Kiel
Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
191–200 of 606 posts
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
"tenured engineering managers"? http://thestartupconference.com/2017/03/25/the-350k-google-s...
That's an even more specific case, because again, most software developers aren't working at Google/FB/Airbnb/Uber/Snap. And those are figures for experienced workers to boot, and "Staff Engineer" is typically a managerial role IMO, if not directly by delegation/HR-type stuff, then in a technical sense. The total comp is in practice also generally a bit lower because most of those companies backload the vesting
“Staff Engineer” is about halfway up the technical career ladder in many places, with a few possible (but increasingly rare) levels above, and a few levels below. Someone promoted to staff engineer likely has at least 5 years of work experience (probably more) and is self-motivated, good at their job, gets along well with their coworkers, and has some technical vision.
Many of these people might have some quasi-managerial duties (interacting with other parts of the organization, helping with recruiting, ...), get roped into more meetings than they would like, or make high-level technical decisions and delegate work to a handful of more junior engineers, but most of them are sitting at their desks writing code a significant part of the day (or perhaps rewriting the schlocky code that the junior engineers just handed in).
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more about the attitude of not being prepared. Someone who is prepared will go to bed early enough to allow them to show up on time without being exhausted.
That's just favoring the early birds. Go look at statistics on lack of sleep, and consider the massive health, productivity and creativity implications. Surely, you will not assert that a third of the population lack sleep because of attitude or responsibility issues?
What is an earlybird? Is it someone who is unambiguously physically hardwired to get up early? Or is it someone who has made the choice to implement the sequence of changes in their life necessary to facilitate comfortably getting up early in the morning?
I imagine both sorts of earlybirds exist, and I'd be interested in seeing how common each is.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may be underestimating the importance of this article to US politics. One of the biggest issues in the 2016 election was stagnating blue-collar wages - it was one of Trump's main platforms, and one of the main factors that made him President. If the economy continues to do well across all income levels, regardless of why, and regardless of how unpopular Trump remains, there is a good chance we will see a…
That I understand but in the article there's a clear anti-Trump agenda and it's just I had a higher opinion about the Economist than them pushing their agenda in an article. It's basically: "The economy is getting better (but not thanks to Trump) and there are more jobs (still not thanks to Trump). There has been an increase in wages (you might think it's thanks to Trump, but it is not)..."
The Economist is strongly pro mass low skill immigration.
One major change in the US has been border enforcement and a promise of deportations instead of amnesty. If that's what's resulting in higher blue collar wages and employment then they have to re-think a large part of their world view.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about manufacturing jobs is that they often involve operating heavy machinery. Drug use and intoxication drastically increases the chance of death or dismemberment - for the inebriated, or often, others around them. As a pilot, I seriously don’t care if you show up to work high or not - unless you’re doing maintenance on the jet I’m supposed to fly.
Drug tests don't test for intoxication. They just test test for something that correlates somewhat with having been intoxicated sometime in the recent past. Better is to use impairment testing. An impairment test is a test of cognitive function, alertness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and similar objective things that actually correlate well with how well you can do your job now , instead of sometime in the p…
>Drug tests don't test for intoxication.
Exactly this. Pot is probably the most common and it stays in your system for 30 days after use (probably the longest that is tested). Essentially the screen will fail a guy who smoked pot two weeks ago, but pass a guy who shot up heroin all last week. Like the polygraph test, they are deeply flawed, in this case, for testing for intoxication.
