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9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

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Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#141

Post by yummyfajitas »

nunez wrote: post #135
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising qualifications usually costs money Browsing twitter from 9AM to 1:15PM (an activity he mentions he does) costs the same amount of money as working through codeacademy.com or learn python the hard way.

This is very easy to say from the privileged position of being a developer. My fiancée is a teacher. She did CodeAcademy. Finding a job just from Code Academy training is not as easy as it seems. The problem is cyclical: you need experience to get a programming job, but you need a programming job to gain experience. I'm not defending the OP; I'm just clarifying that programming jobs aren't as easy to obtain as people…

I know a number of people who have gotten programming jobs just by learning on the internet (or General Assembly in one case) and then building cool projects in lieu of experience. I'd hire such a person tomorrow (if you are in Delhi or Pune, hit me up) if they showed up.

The steps are codeacademy/whatever -> cool project -> hired. You can't skip step 2.

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#142

Post by ryandrake »

tjic wrote: post #6

I've met a lot of people who "couldn't" find a job. What they usually mean is "they can't find a job in the area they want, in the industry they want, doing the kind of work they want, at the salary they want, working for someone else." This is a highly overconstrained search. If / when people loosen one or more of these constraints, they're opportunities open right up. Like everyone, I prefer to get exactly what I w…

I totally understand the desperation of not wanting to "ratchet down" in one's career.

I remember being out of work for quite a bit of time. It was right out of MBA school (after working ~10 years as a software developer), I graduated into the Great Recession. Could not find anything--programming or otherwise. I started burning through savings, and was very tempted to just take any gas station job I could in order to make ends meet. It's like a game of chicken where you wait as long as you can before jumping out of the way of the truck.

Through a great miraculous fortune, at the last possible moment, I found a mid level software job and took it with zero negotiation, being about 1 month away from insolvency. It was totally beneath me in terms of qualifications but when the alternative is going broke, you take it. I was pretty close to walking into McDonalds at that point asking if they needed a janitor.

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#143

Post by ryandrake »

Perihelion wrote: post #40
roflchoppa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah my dad made me learn all that shit at my uncles old house. was worth it, if you have kids and are reading this right now, teach them to fix stuff, its a gift that keeps on giving.

Agreed 100%. Growing up we didn't have money to hire people to do this stuff for us. I learned how to paint, how to hang drywall, how to do basic plumbing, how to lay flooring (tile, carpet, and wood), and odd jobs like replacing crown molding. I'd add basic mechanics to this list -- things like changing my own oil and replacing my own battery have saved me a TON of money and there's a satisfaction that comes from be…

Yea, my parents taught me all that stuff, and I grew up believing it to be totally normal to fix your own car and maintain your own house. It was a shock to enter the real world and find there are people who pay others to do these simple things.

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#144

Post by [deleted] »

dagw wrote: post #119
jotato wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had Patents at 17?! Kudos! ;) My parents taught me the same way. I have worked many manual labor jobs, and I wouldn't blink an eye to go back if I had to. I wouldn't enjoy it but I have a family to support and I do what I must

I wouldn't enjoy it but I have a family to support and I do what I must What if you didn't have to support your family, since your wife could to that for you? Would you still feel the same drive to do so if it wasn't a "must"? Personally I feel that that is the crux of the article. He knows he can get a job, but he also knows he doesn't need to, and the sort of jobs he could get won't make a huge difference to their…

[deleted]

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#145

Post by antisthenes »

jimmywanger wrote: post #138
antisthenes wrote: post #132

Well, HN never fails to to disappoint with the libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "just learn how to code" rhetoric. A slew of survivorship bias comments that seem to focus on the 1 sentence of the article, where the author is saying they do not consider a manual labor job to be practical, and neatly ignoring everything else. Here are some things most commenters have willingly ignored from the comf…

> Ageism is more real than you think. Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties. What studies are you using, rather than your hypothetical "though process" of the hypothetical employer? > If he's providing $10,000 in value by staying at home, It will be 6x as costly to apply for a $15,000 job than for a $40,000 job. It will be 6…

Cherry picking phrases out of my comment just like you cherry picked the article.

> Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties

Programmers. Programmers. Programmers.

This guy is not a programmer. He's not in a senior or even a middle role. Did your coworkers all start coding bootcamps and get their junior positions at the age of 40 and over? If not, then your anecdata is equally as useless as the example you're trying to disprove.

> It will be 6x more costly to accept the 15k job than to accept the 40k job. The application costs are still the same. Also, by applying for the 15k job in your example, you are able to a) spend 10k to offset the value you bring at home or keep the 10k and let some chores remain undone and b) Keep 5k regardless.

Yes, and he'll have to work 40 hours. You have no idea what his utility preferences are, so suggesting to trade 40 hours/week of work for an additional 5k of compensation is laughable. Especially coming from someone in a position of privilege.

> We are not the ones who have to stretch 30 dollars a week to cover expenses for a family of four. If you have a steady job that doesn't frown too heavily on some procrastination, go ahead.

Irrelevant.

> From all accounts, this man who wrote the article is the one in the bubble. It's all about how he feels, how his friends will hurt his feelings if they figure out he's unemployed. He's the one that needs to step outside himself.

And by all accounts you mean your account. Like I already said, someone in your position lacks the perspective to understand what it is to be in that position, not to mention the possible economic trade-offs available. So the value of your account/opinion is null. And no, just because you worked a manual job at some point in your life doesn't qualify.

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#146

Post by amiller2571 »

This article scares me more than any horror movie ever has. I'm currently the sole provider for my family (thankfully, this will change in a few weeks), and even though I have a decently stable job that pays well. Losing it and not being able to get another is my worse nightmare (right after burning alive).

I know it shouldn't bother me this much. I have had 7 interviews in my life and I only failed 2 of them. One of them being back in high school when I applied to Pepsi for stocking shelves.

I know that if I would to ever actually end up in that kind of position, it would most likely be because of feared it so much that I made it happen to myself.

Re: 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them

#147

Post by jimmywanger »

antisthenes wrote: post #145
jimmywanger wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ageism is more real than you think. Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties. What studies are you using, rather than your hypothetical "though process" of the hypothetical employer? > If he's providing $10,000 in value by staying at home, It will be 6x as costly to apply for a $15,000 job than for a $40,000 job. It will be 6…

Cherry picking phrases out of my comment just like you cherry picked the article. > Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties Programmers. Programmers. Programmers. This guy is not a programmer. He's not in a senior or even a middle role. Did your coworkers all start coding bootcamps and get their junior positions at the age of…

> Cherry picking phrases out of my comment just like you cherry picked the article.

Wow, even when you set up straw men you can't knock them over.

> This guy is not a programmer.

This guy said ageism is big in the valley. He said nothing about roles.

> You have no idea what his utility preferences are, so suggesting to trade 40 hours/week of work for an additional 5k of compensation is laughable.

Reading comprehension much? I said it doesn't cost him more to apply, just that it costs him more to accept.

> Irrelevant.

Ridiculous.

See how you need reasons for your opinions before they convince anybody? Maybe you should take some rhetorical courses before spewing nonsense.

> So the value of your account/opinion is null.

That's ridiculous. That absolutely negates all discourse, as you can simply write off somebody's thoughts/reasons as not relevant, because their situation is not exactly the same as yours.

You notice that the more examples your arguments can apply to, the weaker and sillier they sound?

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