Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 198 posts

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#111

Post by zanny »

vinceguidry wrote: post #17

The author of the article is misinformed about the true landscape of wealth and income inequality. The middle class is ultimately defined by the ability and need to build your own safety net. The upper middle class is able to do this with plenty of wealth to spare for luxuries like private schooling for their kids, income security is provided by their network. Just tap your network and find another job. The upper mid…

The problem with all these discussions on economics involving a middle class comes back to how everyones definition of "middle class" is different. Especially when you are rich and/or poor - you might have millions in the bank but you are paid a salary so you are still "working / middle class" despite being in the top .1% of wealth. You are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net and any illness could leave you homeless but you have the latest smartphone so you are "middle class".

Its completely anecdotal - we don't have an international standard definition of "middle class" but if you have an upper class of wealth owners who live off capital, and a lower class that has no wealth and lives off labor, middle is the hybridization of the two. To be truly middle class you would need half your income coming from investments and half from labor, which means at todays rates you would need about a million in investments to make the median salary and have the same income coming from your savings.

A lot of people do fall in that category, but I'm of the opinion nowadays that the dilution of the term is an actively intentional weapon of the globalist elite - when people admit they are poor, working class, or lower class they recognize they have much to gain and little to lose opposing the status quo of society. If you can convince everyone, including the rich (who can shamelessly exploit markets so long as they don't see themselves as the elite ownership class) and the poor (who would rather not recognize their own exploitation) to call themselves middle class you can abuse the poor as much as you want, they can never collectively act against you if you are all claiming to be in the same economic class.

A middle class does exist, but its not nearly as large as anyone - rich or poor - likes to think it is.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#112

Post by heurist »

mseebach wrote: post #41
awat wrote: post #8

To comment on one of the sentiments in the last paragraph. I often find myself wondering about the people doing the bidding above them where they are the last one compensated on a middle-upper class level before the VP or CEO or whoever that makes the 100X worker salary. What motivates that person? I’m sure they are compensated very well but at an exponentially lower rate than the will they are serving.

You seem to imply that those top people receiving these large compensations are obviously unfairly and massively overpaid, and that this is an uncontroversial fact. This clearly isn't the perception at that level. At least some number of people at the board level, as well as presumably these top people themselves, probably don't share that view[1]. This probably extends to the layers immediately beneath them. I know…

This article on CEO compensation packages is relevant: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/how-com...

> Through the 1970s—when the ratio of CEOs’ pay to that of the average worker was much lower, at somewhere between 20:1 and 30:1—the lodestar was “internal equity,” or how an executive’s pay compared with that of other employees in the company. A nascent industry, executive-compensation consulting, changed this. Consultants recommended switching to “external equity,” meaning compensation would be based on what other CEOs were paid. This was merely a useful sales tool—even though the consultants didn’t have solid evidence or theoretical justification for this method, they could attract business by vowing to set ambitious goals for their clients. Still, corporations adopted the standard of external equity, and CEOs got a lot richer.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#113

Post by zanny »

Rafuino wrote: post #98
replicatorblog wrote: post #30

I'd be curious to ask the author, + Have many of your laid off peers had trouble finding work, post-layoff? + Do you think you'd have a difficult time finding another job if you were laid off? Most people in tech, who are willing to live in one of a half dozen specific cities, have job security prior generations could only have dreamed of. Tech skills are far more portable than a skilled line worker at Ford's River R…

I'd be curious to ask you what "tech skills" means. What's demanded by the companies you refer to is likely shifting constantly. If you're not working in the hot stack, you're not going to have job security "prior generations could only have dreamed of."

HN might not like to hear it, but what this hive mind likes to think of as "hot stack" - React, Node based software in general, etc - is not even close to the "hot stack" of almost anywhere except in the microcosm of California around SF.

