If 63% of marketers are planning on a big job change, where are they going?

All marketers have left the building

If you’ve been watching the employment reports lately, you would probably be aware of a few things:

Employers are short-staff across the board with some sectors more affected than others
Employees are demanding more WFH options with some resistance from employers
Everyone seems to be quitting their jobs

And if you’re still not sure how that is impacting marketers, the 2021 Rosie Report tells a tale of a new world order. The report includes a survey of 423 US-based marketers, which found a whopping 63% of marketers planning a big job change this year.

I asked We Are Rosie for a breakdown of the demographics of their survey and this is what they had to say.

— @RosieReport

It’s important to recognize the size of the population before we can assign any confidence in survey results. Please excuse my pedantry, but if the data needs qualification, we should do that early on. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 270,200 Marketing Managers, as of May 2020. Estimates of all marketing related jobs range from 620k to 824k, depending on who you ask and what categories they group together.

With that in mind, a more optimal sample size would be north of 2000 respondents. However, we can still work with what we have as long as increase the error margin to 5%.

So now that we know we can live with an error margin of 5%, where are all the marketers leaving to? That’s higher than the global trend of 41%.

1 in 3 Independent marketers are never going back to Full-Time Employment

This is very significant, because it shows that marketers did like Katy Perry and liked it. The newfound independence of flexible working schedules and the ability to choose the projects they want to work on have never been more attractive, primarily because employers are now more willing to hire remotely. The trend is to work on projects without the long-term commitment.

“Every full-time job I’ve had started out as a freelance gig — and every time I regret signing on as a ‘real employee’.” — Creative Director

This quote from the report aptly sums up the sentiment. Marketers have commitment issues. They’re just not into you. They’re not ready to settle down just yet. They want to explore and see other people.

It’s not surprising then that we would find another 27% of those surveyed not concerned with upward mobility. It’s almost as if marketers have decided to go on backpacking through Europe on a self discovery journey.

Allow me to put this in a way that employers can understand better.

Marketing careers suck

It’s that simple. If people aren’t bothered with it and are looking for project-based work, it is a clear indicator that whatever career paths exist today are nowhere near as attractive as they need to be.

It’s not about the money though. It is obvious that marketers are making a decent living skipping FTE. I suspect this has more to do with working conditions than financial compensation.

WFH struggles: what a difference a year can make

Looking at the chart above, we can conclude that there are some clear benefits from Working From Home. As people become more competent in their use of technology, difficulties decrease. As more people join the WFH movement, loneliness decreases as they have more people to relate to. However, the problem with time management rears its ugly head once again.

Time management is an especially serious problem, as Americans put in more working hours than most industrial nations. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US is the 10th most overworked country (2018). If we were to to couple this with WFH and the inability to unplug from work, we have a recipe for mass burnouts.

Measuring productivity changes with WFH

I’m a huge fan of measuring productivity and have done so extensively in the past. But productivity is not always measurable or quantifiable. A 9-month long study of 16,000 call center workers [PDF] reports an increase of 13% in productivity. Call center work is a lot easier to measure. A marketing manager’s productivity has a lot more moving parts, making it tricky.

The push-pull between companies and employees continues with employees quitting over Apple’s hybrid work policy, while Ford expanded their hybrid policy, and Facebook doubled-down making WFH policies permanent.

The debate continues with proponents declaring that productivity has either increased or remained the same. Some people even mock managers for wanting to “monitor” them at work by visually confirming they’re working. This oversimplification makes it difficult to address the real challenges brought by WFH.

For example, building meaningful connections that would facilitate professional growth is more difficult for entry level workers. Creativity-based work isn’t about the number of hours you spend, but is sparked by casual mindless conversations.

This is not to say that we cannot find WFH alternatives to achieve comparable results. It is, however, a very important factor to consider as we examine ways to adapt.

Creating clear actionable goals for marketers that we can hold them accountable to would be more productive than worrying about the number of hours they are clocking on the job.

Vaccination messaging and censorship

COVID-19 vaccination can be a divisive issue and has become needlessly politicized, due to many factors internal and external.

The US Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently posted a series of tweets admitting that his advice in the early days of the pandemic against masks was the wrong call. He appears to apologize for everything, but his actual fault.

— @JeromeAdamsMD

In his tweets he claims that what he and Dr. Fauci said was based on the “science and conditions at the time”. In a now-deleted tweet from Feb 29, 2020 the Surgeon General clearly and in plain English said that masks are NOT effective.

US Surgeon General deleted tweet claiming that masks are not effective in preventing COVID-19 infections

I remember watching Dr. Fauci on TV explaining why masks aren’t effective for the general public. He explained how they are notoriously difficult to keep on properly and that the untrained public’s constant adjustment of the mask would lead to an increase risk of infection. Can you believe that? I will never forget this because I’ve had a lot of long arguments about this where I defended Fauci’s position and now feel stupid for it. Examples of how masks were effective in Asia during the SARS outbreaks did not dissuade me.

The science did not change, despite the lies Dr Jerome Adams continues to spew. Something far more sinister has happened. People of science broke the public’s trust. The unwritten contract we had was simple: you give us the unfiltered facts as you know them.

Allow me to demonstrate. Imagine visiting your physician for a medical checkup, and she tells you that you have lung cancer knowing you’re a smoker. You don’t have lung cancer, but she lied to you so you can be incentivized to quit smoking. If you condone that type of behavior from your healthcare provider, then you will find Dr Fauci and company’s action acceptable. If not, then you would find it absolutely reprehensible.

Scientists are not in the business of lying to the public for the greater good or for any reason for that matter. This has always been the domain of politicians. So is it any wonder that skepticism in our institutions continues to dominate?

Instead of addressing the erosion of trust in the CDC and other instrumental institutes, politicians are quick to blame social media platforms for disseminating misinformation. In a stunning sound-bite, President Biden declared that “they’re killing people”.

— @thehill

Facebook was quick to respond with data showing that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been vaccinated or plan to. Of course that is not going to stop politicians from using FB as a punching bag. But there is more danger than FB’s feelings.

New language is emerging to label COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy as inciteful. The vaccine that the FDA has only issued Emergency Use Authorization because they still have questions. A legitimate cautious approach that you would expect from a science-based organization.

— @davidfrum

Most disturbing is the censorship coordination between the White House and social media platforms, which allow the government to effectively skirt the first amendment by outsourcing it to private companies.

“..current constitutional doctrine doesn’t clearly lay out how much government coercion of a private actor’s speech decisions it would take to constitute a First Amendment violation.” — Noah Feldman, opined.

Expect more of social media platforms cracking down on content that they deem inappropriate. It is definitely a development that we will be watching very closely.

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