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U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

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Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#351

Post by B4CKlash »

This is largely a problem of "informational asymmetrics between agents," as Nassim Taleb would describe it.

Or Gharrar as describe in Sharia law. "It is an extremely sophisticated term in decision theory that does not exist in English; it means both uncertainty and deception –my personal take is that it means something beyond informational asymmetry between agents. It means inequality of uncertainty. Simply, as the aim is for both parties in a transaction to have the same uncertainty facing random outcomes, an asymmetry becomes equivalent to theft."

The employer sees the entire talent pool and can therefore leverage this informational advantage to drive prices (wages) down.

http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#352

Post by extr »

stlHusker wrote: post #162
existencebox wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done a good handful of interviews, I tend to look for "generic problem solving" (not in the sense of trick questions, but in the sense of running through ambiguous engineering and mixed social/engineering scenarios to see how they'd move forward) communication skills (the ability to communicate the above effectively, talk about past work, problems, successes) and frankly track record. (this is obviously harder…

I really hope that more people would look at it that way. Just my own personal experience, but I've honestly seen the trial-by-fire method used either at the sole exclusion of, or weighted more heavily than actually talking to the candidate about their past work. I can't count the number of times in the past where I've encountered this. At most points when this occurs and it seems there is no end in sight, I typicall…

This reminds me of an data science interview I had early in my career that was exactly along these lines. Several "case studies" that turned out to be semi-guided math/cs interview problems. One guy started off on a variation of the secretary problem, I recognized the general form of it and pointed out that there is a straightforward way to derive the optimal solution, which we could tweak for our situation. No no, we have an hour to kill. I want you to explain my way of solving the problem back to me. Cue an hour of frustrating whiteboarding where neither I nor the interviewer seemed to really grok the intuition for the steps we were taking. I went through 3 more situations like this over the course of a grueling 8 hour day, probably about an hour of which I had the chance to talk about my own background. Didn't get the job, and was specifically called out for my "poor technical performance". I had been through so few interviews at that point I had no idea it wasn't the norm. I legitimately wondered if I was cut out to be in the profession. Felt like major shit.

A little while after I had an interview more like what you describe. It was night and day. We did a brief technical portion that was mainly to ensure I wasn't bullshitting my experience level, then a few hours of discussing my past projects with various current team members. I actually enjoyed it, found myself relating to my interviewers, and easily got the job.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#353

Post by ThePawnBreak »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #142
expertentipp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Eastern Europe deserves low salaries? Mind you - cars, clothes, petrol, electronics there are more expensive (sic) than in US and cost the same as in more developed EU countries. Social security net and healthcare in Eastern Europe are awfully underfunded and are more comparable to American than to those from more developed EU countries.

We (actually you) are talking about "market rate". The Eastern Europe "market rate" is lower than the US because cost of living is. I assure you that people earning USD 40K in Eastern Europe have a quality of life comparable to their "market rate" paid US engineer (as people in the same thread are saying). As quality of life improves (also helped by US companies paying above-average rates, compared to the local ones)…

> The Eastern Europe "market rate" is lower than the US because cost of living is.

It's the other way around.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#354

Post by ChuckMcM »

sdenton4 wrote: post #340
ChuckMcM wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the tension I'm seeing. I'm seeing it in the rank and file all across the country as the article points out. Office admins, waitstaff, hospitality positions, janitorial, etc. These generally blue collar positions have had negative wage growth between 2009 and today but that has slowed or nearly stopped according to the labor statistics put out by Bureau of Labor Statistics[1]. As an example, at some point the cus…

And then all of these new janitors and clerical staff will have paychecks, which they can use to play for hotel rooms on their new paid vacations... There's a strong argument that the wage stagnation in the middle and lower classes in the US is slowing down the economy across the board. In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful of companies is contributing to the inability of companies…

> In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful of companies is contributing to the inability of companies further down the food chain to pay workers market rates.

You would not be the only one wondering that :-). A friend of mine who used to be an economist working at Google and I were discussing what the impact of having over a Trillion dollars locked up in 'cash and cash equivalents'[1] by the top 50 international companies.

By its nature, cash equivalents can't be lent out by banks for longer term investment (they are required to be able to exchange the investments for cash on short notice) so that hoard just sits there.

[1]https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2016/global-cash-25...

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#356

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwaway911233 wrote: post #296
sjg007 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, how much?

I make ~$200k in an affordable city not on the coast. I could make $300k - $400k in NYC. I write and maintain programs for finance.

How do you get a job in finance while not on the coast? Remote work? Work in a branch? Work for a regional outfit?

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#357

Post by kspaans »

School-Cotton wrote: post #337
kspaans wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I was assuming sjg007 was talking about tax treatment of the capital gains if you hold onto the stock after the RSUs vest.

I still don't get how there's any way holding it instead of selling it reduces taxes. If you sell on vest, you pay income tax and 0 capital gains. If you sell after vest, you pay the same amount of income tax, and possibly nonzero capital gains.

Yes, I think the clarification needed was that you can reduce capital gains tax rates but not income tax rates.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#358

Post by AnimalMuppet »

School-Cotton wrote: post #337
kspaans wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I was assuming sjg007 was talking about tax treatment of the capital gains if you hold onto the stock after the RSUs vest.

I still don't get how there's any way holding it instead of selling it reduces taxes. If you sell on vest, you pay income tax and 0 capital gains. If you sell after vest, you pay the same amount of income tax, and possibly nonzero capital gains.

Well... if it's worth $X when it vests, you pay income tax on $X. If it's worth $Y when you sell, you pay capital gains on $(Y - X), presuming you held it longer than a year. If it was less than a year, you pay income tax on $(Y - X).

At least, that's my understanding. I'm not a tax accountant, though. This is not financial advice.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#359

Post by nogbit »

cynicalkane wrote: post #113
altotrees wrote: post #91

Recently had a recruiter call me, interview me over the phone once, in-person once, and via skype once. The job seemed to be a great fit, the pay was there, everything seemed to be lined up. The recruiter called me again to tell me that they were going to be taking the next steps with me very shortly. A week of silence goes by, then another. I email, inquiring about the position. "Oh, we gave that to someone we had b…

I feel like there's two tiers of the software industry: those employable at AmaFaceGoogFlix or a competitor, and everyone else; but the "everyone else" is completely unaware that the first tier exists. It's like if minor league baseball had no idea about major league baseball. You even see it on HN. Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of…

And then there is a third that those in AmaFaceGoogFlix are completely unaware that the tier above them pwned them long ago, governments.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#360

Post by boyaka »

stevenwoo wrote: post #300
maxerickson wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.

That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools. The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done…

A lot go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.
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