Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 531 posts

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#31

Post by varjag »

School-Cotton wrote: post #18
calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

For what it’s worth: I live in NYC. It is not boarded up.

I'm sure the GP reserves his charming side for the interviews.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#32

Post by WJW »

bserge wrote: post #3

I literally can't find a job in any kind of engineering. Applied for dozens of cleaning and production positions and couldn't get a job. You know what the media has become? A cesspool of bullshit unworthy of any trust. No wonder so many people mistrust actual experts, it's hard to even tell who they are.

> any kind of engineering

> Applied for dozens of cleaning (...) positions

Is this a common thing to do when applying for engineering jobs? What kind of qualifications do you even get where you

1. Are not specialized in a specific type of engineering (chemical, electrical, software, etc)? All these fields needs massive amounts of technical knowledge and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be hired as a chemical engineer even though I know a lot about electronics design and software.

2. Want to get in as a cleaner rather than (say) a junior engineer? How much extra on-the-job experience that would be relevant to engineering do you hope to get from a position as a cleaner?

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#33

Post by pydry »

benou wrote: post #8
bserge wrote: post #3

I literally can't find a job in any kind of engineering. Applied for dozens of cleaning and production positions and couldn't get a job. You know what the media has become? A cesspool of bullshit unworthy of any trust. No wonder so many people mistrust actual experts, it's hard to even tell who they are.

I'm sorry to hear that but keep in mind the job market is very different from one location to another and from one sector to another. The BBC is talking about truck drivers in the UK and it is hardly a surprise: UK used to rely heavily on eastern Europe workers in that area, and they vote (Brexit) to prevent exactly that. They got what they asked for. If anything, we can complain that the BBC article title is too gen…

The BBC has for a long long time been more sensitive to the concerns of employers and investors rather than employees or the unemployed.

This has mostly been as a result of aping the trends followed by the rest of the private media in the UK since the 1970s.

They already had a business section and even rolled out a new capital section a few years ago. No word yet on when theyll get a section dedicated to worker news.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#34

Post by ostenning »

calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

Exactly why I am sidestepping out of software into embedded and hardware development. You could never make a 6 week boot camp for EE.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#35

Post by ramphastidae »

calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

No one gets a job because of how long they’ve been alive or how frustrated they are. I suggest changing your attitude and I’d also suggest avoiding rants about the government and media, as well as spreading misinformation about “the cough” and NYC during your job search.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#36

Post by peakaboo »

calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

The media is shit. Its becoming worse and worse, to the point where nothing can be trusted.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#37

Post by throw_m239339 »

phenkdo wrote: post #17
calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

It stretches credulity that you have that many skills and still unemployed. Employers are hiring just about anyone in tech these days. Where are you located? You can kvetch about the media all you want, but the job market is the best it has ever been, and unlikely to get any better. Sorry to be harsh here, but if you can't find a job in this market, you ought to reconsider your professional choices.

> but if you can't find a job in this market, you ought to reconsider your professional choices.

There is enough literature out there about the racist, sexist or ageist hiring practices in the tech sector that you might as well rethink your comment here. How old are you?

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#38

Post by bachmeier »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #22
arcturus17 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried remote-only positions? I’d assume they tend to care less about age, if that’s the problem. I employ freelancers and pay competitive fees by European standards. I would hire someone with your experience without thinking too much about it (provided you had a modicum of people skills) since I only care about people being courteous and getting the job done, and not about “culture”…

As noted elsewhere, it seems Europe may be a better place for older folks. I know that some nations have some fairly strict laws about discrimination. In the US, we have the same laws. It's flat-out illegal to discriminate by age, as it is by race, religion, gender, pregnancy, marital status, etc. Out of that list, if a company tries anything other than age discrimination, they are pilloried and investigated. However…

> In the US, we have the same laws. It's flat-out illegal to discriminate by age, as it is by race, religion, gender, pregnancy, marital status, etc.

This is true, sort of. Age discrimination is different where it matters - the threshold to prove age discrimination is so high that the law could just as well not exist.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#39

Post by peakaboo »

Couldn't it be that people don't want to commute to places anymore for hours every day? So they don't take those jobs where they have to suffer anymore.

I read several article about how people realized during covid that they don't want a job they don't like anymore. Specially tech, since its very demanding.

Re: Employee shortages: Where have all the workers gone?

#40

Post by BlissWaves »

ramphastidae wrote: post #35
calltrak wrote: post #7

I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq, etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up. They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech. That's complete bullshit I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the gover…

No one gets a job because of how long they’ve been alive or how frustrated they are. I suggest changing your attitude and I’d also suggest avoiding rants about the government and media, as well as spreading misinformation about “the cough” and NYC during your job search.

This is actually part of the problem. Did you conveniently ignore that they mentioned years of experience in particular technologies?
Post reply on HN