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

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#191

Post by Flimm » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:42 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #59

tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll find, if you talk to a lot of women who have looked for jobs after taking 6+ months off to deal with having a kid, that this is not true.

I'm in the UK so maybe things are somewhat different here with regards maternity but all women I have worked with who have taken time off for this have been given their job straight back once they are ready to return and are usually paid some % of their salary while they were off (I think the law mandates this).

Are you sure you don't have survivorship bias? How much effort have you made to seek out the ones that didn't come back and ask them why?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#192

Post by Flimm » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:44 PM UTC

xentronium wrote: post #172

droithomme wrote: post #55

It's not a terrible metric. There is an actual correlation between long term unemployment and being unemployable because of lack of skills and incompetence, or serious personality defects, such as drug addiction, mental disorders, criminality, violent behavior and laziness. Few long term unemployed are long term unemployed for no reason at all. It's hard to take the claims seriously of those such as the article autho…

> There is an actual correlation between long term unemployment and being unemployable because of lack of skills and incompetence, or serious personality defects, such as drug addiction, mental disorders, criminality, violent behavior and laziness. There is an actual correlation between being black and drug addiction, criminality &c. Discriminating on skin color is illegal, though.

If you read two resumes that were identical in every way, except that one had experience listed and the other had none, wouldn't you go for the first one? If not, what's the point of listing experience at all?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#193

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:51 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…

Speaking as a homeowner, we didn't buy the house as an investment asset (though naturally we hope it doesn't depreciate too much). We bought it to live in, and are not paying huge amounts or over very long periods. Of course there are risks. That's why we carry insurance.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#194

Post by rdouble » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:52 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #147

enraged_camel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

> Basically, the way our culture mindlessly promotes home ownership is insane. Absolutely insane! It's really the older generation that promote this. If you're 35 years old, chances are your dad walked out of high school into the same large company that he retired from. Why would they need mobility when they had jobs for life? The only younger people I know that share that view are close-minded and never see the poin…

The only younger people I know that share that view are close-minded and never see the point of leaving Smalltown, USA.

Only if you include metros like Atlanta in your definition of Smalltown, USA. Most American cities are geared towards home ownership.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#195

Post by nilkn » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:53 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #187

nilkn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Just to be clear, that 7% is after inflation. The historical performance of the stock market is closer to 10-11% pre-inflation. > The only time a house makes sense is when raising kids. Retirement is of course another scenario where it makes sense. Mobi…

"but lots of people I could double their earnings if they weren't locked down to one location." Likewise, many companies could have lower labor expenses if they'd embrace telecommuting and locate branches (or HQ) in lower cost of living areas.

Indeed, if I could find a very stable, long-term remote development job paying $80k-100k (which is quite a bit lower than the going rates in NYC and SV), I'd seriously consider moving to a small town and just buying a home for $100k. Pay it off completely in a few years and live a really, really comfortable life afterwards.

I'm just starting my career, but one of my big goals is to achieve the above either through a traditional remote development role or through independent consulting. The problem is stability--the most stable tech companies don't tend to hire remote devs, and consulting is inherently unstable, although I suppose if you work hard at the top of your game it wouldn't be much of an issue.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#196

Post by drcube » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:53 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #161

kens wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that puzzles me is that rising house prices are treated as inherently good, and falling house prices are seen as inherently bad. But for most things, it's the exact opposite - rising prices are bad. Is this just because newspaper articles are biased towards the perspective of real estate agents and homeowners? Or are high house prices good because houses are investments? Would cheap 3-d printed houses (hypo…

It's because 2/3 of Americans are homeowners, so for a majority of Americans, falling house prices are bad. It's the same thing for most goods - the price mechanism is inherently value-neutral, and then whether it's better if prices go up or down depends upon how many people are potentially on each side of the transaction. Falling wages are seen as a bad thing, because most Americans identify with labor and not capit…

>It's because 2/3 of Americans are homeowners, so for a majority of Americans, falling house prices are bad.

Why? Those homeowners shouldn't care what the price of their house is. While they're living in it, it doesn't matter, and when they sell, presumably their next house will be cheaper too.

