601–609 of 609 posts
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There's a middle ground between spread out uniform, and having a few major population centers. Germany is a great example.
Big cities in Germany are richer than the small cities. And Germany is poorer than the US, too.
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If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country. America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10. There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of t…
China may have a 160 cities with a million+ people, but, do all of these cities have the infrastructure and opportunities that are the same as or come close to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzen? IMO, this is a case where quantity alone is a poor metric.
There are other educated assumptions we can make based on the rapid response to the Wuhan outbreak and the surrounding cities, but in my opinion, based on inference from what we can observe from the outside, the answer is firmly yes.
>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raise…
I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.
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I don't see where your ability to spread out work is affected at all. Taxes are usually done annually, so how spread or concentrated work is over a year wouldn't affect the level of taxation. And it's already the case that this can't (easily - I suspect there are ways) be spread over multiple years. That wouldn't be a change. I would also point out that those with lower salaries also suffer from mental health issues.…
Yes indeed, taxes are annual - and I told you clearly that I have years (usually less than one) when I can work well followed by years (usually multiple) when I can't work at all. E.g. in 2017 I was able to work 7 months and then nothing 2 years, then 3 months and nothing for a year, etc. I'd have passed your threshold in 2017 (if we adjusted by purchasing power) but thankfully there was none and so I was just barely…
That would include things like free health care, housing, and relief from tax burdens. Why doesn't the state help you? I'd argue that that's a lot because of lack of funding due to people taking your attitude that the state shouldn't take "your" money. I feel like you are someone who would benefit greatly from income redistribution that was well-implemented.
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Yes indeed, taxes are annual - and I told you clearly that I have years (usually less than one) when I can work well followed by years (usually multiple) when I can't work at all. E.g. in 2017 I was able to work 7 months and then nothing 2 years, then 3 months and nothing for a year, etc. I'd have passed your threshold in 2017 (if we adjusted by purchasing power) but thankfully there was none and so I was just barely…
It sounds like you make a very high income in some periods of your life, but that you are unable to work and struggle to make ends meet at other times. What I would like is that make a little less in the good times, but that you have much better support in the bad times. Yes, the state would get more of your work when you can work, but in return you'd get support from the output of others' work when you can't. That w…
In theory, but I also can't afford illusions, if it doesn't work out it will be way too destructive to me - and I can't see any reason whatsoever why it should work.
I disagree the problems are because of a lack of funding. Any western state has loads of money they could be using to help people. I'd be happy to add more if it just wasn't enough, but we're very far away from states making a good use of what they get now.
As it stands, I don't think any increased income from taxation would translate into more support for poor people or people like me. Not a single cent. I expect the opposite - the states would pour the money into enforcement, and people would get hurt more.
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> because they have such a narrow limited set of skills If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.
Narrow =/= Easy The fact that you cannot see that is what I mean, you take what I said as a personal insult while simultaneously having the collective view that if 'poor people want to stop being poor they should learn to code like me' around here. It's cognitive dissonance and the part that I don't get is how you think people with other skills would want to do this even if given the choice were it not for the money.…
I agree to a large extent about the social skills, and even the hobby farm seeing as I've considered it more than once... but being good in IT requires a wide range of skills.
It feels like most people that enter the field now are here because of the money, which is OK, but that doesn't mean they are any good, many are not, they are just taking advantage of a good opportunity. Again, that is OK.
This is a gig that won't last forever, like having a popular YouTube channel, so there is no reason to read into it any more than "people are jumping on the bandwagon during a gold-rush", and no reason to get so upset about it. There is no more or less social inequality because of IT workers than there was during the "house flipping" trend from a few years back, Crypto, social media influencer channels, etc.
There are a lot of good paying jobs, and no job will ever make you wealthy or powerful, so no reason to get worked up over ordinary working-class people (even if they make 6 figures, it's the 8+ figures that oppress).
edit: spelling
>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raise…
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> Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms. I don't think, if asked to interview for it today, that I could land my current job. I'm also fairly certain I'm one of the top engineers on my team, and I do think we have a really good team of developers overall. It makes me feel better that I'm not alone, in this…
It's a random process. If you set the bar 2 std. div. above what you need, you are hiring qualified people with a p value of 5%. You're rejecting /most/ qualified people too. Most people underestimate how random the process is. There are a few ways in: - Be 2 std. div above the qualifications - Apply to many places and pick the one where you're lucky - Give another, less noisy source of signal than resume + interview…
Now, just for the avoidance of confusion, the standard deviation in this context is the standard deviation of the measurement error, not the standard deviation of the skill level of the applicants.
For example, if you simplistically assume people can be graded on a 1d scale from 0 to 10, and you think a certain job needs someone with a skill level of 7.5, and your interviewing process has an uncertainty of 1, then you need to set the bar at 9.5. From the outside, people would wonder why you are trying to hire Einsteins for a job to write dashboards.
You are not trying to hire Einsteins, it's just that your interviewing process sucks.
If you manage to reduce that estimation uncertainty from 1 to 0.25, then you need to set the bar at 8. All of a sudden your pool of reasonable applicants increases tremendously.
My conclusion (I'm making it up as I go, so feel more than free to discard it - I may discard it tomorrow, who knows?) is that there's tremendous value for companies to improve their interviewing process.
But there's a second conclusion: as an interviewee, you want to assist the interviewer in reducing their estimate uncertainty. Because that uncertainty is not a fixed number, it's candidate-dependent. A company will prefer to hire a candidate that is an 7 plus or minus 0.5 than an 8 plus or minus 2. All of a sudden you will beat much stronger candidates.
How can you do that? I'm not sure, if I knew I'd probably be 10 times richer.
But I can offer some guesses. If you have publications, a GitHub account with nice projects, maybe some youtube videos where you explain some concepts quite well. Also, anytime someone can vouch for you, someone that the potential employer trusts, that reduces their uncertainty a lot.
complains about six-figure pay while sitting at home at computer eating a snack while waiting for someone to review their pull request
and then goes out to buy groceries for family that cost 50% more than a year ago. and then has to fill up on gas but decides to just walk