Also, imagine if drug tests failed an applicant for having a beer in the last 30 days. Like it or not, pot is replacing beer for a large portion of Americans, time to adapt.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an even more specific case, because again, most software developers aren't working at Google/FB/Airbnb/Uber/Snap. And those are figures for experienced workers to boot, and "Staff Engineer" is typically a managerial role IMO, if not directly by delegation/HR-type stuff, then in a technical sense. The total comp is in practice also generally a bit lower because most of those companies backload the vesting
“Staff Engineer” is about halfway up the technical career ladder in many places, with a few possible (but increasingly rare) levels above, and a few levels below. Someone promoted to staff engineer likely has at least 5 years of work experience (probably more) and is self-motivated, good at their job, gets along well with their coworkers, and has some technical vision. Many of these people might have some quasi-manag…
I think it depends on the company. I was extrapolating from my own experience but I realize it may not be the same elsewhere. In my experience Staff Engineers were almost always at least 10 years-experienced. I might be wrong about those companies I mentioned, though, because I've never worked at any of them
Also keep in mind I said "usually" in my original comment. Blue collar labor and software engineering are not directly analogous because yes, there are software developers at the high end that are making a lot of money compared to some of the best blue collar workers. But it's still only a small percentage of them making that much, and I wouldn't mention those figures to someone looking to go into software for that reason
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#197I work at a medium-sized software company. We've had similar problems with younger employees. Guys literally posting in company-wide Slack channels that they're "feeling a little sleepy this morning, gonna be in later." Can you even imagine somebody saying that to their boss in some black-and-white movie from the 1940s? "Hey, how about instead of coming in later you hit the bricks and never come back?" The culture ha…
>> "feeling a little sleepy this morning, gonna be in later." Most clients don't want to deal with that kind of behavior. "It's been 3 hours, why is the site still down?" "The developer isn't in yet to fix it." Being reliable and showing up to work on time is a job skill as much as good communication, being a hard worker, etc I realize that you should be flexible with workers' hours but people also need to realize co…
Most developers are not in position where the client would have slightest idea when developer came in.
If you have regular hours long outages that require specific developer to come in and fix the code asap, you have huge mismanagement problem. The developers coming not in the morning is your least problem. Insufficient testing, apparently badly set up servers+application and most likely general mismanagement are primary problem.
Also, if you are in this situation, then it is reasonable to assume that your developers had to deal with similar outages in the middle of the night or during weekends.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test for alertness, judgment, and reflexes at the start of each shift? Pass the test, and you can clock in and get to work. Fail the test, hit the nap room (unpaid) for a while, and try again when you wake up. It would catch people who are drunk, high, having a stroke, or just sleepy, rather than just the guy who used cannabis two weekends ago and is perfectly capable of…
No one is required to give you a job. The increased cost to do that everyday is not worth it to the company if they can weed out possible irresponsible workers from a drug test. It’s work, not a babysitter. All everyone is talking about is weed which I’m sure most of us agree shouldn’t be tested for but we don’t even know what the failed tests failed for.
This whole tree of comments is a response to someone complaining that it's hard for a company to find workers. Nobody's saying that company is required to hire anyone - we are just making suggestions to help them with their problem.
If labor is turning into a seller's market, buyers are going to have to adjust.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a case at all to be made for personal responsibility when such a large percentage don't even bother to show up? How can one possibly ever get out of poverty if s/he can't even make it to an interview?
Sure, but personal responsibility is learned/cultural. It could take a while for people to break the cycle when they grew up seeing their parents make poor decisions, who also grew up seeing their own parents make poor decisions, etc. Not saying that all poverty is a result of poor decisions but that the two feed on each other
They do--but this (a difficulty in getting lower-paid workers to even show up) is a new phenomenon. We've always had lower-paid workers and poverty, but something else has changed.
My concern is that the "something else" might be counter-effective but well-intentioned policies intended to help.
Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may be underestimating the importance of this article to US politics. One of the biggest issues in the 2016 election was stagnating blue-collar wages - it was one of Trump's main platforms, and one of the main factors that made him President. If the economy continues to do well across all income levels, regardless of why, and regardless of how unpopular Trump remains, there is a good chance we will see a…
I don't think Scott Adams is really accurate there. What is going on is that Trump and the Republican Congress have been stupendously ineffective on the legislative level, to the point where this tax reform may be their first major legislative accomplishment. If the tax reform blows everything up, inflates a bubble, whatever, then they'll take a major electoral hit. If they're not bloody-stupid , they'll let "Obamano…
> ...their first major legislative accomplishment
First, Trump and the Republican party are two different political factions. Trump basically ran on that claim. In history books, I would expect this presidency to be marked with an asterisk as one single party does not really control Congress and the White House.
Second, the White House vs. Congress dynamics have been pretty dysfunctional for quite some time now. When there is single party control over all of the above, it's usually fleeting. And rarely with a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. You need to go back to the Carter and Johnson years to see that.
What's the point? People are getting what they vote for. They pretty much want gridlock on issues, they want "our team" to fight "their team", otherwise we'd see consensus on some issues and bills passing and being signed. The thing that concerns me is that the consensus that does seem to be forming is that more should be done by unelected officials: judges and members of the Something Or The Other Administration.
That is, there's no real interest in making sure legislators actually legislate. The lack of separation of powers will be unhealthy in the long run. Possibly catastrophic.