Four million Americans walked away from their jobs in April 2021. That single month set a record for quits since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the number. The trend accelerated through May and June, and it’s not slowing down. We’re living through what’s being called the Great Resignation, and if you work in IT, you’re in a historically powerful position to negotiate your career on your own terms.

The numbers tell a story that matters to you. The quit rate climbed to 2.9 percent by April, the highest it had been since 2000. Across the global workforce, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that over 40 percent of workers were considering leaving their employer in 2021. For tech workers specifically, the number is even higher. This isn’t a recession or a market contraction. This is a workforce reasserting its own value after months of crisis, disruption, and the realization that work can look very different from how it always has.

You should think about what this means for you, personally. If you’re a systems administrator, a network engineer, a database specialist, a security analyst, or any flavor of IT professional, your employer is not in a buyer’s market anymore. They’re competing with every other company in North America for your attention. That’s your bargaining power, and it’s real.

Why the Resignation is Happening Now

The pandemic forced a compression of choices that had been spreading slowly before COVID hit. Remote work, which seemed like an occasional perk at most companies in 2019, became non-negotiable overnight. Workers discovered that they could do their jobs from home. They also discovered that they didn’t have to spend two hours a day commuting, that they could be with their families during lunch, that they could live somewhere cheaper and more comfortable. Once you’ve tasted that, a mandatory five-day office return feels like a punishment, not a privilege.

At the same time, something else shifted. People got tired. Not just a little tired. Exhausted. Microsoft’s data found that 54 percent of workers felt overworked, and 39 percent felt exhausted. IT teams carried a disproportionate share of that burden. You probably remember March and April 2020. VPN infrastructure that was never designed for company-wide remote access had to scale instantly. Help desk teams fielded thousands of calls from people who had never worked from home before. Security teams held their breath wondering if the network would hold. The burnout isn’t ancient history; a lot of IT professionals are still recovering from it.

What’s happening now is that people are voting with their resignations. They’re not taking it anymore. And in the tech sector, companies are desperate to keep the people they have and desperate to hire more.

The Market Power Is Yours

The hiring boom in tech isn’t slowing down. Everywhere you look, companies are posting open positions and offering signing bonuses that would have seemed absurd two years ago. Some firms are offering $10,000 to $20,000 just to come work for them. That’s not because business is booming; it’s because the supply of IT talent hasn’t kept up with demand. You already know this if you’ve checked your LinkedIn inbox lately.

This market imbalance is the actual foundation of your negotiating power. Your boss can’t replace you easily. The company can’t leave that open position unfilled for six months and hope the problem goes away. There’s a hiring boom happening right now, and if you leave, your company has to beat the market to recruit someone to replace you. That’s their problem, not yours.

The first thing to understand about negotiation is that you need to know your market value, and you need to know it before you sit down at the table. This is where data matters. Websites like Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, and Payscale will show you what people in your role are earning at your company, at competitors, and across the industry. If you’re in a tech hub, your salary floor is higher. If you’re in a smaller city, the baseline is different, but so is the cost of living. Collect a range, not a single number. If the data shows that your role pays between $75,000 and $95,000, know that range cold. Know what the median is. Know where you fall within it.

Here’s what you do next: You decide what you actually want. Salary is one lever, but it’s not the only one. Remote work flexibility is worth money, especially if you’re considering a move or if the office commute is stealing hours from your life. Generous PTO, flexible hours, a compressed schedule, professional development budget, relocation assistance, stock options, sabbatical policy, on-call bonus structure, or title advancement could all be part of the conversation. Some of these matter more to you than others. Figure out which ones do, and figure out your priority order.

How to Start the Conversation

You don’t have to wait until you’re interviewing somewhere else. If you’re thinking about asking your current employer for a raise, the market is with you right now. Before you do it, though, make sure you document why. Gather the evidence: the market data showing what people in your role earn, the business impact of your work, the responsibilities you’ve taken on beyond your original job description, the projects you’ve owned successfully, the crises you helped resolve. Put it in a document. Make it factual and unemotional. You’re not asking for charity; you’re asking for alignment with market value.

Request a formal meeting. Don’t corner your manager by the kitchen sink. Schedule it for a time when you’ll have their full attention and when they won’t feel ambushed. Email them with a clear subject line: “I’d like to discuss my compensation and career development.” That’s professional. That’s serious. It signals that this is a substantive conversation, not a complaint.

