401–410 of 693 posts
996 - it's a global marketplace of talent and very few in America are willing to work 996. If you are, you either are the founder type or young and unshackled.
I think there's something quite interesting (well to me anyway) where if you go by the internet, there is this bloodbath (slight exaggeration perhaps but feels like that) in jobs out in the US, UK, Aus and major European countries (the volume of anecdotes & complaints would suggest a significant downturn in employment) but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbin…
Some anecdata from Berlin: - It's now much harder to get a job without speaking German - There is now competition for low-wage service jobs - At times it felt like half of my friends were unemployed - My dev friends have a much harder time finding work. Back in 2015-2020 I had to beat recruiters back with a stick.
Folks with amazing jobs having to spend >1y trying to find a "meh" job. Pretty much impossible to find a job without fluent German.
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> I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it. The simple answer is that they probably had no intention of hiring you, or anybody, in the first place. The amount of fake job listings is absurd.
Why do they bother wasting time on interviewing the person though? Or does it never get that far?
So a LOT of businesses are now in the position that they have to raise prices significantly into the worst market in decades. So they'll get significantly less revenue and they'll have to go into overdrive on saving money. That means no hiring, layoffs, price hikes, shrinkflation, ... the whole thing. They have to do a lot less with a lot less.
How does management respond to this? Well, management generally isn't competent. Their only job is to negotiate, and now that will really be put to the test. The smarter ones know that negotiation doesn't even matter under these circumstances (since it's a fixed pie being divided: someone has to lose). So they're maximizing their runway and getting out. And first, of course, they lie. They tell people even inside companies that they're hiring, even to the point of having interviews. They post job postings, because that's part of doing covert layoffs: they replace full time employees by temporary ones, even interns. They wait with price hikes until they're through inventory. They notice they've signed long-term contracts with Walmart that they cannot fulfill. And so on. So they lie to maintain their reputation for after the crisis (so on their next interview they can believably claim "I could have saved the company, but I found a better opportunity ...").
So I bet we'll be seeing a LOT of managers, especially higher up, suddenly decide they need to find a new job, and when it turns out that doesn't work, take a 2-3 year excuse to take a break.
As for replacing these people with AI: they're not spending ... and AI is expensive. Sure there's startups using AI, but larger companies are just firing people and not replacing them. Certainly they don't see the current period as a good time to change ... anything.
Governments should be "countering the crisis" and hire, according to economics textbooks, and increase social spending with the savings from the decade past ... except ... there are no savings from the decade past. So governments are firing, laying off, saving on healthcare, and so on and so forth. The US obviously has everyone's attention but the UK is doing the same (frankly, worse) and so is the EU.
Trump will be the most desperate manager of all, doing anything and everything he can to delay this from happening until the midterm elections in November, like lowering interest rates. But the thing everyone needs to remember about interest rates: they only lower for a good reason. The problem for Trump is ... either he delays this to beyond November or he becomes a "lame-duck" president, unable to do anything.
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>I genuinely have zero idea what you're looking for if the literal perfect fit isn't it. Maybe someone on a visa that can't leave and will take peanuts.
how the tech world is becoming trumpian-like is a funny thing to witness - try to unionize next time
Well as a single datum: After I got laid off in late 2023 I had a devil of a time finding work (despite having AI experience) to the point my unemployment ran out - And I was 20 years as a dev and tech lead and full stack, (never had trouble finding work) including stints as a leading EM and CTO, I’ve been an industry award winning innovation lead,a digital studio director, switching tech stacks and cloud certs all m…
Doesn't help that I've tried to specialize for quite a while but simply can't stay around long enough without layoffs happening. Hard to be a domain expert when companies let you go ever 3 years. T shaped generalist it is, then.
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Who else is responsible for you? You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future? I know it sucks. I know income inequality is huge. I know the only way out of this is to put in sweat equity. I know the only way to put food on the table is to have a second job at a gas station. I’ve been there. However, as m…
As I said, I agree with taking personal responsibility - I'm not sure why you're still trying to fight me on that. > You have two options. Continue to point fingers and complain and be broke, or start putting $100/mo in VOO and save what little money you have for your future? The imaginary person you're trying to give this advice to graduated from university eighteen months ago and has been living in their parents' h…
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Good grief .. you're serious? Flour comes in sacks, meat comes in cuts - we've a quarter lamb in the freezer, part of that in the fridge, and yeast and flour enough for bread for the next six months. We shop cheap, like the family has done for the past 100+ years, much of our food comes from the garden - our excess gets swapped with others excess (we have a lot of fruit, we never buy eggs, they come from people that…
To cut mbfg a bit of slack here, your approach doesn't work in all situations. I admire your functioning community and supportive family and the fact that you've got time and space for things like gardening. If people can't live like you do, it's probably because they've been placed on some kind of economic hamster wheel, and rather than figure out how to get a quarter of a lamb their better bet is to emigrate or to…
I had eighteen months as an isolated single parent with near zero support (long story) and had to stretch a marginal budget during that period. I've also travelled through the more remote parts of more than half of the 190+ countries across the planet, sorting logistics for food, fuel, et al along the way.
What I can pass on as hard earned lessons are that fast foods are rarely the cheapest or heathiest in the long term - if you can track down a large volume slow cooker in any garage sale or op shop on special you can keep a never ending stew on the roll by throwing in damn near anything, potatoes, celery, beans, carrots, bits of meat, swedes, etc.
It's hard to disrupt a system, difficult to break patterns and build communities and establish areas to grow food - but home cooking and stretching out food is something that can be found across the planet in the most unlikely places. Worth the effort to look for examples and make a few moves.
We're lucky to buy and prep all our food in bulk - it's more expensive on the infrequent shopping days, it's substantially cheaper over the course of year.
It's not something we need to do in current circumstances, it's a habit kept up in case it's ever needed and being frugal where possible means more to spend elsewhere.
I don’t know, I’m hiring and the candidates so far have not been impressive. Maybe that is restricted to my area / region but I got one am confused.
If you're not in a major hub and ATS is filtering out all the good candidates not gaming the system, the results are inevitable. If you're looking for a senior for junior or less pay... Well, it's easier to keep searching than take a job that literally can't pay rent in some high COL areas.