311–320 of 469 posts
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A phone for internet access is basically mandatory now if you want to work, and depending on where you live so is a car.
A serviceable refurbished Android can be obtained for $50. A new iPhone costs at least $800, which is 100 hours of work at the federal minimum wage.
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Less than 17% of tech workers are on H1Bs. They can't exactly scab for the other 83%.
Wow, is it really ~15%? No wonder unemployment is so high.
Pretty sure that short term trends drive it more than long-term visa holder counts.
As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…
This is probably crazy talk, but I have been wondering how requiring people to slap a stamp on an envelope and mail in a résumé would go.
As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…
> The process is so broken right now that we're 100% back to nepotism Just want to comment on this, because I think think favoring unknown candidates is a mistake we make too often, and in fact the "normal" process is a disaster on both sides for this reason. Nepotism or Cronyism is granting resources, patronage, jobs to someone you know instead of a qualified candidate. In many industries this is how they function b…
My senior staff engineer can’t code at all. He got hired because he was friends with our engineering manager. You might say “well that’s nepotism then since he’s under qualified”, but I’m sure he would make the argument that he got the job because of his “stellar reputation and extensive network”.
It’s an abhorrent situation to be in. Everyone knows he can’t code but because he got hired at such a senior level he’s making high level decisions that make no sense. Give me a qualified rando any time of the day.
As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…
The number of fake resumes is insane. During reviews I ended up passing a number of fake profiles through because their CVs looked real. None of them showed up to the initial screening call. There are now AI CVs mimicking real people, so the CVs point to real Linkedin profiles, Github profiles. Not sure what their end game is unless it's to continually test CV creation or find woefully inept companies that will hire…
I wonder about (and didn't immediately find) case-studies that lay out the strategy of Resume Of Total Lies Dude, their expected payout before they get fired, etc.
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I am not sure that means what you think it does. That’s not liquid dollars and does not mean those home owners have savings for emergencies.
The median American also owns $39,000 in liquid financial assets. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf23.pdf (page 22, “Financial Assets” section)
For example, if one is using their life-insurance payouts to pay their rent... well, something has gone very wrong somewhere.
Specifically, this part:
> financial asset—which includes transaction accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, other bonds, stocks, pooled investment funds, retirement accounts, cash value life insurance, and other managed assets
For the highly-liquid "transaction accounts" (checking, savings, money-market) the conditional [0] median is just $8k.
[0] AFAICT "conditional" here means "we don't include $0 data points in the median." That explains why the subcategory of "stocks" has a higher conditional median value than the more-general category of financial assets.
Hate to say the obvious, but it's all about supply and demand. The field I was working in 30 years ago was "hot" and the hourly wage has dropped at least 5x since then. Sure, in the last 20 years I did "development" work which was related but more advanced (24 hours a day stuff, it's always in your head) - but once those efforts were complete, so were the jobs. My field was laboratory science and I still take solace…
Presumably the computer science departments will continue to churn out more supply for a while yet.
I've lived through the recessions of 1990-91 (in my 20s, not tech), the Dotcom bust and the Great Financial Crisis. I can tell you that it's always been this way when its' a "buyer's market" and the employers can afford to be picky. I can also tell you that this is not some game-changing phenomenon[0]. The jobs will return when it is once again a "seller's market" -- which it surely will be. This applies to non-tech…
What could potentially put an end to the current hiring "winter"? We have an increasing amount of immigrants coming over in hopes of getting a white-collar job, in combination with the tech sector shrinking, as well as companies as a whole being much more careful when hiring. There would need to be some explosion in the amount of tech jobs, in order for everyone to be able to get one. However, I just cannot see what…
If companies are much more careful when hiring, they would not consider immigrants unless the candidate is exceptional, which doesn’t significantly change the number of opportunities for an average worker.
Contrary to the conspiracy theories, H1B requires the employer to pay market wage or higher, so hiring an immigrant for a white collar job is extra cost and risk, and only makes sense in a low-interest rate environment where finding a qualified candidate becomes a challenge.
The exceptional and even qualified immigrants that would take these jobs are coming at a significantly lower rate since Trump 1.0. And that includes international students that would eventually become exceptional/qualified candidates.
The 50 year old commenter has pointed out the root cause and showed examples of the cycle to explain when the jobs will come back.
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Is there actually a huge shortage of tech workers in the US?
Experienced tech workers? Yeah. One of the "problems" companies have is that it's hard to find skilled workers in the US with good experience who are not demanding SF wages. And recent graduates aren't that useful so while they might technically be "tech workers" in the sense they would like to fill open roles, companies don't really want them. So for most companies if you want to hire the most experienced and qualif…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What could potentially put an end to the current hiring "winter"? We have an increasing amount of immigrants coming over in hopes of getting a white-collar job, in combination with the tech sector shrinking, as well as companies as a whole being much more careful when hiring. There would need to be some explosion in the amount of tech jobs, in order for everyone to be able to get one. However, I just cannot see what…
Presumably the end of such a winter would involve the tech sector growing. According to wikipedia[0] there doesn't seem to be any significant uptick in H1Bs. Is that what you were referring to by "immigrants coming over in hopes of getting a white-collar job"? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#H-1B_visa_tables_and...