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

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

#171

Post by thefourthchime »

arsan87 wrote: post #42

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us us…

I work in the media industry, there hasn't been any hiring in years, since before covid and certainly not after. Sometimes there are layoffs and they shake up middle management, but my boss doesn't even want to be come a SVP because those are the ones they axe when they restructure.

We're all just hunkering down.

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

#172

Post by cindyllm »

KittenInABox wrote: post #144
georgeecollins wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a trade off that also helps US companies be more efficient. If you want more job stability, try working in France where companies can't lay off workers as capriciously. But then they also don't staff up as fast, don't take as many risks. Pick your poison. I prefer employment to be transactional. I think it always ultimately is. There is a role for government to not let employers unfairly take advantage of worke…

I am perfectly for less job stability in the US but only if it comes with a strong safety net. Losing your job after a year or six months is whatever broski if you have robust healthcare and are unlikely to go homeless. I see SpaceX and Anthropic aiming for IPOs in the trillion range of valuation and all I can see is, how come these companies are benefitting from the "increased efficiency" but the regular guys are no…

[dead]

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

#173

Post by ptero »

ianm218 wrote: post #98
ptero wrote: post #81

The fact that 1 in 4 white collar workers are not getting raises or promotions might not be a bad thing. As white collar workers get older they frequently stop optimizing for money and start optimizing for time, flexibility and other things and be totally OK with no promotions as the trade-off. I personally find the US setup where often the longest serving and oldest workers would be earning the most, strange. Even w…

> I personally find the US setup where often the longest serving and oldest workers would be earning the most, strange. Isn't the US significantly more meritocratic in this regard than other large economies? I.e. compared to Europe or Asia it would seem that Europe has much more rigid comp rules, Japan has formal mechanisms to ensure that older people are paid more. And this is a tech forum obviously where i.e. the r…

On US being more meritocratic in tech -- completely agree. US tech space is very dynamic and very competitive which gives many younger folks a leg up.

But pure tech is a small part of all white collar jobs (the linked article references "white collar jobs", not "professionals" which the title substituded for it). And many non-tech white collar jobs are not nearly as meritocratic as those in the pure tech (I also agree that in Asia or Western Europe those jobs might be even less meritocratic, but this does not change the point above). My 2c.

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

#174

Post by bwestergard »

9rx wrote: post #61
supertroop wrote: post #46

I’ve been in the industry for 40 years. This has always been a complaint. Always. It is not new. UNIONIZE

I've been in the industry for 30 years. "UNIONIZE" has always been the suggested answer. Always. But nobody ever steps up and actually does it, even despite the people being already socially united through platforms like HN, making formalization about as easy as can be possible.

My coworkers and I organized a union five years ago. We're about to enter bargaining for our second contract.

https://code-cwa.org/

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

#175

Post by compiler-guy »

superfrank wrote: post #138
compiler-guy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unlimited PTO" is a fiction created by accountants that sounds good on paper. When you need or want time off, you work it out with your manager. No debate about how many days you have left this year, or how many you have accumulated. It's undefined and technically you are supposed to work together and away you go. Accountants like it because guaranteed time-off is a liability that appears on the company's books as a…

> But what happens in practice is no one feels like they are entitled to the time they should be entitled to, and negotiations from the employee side always come from a place of weakness. It's a terrible system > Undoubtedly someone will respond to this post with just how amazing their manager is and that they have never had a problem. That me! Except I don't think it has anything to do with my manager or company. I'…

Some people do like it, and I'm glad it's working out for them--I really am.

But adding all that manager and corporate discretion sets one up for abuse when things go wrong at either the manager or corporate level. For some, I suppose the benefit is worth it--but if "unlimited vs set days has almost no bearing on how many PTO days someone will actually take", then people are giving up a lot of guarantees for very little benefit on their side. Especially the payout when you leave.

