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As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

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Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#41

Post by eyivghh »

heterodoxxed wrote: post #7
Riesling wrote: post #3

Inflation of specific asset prices is also playing into this. Money is losing its value. Try buying a house with a regular wage nowadays. Politicians, central banks and economic experts are sleeping at the helm.

Cheap wants, expensive needs. This is our economy now. "I love my iPhone, but I worry about health insurance." as I've heard it put here on HN. Ironically, the Soviet system fell from opposite. Expensive wants, cheap needs. Everyone saw the West getting cheaper and cheaper consumer goods and central planning failed to keep up. Now we get to see what happens.

The Soviet system was “expensive needs, non-existany wants, faked numbers to fool the useful idiots in the West”

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#42

Post by mjburgess »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #34
mjburgess wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative is largely false. Both because nothing was "outsourced" and because american manufacturing is at an all time high. Automation ended the vast majority of high-labour manufacturing. What was left was only economical to do without automation at extremely low labour costs. In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation.

Yes and no. It depends on what is being manufactured. We manufacture big, expensive things. I have friends that run Garment District companies, and they are pretty much a Bellwether for this kind of thing. > In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation. I agree. It will be slower than Japan and Korea, because China has a much larger population of poor folks t…

I suspect, based on a type of ecological-thermodynamic reasoning, that china will never be middle class.

I think the "global class structure" we have today might be the peak of history.

The relevant calculation:

Annual US Energy Consumption per Capia: 7,000 kg oil equivalent. China: 2,000 kg.

So you're looking at +5,000kg per capita * 1.4bn people annual.

So you'll need to add that energy capacity to the world, ie., a c. 10 trillion kg oil eqv. -- it's not clear we can do this.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#44

Post by wreath »

lordnacho wrote: post #8

The first guy in the article is a dev. There's never been a better time to find work as a dev. Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before. On top of it all, if your firm wants people back in the office soon, now is the time to do loads of remote interviews so that you can keep being remote. I was interviewing recently and almost everyone is at least partly remote, with a huge number o…

> Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before.

I may be naive, but I guess this office-work-exodus would result to improvements in office spaces in general to attract devs (or other employees in tech). This would also make it easier for people who are looking to move to the US to find office jobs, since the competition is less fierce. Am I off mark here and too naive?

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#45

Post by kaycebasques »

On a tangential note, it really feels like we continue to live in a historic time. Maybe it's a completely personal experience but it just seems like so many basic societal assumptions are getting meaningfully challenged or brought into focus. The pandemic panic and subsequent lockdowns focused our relationships with other humans. The racism protests also. The "inner temple" of the US empire getting breached/"violated" focused thought around the existing global political order. Remote work and these supposed waves of resignations focusing thought around capitalism (as mentioned in other comments I'm on a 1-year sabbatical as of this month [1] and know a few people doing or considering the same so I definitely think there is possible truth to the story). All of these things have been bubbling for a long time, no doubt, but the focus on each one seems more intense lately.

[1] https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#46

Post by lordnacho »

beforeolives wrote: post #10
lordnacho wrote: post #8

The first guy in the article is a dev. There's never been a better time to find work as a dev. Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before. On top of it all, if your firm wants people back in the office soon, now is the time to do loads of remote interviews so that you can keep being remote. I was interviewing recently and almost everyone is at least partly remote, with a huge number o…

> Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before. I'm in the UK and not seeing any of this.

I'm in the UK too. But also remote means you can get a job "based" anywhere. Check out some US firms for instance, many are hiring and are happy with euro time zones.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#47

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

kaycebasques wrote: post #22
vincentmarle wrote: post #9

This is admirable but the truth is that these jobs will not disappear, they will simply be outsourced abroad. There’s swaths of competent people abroad that are happy to take your (overpaid) place and the major shift to remote work tools has made it all the easier to blend in your team even if they’re working from another country. On top of this, foreign workers usually get paid 1/3 of the American salary, so the emp…

The first counterargument that comes to my mind is timezones. I was on a team distributed across San Francisco, New York, London, Munich, Australia, Tokyo. Not being able to schedule a meeting time that works for everyone was a neverending source of friction and frustration. In other words while I don't disagree that there is a lot more work that can be outsourced, perhaps we will reach the limit earlier than you exp…

Timezones arguably benefit some places that require a 24/7 coverage schedule.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#48

Post by vanderZwan »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #40
wayoutthere wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y’all have Brexit to thank for that. All my clients relocated any technical work they had in the UK to Poland or the baltics.

It's a bit of coup out to jump on the British where somehow everything negative that happens is due to Brexit. As counter anecdata, I am in the Netherlands and I am (now, as much as before) receiving calls for job opportunities from UK based recruiters. They are for the majority concentrated around London, Oxbridge, Bristol, Manchester. Depending on where GP is based in the UK, the landscape and opportunities can be…

The person you replied to wrote that all their clients "relocated any technical work they had in the UK to Poland or the Baltics". That's not politics and bitter emotions, that's sharing their own anecdotal data.

Of course, one could criticize generalizing based on that one data point, but that's a different thing altogether.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#49

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #34
mjburgess wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative is largely false. Both because nothing was "outsourced" and because american manufacturing is at an all time high. Automation ended the vast majority of high-labour manufacturing. What was left was only economical to do without automation at extremely low labour costs. In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation.

Yes and no. It depends on what is being manufactured. We manufacture big, expensive things. I have friends that run Garment District companies, and they are pretty much a Bellwether for this kind of thing. > In the next decade, china itself will see large segments of its manufacturing labour gone to automation. I agree. It will be slower than Japan and Korea, because China has a much larger population of poor folks t…

China is hitting a demographic wall, so the changes will happen much faster than many expect. 996 is more of a tech worker thing, not lower skilled manufacturing labor.

Re: As the Pandemic Recedes, Millions of Workers Are Saying 'I Quit'

#50

Post by bluedino »

kaycebasques wrote: post #22
vincentmarle wrote: post #9

This is admirable but the truth is that these jobs will not disappear, they will simply be outsourced abroad. There’s swaths of competent people abroad that are happy to take your (overpaid) place and the major shift to remote work tools has made it all the easier to blend in your team even if they’re working from another country. On top of this, foreign workers usually get paid 1/3 of the American salary, so the emp…

The first counterargument that comes to my mind is timezones. I was on a team distributed across San Francisco, New York, London, Munich, Australia, Tokyo. Not being able to schedule a meeting time that works for everyone was a neverending source of friction and frustration. In other words while I don't disagree that there is a lot more work that can be outsourced, perhaps we will reach the limit earlier than you exp…

Doesn't matter. I'm not sure what time it is in India, the Philippines, or the Czech Republic, but the support teams answer the phone between 8am and 5pm our time.
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