Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last? • Hacker News Board

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#331

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #216

thanatropism wrote: post #29

This comment (not by me; the poster name isn't even visible anymore): > Illegal border crossings on the southern border are down 78% and blue collar wages are rising. Of course correlation does not equal causation, but when there are fewer available workers to hire/train and demand remains constant, wages tend to rise. was marked dead. Why? Is the illegal crossing number wrong/fake news?

Well I have something to share precisely about that. Was in 2001 prior to 9/11 in south Indiana. I applied to a factory. And another one. And another one. Nothing. No bites. I then found work at a gas station Subway across the first factory. Our primary business were the factories. 9/11 happened. Within days, the factories shut down. We at subway were like "WTF happened?" Cause we were staffed like normal for rush. T…

I thought blue collar often referred to e.g. welding, plumbing, electrician, etc. Would an undocumented illegal really be hired as a TIG welder?

Or are those jobs just a small part of "blue collar".

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#332

Post by zippergz » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

gjem97 wrote: post #231

hyperion2010 wrote: post #107

I had a long talk with a guy getting his general contractor's license yesterday. He told me that down in San Diego they are continually short on construction workers, so much that one of his friends said that there is 10 years worth of construction that needs to be done and no one to do it. Wages at ~$45/hr, and probably rising, some projects paying perdiems for commutes from Orange County. Strange.

I always find it a bit strange when people talk about shortages of non-price-controlled goods and services. When you say that the industry is "short on construction workers", there's an implicit "who will work for what we used to pay them." It seems to me like it's someone who hires in that industry trying to entice more talent to come help lower the price again, rather than an accurate description of the state of th…

In my very limited personal experience, it's not that hard to get a worker to come do a job on my house. It is EXTREMELY hard to get someone who actually does quality work and is reliable. You could argue that I'd get better and more reliable people if I paid them more, but the fact is, I pay them what they ask for. I have very low confidence that just offering to pay double would make a bad worker into a good one.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#333

Post by nradov » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

roseburg wrote: post #300

chrisbennet wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say "There are no bad dogs, just bad owners." I think the problems are cultural. (a) Two working parents or a single parent family may result in children "being raised by wolves" to some extent. These are good parents/people but child rearing is a time intensive business. (b) Lack of jobs for young people. In my neighborhood, a lot of lawn mowing jobs are done by services instead of the neighborhood kid. The "en…

I think it's both the dog and the owner and our culture that looks down on the trades, or blue collar work. Kids are being raised and taught to work hard so they can avoid working with their hands. Trade jobs are almost seen as a punishment and schools do nothing but funnel all students into the college pipeline. In the vision of life that is projected for students, the trades do not find themselves anywhere in that…

The mikeroweWORKS Foundation is doing a great job of raising the status of manufacturing and skilled trades work. Worth supporting.

http://profoundlydisconnected.com/foundation/

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#334

Post by cr0sh » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #124

killjoywashere wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past performance != future performance But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gui...

Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.

It's basically only about weed; pretty much all other "hard drugs" (cocaine, meth, etc) flush out of your system within hours to a few days (assuming you can abstain that long - which isn't a given depending on how far into them you are), while THC and such from weed hang around in the body for about a month (30 days or so), and as you noted - up to 3 months (for a hair sample test).

So you could smoke a joint today (ok, maybe a bit more than a joint), and nothing more - and three months later they take a hair sample and find you a dirty guilty pot smoker. Yer fired! Or not hired in the first place.

Even in the best case scenario, you have to abstain for 30 days; so if you're a regular user of weed, and you want to change jobs, you'll have to plan ahead, or just be out of work for 30 days while you let it get out of your system. Doable if you have savings, I suppose.

As far as "random drug testing", I honestly think its more of a threat to instill fear, than something actually done. Drug testing isn't cheap, and a true random test would test all employees, but due to the expense, only the larger companies could conceivably do it. Smaller organizations would tend to only do testing "after the fact" or if there is credible reason to believe that a certain person is having issues (visibly impaired or something) - then a "targeted test" under the guise of a random test can be done.

Even then, such a test might only be correlative, and not indicate the true cause; someone might, for instance, cause an accident or such due to a heated argument they had just before the incident with a coworker, but they get tested and fail the test because of a party they went to a couple weeks before where they smoked some weed.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#335

Post by jacobolus » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

djb_hackernews wrote: post #274

jacobolus wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Staff Engineer” is about halfway up the technical career ladder in many places, with a few possible (but increasingly rare) levels above, and a few levels below. Someone promoted to staff engineer likely has at least 5 years of work experience (probably more) and is self-motivated, good at their job, gets along well with their coworkers, and has some technical vision. Many of these people might have some quasi-manag…

I've worked for 2 well known software companies and what you are describing is a Senior Engineer in both (5-10 years experience). The place I am now starts fresh grads as Engineer I, then Engineer II, Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, Architect and then Staff Engineer. Each promotion takes about 4-5 years so you aren't reaching Staff until about 20 years. A Staff Engineer is basically fully autonomous and is an IC…

Yeah, the version the earlier poster was talking about in his link is somewhere between your levels of Senior and Principal.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#336

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

runeks wrote: post #293

teej wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be 10 people willing to spend $inf for a loaf of bread and only 5 loaves. Supply of skilled work isn't immediately elastic.

