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Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

economist.com

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Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#441

Post by saxenaabhi »

alephnerd wrote: post #306
QuiEgo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience, YMMV: I was told that once video conferencing got good and internet and infrastructure became better in other places, "this time it will be different." I was told once universities in other countries started pumping out a pool of great candidates, expats who worked for FAANGs in the US would go home to found their own companies using that pool, and those companies would take over the world. "t…

The difference is, offshoring in the 2000s was largely private sector driven with minimal subsidizes and investment promotion programs lead by countries and their local governments. On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal…

> On the other hand, in the 2020s, India, Israel, most Eastern European states, Ireland, Costa Rica, and a couple others have launched industrial promotion subsidizes for software offshoring - often providing US$10k-30k per head in federal and local subsidizes along with subsidized office space and real estate and tax windows.

This isn't true either in India or most of eastern europe.

Maybe you are confusing PLI for manufacturing? Altough even that's not on per head basis.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#442

Post by saxenaabhi »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #321
matwood wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how about re-banning stock buybacks? This is pretend boogie man. Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Companies are not charities, they exist to make a return. If hiring people and/or paying more will generate a larger return than giving the money back to shareholders either through buybacks or dividends, then companies will do that. AI is now giving companies someth…

>Banning buybacks will not automatically make that money flow into hiring or salaries. Nope, but that's what trends show us from the decades between its ban and bans being lifted. All I know is that companies flowing money back into itself and having executives shift in and out every few years clearly hasn't worked. It's just one stepping stone to make sure companies have skin in the game again. You can argue dividen…

Why not just stop taxing dividends? CIT already has been paid on it, so why charge PIT on it? Like estonia.

That would mean there's no incentive for companies to buy back stock instead of dividends.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#443

Post by chickensong »

fogj094j0923j4 wrote: post #430
chickensong wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boredom is a personality trait IMHO. Some of us never get bored, there's only lack of time and funds for hobbies and exploring.

This is something my 12 years old self used to say.

Haha I'm old! Several up/down-votes and your comment... I guess I struck a nerve? I speak from experience, and I know other people who feel the same way. We may not be typical, but we exist.

At least you could have the decency to debate my comment instead of a feeble insult. My condolences.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#444

Post by LunaSea »

fooker wrote: post #286
ahtihn wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, just save 100k out of your 170k comp, that's totally how normal people operate. And not only that, also pick the right stocks rather than just sticking everything in an index! Just magically turn 10x 100k into 10M!

You do not understand compounding growth. You could have looked up the numbers for indices yourself, but here you go - S&P500 -> ~4 million NDXT (top 100 tech) -> ~14 million. > just save 100k out of your 170k comp Yes, that was my starting salary, and that's almost exactly what I saved. This calculation assumes your salary is somewhat constant and maxed out as the person I was responding to claimed, but in my experi…

$170K as a starting salary, scratch that, as any salary, is already way beyond the average SWE salary.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#445

Post by ookblah »

echelon wrote: post #134
tibbar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the picture I'm seeing on the ground. AI is eliminating certain classes of junior software positions. (Roughly: jobs where explaining a task to junior engineer is more work than asking Cursor/Claude Code/Codex to do it.) Junior engineers can fight back against this by a) getting really good at clarifying requirements b) learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out…

Show of hands for anyone seeing AI replacing juniors (and I assume also backfilling employees). I'm genuinely curious. I've heard this argued the other way too. Seen it firsthand. Fwiw, we've had good engineers switch to vibe coding and it's ruined their output. From really solid systems to unmaintainable flocks of seagulls - nested if statements ten levels deep with no thought or care. From good engineers that are j…

this is honestly what i think is going to happen as everyone is still figuring this out and why for large companies i think they are walking into a giant ass trap and the execs can't or don't care to see it as long as it boosts the stock.

most people (read: MOST) working at X corp aren't going to be using AI to accelerate their work, they are going to "phone it in" like you said or buy themselves more time to do other stuff. i think with the onslaught of vibe and slop most people don't have a vested interest to go above and beyond to ensure quality as long as it works, even experienced devs. that's honestly probably what i'd be tempted to do.

where we see the most exponential gains will be people who are paid enough to care, smaller teams that have a direct vested interest in long term success (founding teams, etc.) or people paid to just clean up a mess.

hiring and the landscape will be super interesting to see in the next year or so. probably team structure will change drastically as well.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#446

Post by ungovernableCat »

reactordev wrote: post #423
ungovernableCat wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just generic advice that doesn’t even really apply to the fresh grads, their issue is not having any entry point to a career anymore. I graduated 10 years ago and it’s a day and night difference. Whatever worked for me in 2015 will not work for a fresh grad today, the game is completely different.

But crying about not having a door to walk through isn’t going to change anything. I graduated 20 years ago and it was different when you graduated just as it is different now. Things change. Economies change. Life changes. The advice I give is simply because that’s the only thing you can change . You and your habits. I’m all for revolution. I’m all for socialism w/ a sprinkle of free market capitalism. I’m all for t…

Sure, but that's what I said. Your advice is just too broad. Boils down to "be frugal, invest what you can, network, find other career paths".

I think what would be useful for them is to have very concrete examples of what fields to pursue. I wish I knew myself.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#447

Post by avdelazeri »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #330
seanw444 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Idk about interviewing, but there are many benefits to opening fake job listing (gathering a database of people, keeping track of people looking for jobs, etc) which is why people do it. Data is valuable.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#448

Post by mschuster91 »

ponector wrote: post #361
mschuster91 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these days is interested in any sort of training. No one has the resources left to pay for it, that's the thing. Clients are cutting budgets because no one is buying their stuff, so everyone is looking for seniors and above only, and replacing juniors/intermediates with AI. Trickle-down ideology is now beginning to eat it…

>> No one has the resources left to pay for it Record profits reported by tech companies says the opposite. Money are there, but no will to spend them on people. We had multiple layoffs recently so parent company could report a billion USD in quarterly profits.

... which was needed because no/less profit can and does send the stonk price tanking. That's also a "there are no resources left to do the right thing" - the stonk market dynamics are a part of what is eating our economies alive.

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#449

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #398
johnnyanmac wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dividends don't grow the stock as quickly. They can and will do that, but the goal is to change the incentive structure back to long term growth and not "stock buyback and dip from company in a year".

There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends. If anything, all the businesses with the most long term growth have done the most buybacks because they are paying the employees in stock, which employees gladly accept because they bet the business will have long term growth. And executive compensation is not vested until business targets are met a few years i…

> There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends.

If I am bonused on earnings per share, and I have a button to increase earnings per share mechanically (without needing to increase revenue or decrease costs), why wouldn't I push that button?

Can you share some evidence around your statement? i.e. "There is no evidence to indicate buybacks reduce long term incentives for executives compared to dividends."

Re: Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?

#450

Post by tarsinge »

thewebguyd wrote: post #197
johnnyanmac wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and people recover. So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers? They aren't put on the streets, but it's clear some very long term damage is being done to people simply as a matter of bad luck.

> So you read nothing about how graduates during 2008 pretty much had forever stunted careers? Myself included. Graduated in '08, had to work various minimum wage jobs in retail for several years because no one was hiring. I'm just now at a point in my career, nearing 40, where I should have been at 28. Degree doesn't matter much when your only work experience is 5 years of working at Starbucks, and you barely have p…

Career progression is not everything, I'm approaching 40 and I'm doing the opposite, pivoting towards what I should have been doing at 28.
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