Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The quitting economy

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 196 posts

Re: The quitting economy

#81

Post by CalRobert »

currymj wrote: post #9
usgroup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure X years of experience matters all that much. For example, Java dev goes to employer and adds Hadoop to her experience, then applies for other jobs for 10k more ambiently for a few months. Eventually nails one and packs her bags, and so on recursively. Sometimes dev don't add anything at all and just go for more money because of change in condition. JS or mobile app dev is a great example. Nothing changed; th…

What do devs get paid in London on average? I always had the impression, perhaps wrong, that software engineers seem underpaid in England relative to the US, even accounting for currency and cost of living and such (which, probably London is as bad as SF on that front). (i've also gotten the impression that there's not the same level of cultural esteem for engineers and scientists and such in England, and that this m…

No personal experience, but salaries in Europe seem, on the whole, utterly pathetic compared to the US, at least looking at listings. I don't get the impression London bucks this trend.

That being said, I moved to Europe and am pretty happy with where I'm at. It helped that my first job was with a company that had SF and Dublin offices, and I knew what the rate in SF was.

It's public sector and Ireland, but here's an example of a job paying €28k in Dublin that would be triple that in the states. Note the use of docx...

http://www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Corporate-I...

Re: The quitting economy

#82

Post by fierarul »

I've quit only once, from the mega-corp, in order to start freelancing.

I've never quit from a customer project. And oddly, I've worked for very few customer for years and years. Controlling and understanding the entire cash-flow really helped.

My other IT friends did job-hop while young but as they settled down, they started staying longer. After 30 it's basically smooth sailing.

So, I don't see a quitting economy. It's phase in young adults.

Re: The quitting economy

#83

Post by dev1n »

mcguire wrote: post #59
sidlls wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as paid masters' programs. I'd have gladly stayed at my third job for much longer than the ~21 months I did had there been training, retirement, reasonable pay increases, and career development off…

My longest jobs both lasted around 8 years. In both cases, I stayed because I liked my coworkers and the environment. As a result, my salary history is well below average for my location and experience. Further, since I was paid less than my less experienced (and less capable) coworkers, my input was usually ignored and I was basically sidelined except when something went badly wrong and I spent much of my time clean…

IEEE salary survey requires a membership.. free membership gets you no access to that survey data just FYI. I just tried it and now can't find a way to delete my account off that website.

Re: The quitting economy

#84

Post by santaclaus »

diego_moita wrote: post #41
mr_spothawk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc. computers count in your list of precision machines, right?

The key issue is how niche, rare and unreplaceable the skill is. If your skill is MS-Office then you're not niche and you're easy to replace. If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle then you are a little harder to replace and you can see more stable jobs.

> If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle

Maybe not Oracle, but most gigs related to Maya were shipped off to Canada yeas ago.

Re: The quitting economy

#85

Post by xxSparkleSxx »

mcguire wrote: post #70
sidlls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in my career I've reached a salary plateau for the technical track. Short of landing a high-profile project at one of the major tech firms the ~6%-7% raises I've had the last couple of years are about the max of what I might expect from a "hop." Instead I'm looking to both exit this industry completely and, while I build the cushion necessary to do so, switch to management (which has ample support, curr…

! I've seen 6 to 7 percent about twice in my entire career. 3% is the usual max, and 1-2% more common.

First job out of college Inhad something to prove and worked my ass off. What I did was extremely measurable and I was easily doing 2x the work compared to the department average. Every single day.

1.5% raise the first year, made a huge fuss the second year and asked for a large raise (because my numbers of were insane) and only managed a 4% raise (promotion included).

I've been at a new job for about a year and have worked hard as always, but the things I am doing are much, much harder to measure. It's much more difficult for me to actually prove how much value I am providing. However, it's looking like I will be getting a ~15% raise shortly.

If a company wants you to stick around, they'll be proactive and show it. At least that's what I've taken from this...and I don't want to be anywhere I'm not wanted.

Re: The quitting economy

#86

Post by s73ver »

0x4f3759df wrote: post #62
wyc wrote: post #18

The most recent resource I've read on this was The Alliance by Reid Hoffman. In it, he postulates that both employees and employers are lying through their teeth: employers tell employees about the benefits, investment in its people, and family-feel. Employees say they want to be lifers. This never happens. Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk.…

One idea I've heard is that Wall Street has solved this problem in the form of bonuses. If companies want their talent to stick around, a bonus structure would go along way, especially since a quick job move can get a person $10k bump.

Don't many of the big tech companies have this with their stock options?

And I've heard that, with the Wall Street approach, your bonus is the lion's share of your income for the year. If true, I don't know if I'd like to go to that, given the propensity for letting people go in this field.

Re: The quitting economy

#87

Post by wastedhours »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #65

One of the serendipitious consequences for the "quitting economy" in my experience is that I have gained experience working in a number of diverse industries such as finance, insurance, biotech, entertainment and gaming, hospitality, etc. giving me first hand insight into how such sectors work. This has not only increased my ability to apply novel solutions when new problems approached, it has informed and broadened…

Yep - one of the things I recommend people to do when mentoring them is to read a sh*t load about other industries (I still maintain that buying random magazines is a fantastic way for people to learn) - those novel approaches will work wonders when creating solutions.

If you can sell an employer on the benefits of diverse experience, it can reap wonders.

Re: The quitting economy

#88

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mcguire wrote: post #69

I have a question about the term 'neolibral'. I seem to have missed when it became common. Further, it seems identical to what we called neoconservative back in the 1990s: free market economics, very limited government, Hayak, etc. Is William F. Buckley a neolibral? Ronald Reagan?

There is a lot of overlap between people with neoconservative views and people with neoliberal views. Neoliberalism is purely an economic position while neoconservatism is primarily focused on foreign policy. Reagan is definitely a neoliberal.

Re: The quitting economy

#89

Post by xxSparkleSxx »

treyfitty wrote: post #3

tl;dr: Our capitalistic economy, which incentivized the notion of "maximizing shareholder returns," created an environment in which Companies who are efficient in hiring the right amount of disposable assets. Because of this, employees better be ready to quit when they sense better pastures elsewhere. It was a good read, and a reminder that we are all subservient to the Shareholders (directly or indirectly). The comp…

I'm of the opinion that we will have to use technology to restructure the fundamental ways businesses work.

Whether that means every person is their own business or we try some other type of union to give workers more leverage when negotiating or we crowd-fund the resources to start a competitor to shitty company A and have all the workers walk down to a new building and start company B with 95% of the same people but better deals all-around.

Lots of ideas, very few potential solutions. I don't think the wealthy are ever going to change the game to make it easier for us plebs, so we've gotta figure out a way to play the game and beat them at it.

Re: The quitting economy

#90

Post by kerkeslager »

sidlls wrote: post #34
wyc wrote: post #18

The most recent resource I've read on this was The Alliance by Reid Hoffman. In it, he postulates that both employees and employers are lying through their teeth: employers tell employees about the benefits, investment in its people, and family-feel. Employees say they want to be lifers. This never happens. Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk.…

> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as paid masters' programs. I'd have gladly stayed at my third job for much longer than the ~21 months I did had there been training, retirement, reasonable pay increases, and career development off…

Exactly. I've never worked somewhere that gave >5% raises, yet simply switching jobs has gotten me a >8% raise every time.

I've stayed beyond what pay would incentivize at almost every company I've worked at because I liked the culture/coworkers/etc., but workplaces are fragile ecosystems, and culture/coworkers/etc. can drastically change with surprising speed.

Post reply on HN