Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers • Hacker News Board

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#31

Post by derekp7 » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

neversupervised wrote: post #16

Years of experience don’t correlate to output in all careers. Surgeons and engineers get better over time. This might not be true for all jobs. Meanwhile, management is naturally capped because every manager necessarily needs people to manage under them, so there’ll be 1/N^y managers at the yth level of the org. Unless loyalty ought to be reward for its own sake, it’s not clear why 100% of workers should get promoted…

There is a dual ladder setup. Where you can have Administrator, Systems Engineer, Sr. Systems Engineer, Lead, Architect, Sr Architect, etc. These will have parallel tracks to equiv. management positions for benefits and perks (bonus levels, etc).

Now obviously you can't have every employee promoted to a Sr. Architect or Fellow, but that is ok be cause not everyone can (or want to) obtain that necessary skill set. A while back I recall seeing a grid with various levels, what management title that would typically mirror, and the skills that would be required for each level.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#32

Post by gaiagraphia » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

Isn't it a natural pattern in empire? Everything grows, there's a huge administration class employed who manage to live in relative luxury from the profits, then as relative power and influence recedes, those jobs are the first to get cut.

It's an international market and everybody's using the same skills and tools. It's insane to think that 6 digit salaries would forever be sustainable when the rest of the world is doing the same stuff.

Developing tech to knock down barriers also paves over moats. I think the west is going to be in for some very trying times in the coming decades. The UK is a fascinating place to look at in this regard.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#33

Post by tiffanyh » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

Would it be wrong to flip the narrative and say "3 in 4 (75%), don't feel this way"?

Not trolling, genuine question.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#34

Post by 9rx » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #21

Frieren wrote: post #14

Big tech owns a big chunk of the job market. So, the job market is not a market but a centralized system were big-tech has all the power to shape it. Unionizing is just part of the fighting back. Only splitting the big monopolies can bring back competition and healthy salaries and promotions. Monopolies are bad for consumers, but they are also bad for employees when that monopolies control most of the jobs of the ind…

> Big tech owns a big chunk of the job market Big tech employs less than 1% of the people in the country.

To be fair to the parent, jobs require capital, and big tech owns a big chunk of the capital, and thus do own a big chunk of the job market even if they aren't putting it to work. Which is part of the underlying problem. Those with capital don't really need workers and the areas of the economy who could put workers to work in a bigger way don't have the capital to do so.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#35

Post by nemomarx » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #33

Would it be wrong to flip the narrative and say "3 in 4 (75%), don't feel this way"? Not trolling, genuine question.

Yeah if it's only 25 percent that's not as bad as I expected. I would have thought closer to half?

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#36

Post by zeroonetwothree » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #33

Would it be wrong to flip the narrative and say "3 in 4 (75%), don't feel this way"? Not trolling, genuine question.

Clearly you aren’t a journalist

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#37

Post by smallmancontrov » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

gaiagraphia wrote: post #32

Isn't it a natural pattern in empire? Everything grows, there's a huge administration class employed who manage to live in relative luxury from the profits, then as relative power and influence recedes, those jobs are the first to get cut. It's an international market and everybody's using the same skills and tools. It's insane to think that 6 digit salaries would forever be sustainable when the rest of the world is…

> administration class

Well it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the capital class, the "responsible" owners of the economy. Everyone knows that credit goes to capital and blame goes to workers!

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#38

Post by chomp » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #33

Would it be wrong to flip the narrative and say "3 in 4 (75%), don't feel this way"? Not trolling, genuine question.

Only if that 3 in 4 number is increasing (documenting a trend) But that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#39

Post by NoLinkToMe » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

smallmancontrov wrote: post #20

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #9

I was at my previous company for almost 10 years, I had annual promotions and I roughly 4x'd my annual income in this period, which averages to about 15% of year-on-year pay increases. Part inflation, part growth in skills. Virtually all of that happened in the first 8 years. In the last 2 years I also stalled and saw minor inflation corrections of 2% a year, so I quit. In my experience it had everything to do with m…

"Work hard and it will be recognized" is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad advice. "Tit for tat" is the most generous to the company anyone should ever be: try working hard, if it's recognized then continue, if it isn't see if you can politic until it is, and in the very likely circumstance that it continues to not be recognized either jump for a pay bump or work like you're paid.

I didn't say work hard. But if you keep contributing what you already contributed previously and nothing changes, your salary likely also doesn't change. Changing that doesn't necessarily require working hard, I haven't made any such claim. In fact my salary inversely correlated with my effort. But I do recognize that when I stopped changing things (i.e. my role in the company became stagnant), my salary also remained stagnant.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#40

Post by voakbasda » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

Rp8yXmdmr wrote: post #28

deburo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was it different? I never saw that in big corporations, only SMBs when the founders were still at the helm.

The thing that changed was perception. People no longer believe loyalty to employer is worthwhile, just as they no longer believe hard work is what gets people rich.

They no longer believe it is worthwhile, because the landscape changed: companies found they no longer needed to treat their employees was well as they had. (Driven largely by the shift around that time toward quarterly results over long term sustainability, as I understand it.) And thus began a race to the bottom.