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

#176

Post by compiler-guy »

yladiz wrote: post #169
compiler-guy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Contracted minimum with more at manager's discretion" isn't what people usually mean when they talk about unlimited pto.

Sure, my point is that the way it works in the US does not work in many other places.

Right. Places without unlimited PTO get neither the upsides nor the downsides of unlimited PTO.

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

#177

Post by bwestergard »

mrguyorama wrote: post #158
AlexB138 wrote: post #80

The youngest baby boomers are in their early 60s. I doubt it will make a difference in tech, but traditional industries, or what is left of them, should see a lot of senior roles open up as baby boomers begin to retire. Then, as they begin to pass away, a lot of their accumulated wealth will pass to their heirs as well. The baby boomers have been a serious "clog" in the system at a lot of levels. It will be interesti…

~$0 of baby boomer wealth will pass down. It's all going to be taken by end of life care companies who charge $20k a month (yes really) to put you in a small room and have a teen with barely a highschool diploma check in on you every now and again, for minimum wage. Every dime of wealth the boomers collected will be captured by a few private capital orgs who prepared for this. It will never flow down.

In 2024, the Silent Generation and baby boomers represented 25% of the population, but held 65% of all wealth in the US.

The healthcare industry will profit a great deal, but there is no way they will capture 65% of all wealth in the country. And supposing they did: ultimately, all this wealth ends up on some household's balance sheet unless it goes abroad.

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

#178

Post by whyenot »

nradov wrote: post #48

Kind of a silly article. If you're working in education administration or local government then why would you even expect career progression? These are not growth industries.

I work as staff at a state university in what as been ranked as the highest cost of living city in California. In my field, I have the highest classification I can get. I am on step 20 out of 20. My salary is $88,000 a year. That is considered “low income” where I live. There is nowhere I can go higher in my chosen profession. The union is more interested in bringing up the lowest paid members than helping people in my situation, which is probably the right thing to do. The university is still attempting to hire people at $55,000 a year (ridiculous), and wondering why they have so much trouble filling positions. About half of the search committees I have been on ended with a recruitment failure.

Career progression is of course nice, but the larger issue is just being paid a living wage. In my case, I have money, I can walk away from my job any time that I want to, but I love what I do. Most people aren’t so lucky. The politics are hard, because there is this characterization (and I have seen it here at HN) that state employees are lazy, incompetent, inefficient, have huge pensions, collect large amounts of overtime, and more. In my experience, while there are exceptions, this really isn’t true.

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

#179

Post by aksss »

voakbasda wrote: post #40
Rp8yXmdmr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Globalization played (plays) a huge part in this timeline too. If I can outsource your job to a place that really does treat their employees as disposable, you should just be happy to be employed. And even if I don’t want to offshore, how does my product/service succeed or remain sustainable if my competitors are all offshoring (or indeed come from offshore)? I’m not defending this attitude just distilling and illustrating through extreme language what I see as a reality of global competition.

Post-WW2, America had a lock on global manufacturing and was like last man standing in a burned down world.

It was/is an illusion to think that could be a permanent state.

The pre-war employment situation in America looked nothing like post-war. Your race to the bottom narrative is probably better framed as reversion to a multi-polar world with bonus features of higher global prosperity and capability, lower barriers to access foreign markets (whether laborers or consumers), and mature logistics infrastructure. In short - more people than ever want YOUR job, and to live in YOUR house, and have YOUR safety net, such as it is, it’s not just some focus on quarterly reports.

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

#180

Post by supertroop »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #83
9rx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in the industry for 30 years. "UNIONIZE" has always been the suggested answer. Always. But nobody ever steps up and actually does it, even despite the people being already socially united through platforms like HN, making formalization about as easy as can be possible.

HN-style startups couldn’t afford to unionize, right? To a founder it would look like eating your seed corn for no realizable benefit.

Oopsie. Looks like the 98% failure rate of startups means maybe they should take a seat?
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