Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by erw1 » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #63

muse900 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the min…

> The unemployment benefit is 400+ euros per month. So tell me who in their right minds would go to work for 500 euros or even 800 euros, whilst they have to spend petrol to get from and to work, work prolly 10+ hours a day, in the sun most likely cause thats what means tourism industry, There are always people who don't just want to live off the dole. Also a lot of the people who complain about crappy entry level wa…

The OP has a very strong point when it comes to money.

If they offer you a $800 wage, when your unemployment is $400, your effective earning rate for the work you are doing is just $400/mo. Cost-benefit analysis isn't in favor of working. The employers either have to offer something on top of the starting wage (like clear path to advancement), or raise the wage. Otherwise it's a fairly logical choice for people to stay home and draw unemployment.

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

#372

Post by poutrathor » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

frenchdev wrote: post #168

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 have worked for 5 diferent french companies as a developper and this is so true. They all complain because they can't find developpers, sometimes its not even that they can't find "good" developpers its just that they can't find any developpers willing to work for them. Then when you see what they wan't to pay i just laugh. Someone helping on a kitchen in a restaurant can earn the same as a developper here in franc…

The sad truth is that Big Companies are always cutting prices. It's impossible to get contracts at decent prices to shovel it down to the devs. I see both sides of the equation and in France you can't get clients if daily rates are too highs ; then you struggle to pay people what they truly deserve.

Our devs are not paid enough to save projects poorly down by half-competent team from big SSII that undercut everyone else.

And then the client is saying : "how can it takes so long ? I am only asking for this feature from Dropbox, that one from Google, a Facebook like feed and some Whatsapp notifications, all synchronised with these existing applications ! NOTHING HARD to do here !"

/rant

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

#373

Post by merinowool » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

CamTin wrote: post #359

merinowool wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are happy to convict drug users (even medicinal), so why would they be lenient on employers?

How are the two things (drug convictions and unfair labor contracts) related?

Human rights

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

#374

Post by sdhgaiojfsa » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

pjmorris wrote: post #364

sdhgaiojfsa wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an enormous amount of complexity here. For one thing, it's not like there is an infinite amount of beef available at a fixed price. Bob's eating that burger probably on the margin increases the supply of beef, but it also on the margin increases the cost. Now everyone else has to pay 0.0000001c more for their hamburgers. Or what if Bob bought a filet mignon instead of a hamburger. Maybe farmers will now be (o…

You raise fair points about the spending of money on physical assets/consumption. Can you elaborate similarly on the potential problems with how saved/invested money is allocated?

Well, at a very high level, banks can use saved money to lend to businesses or individuals at a given multiplier. If a bank has insufficient deposits, it can't lend any more money. This is called fractional-reserve banking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking So when you make a deposit, you are effectively causing a fraction of that deposit to be available for lending. This is what you're getting paid for when you get interest.

On the other hand, when you invest in a stock, you're providing liquidity to whoever held it last. That doesn't directly provide money to a company. But it has an important function: people only buy stocks when they are confident they can later sell it. If there were no buyers for stocks in the secondary market, nobody would participate in IPOs.

As far as which is better for the economy, this is beyond my knowledge. However, any normal person with any financial savvy knows that market returns are much better than deposit returns, so most of the time when such people say "save" they mean "invest in the market."

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

#375

Post by mistermann » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #220

mistermann wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> That is incorrect.

Maybe, show me your math proving that number is correct.

I can't speak for the US, but in Canada the housing component of the CPI has utterly no connection to actual observed costs of owning or renting, at the national level as well as the municipal level.

You don't have to take this as a fact (I can't really prove it if the government doesn't share their data or calculations, can I), but moreso something to think about in the formation of your world view.

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

#376

Post by sametmax » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

geezerjay wrote: post #370

sametmax wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that's not agile. Agile means small teams focused on one project communicating constantly with the client in a feedback loop. If any of these elements is missing, you are not doing agile, you are doing the same thing most companies do, but with some agile pieces and labels attached to it. It's like saying you are on a keto diet, but you eat ice cream, or that you are for democracy as long as the press is control…

> Then that's not agile. It's kinda saddening that from everything OP said, the only take you got from the message is whether a soul-crushing mouse-wheel is buzz-word compliant in your opinion.

I actually meant the opposite : most companies do terribly, and then smash some buzz word lipstick on that pig.

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

#377

Post by scarecrowbob » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

Markoff wrote: post #211

scarecrowbob wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, I caught that... I haven't figured out how to get the hours down to that, but I am working on it. Mostly I just end up doing stuff like visiting my parents while I'm at "work".

I have a 17 year old and basically have ended up remote working just to be around him and his sister. For me, that's definitely a thing that I feel like was a great deal for both our lives. Also, now I'm just turning 40 and he's graduating high school, I've started traveling and working that that's also quite fulfilling.

I feel sad for those folks to- it's not a judgment thing, I just know how much I got from being around my kids and how much I personally would have lost out on.

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

#378

Post by lovich » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

morsma wrote: post #174

beagle3 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was living in NYC I paid 39% federal + 13.5% state/city - that’s over 50%. Healthcare and children education not included. I was not a home owner, and my other deduction amounted to almost nothing thanks to AMT. It’s a myth that taxes in the US are low.

I make $100k in Texas and after taxes and everything including healthcare I have approximately $75k. Living in a democratic state has its price.

After federal taxes you'd be left with 81710.5, so 7k for property taxes and healthcare seems reasonable. Except that you are neglecting to calculate in your higher sales tax that the state of Texas uses to generate tax revenue as well as oil sales which are a non renewable energy and can't be relied on forever

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

#379

Post by lovich » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

pluto9 wrote: post #362

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it wasn't for "socialist Europe", our health care would be shit (see the US where people die on the streets because they can't afford an ambulance), my brother would be homeless and probably dead, my dad would've been without any income at age 60, years before his retirement, my sister wouldn't have been able to attend university, and I wouldn't have been able to attend college and land a job in Amsterdam where I…

Speaking of memes that need to die: > see the US where people die on the streets because they can't afford an ambulance American hospitals cannot deny emergency treatment for lack of ability to pay.

No but people avoid going to the doctor until it's too late because they'd rather not go bankrupt

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

#380

Post by rglullis » Wed, Jul 11, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

germanier wrote: post #365

rglullis wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are technically correct. In practice, I had colleagues working as "web designers" who were working right next to me and would not get a substantial part of their salary taken out for health insurance. So, they were still funded by the non-artists. Why the distinction? Because this work involved Photoshop and mine used emacs?

As I said, the portion they don't pay is taken from companies using creative work. Not from you and not from me. It is only available to freelancers. People working in those fields usually don't have the option of regular employment. For that reason was decided that companies using their work still need to contribute to health insurance (as all regular employers need to do as well). For everybody else the answer is:…

Alright, then. One could argue that the costs that companies have with this still get passed along to the consumers and other workers, but I will concede it is not "funded by us".

Still does not explain why there is a distinction. Why do artists get to have companies paying them part of their social security while other freelancers still need to make this out of their own pocket? If this is a good idea for the artists, why not for other professions?