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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

#31

Post by vfc1 »

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…

I've worked around in a couple of european countries and I can confirm that the freelance rates for software development today are the same or typically less than in 2001.

The software developer golden age was in the mid-nineties here in Europe, and then the rates and salaries have stagnated (but not the inflation).

Also, the contractual conditions are getting worse. We are now many times offered contracts with a termination clause of one week on the employer's side, and without a termination option the the freelance side.

This means that if you sign a contract of one year, and then on the first week you realize that the job is not what it looked like in the interview, you are stuck for one full year.

This is especially important as employers are not really transparent in the interview process, they will often not tell you what the job is really about, and the job description you have is either out of date or it was embellished to look much cooler than the day to day job actually is.

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

#32

Post by pnut »

HenryBemis wrote: post #14
Talyen42 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person spends almost exactly as much as they make as income rises. It's a hedonic treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

For anyone who hasn’t already, I would strongly suggest that you read/listen the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. It speaks of the “Rat Race”, where once you increase your income by a fraction, you almost immediately and subconsciously adjust your needs to absorb that increase. I think this is one of the books that everyone over the age of 15-17 should read as it gives a crash-course on the fine art of making money. This book,…

I'm not saying there isn't usable advice in that book, which I have read, but in full disclosure, the book's author, Robert Kiyosaki, fictionalised most of the anecdotes contained within it.

Additionally, he operates a real estate "investing" school that advocates and instructs semi-legal, morally questionable predatory practices.

It is openly modelled after Trump University, Trump being Kiyosaki's business mentor and aspirational avatar. They have authored at least one book together.

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

#33

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

HenryBemis wrote: post #14
Talyen42 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person spends almost exactly as much as they make as income rises. It's a hedonic treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

For anyone who hasn’t already, I would strongly suggest that you read/listen the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. It speaks of the “Rat Race”, where once you increase your income by a fraction, you almost immediately and subconsciously adjust your needs to absorb that increase. I think this is one of the books that everyone over the age of 15-17 should read as it gives a crash-course on the fine art of making money. This book,…

It's definitely an insight that has given me a lot of insight into the ways people make themselves suffer around me.

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

#34

Post by matte_black »

HenryBemis wrote: post #16
bungie4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks HN, I didn't realize this phenomena was named. Learn something new everyday. I always just said, expenses rises to meet income, + 25%.

..and the “Rat race” I mentioned on a previous comment above is that exactly perpetual effort to cover that +25% as you very correctly stated of “more expensive lifestyle” that we impose to ourselves.

As a counter argument, never forget you can be a responsible saver one day, only to be dead and buried the next.

If you want to guarantee an expensive lifestyle, it’s best to obtain it as immediately as possible.

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

#35

Post by bmcusick »

madengr wrote: post #9

I’d like to earn more, but I also want the market to keep on going up for my retirement investments. At mid career, my 401k performance over the next 20 years is now market driven, rather than by contributions over the next 20. So at this point, I’d rather have better investment returns than a higher salary.

Everyone does. Hell, I do too. But it's not realistic to expect this music to keep playing. The ratio of workers to retirees keeps getting worse, from 10:1 in the 1950s to 3:1 today, and falling.

The economy can grow over time, but on any given day it's a fixed pie, and it has to be divided among workers (who are doing the labor now) and retirees (who accumulated the capital in previous decades that today's labor uses to magnify their productivity).

Everyone is feeling squeezed as individuals because of falling incomes, but the real culprit is a falling ratio of income-makers (labor) to income-takers (capital, whether retired individuals or just wealthy).

This cannot last. The ratio of labor income to capital income will eventually be restored (hopefully in a peaceful manner, but we can't rule out alternatives). The reasonable fix will be raising retirement ages, but good luck getting a sufficient raise there to restore a 10:1 ratio.

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

#36

Post by misja111 »

jdhn wrote: post #5

"That money won’t disappear, of course—it will go into the pockets of workers, and then find its way back into the coffers of corporate America via higher sales." Do people really go out and spend money immediately if they get raises? Personally, if I get a raise, I may treat myself to something nice, but then I immediately go back to my old spending habits so I have more money to save.

You're right, that line doesn't make sense, although not for the reason that you are giving.

It doesn't really matter if you spend your raise or not. If you put your raise in the bank, the bank will spend it by either lending out more money or investing it.

For the same reason, for the economy it doesn't matter much if the company spends its money on employees or on shareholders.

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

#37

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

pnut wrote: post #32
HenryBemis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who hasn’t already, I would strongly suggest that you read/listen the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. It speaks of the “Rat Race”, where once you increase your income by a fraction, you almost immediately and subconsciously adjust your needs to absorb that increase. I think this is one of the books that everyone over the age of 15-17 should read as it gives a crash-course on the fine art of making money. This book,…

I'm not saying there isn't usable advice in that book, which I have read, but in full disclosure, the book's author, Robert Kiyosaki, fictionalised most of the anecdotes contained within it. Additionally, he operates a real estate "investing" school that advocates and instructs semi-legal, morally questionable predatory practices. It is openly modelled after Trump University, Trump being Kiyosaki's business mentor an…

I assume anybody reading that book understands that "Rich Dad" is mostly literary device, probably loosely based on an actual figure(s) and a few key events or experiences.

Nobody remembers conversations they had word for word an hour afterward, let alone decades.

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

#38

Post by creaghpatr »

Love it when people compile montages of article headlines that circulate every year to encourage the importation of more cheap labor.

Here's a recent favorite byline: "America’s labor shortage is approaching epidemic proportions, and it could be employers who end up paying [their workers more].

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/the-us-labor-shortage-is-rea...

Epidemic proportions!

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

#39

Post by Waterluvian »

I worked for a Canadian company that's absolutely hemmoraging talent because they refuse to pay well. I'm now paid about 50% more to work remotely for a US company in an environment that is far far more fitting of my life goals of being with my kids as they grow up.

It's beyond bizarre to watch them continue to refuse to pay anyone properly despite their imminent collapse.

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

#40

Post by samsolomon »

dijit wrote: post #23
Zeebrommer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you read this article? I'm in Europe and run into a message saying "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." with the LA time…

I have the same message in Sweden, shame they can't find to operate business without abusing user data. Still there's an archive.is link listed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17506215

Would you pay for an LA Times subscription? Do you know anybody that would?

The newspaper business is struggling as is. Every time a publication is blocked in Europe people complain. Ads were the answer for most online publications, but showing targeted ads now pose a legal risk.

I don't know about their business ops, but I'd suspect they've done the math and decided it isn't worth the effort to change their platform so people can read for free in Europe.

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