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The Idled Young Americans

nytimes.com

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#61
post #9

Buzz words like "entitled" in 3...2...1... Anyway. >Average wages are no longer trailing inflation. And wages as a whole have diverged from productivity since the 70s. That we're happy that wages are once again keeping pace with inflation --another way of saying "well, at least we're no longer losing money"-- is depressing in this context. >What might help? Easing the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal…

> AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots. Being on the hiring side of things, America needs all the talent it can get. Hiring good software engineers is seriously hard. Maybe the problem is just connecting people with jobs, but given the low unemployment rate in the tech sector, I really dou…

> America should make it as easy as possible for highly > motivated and talented individuals to come here. Jobs, > heck, entire new industries will be created.

America also needs to remember that the high quality engineer they sent home has the world at his feet - if he has migrated out of his home country, the world is his oyster. He can migrate to any other country offering him a job and will not have to limit himself to the H1B.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring top talent is certainly expensive. And if you're searching for the best of the best, it will always be hard by virtue of the fact that you're looking for people at the extreme of a bell curve, no matter how large the sample set is. As for knowing how malloc works: fewer and fewer universities are even touching C. It's all C++ or, better yet, Java (no need to understand memory management _at all_ in that case).…

As someone who has implemented a couple of mallocs, what on earth are "HA scenarios"?

I believe it refers to High Availability.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#63
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis? What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an allocator"?

> Honest question: what field are you in which means your candidates are going to need to write custom allocators on a regular basis? Embedded. :P > What problems need custom allocators? I'm a fan of lower level details and all, but surely you can get away with one of the many existing allocator implementations when the problem to be solved isn't "sudo make me an allocator"? Memory is being counted in kilobytes. Proc…

Have you (or your company) given any thought to telecommuting? I know of one software engineer who would love to return to the embedded space, but would not be willing to move (he is right now, on a "working vacation" for the next three months some six times zones away from his current place of employment; his employers put up with this because he is that good at what he does).

Heck, I might be interested in the embedded space. I certainly have experience with Assembly language (several different CPUs) and C (for twenty years now). It would certainly be a change from testing call processing.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#64

I'm always perplexed by the (possibly rhetorical) surprised tone of these kinds of articles. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious that young people are getting screwed because of their lack of employment histories combined with an ultra-competitive job market (for most industries). The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback…

> (and no, the rising tide doesn't help undeveloped, inexperienced college grads with nondischargable debt)

But there isn't a rising tide. Wages are falling. If you work for a living, your job will pay you less next year than it did this year.

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#66
post #9

Buzz words like "entitled" in 3...2...1... Anyway. >Average wages are no longer trailing inflation. And wages as a whole have diverged from productivity since the 70s. That we're happy that wages are once again keeping pace with inflation --another way of saying "well, at least we're no longer losing money"-- is depressing in this context. >What might help? Easing the parts of the regulatory thicket without societal…

> AND we need more H-1B's? This guy's a real piece of work. We already have the ability to bring in extraordinary talent. We don't need 50,000 more outsource firm slots. Being on the hiring side of things, America needs all the talent it can get. Hiring good software engineers is seriously hard. Maybe the problem is just connecting people with jobs, but given the low unemployment rate in the tech sector, I really dou…

What is the salary you are offering?

Re: The Idled Young Americans

#67
post #42

I'm always perplexed by the (possibly rhetorical) surprised tone of these kinds of articles. As if it wasn't glaringly obvious that young people are getting screwed because of their lack of employment histories combined with an ultra-competitive job market (for most industries). The discussion then usually turns to how young people have useless degrees or are lazy or entitled, or some other monday morning quarterback…

> One thing is obvious: most white-collar, educated people who already had jobs before 2008 are doing just fine, haven't noticed a thing, and don't give a neuron to thinking about unemployed people. I remember reading an article around 2008 (in the Economist, I think) based on a (then recent) research paper that showed that people who graduated during a recession had a lot more to lose in the long run (smaller wages…

I read the same article. It said graduates during a recession may take up to a decade to have their wages catch up to what it might have been had they graduated during normal times.
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