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

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#311

Post by sneak » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 8:04 AM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #294

sfont wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't give you any insight into developer wages. But as far as commuting in the Houston area goes, I used to commute from Fort Bend County to Bush Airport (which really was an absurd commute) and it took me about an hour each way. So if you're trying to keep your commute under 45 minutes each way, you may have a wider area of acceptable areas to live in. Especially if you are thinking of companies inside the loop.

I'll be making about $83k/year this coming June (haven't graduated yet...) working in the Greenway area in the loop. I have an apartment lined up which will actually be in walking distance, so life will be easy. But I'm the sort of person who tends to think too far forward in the future, and I don't want to be renting an apartment my whole life. To me, the sooner one owns a home (and by own I mean own, not a mortgage…

> The idea, I hope, is that through partially remote consulting work one can make a wage which is disproportionately high compared to the cheap area in which one lives. It remains to be seen if any of this speculation is actually true.

This is precisely what I've done with my life for the last five years. It works, on one condition: you must find, connect with, and sell the Right Kind Of Customers for it to work.

If you're just a programmer (which, of course, Patrick famously recommends against identifying as), you are competing against every other "programmer" with your list of bullet-point skills, many in places a lot cheaper than even your "cheap area in which one lives"— e.g. eastern Europe, former Soviet states, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_wages

The trick is to position, market, and brand yourself as a specialized, boutique consultancy that incorporates various highly-sought-after technical skills in a complete "special sauce" package for businesses to achieve business-ey goals. People LOVE good abstractions, and are willing to pay for them. Be a problem solver/revenue increaser, not a "programmer". If you try to compete on a specific, easily-defined technical skillset, you'll lose to vast hordes of internet-connected Romanians, Latvians, and Ukranians every time - they can maintain a very comfortable standard of living at prices way below what you could offer your services for.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#312

Post by ggreer » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 8:42 AM UTC

svachalek wrote: post #296

gvb wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That mathematical error corrects itself over time. I now own my house. Rent is forever.

Property tax is forever too.

Renters pay property taxes as well, it's just hidden from them because the landlord is a middleman. If property taxes go up, so will rents.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#313

Post by yardie » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 9:21 AM 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…

Then how does the US factor into this correlation with an even higher rate of home ownership and lower rate of unemployment?

No, unemployment and home ownership may be tangentially linked but one does not relate directly to the other.

This is how the unemployment rate matches up for both countries.

https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&...

Notice a difference? Spain, and a lot of European countries, have some archaic debt laws. Where even if you could move to where the jobs are, the mortgage on the house you no longer own is still on your back. So you could take another job but half your income is going to service that old debt. This contrasts pretty well with the way the US and UK handle debt; you invested, the investment failed, liquidate everything, and then move on.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#314

Post by andyking » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 10:36 AM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #250

walshemj wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the landlord then retains your deposit for "spurious" cleaning or do US landlords not do this nasty little scam.

Just write the deposit off and if you get any back, consider it a blessing. It's odd that you give it so much weight when it's usually less than a single month's rent.

In Britain these days, the deposit is held by an independent agency, not the landlord or letting agent. They have to give a good reason to have money deducted - and you can then dispute this if it is spurious.

I recently moved, and the landlord (who was broke) was trying to keep money for all sorts of non-existent faults, most of which were due to his shoddy DIY work before I moved in. I raised a dispute and eventually got the vast majority of the money back. Just make sure you keep pictures of the state of the house before you move your stuff in.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#315

Post by yummyfajitas » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 11:36 AM UTC

jarek wrote: post #73

yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you engage in rational behavior and get rich?

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"

Please go learn what this quote actually means (hint: it refers to speculation, not consumption).

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#316

Post by fredgrott » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 11:48 AM UTC

a question:

any engineer would recognize the symptoms of what may be a systematic failure in a system. There was no mention in the article of studies fo studying the hr system from a sysatem perspective.

My thinking is that the drastic increase in applicants for any job posted acts as a feed back loop adjusting the system into chaos as hr personnel choose to reduce workload via reducing quality.

Is thee any studies somewhere where a team took on the task to study the problems as a system?

even my assumptions could be wrong..it would be nice to attack with some actual facts based on some science.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#317

Post by youngtaff » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 11:54 AM UTC

yardie wrote: post #313

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…

Then how does the US factor into this correlation with an even higher rate of home ownership and lower rate of unemployment? No, unemployment and home ownership may be tangentially linked but one does not relate directly to the other. This is how the unemployment rate matches up for both countries. https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&... Notice a difference? Spain, and a lot of European countr…

Why do you consider them "archaic debt laws"

Someone takes on a debt using property as security, if they forfeit the security why should they be excused from the difference between the value of the security and the value of the debt?

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#318

Post by flyinRyan » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 12:03 PM UTC

kevinskii wrote: post #225

UK-AL wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How common is this sort of stuff?

I think not common, at least not in the US. The risk of liability is too great. My company has a strict no-comment policy, and won't affirm anything beyond dates of employment and job title. This seems to be the norm for corporations. Smaller business who don't have their own HR and legal departments protecting them may be a bit more forthcoming, but probably not much.

Big companies find other ways to do it though. Don't believe for a second that nut job managers won't do everything they can to screw your career if they feel slighted.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#319

Post by dagw » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 12:03 PM UTC

youngtaff wrote: post #317

yardie wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how does the US factor into this correlation with an even higher rate of home ownership and lower rate of unemployment? No, unemployment and home ownership may be tangentially linked but one does not relate directly to the other. This is how the unemployment rate matches up for both countries. https://www.google.fr/publicdata/explore?ds=z8o7pt6rd5uqa6_&... Notice a difference? Spain, and a lot of European countr…

Why do you consider them "archaic debt laws" Someone takes on a debt using property as security, if they forfeit the security why should they be excused from the difference between the value of the security and the value of the debt?

A counter argument is that someone agrees to loan you some money in exchange for some collateral. If the value of the collateral isn't enough to cover the value of the loan in case of forfeit then surely that is the lenders problem since he was the one who set the level of collateral too low.

Re: The Terrifying Reality of Long-Term Unemployment

#320

Post by maeon3 » Tue, Apr 16, 2013, 12:05 PM UTC

pvdm wrote: post #262

maeon3 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did volunteer work at a soup kitchen and through the connections I made there I worked with someone who kicked my butt and fixed my resume. If that hadn't happened i wouldn't be making the salary I am now. The ancient wisdom: give and it will be given you is mysteriously powerful. Humans want to help those who help others, it's in our genetics.

I can not recommend this advice enough. Give and it will be given you.

It is the first step of forming an alliance and symbiotic relationship between adversarial systems.

When two humans want to acquire all the assets of the other and make the other one the slave, the first step in starting an alliance is doing a cost benefit analysis of how things would be easier for both if cooperation was done. Often times the one persuaded is reluctant until one human takes a leap of faith and gives, in expectation of receiving. It's all highly mathematical and I could create an algorithm to describe it. But you wouldn't recommend that either.