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The quitting economy

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Re: The quitting economy

#181

Post by jaggederest »

noobhacker wrote: post #149
jacobush wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Except, "strategic value to the manager "

What is strategic value to the manager that is not hard work and delivering result? I'm asking sincerely, since I do hear a lot about the lack of correlation between hard work and promotion. I want to understand.

Reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine as well as the background in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage_in_ancient_Rome

Essentially by supporting that manager's political goals (to gain power within the organization), you receive rewards based not on skill or merit but as a result of your support.

In this system, people in a relationship are either 'patrons' or 'clients', and it is expected that patrons will help clients within their power and in return clients will support their patrons advancement, either through advancing their ends directly or undermining competitors.

All of these things are wasteful distractions, but then, that's politics.

Re: The quitting economy

#182

Post by seanmceligot »

This quitting is completely forced in government work. Every few years the project will be turned over to an entire new group of programmers and system admins at a lower price. They often spend years trying to figure out how the code and configuration works and learn the business rules. It's sad to watch.

Re: The quitting economy

#183

Post by currymj »

gncb wrote: post #129
currymj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The average is not a very useful metric since the gap between IB/hedge fund pay and the rest is huge. It's not unheard of for developers with 4-5 years of experience to make close to £100k.

is that number supposed to be low or high?

in the US $120k is a reasonable (mid-range) salary for a new college graduate in Silicon Valley, Seattle, or New York at one of the big 5 tech firms. It's comparable at financial institutions.

probably $60-$70k for a more "blue-collar" programming job at a lower-profile company, or in a lower cost-of-living area.

Re: The quitting economy

#184

Post by jaggederest »

WorldMaker wrote: post #78
didgeoridoo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are labor market overhead costs that are often easily overlooked/under-appreciated too: tying one's health care, as one obvious example, to one's current employer necessarily undermines liquidity in the labor market. But more importantly: the overall inability in current culture to have "not working" as a legitimate and survivable labor position (for the majority of the labor force, at least) also threatens the…

Yes, the labor market is distorted precisely because it's not a negotiation between equals. Costs and benefits are disproportionately pushed onto the party with less leverage.

Re: The quitting economy

#185

Post by khedoros1 »

noobhacker wrote: post #149
jacobush wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Except, "strategic value to the manager "

What is strategic value to the manager that is not hard work and delivering result? I'm asking sincerely, since I do hear a lot about the lack of correlation between hard work and promotion. I want to understand.

Consider this case: For one of our software releases, we worked with another product group in the company to co-release a new product line. I was basically on loan from my team to work on that project, as the only developer from my product group, and working under another manager. During that time, my team's manager stepped down, and a new one was hired. The product was released, the salespeople made a lot of money on commissions selling the product. The "other manager" left the company. The dev team in the other product group all either left or were reassigned, and I was left as the sole escalation support for the product.

Problem: My team's new manager had no part in the decision of putting me on that project, couldn't override the time that I was required to spend supporting it, but also couldn't use me as flexibly as her other developers. So I was first at the chopping block when the company decided to have a round of layoffs. I was providing value to the company as a whole, but not helping my manager in her own job.

Hard work: Check.

Delivering results: Check.

Delivering value to my manager: Nope.

Result: Looking for a new job.

Re: The quitting economy

#186

Post by gregjor »

spinlock wrote: post #111
mcguire wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about what I've decided, but all the freelance work I've seen available has been web development---the kind of thing I'm trying to escape. Freelancing for a systems programmer has a "I can't get there from here" problem, particularly since I'm crap-tastic at networking.

I feel like there's a market for independent contract sales. I would love to pay 15% of a contract to someone who could source and close contracts for me. Unfortunately, I think there's no way to escape the need to network. But, it's a learnable skill so you just have to put in the time and effort.

I work through 10X Management, doing freelance programming. They find customers, define the work parameters and scope, close the deals, do all contract and billing, and provide customer support as necessary. Flat 15%, I see the contract with the customer. They get better rates than I do on my own.

Re: The quitting economy

#187

Post by didgeoridoo »

dalbasal wrote: post #153
didgeoridoo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

:) That's definitely a very Ronald Coasian answer! We should start that lobby to get Ronald Coase accepted into neoliberalism or novoliberalism or whatever comes next. I purposely didn't give the answer because I think there are possibly other explanations besides transaction costs and regulation (probably the more friedman-esque go-to). The reason I like his papers a lot is because of his questions. He has a Darwini…

Huh. I think this highlights the fact (that I didn't realize until now, really) that I never really considered Friedman an "economist" in the strictest sense — in my view he's more of a normative political theorist, who uses economic models combined with empirical evidence from history to draw conclusions about policy. Though I'm politically & philosophically simpatico, I've never really looked to Friedman (or Hayek, for that matter) for practical economics.

Re: The quitting economy

#188

Post by gregjor »

georgeecollins wrote: post #119
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.…

There are two problems to this in my mind: people are always scrambling for the rare "experienced" people because too little training happens. The other problem is that the best project work I have seen have come from experienced, cohesive teams. It's true that many experienced teams are not cohesive or even sometimes skilled. But I think continuity helps. A company wonders why their development team is performing an…

This has been observed repeatedly, Fred Brooks wrote a whole book about it. Everyone says they've read and agree with "The Mythical Man Month" but when schedules loom the first reaction is always to throw more people at it. An expensive hot-shot added late in the project can grind the gears much worse than a green trainee.

Re: The quitting economy

#189

Post by true_religion »

aetherson wrote: post #176
dsparkman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe, but if you have 10 years of 1-year stints... companies aren't foolish either. They know you only survived that tactic because you're extremely good (and gosh hopefully well recommended by your colleagues from 10 jobs).

They also know that they are now 'lucky' enough the market is cold, and you'll be trapped with them for the next 5+ years out of fear.

Re: The quitting economy

#190

Post by dwaltrip »

dalbasal wrote: post #153
didgeoridoo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

:) That's definitely a very Ronald Coasian answer! We should start that lobby to get Ronald Coase accepted into neoliberalism or novoliberalism or whatever comes next. I purposely didn't give the answer because I think there are possibly other explanations besides transaction costs and regulation (probably the more friedman-esque go-to). The reason I like his papers a lot is because of his questions. He has a Darwini…

I like your "in the weeds" thoughts. There are a lot of intagibles that get wrapped up in employment, and many of them are very personal and contextual. Such things are incredibly resistant to meaningful quantification -- often the individual might even struggle to explain the dynamics that led to certain choices. A lot of food for thought here... thanks for the post!
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