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Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

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Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#111

Post by cj »

ulfw wrote: post #108
cj wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they will refuse to work for organizations like yours that continue to hold regressive views on WFH. Which is 100% their right! (But don’t then go on tech forums complaining about how difficult it is to find a job) PS. My company is fully remote (and was remote pre-Covid) so I definitely don’t have “regressive” views on WFH. I rejected a candidate recently who said they wanted to work out of a van while driving…

What an arbitrary limitation. So you don't hire on merit or what your candidate is able to deliver. You hire on desk space

I 100% acknowledge that there is likely someone out there who is an amazing “10x developer” that works out of a van.

But, on average, not having a desk means lower productivity.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#112

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #109
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do the forecasts of climate scientists, and in many other fields, this not an excuse.

That is just not even close to a fair analogy.

You are right; climate scientists have it worse. Economists do not have an established cabal of special interests working to undermine them at every turn. An entire political party opposed to anything they say.

Public reception is a top concern for climate scientists.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#113

Post by infamouscow »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #82
infamouscow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the bay area role also come with equity? I doubt that's true for the restaurant manager.

Probably, but the comparison wasn't meant to imply that fast food is a reasonable alternative. The point was to illustrate how bad things in tech are that recognizable companies (Oracle in this case) are hiring for extremely senior positions at salaries that make fast food look even remotely competitive. It's a very different market from two years ago.

I think what's happened is compensation packages have normalized or converged.

If you live in an HCoL area, you're probably not very happy about this, but if you live in a LCoL area these compensation packages are excellent.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#114

Post by dang »

jstarfish wrote: post #87
ak_111 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be critical but if you are in tech and have been unemployed for years (especially if those overlap with covid) then you are most certainly doing something wrong and need some guidance. Even now the situation is bad, but not that bad that it should take you more than a couple of months to land some kind of tech job that can pay the bills.

[flagged]

> A sea of brown faces betrays what you're up against.

WTF? You can't post like that here, and we ban accounts that do. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#115

Post by hirako2000 »

bee_rider wrote: post #91
hirako2000 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree great engineers will continue to grow in scarcity and demand higher and higher compensation, the shift to armies of prompt specialists is not just an overstatement. It's wrong. Why? The same was said again and again again about the offshoring programmers. Reality? Here we are with countless unfilled jobs hiring for senior enginners in NYC for over 200k per year. The gap, at least cultural, between a cod…

It might be necessary to hire more junior engineers to produce enough senior ones.

Wasn't trying to explain where are senior coming from. But that if after 20 years of attempt to offshore tech like we did textile, here we are still looking for upper level qualified enginners in the most expensive cities in the world, it means announcing the offshoring of the industry , all along , was fallacy. Wishful thinking for some.

Here we are at it again. AI will shift all these workers off payroll . Compress salaries. They are just manipulation, fear mongering to make job seekers give in and accept those underpaid vacant jobs.

Where are senior nurtured at? From companies, usually small, and/or those that don't buy the outsourcing/off shoring fallacy, or because it isn't an option for their organization.

The ratio of senior to junior has always been an issue and is independent to the offshoring phenomenon. More new people get into tech, and faster than seniors get formed. So it always seems there are too many junior, not enough senior. It also means there will defacto be far more seniors in the next generation than there are today. Still even less relative to how many we will need though.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#116

Post by afp14 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #17
vasco wrote: post #8

Most times in history the real crash only happens a while after rate increases stop, sometimes only after the first reduction. Famous last words I guess.

Define "crash". Do you mean a real crash? Or just a recession? There's a huge difference between a normal business cycle, and, say, 2008 or 1897. In a normal cycle, there's often a lag time between where the economy actually is (especially viewed with hindsight) and where the Fed policy is. By the time the Fed starts reducing rates, business activity has already started slowing down, and six months later they will sa…

I think that's the problem, there aren't hard and fast definitions. I think "economic depression" is an unsettling word, so it keeps switching to "recession" or "slowdown" in the same way that what was once a "moron" or "mongoloid" has become "intellectual disability". I think the powers that be worry that if they announce "we're in a depression right now" it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy to a degree. And eventually, one day if not already, they'll be equally hesitant to use the word "recession" at all.