No. No person owns an infinite number of dollars. But I will happily bake you a loaf of bread for $10,000 each. In fact, I’d quit my day job to do that. That shortage wouldn’t last long.

You might also happily weld for $10,000/hr but you aren't a talented welder, and you can't learn in a day.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#337

Post by ashark » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

graphitezepp wrote: post #315

ashark wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit OT, but I blame artificial lighting and (especially) in-the-home, always-available, on-demand, hyper-stimulating entertainment on glowing screens. I once spent a couple weeks living only by candlelight after 8:30 or so, no screens. It's hard not to get enough sleep that way. You can still read, play board games/cards, write, study, play or listen to music, prep/cook food, talk(!), and tons of other stuff, but g…

I really would like to see red shifted lighting + use of flux (or similar) on all devices compared in efficacy to more extreme no lighting what so ever. I personally have no felt a difference but I am wary of that being wishful thinking on my part as I don't want to cut out computer use.

Sadly, I think screen-focused media are much of the problem. Especially the unprecedented quality and quantity available now, with easier access than ever.

Having a window to all the world, a vast library both greater and with a worse SNR than any that's ever existed, more high-quality, unique audio-visual entertainment options than existed in entire major cities a mere couple of decades ago (let alone 50 years ago), hundreds of immersive video games tuned for "engagement" at best and outright addiction at worst (remember when games would eventually get frustrating/boring enough, or you'd get stuck and have no immediate way of finding a solution, so after an hour or two you'd be sick of playing and just want to ride bikes or something? Those were the days.), a direct line to answer any stupid low-value question that pops in your head, near-instant communication with everyone you know, and so on (mixed in with tons of manipulative advertising and such), all in your house, all of the time, is maybe not healthy for most people.

It is my will being perpetually sated.

Pretend we are writing a fable in which a sorcerer always gets what he wants.

Consider what happens to a soul which always gets what it wants.

- Emily Bludworth de Barios

(excerpt, whole thing at http://www.forkliftohio.com/index.php?page=freight-31)

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#338

Post by VLM » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #250

danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

stealth intelligence test. For a variety of interesting historical reasons, the government hates intelligence tests as a hiring criteria and this is the blue collar stealth/workaround IQ test. Its the blue collar equivalent of fizzbuzz or a gitlab repo.

Look, you got one task, one task only, it's not even hard to figure out, do not, repeat, do not, get high the week or two before your pee test. That simple. There are human bipeds burning valuable oxygen right now, who can't follow a test that elaborate and complicated. They are literally the kind of people where if you told them not to lick a circuit breaker, would turn around and an hour later electrocute themselves and probably a coworker or two by licking a circuit breaker on the jobsite. Whats the minimum IQ and discipline level necessary to pass a pee test? Not much, but there are failures out there walking around...

Its interesting that as far as I know this is the first strictly chemistry based IQ test. AFAIK there is no "pee in a bottle to determine if you can fizzbuzz" test for code monkey work. No chemical marker that can identify if you know the modulus operator... not yet...

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#339

Post by MrFantastic » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:43 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #250

danielvf wrote: post #9

I worked with small / medium manufacturers in the prosperous part of the Southeast. Hiring is brutal currently. Last week one company setup interviews with 20 possible new workers. One showed up for his interview, and one wandered in the next day. 18 nonshows. Another local company is seeing 50% of new hires failing their first drug test. Anecdotaly, about 20% of new hires under 30 don’t understand the concept of sho…

I hate the drug testing bs. How is that relevant? If the worker is present, is sober, and not hungover what business is it of the employers what the employee does on their own time? The drugs that are readily detectable are mostly the ones that don’t matter too, while the ones that are more concerning (to me anyway) are either not tested for or are not detectable fairly fast. And alcohol is ok to abuse. Why? It would…

Drug testing allows companies to deny Worker's Comp and Disability Insurance Claims. Being able to deny claims allows lower premiums.

Re: Blue-collar wages are surging. Can it last?

#340

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Nov 21, 2017, 7:44 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #269

opportune wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always read these ridiculously high salaries and laugh. Your average HVAC worker is not making $400k. I do know people in construction/HVAC/plumbers/electricians and it's the bosses making that money, not the grunt workers. The people on the front lines still make good money, for some easily approaching $100k/year, so there's not really a need for embellishment. That isn't to say that it's unattainable, but it's ak…

$400k is what senior executives of major multinational companies get paid. It's also what top surgeons get paid. I highly doubt that blue collar workers get anywhere near that much. If they did, everyone would try to work in that industry because the barrier to entry is comparatively very low.

"If they did, everyone would try to work in that industry because the barrier to entry is comparatively very low."

That's an old joke:

Surgeon to plumber: "You are charging higher prices than I get for performing surgery!"

Plumber: "Yeah, I make more money now than when I was a surgeon, too."