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Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

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Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#41

Post by dboreham »

vkou wrote: post #33
Apocryphon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.

Ever since Obamacare banned discrimination for pre-existing conditions, health insurance is entirely a function of money. If you're taking home significantly more money, you can set a small fraction of it aside to cover an employer insurance gap. The problem for programmers is not cost of insurance, the problem is weird long-tail shit like insurance denying treatments you need, or wildly over-billing you.

"small fraction" is optimistic imho. Health insurance costs me more than my home mortgage payment (and it's crappy insurance that pays almost nothing). In my experience it isn't possible to reproduce the "BigCo health insurance" experience yourself, regardless of expense, unless you allow buying your own hospital.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#42

Post by lotsofpulp »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #39
lotsofpulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>profit per revenue is up, ie. we're making more money on the money we make. This makes no sense to me.

The amount of profit per customer or item sold has increased. Instead of just increasing the number of sales, they have increased their profit margin on each sale.

Oh, the usual way to phrase that is “increased profit margins”.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#43

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #16
nightski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd focus more on making a layoff less of a traumatic event than playing ultra safe with a low salary in a low risk company. For most software engineers it's not hard to build up a significant emergency fund. I'd advocate for 6 figures. Feel free to invest 80% of that as well in something liquid. Keep at least 3 months in cash.

It’s not just the money. Losing health insurance is pretty bad, especially if there are others on one’s insurance.

COBRA, or a state-equivalent, is available for nearly all US employees for 18 months after a layoff. Yes, it's expensive, but not outrageously so - I've been on COBRA a few times, and the expense is just because you're paying for the piece the company used to.

Point being it's still just money at the end, and saving up for a rainy day fund should also include COBRA payments in the calculation of how long the fund will last.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#44

Post by lotsofpulp »

crmd wrote: post #37
cdumler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. It's about making your financial results look better. My company touts every quarter how not only is revenue up, profit per revenue is up, ie. we're making more money on the money we make. Yet, when it comes to compensation and dealing with cost of living, the statement is that we haven't met our targets so it's a 3% pool. Not minimum or maximum, but that for someone to get more someone else has to get less. COV…

At my last medium sized company there were at least a half dozen branches of “the budget”, with employees and sales people being measured against the most aggressive budget, and several levels of management adding their own buffers, and finally the board which was working off the most conservative/pessimistic revenue and profit forecasts. No idea if this is normal or not.

It is normal because most labor sellers are not able or willing to sell their labor at a higher price to a different buyer.

All that nonsense about pools and targets and budgets is just a polite way of the buyer saying “we are betting you will not quit for x number”.

As a labor seller, you should always just think of employers as buyers, and negotiate the way you would in any transaction. If you think you can get more, then shop around for a different buyer. Or a different line of business if your buyers are not earning much profit themselves.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#46

Post by vkou »

dboreham wrote: post #41
vkou wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever since Obamacare banned discrimination for pre-existing conditions, health insurance is entirely a function of money. If you're taking home significantly more money, you can set a small fraction of it aside to cover an employer insurance gap. The problem for programmers is not cost of insurance, the problem is weird long-tail shit like insurance denying treatments you need, or wildly over-billing you.

"small fraction" is optimistic imho. Health insurance costs me more than my home mortgage payment (and it's crappy insurance that pays almost nothing). In my experience it isn't possible to reproduce the "BigCo health insurance" experience yourself, regardless of expense, unless you allow buying your own hospital.

Your home must either be a cardboard box, in the middle of nowhere, or you bought it two decades ago.

Its value is not what it pays for, it's value is capping out-of-pocket maximums in the worst-case. (Any serious medical situation will quickly run you up to them.)

Also, have you ever looked at the 'Employer pays' line item on the insurance section of a bigco paystub? Mine is more than my rent. (Maybe I should move to a bigger apartment.)

I understand that there's a huge sticker shock to having to pay your + an employer's portion of insurance, but it's still a function of money, and working for a bigco that does 7% layoffs every 8 years is a really good way to earn a lot of money.

And it's not like there are any 'play it safe' places in a recession. You can't predict the future, and small companies go belly-up, and do layoffs just as much as big ones.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#47

Post by nightski »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #40
_rs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations on what type of accounts to use or what might be decent investments? I certainly wouldn’t put anything I’d call an “emergency fund” in stocks right now

Emergency funds in FDIC insured savings accounts. HSA accounts serve as the best tax advantaged backup that you can invest in a broad market ETF like VOO since they are triple tax advantaged, although ideally you never have to withdraw from here until retirement.

I consider retirement & HSA accounts separate from emergency fund. Max HSA, max 401(k) then build up emergency fund in liquid assets.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#48

Post by lotsofpulp »

nightski wrote: post #47
lotsofpulp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emergency funds in FDIC insured savings accounts. HSA accounts serve as the best tax advantaged backup that you can invest in a broad market ETF like VOO since they are triple tax advantaged, although ideally you never have to withdraw from here until retirement.

I consider retirement & HSA accounts separate from emergency fund. Max HSA, max 401(k) then build up emergency fund in liquid assets.

I do too, but HSA is a nice backup emergency because you can withdraw up to all of your accumulated healthcare expenses tax and penalty free.

So pay for all your healthcare expenses with non HSA funds, keep track of the expenses, and eventually, you probably will have accumulated $10k or $20k of healthcare expenses you can reimburse yourself for IF you exhaust your regular emergency fund.

Re: Tell HN: IBM and SAP are cutting thousands of jobs

#49

Post by Apocryphon »

snowpid wrote: post #34
Apocryphon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is all in the context of layoff sprees happening at mostly U.S. based tech multinationals. It’s not as if Booking.com has been doing layoffs- though it seems like they already did that a year ago. And certainly Spotify also laid people off.

the context might be different for people in different countries. SAP is more important for me than lets say Meta.

Yes, but it would seem not to the HN audience, otherwise threads like this wouldn’t have 600+ replies because the mostly North American audience is unfamiliar with SAP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32776276

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22244750

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