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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#241

Post by TypingOutBugs »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #223
TypingOutBugs wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should be illegal, specifically? What concrete action should be made illegal? These are people hired locally within their respective countries by local corporations owned by holdings in the US. How can you make it illegal for a company to hire people legally in other countries through their legal non-US incorporations?

> many of them are no longer hiring in the US, but in India, Poland and Brazil instead to reiterate what i've stated throughout this thread: passing up US workers in favor of hiring foreigners should incur heavy penalties. There is no shortage of American workers. If a foreigner wants to work for an American company, they should get a greencard and work in America. If a company has a foreign office, of course it make…

There’s three ways US companies can do that:

1. Hiring a company for a service

2. Hiring a contractor who invoices through their foreign company

3. Having an office in that country

Which one would you make illegal? I don’t even understand what the rule would be to defend or support here, in practice. Companies in the US cannot hire services from foreign countries?

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#242

Post by vbi8iBEX »

intelVISA wrote: post #232
irvingprime wrote: post #209

The longest period of unemployment I've ever experienced ended about 6 months ago. I was unemployed for 11 months. The company that finally hired me was intentionally targeting people with lots of experience. I have that. They also pay less than I used to make but I took it because I needed a job. Previous to that period of unemployment, my resume tended to get noticed. I got interviews from 3 applications out of 5.…

Taking your conclusion in good faith, would you really want to work in a shop that weighs immutable characteristics over actionable metrics like solving LC hards?

yes, because I like food better than principles.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#243

Post by variadix »

I can’t comment on the current job market, but I was looking for work as a fresh grad in 2021. After applying to 200+ positions I received 5 callbacks, 3 of which were defense contractors. 3.9 GPA in EE at a top 10 state school, 2 internships, several big projects in and outside of school. Mostly applied to RTL and embedded positions, ended up in infosec for various reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#244

Post by layer8 »

RGamma wrote: post #11
vbi8iBEX wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like its a problem everywhere, not just the states.

And it's not just in programming-related jobs either. Parts of industry and the blue collar market are shitting themselves in Germany right now. Two people I know have been let go (pumps and wood sectors resp.). Another (metal construction) is getting barely more than minimum wage. There's only one dude (chemical engineer) who is doing well (nearing 100k at 5 years work experience). The others are getting by. Politic…

On the other hand, craftsmen are in high demand and make good money, but not too many people seem to be keen on that kind of career.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#245

Post by stefan_ »

notfried wrote: post #58

I see this as a combination of three forces at play: AI, WFH, and Skillset--all adding downward pressure to hiring talent in the U.S.: 1) While A.I. may now be only adding 10-20% of productivity gains, the rapid pace of improvement leaves open the possibility that tha gains can be soon much more than that. So, instead of scaling your company now, if you can afford to, wait out a bit and see where this goes. 2) Even t…

H1B has been around for a while now. It can't take more than a moment of original research to realize it's vastly used for junior roles & a large percentage of consulting outsourcing houses who charge much, pay little and deliver nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#246

Post by w4ffl35 »

akmarinov wrote: post #221
w4ffl35 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked for a startup and lost my job to remote workers in a foreign country because they were cheaper and being told "we can hire 3 or 4 of them for the price of you" has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Getting the most product for the least amount of money is Capitalism 101. Companies don’t owe you anything past that and you should follow the same principle. Do the least amount of work that’ll get you as much money as possible and always look for a better offer.

I'd prefer to take a pay cut and continue working - that's survival 101, which as a human is my primary concern.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#247

Post by throwaway48476 »

layer8 wrote: post #203
w4ffl35 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is a shortage of American workers willing to work for internationally competitive salaries. This is similar in Europe, by the way. Industry associations claim that there is a shortage of skilled workers, whereas in reality there is only a shortage of skilled workers willing to work for low-ish salaries. On the other hand, paying everyone higher salaries across the board would have its own economic consequences.

The economic consequences would be an increased percent of the economy going to wages instead of returned as dividends and stock buyback. Wage income also has a higher velocity of money increasing economic activity.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#248

Post by ironman1478 »

I haven't had a hard time finding employment. I am going to start at a FAANG next week, coming from another FAANG. I work in embedded / hardware. I think what is being asked for is changing and people are being caught flat footed. We don't need more web or backend devs, we have so many of those. The world of embedded can't hire enough because the scope of embedded has increased. It's no longer just writing bare metal C on a tiny microcontroller, it has expanded to writing applications for embedded Linux for custom devices that are more tricked out than desktops 20 years ago. It's easier than ever to build an SoC and a device and so many companies need people to write software for them. I think it's hard to outsource because frequently it requires lab space (unless you're working on pure compute devices) and companies don't want to ship prototypes and devkits overseas. So there are industries that are hiring lots of Americans.

Also this might be a hot take, I don't agree with Elon or Vivek's plan to outsource, but I do think tech has done this to itself. Why are so many startups and tech companies so bloated with engineers? I worked at a company that sold VERY complex factory and plant monitoring software to companies around the world. It's engineering team was about 500 people supporting a wide range of products and different levels of the stack. Companies with way less complex software and less software volume have way more bloated engineering orgs and are way less efficient. Because, fundamentally most people are bad at software engineering (which is different from just programming and pure CS), including grads from MIT. A lot of companies are outsourcing because if everybody isn't that great, they might as well pay less for something that isn't good. The companies that have simple products and have crap engineers are the ones outsourcing.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#249

Post by Izkata »

brtkdotse wrote: post #33
RGamma wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not just in programming-related jobs either. Parts of industry and the blue collar market are shitting themselves in Germany right now. Two people I know have been let go (pumps and wood sectors resp.). Another (metal construction) is getting barely more than minimum wage. There's only one dude (chemical engineer) who is doing well (nearing 100k at 5 years work experience). The others are getting by. Politic…

> Fachkräftemangel Why is this German word thrown in without any explanation? I’ve noticed this is a common trend whenever a Germany-adjacent topic is discussed.

Unless they edited it in afterwards, they are translating it. That's what the two-comma asides are, explanations/clarifications.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#250

Post by dmantis »

w4ffl35 wrote: post #140
derektank wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, exactly? These companies have foreign customers, it seems reasonable to expect that they would also want to have foreign employees that can speak the language, work in the same time zone, etc. And the demand for those employees is unlikely to be perfectly commensurate with demand for US based employees at all times. Seems like a ban would be pretty destructive, even if some of this hiring is an attempt at offsho…

If a company is operating in a foreign nation sure. If a company is operating in America on American soil and refusing to hire Americans because they want to save a buck, they should face penalties. I do not see hiring foreigners as being pro-American.

When US sells stuff, it's all pro free-market. When US competes, there are tiktok potential bans and whining about workers from other countries. You can only pick one to be fair. You either don't sell your products to the outside world (and kill the economy) or provide equal opportunities for nations you earn money from.
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