At the end of the day there will still be a dozen programming jobs in .Net or Java to every one in the latest and greatest web tech. In equal parts because on one hand finding people who stay contemporary with the "latest and greatest" is expensive and because businesses don't want to use the latest and greatest if it means changing the software they already wrote twenty years ago.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#114

Post by allannienhuis »

mseebach wrote: post #55
allannienhuis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea might work better for products than departments. I worked for an employer who did exactly that when one of the new product/business they'd built wasn't growing (enough?) to warrant more investment. So he set up a couple of the developers working on the product with the rights to the product and helped work out new contracts with the existing handful of clients (it was large enterprise software). There was en…

But was the alternative in that case to fire the two employees? It sounds more like the case that they wanted to cut the product. Specifically, in the case of the article, spinning off the redundant employees leaving them in a new firm with no product and no revenue sounds like a cruelly dystopian option. And if the company was willing to put money into it, I'm pretty sure most employees would prefer that as a severa…

Cutting a product often comes with layoffs. The other products may or may not be able to support the staff that were working on the products being cut. Obviously the larger the company is the more likely there are other options aside from layoffs.

In this case I expect he might have made a spot for those employees working on a different product, but that's not certain - technologies & skills were different & the vertical markets were completely different.

And in this specific case, the two staff thought it was an amazing opportunity for them - I think their short-term salary went up & they got a lot more flexibility plus potential upside if they could grow the business even slowly. Obviously some downsides in terms of benefits, etc. But even if it didn't work out it would have been a pretty good line item on their resume. :)

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#116

Post by mcphage »

Rafuino wrote: post #98
replicatorblog wrote: post #30

I'd be curious to ask the author, + Have many of your laid off peers had trouble finding work, post-layoff? + Do you think you'd have a difficult time finding another job if you were laid off? Most people in tech, who are willing to live in one of a half dozen specific cities, have job security prior generations could only have dreamed of. Tech skills are far more portable than a skilled line worker at Ford's River R…

I'd be curious to ask you what "tech skills" means. What's demanded by the companies you refer to is likely shifting constantly. If you're not working in the hot stack, you're not going to have job security "prior generations could only have dreamed of."

> If you're not working in the hot stack, you're not going to have job security

What do you think happens to all the software written in languages / frameworks after all the hotshot devs have moved on? They still need features and maintenance, and they’re not rewritten nearly as often or as quickly as people want to think.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#117

Post by toephu2 »

refurb wrote: post #2

Having been laid off due to downsizing, I think everyone should go through it at least once. Sure, the first time will leave you panic stricken, but you'll come out the other side with a lot more clarity about the employee-employer relationship. You are disposable. Even the CEO is disposable (as I've seen many times). Once you realize that, you'll stop the BS about loyalty to your company. It's a business arrangement…

Even Steve Jobs is disposable.

How many here remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard Steve Jobs passed away? Almost like being able to recall where you were when 9/11 happened.

When I heard of his death I was shocked, I wondered how Apple would survive, how the world for that matter would move on? But sure enough the next day the sun still rose and and the earth still rotated. Today Apple is doing just fine without Jobs and is making record profits. Everyone is disposable and money will always make the world go 'round.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#118

Post by kraig911 »

Survivor Syndrome to the T. It's a part of our modern life I'm afraid. It could be a lay off. A car crash. Any event of trauma where you didn't feel in control. I've been laid off 3 times now - there's not a lot of ways to spin it. Rather than trying to find it as an opportunity or BS any it all it's just best to say it really sucks that are minds can mess us up that way. It just sucks. Leave it at that.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#119

Post by yeslibertarian »

This is some leftist shit. The C level executives are also disposable. The company itself is disposable. They are providing some product and service and trying to convince people to buy it.

So you feel powerless eh? Try creating a successful business. THEN you will feel really powerless.

Re: Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security

#120

Post by notabee »

taurath wrote: post #72
vinceguidry wrote: post #17

The author of the article is misinformed about the true landscape of wealth and income inequality. The middle class is ultimately defined by the ability and need to build your own safety net. The upper middle class is able to do this with plenty of wealth to spare for luxuries like private schooling for their kids, income security is provided by their network. Just tap your network and find another job. The upper mid…

Both the middle class and upper middle class can and frequently do operate with no "real" safety net, especially before age 40. Those people sending their kids to private school and have a nice house can and are leveraged like crazy, and can't afford a big layoff, economic downturn, or huge emergency medical bills. Upper middle class delineation to me isn't about security, its about being able to scrounge better qual…

This is the link you're referencing, right? I also found it a useful model of how social and economic ranks can substantially but not completely overlap. https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaeloc...
Post reply on HN