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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?

#541

Post by actionfromafar »

bluGill wrote: post #531
actionfromafar wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substitute some numbers until the example makes sense, the point is that net worth can be misleading.

Joe is on the hook for his mortgage and so his monthly cashflow must be higher to afford to live. However his net worth is larger and so he is richer. This is why middle class people often feel poor than those who are poor: they make more money and have more in total, but they also have large bills and if something happens those bills will catch up with them fast.

And that is the interesting part - for a given sudden bill of a certain size, someone more wealthy on paper can have much worse outcomes.

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

#542

Post by projectazorian »

idiotsecant wrote: post #428
deadbabe wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take care of yourself: exercise, skin care, fashion trends, botox, hair dye, etc. so you do not look 50+ and no one will know the difference.

Can we just pause and consider what happened to this industry where this is the advice. This is the natural consequence of marketing and fundraising completely destroying engineering. It's not about real things anymore. It's about image. It's an industry of carnival barkers turning everything it touches to shit.

This is America, the land of grifters and carnival barkers. Everything is about marketing and image. Always has been.

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

#543

Post by peppersghost93 »

jve wrote: post #420
johnnyanmac wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You telling someone with 50k in debt, turning in 1000's or job apps struggling to find a job they studied 4+ years for and not being able to even pay rent to "just save"... is exactly how we got into this situation to begin with.

That list should surely had to prepend "pay off debt, live within your means" Listening to Dave Ramsey on YT gets me amazed on how some people can be so irresponsible and accumulate debt on credit cards and cars they can't afford.

I firmly believe if people in this country were smart with their money in the way Dave Ramsey preaches, the entire service sector would collapse.

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

#544

Post by ethin »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #329
ethin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm literally one of these people. My only work experience is a GSoC internship in 2021. I have yet to get hired and I've been looking for 4 years, graduated in 2022 right before ChatGPT came out. I've had no choice but to become a generalist as a consequence, and over the last year or two my interviews have dropped to zero and absolutely none of the advice I've gotten from anybody has helped. Just my personal experi…

Yeah, I'm really sorry this happened. I'm managing a bit better since I graduated in 2017, but I still pretty much had my senior trajectory yoinked from under me. The market is completely different now than back when I graduated. I don't really have any advice for the present. We're in a storm, so do what you need to weather it. If there's any downtime you do have, use it to prepare for when (if?) the market bounces…

Thank you for this. Networking is tricky (at least in person networking) because I live in an area that pretty much has no tech hub at all. I call it the state nobody talks about because the only time I've ever heard it mentioned is in elections lol. But I've certainly tried to network and will continue to do so.

I can't do graphic design or UI design more generally but I absolutely love to develop software and work with tech. But I am trying to diversify because I don't know what else to do. As a result my resume puts me as a generalist which doesn't exactly help my chances... But eh. I am definitely trying to work with what I have, it's frustrating and really demotivating though.

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

#545

Post by ryandrake »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #519
reactordev wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out. People who make less than $60k aren’t usually offered 401k’s. I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself first, before you do. Don’t max out a credit card for a trip. Don’t cover the table’s check when you only have $200. Be responsible, but still have fun.

>If you are offered a 401k, you have the means to max it out. Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics). Perhaps you are only referring to doctors/software engineers/lawyers/IB/PE employees? >I’m not telling you to forgo partying. I’m telling you to pay yourself fi…

> Given rent, saving for house downpayment, student loan payments, auto loan payments, and possible childcare/healthcare costs, I don’t think we live in the same reality (based on income statistics).

These things all come after savings, not before. If you can't afford them using post-saving money, then you need to get a better job, or a cheaper living conditions. Easier said than done, I totally agree, especially nowadays. But that's the mentality you need to really take saving seriously.

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

#546

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

lan321 wrote: post #421
godelski wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to lower standards than to raise them. There's always a race to the bottom. I don't think it's a big leap to suggest that what's considered the "minimum viable product" has decreased over the years. It's also no secret that software is getting worse. As to salaries, I think you forgot how things worked before. The reason companies like Google introduced free food and all the incentives was because increas…

I feel this is more true in the sense that when they don't care about money you can get them below market value and not that they are better. I find the most valuable employees to be the financially literate ones. The ones who're constantly thinking about the money aspect. 'Will we get more customers?' 'Will they be more likely to stay with us?' 'Are we screwing ourselves out of sales by offering to host a server for…

I have had 10 jobs over 30 years and I am now at only the third company where I gave two shits about the company’s success or saw it more than just a stepping stone to my n+1 company.

