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

The quitting economy

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 196 posts

Re: The quitting economy

#41

Post by diego_moita »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #36
diego_moita wrote: post #16

Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias. This is not an unavoidable trend and is not global. Japan's work market isn't exactly like this. Germany's Mittelstands are eating the world precisely by buckling this trend. Northern Italy (around Milan) has an artisan industry that thrives on skilled artisans working for small cottage industries, etc. If you want workers skilled in a very niche and crucial technology the…

> manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc. computers count in your list of precision machines, right?

The key issue is how niche, rare and unreplaceable the skill is.

If your skill is MS-Office then you're not niche and you're easy to replace.

If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle then you are a little harder to replace and you can see more stable jobs.

Re: The quitting economy

#42

Post by wastedhours »

wyc wrote: post #18

The most recent resource I've read on this was The Alliance by Reid Hoffman. In it, he postulates that both employees and employers are lying through their teeth: employers tell employees about the benefits, investment in its people, and family-feel. Employees say they want to be lifers. This never happens. Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk.…

I fully support that idea - in fact, your example is pretty much where I am at the moment: marketer who wants to start a company, working for another startup to deliver more strategy and system development. It'd be great if it was on a tour-of-duty type contract where someone could come in, deliver on their area, and then transition out onto the the next thing when the company lifestage has been fulfilled feeling satisfied the role had been done.

Re: The quitting economy

#43

Post by didgeoridoo »

dalbasal wrote: post #30

I really think trying to reason about labour markets using pure theory in a Hayek-Friedman-esque way is a dead end. It's the 2nd time in two days I made the recommendation, but throwing Ronald Coase into the Neoliberal canon would help a lot. He was a "chicago school" academic from the same intellectual family, so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock. He wan't like "progressives" in the "evidence based" sense…

Transaction costs.

Both the employee (search costs, hours in the day) and employer (job training, search costs, process knowledge) incur far greater transaction costs than you see in commodity markets. Business models that lower transaction costs (e.g. "gig economy" middlemen) tend to lead to the emergence of highly flexible labor markets. This currently only applies to jobs that don't require a high level of nontransferrable knowledge, because nobody has yet invented an "I know Kung-Fu" machine that can transplant a company's 5 year marketing strategy into the head of a day-laborer CMO.

None of this requires going outside pretty basic economic theory.

Edit: I just realized this sounds like I'm explaining Coase theorem to the person who cited Coase. It's not for you, it's for others reading your comment. I'm disagreeing with your conclusion, not your premises.

Re: The quitting economy

#44

Post by nikon »

usgroup wrote: post #2

This is very noticeable in London. It's a relative rarity to find a dev that's worked anywhere longer than a couple years. The simple economics of it is that until a certain salary, there is no easier way to ratchet up the pay scale then to use the negotiating leverage of having a job to get the next one on better terms. Meanwhile, the supply situation for devs is such that employers have to accept the situation. I'm…

I can't help but think contracting is becoming more popular in London. I've been doing it myself now since 2013. I've seen a couple of perm staff walk out of jobs due to petty reasons in the last year, both were Actually trying to move into more of a consulting role going forward, but there is such a demand for contractors IMO it could be shortening the availability of good developers in London.

Re: The quitting economy

#45

Post by spoonie »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #40
spoonie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so does the employer not realize that the Hadoop experi nice they require is valuable? Or are they hoping the dev doesn't know it's more valuable? It seems to me hat in cases like these thare employers are hiring and training but then not compensating employees for the new skills. Thus there is always another employer willing to value that training.

The business of course wants it for as little as possible, but pricing individual skills can be tricky unless they've done something with it you're specifically looking for. In that case, you know they can do what you want. It's difficult to know if "6 months of Hadoop XP" means more than tutorials and basic usage and if they'll be able to solve your business's problems. 10 years of experience vs. 1 year 10 times is…

Indeed! But who is the greater fool in this case? The job-hopping employee looking for money, or the new employer willing to pay more for the job-hopper?

