is he no longer has to “grind 9-to-5,” he said. He has the luxury of time and can travel with his wife. The day we spoke, he was just about to catch a flight.
Not all career shifts are as drastic as quitting your job and starting a company. Jackie McGraw quit her job doing in-house communications for a San Francisco nonprofit in April 2021. She had been ready for something new and she’d been enjoying exploring new cities other than San Francisco during the pandemic. Her lease had ended and she and her partner spent three months trying out different places to live in the U.S. “Remote work opens up more possibilities,” she said. “Even though we came back, we always have that question in the back of our mind about whether we should stay.”
She’s now back in the city and works for a creative communications agency with offices in San Francisco, Salt Lake City and New York City and continues to work mostly remotely. She said she knows a lot of people have switched jobs in the last two years.
The same Credit Karma study found that 41% of “employed respondents are considering leaving their job within the next six months” and an October Joblist survey saw that “58.3% of respondents had left their job in the past six months or were planning to do so in the next six months.”
None of the people we spoke with said they thought the “The Great Resignation” was going to end anytime soon. “I think the pandemic has put into perspective for so many people what your values really are and, at the end of the day, what matters to you,” Ngo said.