I agree with you completely. They can just keep giving me cost of living raises and respect my experience and opinions (not saying they always have to go along with them) and I will be the last person here if they shut the lights off.

I work in a consulting company where I lead projects and I have an almost obsessive commitment to seeing the customer happy within the constraints of our contract that I wouldn’t even think I was capable of earlier in my career.

I pay close to attention to my employer’s goals and strategies and stay aligned. I lurk in our sales Slack channel and care very much about how I can add revenue even though I know it wont make but a little difference in my comp.

FWIW: the other two companies I cared about deeply were startups where my opinion was respected and they gave me more autonomy than I could have ever expected. The first I was leading a project for their largest customer and the second a decade later I was just kind of thrown the reigns of our cloud architecture strategy even though I had no experience at the time.

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

#547

Post by mollusc-engine »

noitpmeder wrote: post #437
mollusc-engine wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have hella money.

You'll have to give some context. What did hella mean? How many months of your current spend rate do you have in the bank?

First off, the pay for a tenured mail carrier is plenty for me, and I feel like I have a full life.

I take martial arts classes, yoga classes, have nice apartment, eat what I want, have a decent car, etc.

I really don’t want anything, except ridiculous things no one can afford, like sure I’d be up for buying a Cathedral and converting it to a $20m house.

——

Liquid 3 years (savings plus liquid investments). 2 years in IRA. Set to inherit somewhere between 20-40 years worth.

I just have to work to make ends meet, let my investments mature, and eventually inherit.

It feels weird because I love my parents, but it’s something to plan around nonetheless.

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

#548

Post by reactordev »

CalRobert wrote: post #480
bluGill wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you bid on the same houses. Bid on a smaller house. Don't forget too that inflation works for you! If you save and get in a nice house early and the STAY THERE (I can't emphasize enough how important this is - sometimes life forces you to move, but avoid it), your payments measured against inflation will go down - just put that difference into a 401k (that is don't do a cash out refinance along the way as so…

Right, I am fortunate enough to be a homeowner but you do understand that telling a 30 year old with 4 roommates to “bid on a smaller house” is a bit tonedeaf, do you not?

Only to those who refuse to hear it. They will continue to ignore the advice while those who hear it put it into practice and when you’re both 50, they will have their house, a retirement account. While you’ll be bidding on your starter home.

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

#549

Post by mollusc-engine »

JLO64 wrote: post #99
mollusc-engine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a USPS mail carrier instead. Certainly less pay but I love being outside and walking. And no Jira, changing the color of that button, or steeping myself in Frank’s eldritch horror code.

As someone who is currently delivering Amazon packages with their own vehicle (Amazon Flex), what’s the process like to become a mail carrier? The miles are starting to take a toll on my car, so delivering for USPS is tempting for me…

It’s a 1 hour application online.

Fingerprints, background checks, references, and drug testing.

It’s the CIA. But good benefits.

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

#550

Post by ryandrake »

cyberax wrote: post #299
echelon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree. Old staff will be exited. Especially senior and mid level management. If you lose your job, you won't get the same comp again. The days of $500K TC are long behind us. It's the era of downsizing and outsourcing while blaming AI. None of this has anything to do with AI. That's just a scapegoat. Google and Amazon are culling entire US teams and rebuilding them in Asi…

> New folks will never be hired. RIP to the CS degree. We've just hired a couple of graduates, with the expectation that they are going to take some time to grow. What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out. Others in the industry are seeing the sam…

> What I'm seeing right now is a huge influx of candidates from large companies that have zero skill. I'm not exaggerating, they can't code anything. And it's not just AI, they started working before ChatGPT came out.

This has been true in software for decades. From the very first time I was senior enough in my career to start conducting interviews on the "employer" side of the table, we've seen a huge number of candidates who literally (in the literal meaning of literally) could not code. Like you would ask them to write a for loop, and they froze up and couldn't do it, or just started talking, hoping we would move onto more "behavioral" questions. This has been pretty much a constant in the software industry for as long as I've been in it.

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