The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment • Hacker News Board

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#121

Post by pc86 » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

lreeves wrote: post #60

larrys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is that most Americans do not know how to market themselves during job searches" Along the same lines I had an office a few years ago in an office park about 1 mile from a Walmart. In all the years I was there nobody ever knocked on our door looking for work or dropping off a resume. At the Walmart though I'm almost certain that they had a steady stream of job seekers showing up and filling out employment forms. I'v…

Your anecdote doesn't really seem feasible for most people. Do you think it's reasonable that someone who has been out of work for 6 months would take on the risk and cost of flying to a tradeshow?

Come on, now. He's not saying "just fly to a trade show and you'll get job offers," he's saying that you need to be proactive. Go into a business unsolicited and ask if they're hiring (obviously you should know what they do and know that you're a fit).

Are you a web developer? I live in a rural area and there are a half dozen shops within a 30 minute drive. Show up during business hours, ask for the GM or owner and tell them why you're there. Sure, you'll have the people who are put off by you just showing up, but it's just as likely you'll hit someone with a need just a few days (or hours) before they were about to place a listing.

So no, he's not saying to "take on the risk and cost of flying to a trade show," he's saying to be proactive and act like you actually want to have that job, not just a job.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#122

Post by rdouble » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

This seems to also affect software engineers. I used to split my time between 18-24 month consulting projects and then would take 3-6 months off to travel. I've been lucky to see all of the US and parts of Africa, Europe, Japan, Australia and Mexico. This was pretty easy to do in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, after the last time I traveled, it took quite some time to find another contract. It seems much riskier in the current economic climate.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#123

Post by pc86 » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:34 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #111

theorique wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you advertise the fact that you were unemployed for 6 months to a prospective employer? This. No one is unemployed any more. They are just "freelancing" or "self-employed" or "working on personal projects". Anybody can make up (and preferably actually do) some resume items that makes your non-working time look incredibly productive.

And do you think the screeners won't start screening out "personal projects" if enough people start doing that? "Freelancing" for eight months after a career of working for other people, and suspiciously little to show for the freelancing... I wonder what that's about?

It's already happening.

Last time I applied for a job was after just shy of two years of contract work full-time. They asked for a portfolio which I sent over. I was confused when they asked for more as I had already picked my best work. After supplying some more samples I asked the hiring manager why they had requested more and was essentially told they were looking at not only quality, but also quantity. They wanted to make sure I had been doing this for two years.

Personally, I think this is good. Saying you're freelancing when you're actually unemployed is no less dishonest than saying you have a degree you don't have or you worked at [X] BigCo for six months longer than you actually did.

I worked my ass off when I was a consultant and I'd be pretty upset if John Q. off the street has been resume blasting everyone for six months while drawing unemployment and saying he's been "consulting."

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#124

Post by rdouble » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #56

rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this assertion that corporations are a "terrible way of turning human labor into work product." In industries like software? Sure. In industries like coal mining? Explain to me how a decentralized structure would be a more efficient way of marshaling the capital resources and labor necessary to blow the top off a mountain and extract a bunch of rocks from the carcass.

Well, I'm not a fan of mountaintop removal. Still, I get your point, and you're right. I shouldn't say "corporations" are terrible at that, because there are a lot of processes that require (if nothing else) the legal structure of one, but that a certain management style associated with the 20th-century large corporation is counterproductive. We can't know, because we can't go back in time, but I feel like those coal…

As a point of interest, miners in Australia are astoundingly well compensated and taken care of compared to resource extraction workers in other countries.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#125

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #74

prostoalex wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristie-arslan/five-big-myths-... "large businesses only employ about 38 percent of the private sector workforce while small businesses employ 53 percent of the workforce. In fact, over 99 percent of employing organizations are small businesses and more than 95 percent of these businesses have fewer than 10 employees" Affordable health care is pretty much the last major benefit that puts…

I think this is likely to be a sleight of hand analysis on the HuffPo columnist's part. Firms with fewer than ten employees, which the column alludes to when talking about small businesses, make up just 5% of employer firms. Census doesn't define "small business", and SBA defines it in the context of specific verticals, so that a small manufacturer might have 500 employees while a small law firm might have far fewer.…

Looks like the original stats (38% of US workforce employed by large businesses, 53% by small) were pulled from Wikipedia, which then refers to SBA.gov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#Em...

