I am aware that I am in a pretty privileged position compared to the retail/service industry folks who participate here, but I hope my story can provide some better insight into why high-paid staff are also resigning their positions. I've made a few posts in this sub outlining my current work situation, but I'll give a quick rundown. Wall of text incoming.

My (former) Job

I have worked for my current employer since 2018. I work in regulatory compliance and auditing. This company gives a decent salary, good benefits, and steady work. I am paid just over 6 figures for this position, and work 40-60 hours a week to keep up with the responsibilities. We live in a high-ish cost of living area, so this isn't amazing but it's better than most wages. However, my entire department (3 people) have always been overworked and underpaid. On our annual merit raises, everyone on the team received a 3% raise, despite 8% inflation and our 52% decrease in regulatory citations. Realistically I wear the hats of 3 full-time employees.

1. I am a database administrator. I handle all of the ETL and data wrangling for all of our regulatory reporting on a monthly and quarterly basis. This is a full time job on its own, as I personally maintain multiple SQL databases and work with development teams to make sure the database schema can handle the applications that plug into the database. I pull the reporting data for not only my department, but multiple other related departments who utilize these applications.
2. I consult for corporates policy draft proposals. We are in the medical industry, so there are a lot of FDA/BOP regulations at the federal level, and a ton of state level regulations that need to be maintained in order to keep licensure (operating in 48 states). I read documents like FDA draft proposals (hundreds of pages of government speak), and make determinations about how they would impact our business operations. This is another full time job, as you're not only required to read technical documents, you need the business knowledge to discern what process will be affected by regulations.
3. I also do compliance audits and inspections for our physical locations. This entails setting up meetings with operations managers at their sites to do virtual or in-person inspections to make sure that they are actually complying with our internal policies for regulations. Anything not up to our requirements gets an action plan to address the problems, and a follow up visit within 6 weeks. This is a full time job itself because it also requires knowledge of our internal policies, soft skills, and significant time management/scheduling abilities. Many of these things get delayed or rescheduled so you have to be able to work in an always-changing timeline.

What happened?

Our team is 3 people, including the supervisor. The supervisor quit a few weeks ago due to the insane travel requirements that were being put on him. Here is a previous comment that explains it well:

We did our job entirely remote for 2 years and saw a marked increase in compliance with our key performance indicators. Working remote allowed him to work in multiple states at once and we could work together to have more national coverage with our audits and inspections.

In Feb 2022 the company instituted a policy where at least 1 supervisor needed to be on-site for every department, every day. We would alternate since we are the only 2 supervisors.

Well recently, HIS boss gave him a travel schedule that required him to travel to 14 states in one quarter. They wanted him to fly to each location for inspections and audits, and repeat that every quarter.

We are both fathers of young children (4-8 years). His youngest never knew anything except for him being wfh at a home office. And they wanted him to be gone for weeks at a time. He said nah fuck that. He's an RN and has a business degree. If he was going to travel he could make much more as a travel nurse, and choose his own travel schedule.

The day after he quit, I received a meeting invite from 2 of our c-suite officers to discuss our department. Of course, I knew this meant they would be asking me to take on his role. However, unknown to them, I spoke to my boss prior and he gave me a copy of his travel schedule, his salary information, his expenses etc.

Well that meeting was yesterday. They offered me all of his responsibilities, with a meager raise of 20%. They offered me less than he was making to do his work PLUS mine until someone else could fill my role. I voiced my concerns that I also am not willing to travel as I have a wife and kid who need me to be nearby, as well as at-risk grandparents who depend on me for day-to-day things.

I explained that even travelling to the corporate HQ twice a week was detracting too much from my home life, and that the compensation was not nearly enough to make me reconsider. The CCO (who would be my direct supervisor) made an appeal that I could work entirely remote moving forward. I agreed that this would be the only option if I was to take the position but the workload would be immense, and my salary would need to reflect that. They asked what type of compensation would be I be seeking. I told them 210k/yr. I knew that my supervisor (who I would be replacing) made over 170k, and I would need to get his pay and then some.

The COO said that there's no way they can justify that pay for the position. I said I'm sorry to hear that, took my resignation letter out of the folder that I brought, signed it right there and passed it to the CCO. My last day of employment is next Friday. I'm doing as little work as possible until then.

What now?

I recently accepted an 18 month contract for a small medical device company to lead their regulatory submissions process for PMA on a new device. The compensation for that contract is 40% more than their offer to me. I will probably continue to do consulting/contract work in the industry as necessary. I'm not happy that I have to buy health insurance out of pocket for my family, but it's an expense I am willing to make for the sake of my own Life/Work balance (Life comes first btw, don't listen to anyone who says Work/Life balance).

​

PS:

If you are a struggling retail/service worker and you want to make a career change, consider regulatory work in the medical field. There are a TON of online resources to walk you through specific processes. Highly recommend the SBIA Learning portal on the FDA website. It is specifically geared towards small businesses who are learning to navigate their first attempt at clearing regulatory hurdles in this space. They have hundreds of presentations, lectures, and tutorial articles to look through. A lot of small medical device companies have great products that can make a lot of money, but they lack the procedural knowledge to get Pre-market approval through the FDA. You can easily land 12-month contract work around $70-80k.