Go into the meeting knowing what you’ll ask for. If the market says your role pays $80,000 to $90,000 and you’re earning $72,000, you might ask for $85,000. You might ask for $80,000 if you want to be conservative, or $88,000 if you’re confident in your market position. Anchor your number to the data, not to what feels good. Say something like, “Based on market research for this role in our region, I’m asking for a salary of $85,000, which reflects the current range for my position and my contributions to the team.”

If your manager comes back with a counter-offer, you have choices. You can ask questions: What are they comparing this to? What would it take to get to your number? Is there a timeline? Are they considering non-salary benefits as part of the equation? Don’t accept the first number they offer. That’s not being difficult; that’s negotiation. Markets work because both sides make their case.

The Remote Work Wildcard

Remote work has become a negotiation chip, and it’s one that IT workers can actually use effectively. If your company is trying to pull everyone back to the office five days a week and the market is moving toward hybrid or fully remote positions, you have an opening. Other companies are offering the flexibility your current employer isn’t. The talent is following the flexibility.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: Your manager offers you a three percent raise. You say something like, “I appreciate that. I’m also asking that we make my position eligible for permanent remote work, with the option to work in the office two days a week.” Remote work doesn’t cost the company money; it saves them real estate expenses. It’s a negotiating tool that has no downside for them. And for you, it could be worth more than the raise. A two-hour daily commute is 480 hours a year. That’s worth thinking about in salary terms.

The trick is to ask for both, not instead of a raise but alongside it. “I’m asking for a raise to $85,000 and the flexibility to work remotely on a hybrid schedule.” Make it clear that both things matter to you, but that they’re separate conversations. If the raise doesn’t happen, maybe the remote work flexibility does. If remote work doesn’t happen, you’ve made your case for compensation.

When Your Company Won’t Match the Market

Some companies won’t budge. Your employer will smile and tell you the budget is tight, or they’ll offer a number that’s still below market, or they’ll deny the remote work request because “we’re a in-person culture” (usually while their competitors are three time zones away and hiring faster). Sometimes they’ll do all three.

This is actually the moment where your negotiating power becomes crystal clear. You have options. There’s a hiring boom. Companies are desperate. You’re not stuck. The psychological weight of your current employer’s “no” shrinks dramatically when you know there are three other companies that would hire you tomorrow and happily pay what you’re asking.

This is where you make a decision. You can accept what they’re offering and stay. You can take a job elsewhere and use the offer as a reference point for your new salary. Or you can stay but document the conversation in writing, asking HR to confirm on email that you requested a market-rate raise and that it was declined. That creates a paper trail for future conversations and for the next position you seek.

The hardest part of this whole process is believing that you’re actually worth what the market says you’re worth. A lot of IT professionals, especially those who came up through support roles or smaller companies, have internalized the idea that they should be grateful to have a job. The pandemic changed that equation. You survived months of chaos, learned new tools, scaled infrastructure that was never meant to scale, and kept the business running while the world fell apart. Your employer got value from you. Now it’s time for you to get value back.

The Psychology of Anchoring

One last thing: understand what’s called anchoring in negotiation. The first number that gets said in a salary conversation becomes the reference point for everything that follows. If you ask for $90,000 and your employer counters with $80,000, the conversation will probably land somewhere in between. If you ask for $75,000 and they counter with $70,000, the outcome is lower. The anchor matters.

This is why going in with research matters so much. You’re not making up a number out of thin air. You’re anchoring to data. When you say “Market research shows this role pays $80,000 to $90,000, and I’m asking for $85,000,” you’ve anchored the conversation to something external and defensible. Your employer can’t just dismiss it because it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from published data.

The flip side is important too: don’t lowball yourself trying to be reasonable. Your employer will respect you more if you ask for something and have to negotiate down than if you ask for less and they immediately say yes. If you ask for something reasonable and they refuse to budge, that tells you something about what they value, and you can use that information to make your next career decision.

You’re living through a moment where the IT labor market has swung decisively in your favor. The hiring boom from early 2021 is still going. The burnout that drove people out of the workforce is real and widespread, which means positions are staying open longer. Remote work, which felt like a temporary pandemic measure two years ago, has become a permanent option at most companies, and that’s expanded the pool of jobs you can apply for without moving. The Great Resignation is real, and it’s happening partly because workers figured out that they had more power than they thought.

Don’t let that moment slip by. Do your research. Know your market value. Ask for what you’re worth. Whether your current employer matches the market or not, you’re going to come out of this conversation with better information about your own value and with clearer options. That’s the real power of the moment. You’re not just negotiating for a raise or remote work flexibility. You’re clarifying your own career trajectory and taking control of it. That’s something worth asking for.

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