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The quitting economy

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Re: The quitting economy

#171

Post by ryandrake »

jazzyk wrote: post #135
_delirium wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, there's no shortage of programmers in SF/SV either.

Re: The quitting economy

#172

Post by le-mark »

wonderwonder wrote: post #146
gncb wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not how London works. It may be a cultural difference but a non-contractor candidate asking for salary during an interview is considered a big red flag.

I agree, salary should not be discussed during the interview, it should occur prior to the interview. It should take place with the hr rep. during the interview setup or initial contact conversation that way salary does not have to be discussed in the interview. It does not have to be a detailed initial conversation, something as simple as "what is the salary range for this position, due to my current responsibilitie…

Yeah, I didn't make that clear, I don't ask that in the interview, but with HR or the person recruiting for the firm (before any interviews). One time had a recruiter lead me to believe the salary on offer was upto $X, then after interviewing and negotiating salary, found they would only go so high as $X - $Y. I declined and no one was happy with that situation.

Re: The quitting economy

#173

Post by pge »

adventured wrote: post #166
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.…

It's worth noting that people are staying at their jobs for longer periods of time, not shorter. [1][2] "As of January 2016, the typical U.S. worker had been in their current job for 4.2 years, up from 3.5 years in 1983, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics." There has been a significant slowdown in the speed at which people are changing jobs. Younger people today are also not showing any indication of switching jobs m…

I wonder if there is bias there in the moment in time chosen. Having been a genX young professional in 2000, my impression at the time was that the rocketing Internet bubble caused a lot of people to switch jobs much faster than they had done even just five years earlier (lots of Internet companies were recruiting heavily and plucking people out of other jobs because the demand for new hires was so high. Lots of rapidly growing companies with stock options to offer made for an employees' market). After the bubble collapsed, jobs were much harder to come by, which in turn meant job tenures were longer. It would be interesting to compare today to 1997 or 2007, rather than 2000.

Re: The quitting economy

#174

Post by tpeo »

dalbasal wrote: post #155
tpeo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind if I told you that you're not even wrong? First, neither Hayek nor Friedman were well known for contributions to labor market research. Hayek was well known for his critiques of central planning while Friedman was famous for his contributions to monetary theory. But my point is that these guys aren't "labor market economists", so taking an issue with them over labor market issues would be barking up th…

They were both pretty wide, but I disagree. I think both touched on labour markets quite a bit. For example, "Friedman's" best known policy is negative income tax (earned income tax whatnots). Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rate_of_unemployment http://journal.apee.org/index.php?title=Spring2008_2

Frankly, I think that in order for something to "touch on labor markets quite a bit", they'd have to at least dedicate a book to it. In the current day, David Card and Orley Ashenfelter might be said to have touched on labor markets quite a bit.

Hayek and Friedman? Not so much.

Re: The quitting economy

#175

Post by pmiller2 »

dev1n wrote: post #83
mcguire wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try payscale.com instead. I've found it to be reasonably accurate.

Re: The quitting economy

#176

Post by aetherson »

dsparkman wrote: post #121
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…

I learned in the late 90s that the best fit for myself was to hop and hop often. I tended to stay with a company for about 12-18 months and would use each hop to increase my salary. Among my friends, the basic catch phrase was "want a 10k pay raise, get another job". This worked well on 2 fronts, your pay kept going up, and you tended to stay at the firm long enough to extract any real value to yourself in terms of i…

A cautionary note here: companies are not blind to this behavior. The job market for programmers is very hot right now and employers to some degree just have to suck it up and deal with job hopping employees, but if the market cools, a resume full of one year stints may become a liability.

Re: The quitting economy

#177

Post by confounded »

jazzyk wrote: post #137
pm90 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but pm90's point is still a good one (as someone who's worked for tech companies in both markets).

Re: The quitting economy

#178

Post by jaggederest »

ryandrake wrote: post #158
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…

The plateau is real. It's not unheard of for your first job hop, early in your career, to get you 10-50%. Next move might be 5-15%. Over time, as you approach the ceiling, your reward for job hopping will diminish. I've got close to 20 years under my belt, and my last few hops were less than +1%. Short of going into management or doing a complete career change, it seems you can get stuck later in life.

For me, the route out that I'm trying is to try to build a consultancy or productized-consulting business. It's effectively going into management, but the person you're managing is yourself.

It's especially true when you look at contribution vs reward for a skilled senior / principal engineer. If you take away the "steady paycheck" aspect of salaried employment, you can get 2x to 3x the reward for some percentage increase in total effort.

Re: The quitting economy

#180

Post by ntrepid8 »

I've had a few sales jobs where I was employed full-time (w2 not 1099) but also had an employment agreement with a defined term. Most often the term was 1 to 3 years, and if you were going to be let go it would happen when the term was over. They just would not renew your contract.

You could still be fired "for cause" but that almost never happened. The employee would almost have to commit a crime to be terminated early.

Of course you could always quit during the term if you wanted, but that meant you would have to pay back the signing bonus received when the contract was signed :)

I really did not mind this structure, but it seems like it's confined to specific industries and outside of those almost no one does it. For example, I've never seen a software dev job with this sort of structure.

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