221–230 of 355 posts
Do we have any empirical study of tax section 174's effect on how software companies are operating and if they have changed staffing plans because of it? January S174 discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38957651
Iirc this got reversed last minute.
(https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/2024/03/12/business-owners-un...)
And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…
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Unemployment is capped very low compared to tech salaries, involves a bunch of paperwork, and requires you to attest that you're actively pursuing opportunties for work in your field. Lots of highly paid people don't bother with it, even when they might have qualified -- whether because they're lazy to lazy to do the paperwork for a small offset against their expenses, or because they intentionally took time away fro…
In some states, severance pay can delay or reduce eligibility for unemployment benefits. The generous multi-month severance packages that many tech workers receive could have an effect on the unemployment numbers as a consequence—but I’m speculating.
My observation is that companies are getting much more precise on their needs. The days of “you’re smart and have a technical background” have given way to “there’s a dozen people in the market who have the exact experience we need, so we will limit our pool to them.” This is especially painful for college grads, who don’t have specific experience to fall back on.
This isn't new. When I was laid off in 2012, I had a friend at a company with an open position but they were looking with someone with GWT (Google Web Toolkit) experience. Six weeks later they were still looking. You don't think a senior developer could learn GWT in six weeks, and bring a lot more to the table?
Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more com…
There's something to this. I’m a senior dev in NYC with ~7 years experience working across the stack (NextJS/ReactJS, Node, Python, Postgres, SQL Server, etc). I’m also not half bad at design. I haven’t been able to get a response much less an interview.
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Why should I (in NOLA) take a salary that I got as a team lead 10 years ago on the West Coast?
In my case - because I can. It's part of my value proposition from my employer's perspective. I try not to think about it in terms of total compensation, but of marginal income (net income - cost of living). My taxes here are lower, and my cost of living is much lower. I own a 5-bedroom home on half an acre that I paid $125k for. My mortgage is $850 / month. My entire monthly expenditures, including food and such, ar…
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Usually it’s much easier to be liberal when doing so doesn’t cost you meaningfully. I’d encourage you to evaluate for yourself if your stances are truly fair and if you’re truly liberal considering how painful it is for an H1B to lose their job vs you. It’s also easy to say “but H1Bs get exploited!” Considering how many H1Bs come here, maybe they’d rather face this exploitation vs staying in their own country?
In a free market, there's no such thing as a shortage. This isn't a 1980's soviet grocery store. The market for programmers is not centrally planned. Its one of the least-regulated markets extant today. So anybody complaining about a "shortage of programmers" is just a cheapskate. In a free market, what signals to us that more of something should be produced? Buehler? Buehler?