I loathe to hint to you that 90% of jobs are 'dead end jobs'. There is no 'promotion' waiting for you arbitrarily. It's a steep hierarchy and most people don't want to perform to compete.

Moreover, in a downturn, it's rare that people are going to just jump off to a promotion, and rolling the dice is quite risky. Responsibilities, family, mortgages, etc..

I think a lot of the posture here is coming from young people in tech jobs who have a somewhat different situation than others, and, who might not realize how much risk is involved here.

It's almost always better to have the option to keep a job than not. If people don't want to stay they can leave.

I have no idea how you can claim to understand risk... then decline a guaranteed X months of pay for an uncertain number of months of pay that might even be less than X.

And the whole diatribe about dead end jobs, while packed full to the gills with angst, is just misunderstanding: usually dead end job means the job continues without upward mobility. Here it means you get terminated once things go from "bad" to "really bad" for your employer and you have no idea when.

Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your employer while finding another job is net better than that option.

And good luck finding another job if you are a recruiter right now.

> Seems like the option of continuing to "work" for your employer while finding another job is net better than that option.

I guess it depends on the person. My mental health would be 100% better knowing I have guaranteed income for X months and can freely spend my time working on getting a job and decompressing. As opposed to knowing I'm on a sinking ship but still having to half-ass 8 hour days for appearances.

Also recruiters who have been let go now are in a way better place than recruiters who are on ghost ships right now and will be let go deeper in the thick of the brewing storm...