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The quitting economy

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Re: The quitting economy

#131

Post by soulnothing »

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.…

This is why I find contracting to be ideal. Minus the night mare of health insurance. I'm in for X months, and it may be renewed. I know what I'm getting in. If they don't deliver on their end, i.e. the project is canned, or a death march. Either way I have an out.

I also structured my year so I did two contracts. Allocating about 10 months then took two months off. I would like to be loyal to a company. But have found the "lying through their teeth" to be apt. I tried full time again. But the end result is I regressed my career by about five years. If it weren't for the health insurance I don't really see a point to full time. It's all project based, deliver something and move on.

Re: The quitting economy

#132

Post by Clubber »

tradesmanhelix wrote: post #25
usgroup wrote: post #2

This is very noticeable in London. It's a relative rarity to find a dev that's worked anywhere longer than a couple years. The simple economics of it is that until a certain salary, there is no easier way to ratchet up the pay scale then to use the negotiating leverage of having a job to get the next one on better terms. Meanwhile, the supply situation for devs is such that employers have to accept the situation. I'm…

> I'm not sure it's an employer led effect at all; especially given the size of the SME scene in London. In the US at least, my experience has been that most employers would rather let a good dev walk than raise his/her salary to match the going market rate, even if said dev has copious amounts of domain knowledge, works well with the team, regularly receives positive feedback on performance reviews, and consistently…

In my experience, the executives in companies don't even consider that, the only consider the total cost of development. Whether it's a good developer or a bad one doesn't even enter their thinking because they are so far removed from it. They don't have nuanced thinking in those regards or long term planning what so ever. It's quite old fashioned.

It's up to individual managers to stick their necks out, and they most likely won't. They are told to reduce costs and they do. Middle managers are trying to hold on for dear life, their future prospects are much worse than a developer in high demand.

My experience is working at small, great companies that get acquired and the acquiring company usually wrecks everything.

But hey, if you need justification to not stay at a company, there it is. Unfortunately for me, I'm just about capped. Contracting or building a company is the only way up from here on. Having survived the dot.bomb, I can tell you both have a lot of risk that needs to be calculated.

Re: The quitting economy

#133

Post by sidlls »

TomSawyer wrote: post #115
sidlls wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a capitalist ploy. Capitalists do exploit the passionate (to the detriment of us all) by giving them what they ask for: lower compensation in return for providing a job they're "passionate" about. It's not really any different from them exploiting youth.

The exploited are being tricked into believing that there's intangible value in spending their life's work on something that they believe in and are passionate about, right? It's only virtuous to do that if someone doesn't profit from it, correct?

There is virtue in laboring at a compensation far below the value generated (see: most science ever done). There is also intangible value at dedication to work. Neither is what I referred to, though.

Re: The quitting economy

#134

Post by soulnothing »

s73ver wrote: post #86
0x4f3759df wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I view it more akin to a military contract. You will serve X years then get stock.

Re: The quitting economy

#135

Post by jazzyk »

_delirium wrote: post #114
CalRobert wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Salaries overall in the UK are comparable to the US (similar median), but programming falls at a different place on the salary curve. In the US, programmer is among the highest-paid professions, often earning 2-3x what would be a typical salary in other white-collar, professional jobs. In the UK that's not the case, and programmers earn just a typical white-collar salary that you'd earn in any job that requires unive…

There is no shortage of programmers in the US, either (except, temporarily, in SF/SV).

There is this myth, which uses an example of a handful of lucky "tech" people like Jobs or Gates or Zuckerberg who got rich and famous. In fact, none of them were/are programmers (though Zuckerberg _can_ hack around a bit)

A few numbers to refute your point about programmers being among the highest paid professions:

- doctors $400K-$800K

- lawyers - starting salary $160K[2], can go into millions, if you make it as a partner

- MBAs - even lowly "marketing managers" - often glorified secretaries - can make $150K or more

- chemical engineers - at least comparable with SW

- pharmacists

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/business/dealbook/welcome...

Re: The quitting economy

#136

Post by volune »

mathattack wrote: post #6

It can be difficult to hire in this environment. I've had 3 employees quit less than 3 months into new full-time positions. My first inclination is to ask, "What are we doing wrong?" but the more I look around it seems like a common industry problem. Perhaps it's rational behavior - as the article highlights, companies now view people as disposable. There's loyalty to a manager, but not a company. (You always want a…

how many of those that left are going to be better compensated at their new positions?

Re: The quitting economy

#137

Post by jazzyk »

pm90 wrote: post #130
jazzyk wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can ? Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. The word "market" assumes that each party can walk away from the deal. But if you are the sole bread-winner and jobless, you are not in a position to walk away.

> Has it occurred to you that they hold down salaries, because they can? Can we please have a conversation without the snark ? Thank you. > Apparently there are many people willing to work for that money. I understand that they probably do find workers willing to work that wage. But what I'm stating is: they can have much more, a thriving hub of tech innovation much like SV, if they were to pay more, and attract tale…

There is more to creating "another SV" than just paying more, and it is quite complex and not precisely measurable.

If you are interested, The Economist had a cover story on this a couple of years ago, explaining it much better than I ever could.

Re: The quitting economy

#138

Post by mahyarm »

bradlys wrote: post #127
spinlock wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Wall Street bonuses are cash. Your options are restricted and the value is very unknowable.

I think at the big tech companies, it's comparable to cash but favored even more so because (if you hold them for a year) you can take capital gains (15-20%) on them instead of paying 40%+ tax. I don't think s73ver wasn't talking about startups that are pre-IPO. I think this only applies at companies not using RSUs. Since I think you get taxed immediately (no capital gains) with RSUs.

No when you receive the RSU unit or exercise your option, it's taxed as income. Whatever gains you make after that event is taxed as capital gains, like any other stock.

Re: The quitting economy

#139

Post by s73ver »

soulnothing wrote: post #134
s73ver wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I view it more akin to a military contract. You will serve X years then get stock.

What's to stop them from terminating the contract a month shy, because of "performance reasons"? Unfortunately this setup would require quite a lot of trust in the industry, which, quite frankly, it has not earned.

Re: The quitting economy

#140

Post by CWuestefeld »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #43
dalbasal wrote: post #30

I really think trying to reason about labour markets using pure theory in a Hayek-Friedman-esque way is a dead end. It's the 2nd time in two days I made the recommendation, but throwing Ronald Coase into the Neoliberal canon would help a lot. He was a "chicago school" academic from the same intellectual family, so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock. He wan't like "progressives" in the "evidence based" sense…

Transaction costs. Both the employee (search costs, hours in the day) and employer (job training, search costs, process knowledge) incur far greater transaction costs than you see in commodity markets. Business models that lower transaction costs (e.g. "gig economy" middlemen) tend to lead to the emergence of highly flexible labor markets. This currently only applies to jobs that don't require a high level of nontran…

Transaction costs.

Of course. And I'm surprised that the post you're replying to didn't come out and say that, since he brought Ron Coase into the conversation. I mean, for Coase, the effect on markets of non-trivial transaction costs was really the core of his work, at least as I understand it.

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