Re: The quitting economy

#46

Post by wastedhours »

currymj wrote: post #9
usgroup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure X years of experience matters all that much. For example, Java dev goes to employer and adds Hadoop to her experience, then applies for other jobs for 10k more ambiently for a few months. Eventually nails one and packs her bags, and so on recursively. Sometimes dev don't add anything at all and just go for more money because of change in condition. JS or mobile app dev is a great example. Nothing changed; th…

What do devs get paid in London on average? I always had the impression, perhaps wrong, that software engineers seem underpaid in England relative to the US, even accounting for currency and cost of living and such (which, probably London is as bad as SF on that front). (i've also gotten the impression that there's not the same level of cultural esteem for engineers and scientists and such in England, and that this m…

I've seen RoR jobs go from £35k to £60k in London (and even ones as low as £27k...). Might just be the ones recruiters have tried to pitch though.

Re: The quitting economy

#47

Post by nikon »

wonderwonder wrote: post #12
spoonie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how is it that there is always another company willing to pay more? Do companies hire devs with X years of experience without planning to pay more for X+1 years of experience?

They will pay you the range you ask for. If Joe is offered a job at 50k but he does not know the position range is 50 - 70k, he might accept it. Joe now has a job making 50k a year with the potential to earn 3% raises annually. Bob might be offered the same position, but right from the beginning he has indicated he expects to earn 67k or more, they will offer him 67k. The company will hire you for as little as they c…

> Lately I have seen a trend where people wont even ask the salary until they have interviewed because they don't want to appear rude. I just don't get it. You should provide your salary expectations prior to reaching the interview stage otherwise you are potentially wasting your time.

I once asked an internal recruiter the salary (as to not waste each other's time) and he returned a tirade of abuse about me not clearly being a good fit if money is my only focus. The guy organises a few meetups as well, fair to say I'll avoid anything he touches at all costs.

Edit: if you publish/ let me know the the range, I'm happy to interview.

Re: The quitting economy

#48

Post by pm90 »

sidlls wrote: post #34
wyc wrote: post #18

The most recent resource I've read on this was The Alliance by Reid Hoffman. In it, he postulates that both employees and employers are lying through their teeth: employers tell employees about the benefits, investment in its people, and family-feel. Employees say they want to be lifers. This never happens. Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk.…

> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as paid masters' programs. I'd have gladly stayed at my third job for much longer than the ~21 months I did had there been training, retirement, reasonable pay increases, and career development off…

A lot of this can be mitigated by managers having genuine conversations with their employees. The ideal manager I would work with (I've seen some managers come close but never hit all the right notes) would first and foremost be genuinely interested in my career progress as an employee. Different employees have different ambitions and expectations and there is just no way for a manager to know all of this just by observing someone; they really need to actively communicate and find out, to have a genuine conversation about how much raise they can provide or why they can't, what future they see for the employee. Especially if the employee is performing below expectations... that conversation can be tough, but I think one of the qualities of being a good manager is to convey this information in a way which makes the employee try to remedy the situation rather than just disparage them.

Re: The quitting economy

#49

Post by isuckatcoding »

mathattack wrote: post #6

It can be difficult to hire in this environment. I've had 3 employees quit less than 3 months into new full-time positions. My first inclination is to ask, "What are we doing wrong?" but the more I look around it seems like a common industry problem. Perhaps it's rational behavior - as the article highlights, companies now view people as disposable. There's loyalty to a manager, but not a company. (You always want a…

Only time I think one would be loyal to the company is if they own a significant stake in it (which is usually the founding execs).

Or maybe if the company has done something amazing like pay for all your college / masters tuition...

Re: The quitting economy

#50

Post by ThomPete »

Firm hopping happens because hierarchy hopping within an organization get's obstructed. Sooner or later you can't get further up because someone has the position you want and you start looking for opportunities that allow you to move up.
Post reply on HN