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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?

#501

Post by FitchApps »

fooker wrote: post #245
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much tech bubble thinking. Most developers in the US don’t work for tech companies and will never make ovdd $200K inflation adjusted. Developer salary is very much bimodal https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal If you are working for boring old enterprise companies like banks, airlines, insurance companies or even most YC funded companies, “senior” developers will top out at around $160K-$17…

Okay, assuming you could invest 100k out of your 170k per year into companies you know were doing well on tech from 2015, how much would you have ? (say: AMD, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Facebook) The answer is about 10M, which is not that far from what I estimated, even without including Nvidia. Now add in house price appreciation. There are plenty of people who have managed to do this, from fairly normal tech jobs.

170k after taxes leaves you with about 130k net, maybe 140k; if you live in a big city and have a family, it's almost impossible to save 100 grand of that 140k. More realistic you would save about 50k and still come out ok, but lets be realistic noone is saving 100k from 170k gross salary

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

#502

Post by Throaway1985232 »

raffraffraff wrote: post #337
SilverElfin wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others are criticizing you but the reality is that people usually spend more and save less than they could. There are plenty of people with modest income who manage to build a decent retirement. But it takes discipline. You have to be okay with sacrificing for the future.

As an "Old" who was a kid in the late 70s to early 90s, I'm telling young folks that there is no first world poverty like there was then. Not just because "we" were poor, but because you couldn't get "stuff" anyway. Like, the biggest TV I ever saw back them was 25". Nobody had a computer. Unemployment across the board was high. I saw my first kiwi fruit or avocado when I was 10. Clothes were expensive (even thrift /…

[dead]

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

#503

Post by ecshafer »

AIorNot wrote: post #260

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…

Are you in a major tech market (SF? Seattle?)

I was a laid off in the beginning of the year from my remote job, landed several interviews, and I found a new job in I was able to land interviews with some remote companies. I used to work at Shopify, a got some interviews at Ruby shops from that.

Some possibilities:

1. Ageism, this is a distinct possibility.

2. You held very senior positions. I think a lot of people don't like hiring people that were more senior than them. So that CTO is being held as a negative. They are not saying "Hey I get the experience of an EM and a CTO in a Senior Engineer for a bargain salary", they are worried you will overshadow them. This is sub optimal behavior for companies.

3. Talking to people I think non-tech markets look like they are doing fine. People I know in Rochester, Syracuse, and Cleveland aren't having issues getting jobs. I think the huge layoffs in big tech have left a big supply in tech cities to less demand.

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

#504

Post by bluefirebrand »

tibbar wrote: post #268
05 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learning quickly, so their work quality is eventually higher than Cursor can work out in one shot. This sounds almost word for word like The Onion’s classic: Secretary Of Labor Assures Nation There Still Plenty Of Jobs For Americans Willing To Outwork Robots [0] https://theonion.com/secretary-of-labor-assures-nation-there...

Wow. That is ... too painful and true to life to really be funny at this point. But, ok, still funny. To be fair, I meant something a little different -- something like -- learn how to be a robot priest who can get it to follow the desperate prayers of humans. And, like, how to unstick the robot arm when it accidentally punches through a wall. Etc. Not that that is particularly comforting, in an existential sense. Ma…

If "a couple of years until you have to pivot again" is all new grads have to hope for, they might as well forget it

Instead they should start learning how to shoot guns and build pipe bombs.

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

#505

Post by doom2 »

cal_dent wrote: post #62

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…

> but out in the official data, and less so but still true in the real world, things are still bobbing along. Not great guns but still ok. The interesting thing is how much is internet chatter a leading signal for this thing now than in previous cycles?

It's really interesting to read both this comment and the featured article because my recollection is that one of the big reasons Harris lost in 2024 is that Democrats kept saying the underlying economic data was fine but voters felt things were bad, even if they weren't (the so-called 'vibecession'). Maybe also a bit of distrusting economic experts. So which is it? Are voters just being illogical and should trust when others say the economy is doing fine? Or is there something not being captured in economic data that validates people's concerns?

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

#506

Post by [deleted] »

smileson2 wrote: post #226
thewebguyd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm a little older but I have found it strange how well economic crisis has been almost wiped from our collective memories it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software

[deleted]

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

#507

Post by flag_fagger »

smileson2 wrote: post #226
thewebguyd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm a little older but I have found it strange how well economic crisis has been almost wiped from our collective memories it was a horrible period and I have many friends who are in the same boat especially those not in software

It’s because the site is chalk full of millennials who jumped on the “I was an office assistant making $40k and I did a bootcamp and now make 200k” at the right place at just the right time.

They’re convinced they’ll time the next grift right. Who knows

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

#508

Post by reactordev »

goodolddays9090 wrote: post #282
aaronblohowiak wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FI is more valuable than RE. After three years or so I got the itch again and decided to self fund my own thing. Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly..

> Also looking back on around 10 years ago more fondly When the work didn't suck and the product didn't suck.

So it’s not just me

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

#509

Post by dragonwriter »

windward wrote: post #387
dragonwriter wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My pet theory is that we are experiencing stagflation, but only people >70 years old have ever really experienced it before, so most people are just scratching their heads wondering how it’s possible that stocks keep going up (inflation) while jobs are disappearing (stagnation). We do not seem to be technically experiencing stagflation,ir really either half of it, on a national scale, as we appear to still be in a…

>we are in a very weak economy especially outside of the leading AI firms Isn't that part of the cause? It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else. Or at least nothing without such perceived upside. Either they pull it off and you're replaced by AGI, or they fail to pull it off and you lose your job to the resulting economic implosion.

> Isn't that part of the cause?

Probably not significantly, IMO.

> It sucks up so much investment, there's nothing left for anything else.

Tariff-inflated input costs combined with weak consumer demand are the reason the rest of the economy is slow, and the reason there aren’t places woth strong and near-term upsides for investment dollars to go. AI being the only thing attracting investment is the effect, not the cause.

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

#510

Post by flag_fagger »

pyuser583 wrote: post #251
thewebguyd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

sorry your math seems strange. You graduated from college in ‘08 - 17 years ago. You’re nearing 40. So let’s say you graduated at 23 … you’ve only had a college level job for five years? The economy has been moving upward since 2013 - 12 years ago. What were you doing from 2013 to 2020? I ask because I also graduated around ‘08. I’ve been a software developer since 2016. I’m currently a senior dev with almost a decad…

Yeah man, those stupid hick rednecks in Appalachia should have just learned to code.
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