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Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

latimes.com

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Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#211

Post by Markoff »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #120
Markoff wrote: post #50

yeah i work currently as contractor around 30 hours per month from home for Chinese company without any commuting anytime i want to cover expenses of my family on the other hand i could work 160-170 hours per month for local EU employer and get like double salary (a bit more with bigger retirement savings and paid vacation) somehow i am not rushing to get stable job and get employed locally to work five times more pl…

Same-ish, but I'm in rural Texas. I work 30 hours a week for a US firm, working remote and finishing up raising my kid. I could probably multiply my income by 1.5, but I'd have to work 15 hours a week more and come into an office. I've had several interviews with people but no one seems to understand how much they would actually have to pay me to come into an office because they are used to discounting the time spent…

similar, though i said 30 hours per month, not per week

also i have two small children, nobody will pay me for priceless time away from them now they are both under 3, i feel sad for people seeing their children in evenings or just weekends

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#213

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

My job takes me to Frankfurt and Brussels once or twice per year for four weeks at a time.

Every time I am inundated by queries from the local engineers and developers about how to get work either directly with for my employer or any other US company.

For the same level of skill and experience I'm paid more than double the typical EU engineer and the cost of living (including health care and retirement planning!!!) is much lower where I live.

On top of all of that, I'm 49.5% moron. Most of the guys I work with here in the US and in the EU are much better than I am. The only reason I go on these trips is because nobody else wants to be away from home for a month.

So I just shrug, say "I don't know man", take their business cards and resumes and forward them to HR where I assume nothing happens.

edit: and my understanding is that Frankfurt is a relatively high-wage area.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#214

Post by rglullis »

lioeters wrote: post #196
rglullis wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying health insurance is apart from the income tax. So in this particular case your income tax money is not getting you anything in return, healthcare-wise. Worst in case of health insurance, the amount you pay is dependent on your income, not your actual actuarial risk. This means that, indeed, the healthy people working are subsidizing the costs of the ones "who don't give a flying toss". And don't get me started…

I consider "health insurance" to be somewhat of a scam, just less so in Europe than the U.S. I feel like I'm forced to pay into a black hole with no accountability. Don't know anything about Künstlersozialkasse - "artist social fund". Is that like a tax to (supposedly) support cultural activities..?

No, more like a social security system separate for the artist "class". If you manage to declare yourself as an artist, they pay a substantial part of your health insurance, social security, etc... All funded by us, poor feeble minded workers with no creative bone in our bodies, to support 20-somethings and eternal Peter Pans who can't keep a job.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#215

Post by wolfgke »

JTbane wrote: post #191
swebs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To me, if a tech company claims in a newspaper that it cannot find competent coders, to me it says that they are uncapable of detecting talent. Nah, you see the pattern in pretty much every first world country. 1. Government makes law protecting citizens saying companies must hire local unless as a last resort 2. Big tech companies post job listings with unreasonable qualification requirements, while offering wages…

100% agree. It's all about the money.

> 100% agree. It's all about the money.

Is it really worth to invest so much money into "marketing" and "lobbying" the skill shortage instead of simply increasing the salaries to make the job more attractive? Just wondering...

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#216

Post by quotidium »

sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

Oh, hey, wait, let's not forget the daily standup rituals of agile scrum behavior modification.

Every day, justify your existence. Every day, beat that same dead horse. Every day, grab your coffee, sound off, and then listen to 20 other people bark at the empty air under their nose to show their devotion to a product that has the slimmest utility, and is coated in slippery, greasy dark patterns intended to screw the users that UX/UI supposedly cares so much about.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#217

Post by athenot »

geezerjay wrote: post #93
Nursie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shush, taxes are not 'extreme' in most of Europe, and you get a lot for your money - healthcare for example.

Income taxes tend to cover up to 50% of your income. Then there's VAT syphoning an extra 20% of the remaining cash. Then there are hidden taxes charged throguh other fees being levied, even to access mandatory state services. In the end you get healthcare, but in general the service is practically unusable and you end up having to pay for health insurance anyway. And by the way, a large portion of your taxes is effec…

The alternative from the US perspective:

- About $20k/y to provide health for a family, regardless of income. Median wage is barely double that amount. So most people in that situation forego health coverage (or pick the cheapest catastrophic-only coverage they can afford, and then are on the hook financially for any health issue).

- Still have 33% income tax

- Retirement: it's entirely up to you to save. Good luck! (rule of thumb is 15-20% of income)

- Child care: $12-24k/year/infant should your spouse have to work.

- College education: similar figures, maybe less with some assistance programs, maybe more if children go to prestigious schools. Or you can punt the bill to them and have them be on the hook for a loan.

- Oh, and nursing home for the elderly is about $30k/year so better get that retirement fund full of money. Though it's an undue burden to place on someone else, the traditional view is that having children can help reduce that cost.

In short, the US' system is not optimized for the median citizen ($59k in 2016), it's optimized for those who are in the 75th percentile or above.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#218

Post by jhasse »

rglullis wrote: post #167
sdoering wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@rglullis: Well. There is social security, health care, retirement funds and there are taxes. Well: I gladly pay health insurance in Germany instead of having an American system. Could it be better - hell yes. There is so much bullshit being paid for and so much in the system is made to extract money. But first: taxes are not the culprit here. And second: Pay for healthcare in the US yourself and see what system you…

It is a false dichotomy. I don't mind the health insurance being mandatory, much like I don't mind people being forced to pay for car insurance if they drive a car. What I find absurd in Germany is that you pay based on your income, just that . I would accept it being factored in, but not being the sole metric to determine pay.

Most health insurances will give you benefits for staying healthy (e.g. visiting the gym or a nutritionist). Visiting the dentist at least once a year will also give you a benefit. There might be other stuff I can't think of right now.

So income isn't the sole metric which determines the pay.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#219

Post by CamTin »

vfc1 wrote: post #203
CamTin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you just don't show up for work? They fire you, right? Do you have to pay some big cash penalty? Or is the hesitance just that you can't get a reference for your next gig?

Legally, they could sue you for the same value that they were charging the customer for your work until the end of the contract, which is the money that they lost by the contractor not working. In practice, they will probably not do that as the HR team is busy with other things and the lawsuit might be bad PR, although a hiring manager that wants to get back to you for doing that might have the HR department sue you,…

This seems like it's begging for a test case to strike this down on humanitarian grounds. I can't imagine any western judge of any serious level (possibly some county judge in West Texas or something) would take seriously the claim that this wasn't a violation of basic human rights (in US terms, the 14th amendment, though I assume similar principles apply elsewhere), and that such contracts were unenforceable. IANAL and I'm certainly not a limey lawyer, but our notions of justice on both sides of the pond share a lot of DNA.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#220

Post by guelo »

mistermann wrote: post #57
lkrubner wrote: post #4

It’s interesting how much momentum there is in these processes. After several decades of big wage gains, during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, the nominal increases could not be stopped, even as the economy weakened in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then all the wage cuts had to done through inflation. Nowadays there is no inflation, and no momentum to restart wage increases. This part of the article says it right: “””The u…

> Nowadays there is no inflation If you ignore most people's largest expense: housing costs, the price increases of which are "adjusted" away in inflation calculations.

That is incorrect. Here you can see that the US CPI-U includes shelter which is running at 3.5% inflation https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.htm
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