As far as a bubble, yes, it's the evaporation of a huge amount of money. 1929 stock market crash -> all that market cap was lost. In the 2008 crash, home values crashed thus losing a vast amount of hypothetical worth. We were/are/will see a similar real estate crash in the corporate/office sector since the value of these rental units has plummeted post-covid-work-from-home.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#117

Post by carlosjobim »

cj wrote: post #102
carlosjobim wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have trouble finding good engineers to hire > unrealistically high salaries That's expected if you don't want to pay the salaries your candidates want. Admitting to not being able to find qualified workers is admitting fundamental incompetence as an employer and as a business. Hiring and retaining workers is the foundation of any business that employs people. Haven't it struck you that maybe you are unrealistic…

The reality is many people are taking pay cuts especially on the junior side of the spectrum. People were hiring devs straight out of bootcamps with zero experience for $160k a couple years ago. Sorry but I can’t hire someone and match their previous salary (from a company that fired them) with a total of 2 yrs experience.

Consider the same line of thinking for other cost centers of your business. Would a restaurant say they're having trouble finding produce just because they don't want to pay the prices asked for? Would a sawmill say they're having trouble finding lumber when they don't want to pay the prices asked.

If the developers you want to hire cannot produce enough for your company to make a profit at the salary levels they are asking, this is a hint that your company is not profitable enough to continue functioning. That happens sometimes when margins get thinner. The equation between what customers are willing to pay for the work, and what profit the company desires, and what salaries the workforce demands for doing the work, doesn't give a positive result anymore. So the business model doesn't work anymore.

Otherwise you'd hire them right? If the company will make a profit from their work. Or are you foregoing profits out of spite?

Edit: I say all this because I used to be incompetent at hiring and my business at the time suffered as a consequence. My mistake was that I was looking to hire people through networks of friends and family, instead of plain old job ads. Sounds like a dumb mistake, but as mentioned I was incompetent. Once I started publishing ads I had no problem finding a lot of good candidates. Hiring and retaining employees is a skill, the most important skill of a business owner.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#118

Post by pm90 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #96
pm90 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have trouble finding good engineers to hire And then > while I might have been open to hiring a digital nomad in 2021, I’m not open to that anymore because there are more “normal” candidates out there who aren’t asking for special treatment or unrealistically high salaries. Maybe these things are related. “Normal” has changed. The engineers I know have moved away and are very happy with the flexibility of their…

Yea I think normal is back a lot more than you want to believe.

Office occupancy levels in SF beg to differ.

Re: Global Economy Approaches Soft Landing, but Risks Remain

#120

Post by cj »

carlosjobim wrote: post #117
cj wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is many people are taking pay cuts especially on the junior side of the spectrum. People were hiring devs straight out of bootcamps with zero experience for $160k a couple years ago. Sorry but I can’t hire someone and match their previous salary (from a company that fired them) with a total of 2 yrs experience.

Consider the same line of thinking for other cost centers of your business. Would a restaurant say they're having trouble finding produce just because they don't want to pay the prices asked for? Would a sawmill say they're having trouble finding lumber when they don't want to pay the prices asked. If the developers you want to hire cannot produce enough for your company to make a profit at the salary levels they are…

> Would a restaurant say they're having trouble finding produce just because they don't want to pay the prices asked for?

Yes, if there were another produce supplier offering half the price for a better product.

I was probably wording my comments too strongly in this thread. It's not like we can't find anyone to hire. Just that we typically can find really good people if we spend just a tad bit longer rather than jumping on the first decent candidate.

In 2021, you basically had to jump on the first decent candidate because if you didn't they'd be snatched up by another company within days. In this market, you can afford to hire slower, talk to more people, and find the right fit.

Also, having hired and worked with dozens of people, I've seen zero correlation between salary and performance + employee retention. Paying someone more salary is not at all correlated with higher performance or higher employee retention (once you're above the 50th percentile). Everyone at our company is above 50th percentile in salary benchmarks, some people are at 70th or 90th percentile, and their performance + retention is no different than people paid 50th percentile.

TLDR: Throwing money at a problem usually doesn't fix it. Same applies in hiring. Throwing money at people doesn't make them perform better or stay at your company longer, once you're paying at least 50th percentile salaries.

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