The only time home prices should matter is in comparison to the overall market. If your house got cheaper while other homes got more expensive, that's a problem for you. Otherwise, the price of your home is mostly irrelevant.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#197

Post by vec » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:54 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

"It's time for the government to start hiring the long-term unemployed." What the fuck? If you measure something you do not like, the immediate response should not be to grab a hammer and try to kill it. It probably exists for a reason. Understand the reason. Then take action. It may be that there is nothing you can do -- directly. Only a small few percentage points of the problems in the world go away through direct…

The reason here is that the interests of employers are misaligned with society's interests at large.

Individual employers are clearly demonstrating that they have a disincentive, rational or otherwise, from hiring potential employees with large gaps in their resumes. This obviously will tend to feed back on itself, making long gaps longer and unemployable applicants even more unemployable as time passes.

Society, on the other hand, has both economic and humanitarian interests in minimizing the number of unemployable individuals. Since the market has inadvertently began creating a large pool of these unemployable people, and it shows no sign of changing in the short to mid term, then society can and should apply non-market forces to advancing its interests.

Honestly, I'm not sure if direct employment is the best solution; I'd probably prefer some variation on tax incentives for employers. But reaching for the hammer, as you put it, is not always a knee-jerk reaction and seems like a pretty rational instinct in this situation.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#198

Post by lelele » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

rprospero wrote: post #109

marknutter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if they act irrationally they will be sufficiently punished by the market (no childish fantasy required). There aren't enough jobs? Then create more jobs. Starting a company, at my last check, is incredibly simple to do. Of course, turning a profit is hard, which is why people turn to the government to provide them with work rather than take the risk of starting a company. The government doesn't need to turn a p…

Companies will eventually be punished for acting irrationally, but, in the short term, they can be rewarded quite handsomely. This reminds me of an old trick I've heard used on multiple occasions. We've all read the Hack News posts about how no amount of programming can compensate for a poor personality. Image that you're looking at an applicant and their former employer tells you: "He was a good coder, but he had a…

What? Companies call your current employer for references? That's unbelievably stupid.

A smart company would call the employer before your current one, because your previous employer would have no interests at stake.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#199

Post by sharkweek » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 9:00 PM UTC

saturdayplace wrote: post #184

pchivers wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>failing to take into account that only a tiny fraction of the mortgage payment actually becomes equity. What percentage of a mortgage payment actually gets converted into equity? (coming from a genuinely curious person who has never owned a house)

At the beginning of a mortgage, the overwhelming majority of your payment will be interest; a very small slice is applied to the principal. Over the term of the loan, those small cuts whittle away the principal owed, which in turn lowers the amount of interested charged each payment (a percentage of the principal owed), until at the end of the mortgage your payment is mostly principal. If you do the math, a typical 3…

As someone who just bought a home -- I can also assure others in this thread, there is a lot of emotional value in owning your own place (reality check -- yes I know the bank owns it for a while) -- but for me and my wife, the value comes from being able to do whatever we want with the house.

Expand the basement? Sure! Get a bunch of dogs? Why not! Commit to getting to know the neighbors? Sounds great. All while not having to worry about a landlord doing whatever they want at the end of a lease.

It's a very rewarding thing. Is it for everyone? Absolutely not, much in the same way having kids or getting married isn't for everyone either. But for me, there is a lot of value in the actual ownership.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#200

Post by sukuriant » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #137

sukuriant wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting amount of money you can make as a person living in the United States where you're not making enough money to both survive and save on your own; and, you're making too much money for the government to go out of its way to help you. I've had friends in those situations over the course of my life. I believe I've even heard of situations where people would turn down raises or even turn down jobs be…

How on earth then are so many illegal immigrants making enough money to both survive and also send money back to their families in their native countries? Also, anecdotally, and since you brought it up, I was in a situation where I lived for many years at or below the poverty line, but I made due by living in inexpensive apartments I split with other people in the same situation. I think most young adults who aren't…

> How on earth then are so many illegal immigrants making enough money to both survive and also send money back to their families in their native countries?

no taxes? no health care? no social security?