More top executives walk off the job, as quick quitting by VPs rises 13%

What decisions have the biggest impact on our careers? It’s easy to chat about the thrill of finding great pathways that click for us. But today let’s pull the curtain back on a topic that’s a lot rawer — and just as vital: the importance of knowing when to quit.

“Toxic work environments are one of those taboo topics that people don’t like to talk about,” says leadership coach Chelsea Jay. “If you are in fear, or depressed, or keep counting your sick days and vacation days, it’s time for you to go.”

Last month, my colleague Taylor Borden shared LinkedIn data revealing workers’ growing refusal to suffer quietly in such workplace mismatches. Now, a deeper look into the data shows that impatience is rising especially quickly among high-level bosses. 

In economists’ terms, we’re talking about the “short tenure rate” — when people leave a job after working in that role for less than a year. For the rest of us, the label that sticks is “quick quitting.” 

Either way, as the chart below shows, such career U-turns aren’t limited to non-management employees, who are likely to be lower paid, earlier in their careers, and less certain about what kind of work they want. Instead, it’s people in more senior roles — all the way up to vice president — who are increasingly saying: “I’m outta here.” 

It’s important to note that in absolute terms, quick quitting still remains most common among entry-level workers. After all, they’re more likely to be in their 20s, when rapid switches among jobs have always been most common. They may also be more likely to have been hired hastily, perhaps after just one interview. That increases the odds of a not-so-great fit between the candidate, the employer’s culture, and the actual nature of the job. 

Still, when one focuses on the areas of greatest change in long-time trends, the increasing inclination of managers and executives to make career U-turns is the transformation that demands the most attention.

If we look at the workforce patterns over the past 15 months, the first notable period is mid-2021. At first, short-tenure moments rose at about the same tempo for entry-level workers, more senior colleagues, managers, directors and executives at the vice-president level.

Then, around September 2021, everything started to diverge. The year-over-year change in entry-level workers’ rate of quick quitting stabilized at about 0% to 5%. Managers’ rate of change spiked as high as 20% in February 2022, before settling in about 11% this past August.

For executives at the vice president level, early 2022’s rise in quick-quitting rates fluctuated between about 8% and 16%, eventually settling at 13% for August.

One likely factor contributing to this change: hiring processes in 2021 may have been unusually ragged. Even as many parts of the country relaxed COVID safety protocols to some extent, job interviews via video calls remained common. Without an ability to walk the grounds or to get to know potential new colleagues in person, fresh managerial hires may have found themselves in new settings that just weren’t what they expected at all.

Another important factor: high levels of stress in some industries that were rocked hard by COVID-related disruptions. Turnover among hospital chief executives in the past year, for example, has been so rapid that it’s been featured in multiple trade-publication articles. 

Farther down the organization chart, there have been wide reports of stress and dissatisfaction among frontline managers. In many settings, they’ve been squeezed between the demands of top executives wanting to drive change in a hurry — and the family stresses or mental-wellbeing challenges that burden their subordinates every day.

In terms of generations, the highest absolute rates of quick quitting, not surprisingly, have consistently been found for the past few years in work’s youngest cohort, Gen Z (born in 1997 or later).

But if one focuses instead on each generation’s year-to-year trends, millennials (6%) and Gen X (5%) showed the greatest increases in August. By contrast, as the chart below shows, both Gen Z (-4%) and baby boomers (-6%) posted declines.

Looking at quick-quitting rates by gender, women since at least 2019 have been more likely in absolute terms to leave jobs within 12 months of starting. But if one zooms in to look at changing trends, in the past few months men’s willingness to walk off the job within a year has been increasing slightly faster than women’s.

Methodology:

The LinkedIn Short Tenure Rate measures the fraction of positions held by LinkedIn members for less than a year. The analysis covers more than eight million positions in 2020 alone. The focus on year-over-year trends reduces the impact of  the natural seasonality in job tenure, such as summer jobs, internships and more.

LinkedIn data scientist Cristian Figueroa contributed to this article.