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#126

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:44 PM UTC

jonathanwallace wrote: post #89

michaelochurch wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if they act irrationally they will be sufficiently punished by the market (no childish fantasy required). The market does punish shitty corporations, but it happens over years to decades, and most people can't wait that long. How much comfort is it to someone who's unemployed if Microsoft breaks off and falls into the ocean in 2025? These people want jobs now and, as far as I can tell, don't really care what the…

Sounds like there is a market opportunity for job coaches. Reasonable-reason-for-extended-absence-from-the-job-market as a service, anyone?

There's also a market opportunity for "career incubators" that train people relevant skills, like that one organization in S.F. that was training Rails developers from the ground up.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#127

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #84

This doesn't surprise me at all. One thing I've come to learn in life is the importance of social proof. Social proof takes many form. It's why MIT and Stanford CS grads have tech companies come to their campuses and throw money at them (these institutions don't have a monopoly on good engineers). It's why if you have Google/Facebook/Twitter on your CV you are pretty much guaranteed a job. It's why academic staff who…

>>There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership.

Oh boy. There's so much I can say about this topic, and none of it is positive.

Basically, the way our culture mindlessly promotes home ownership is insane. Absolutely insane!

Every time I hear people complaining about "throwing away money" by renting, and how they would rather put that money into a house, I want to hold them by the shoulders and shake them violently. It's like the housing market crash did not teach anyone anything!

It comes down to this: a house is a terrible, terrible means of investment. It's a fixed asset that, contrary to popular belief, is not guaranteed to always go up in value. In addition, people don't really take into account the negatives. Primarily, a house ties you down. You have zero mobility as a labor market participant if you own a house, and this significantly reduces your leveraging power when it comes to negotiating salary. Besides that though, houses have a ton of expenses, and as fixed assets they are subject to a lot of uncontrollable risk (fire, floods, earthquakes, the neighborhood depreciating, etc.).

Instead of having that money tied down on a house, people are much better investing in the stock market, which has, over the past 100 years, gone up by 7% annually.

The only time a house makes sense is when raising kids. The stability of the environment has a lot of positive benefits for their growth. It also makes social integration easier.

/rant

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#128

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #84

This doesn't surprise me at all. One thing I've come to learn in life is the importance of social proof. Social proof takes many form. It's why MIT and Stanford CS grads have tech companies come to their campuses and throw money at them (these institutions don't have a monopoly on good engineers). It's why if you have Google/Facebook/Twitter on your CV you are pretty much guaranteed a job. It's why academic staff who…

There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership.

10+ years ago I remember reading a study in Europe that showed the rate of unemployment was directly proportional to the rate of home ownership across the entire EU with a very high correlation. Spain had the highest rate of home ownership and unemployment. Britain (then) had the lowest for both.

We push home ownership as a political agenda. While it has benefits for creating stable communities it also creates an inflexible labour market as people won't move to where the jobs are.

Beyond just the correlation with unemployment, it also results in the FIRE sector wielding far too much power over your economy and politics. When political effort goes into bolstering the stability of real-estate to keep all the homeowners afloat, that's the real-estate brokers, the landlords, the banks, and the insurance companies getting the boost.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#129

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:46 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #127

cletus wrote: post #84

This doesn't surprise me at all. One thing I've come to learn in life is the importance of social proof. Social proof takes many form. It's why MIT and Stanford CS grads have tech companies come to their campuses and throw money at them (these institutions don't have a monopoly on good engineers). It's why if you have Google/Facebook/Twitter on your CV you are pretty much guaranteed a job. It's why academic staff who…

>>There is another side of this that the article doesn't touch on: home ownership. Oh boy. There's so much I can say about this topic, and none of it is positive. Basically, the way our culture mindlessly promotes home ownership is insane. Absolutely insane! Every time I hear people complaining about "throwing away money" by renting, and how they would rather put that money into a house, I want to hold them by the sh…

A house is a very useful durable good. Like automobiles and refrigerators.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#130

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:47 PM UTC

In tech itself, open source organizations should make a push to hire long-term unemployed developers. Promise to give them recommendations and references if they do a good job during the interim.

The downside is the long-term unemployment problem is probably not as significant in software, compared to other industries.