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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?

#571

Post by karlshea »

senordevnyc wrote: post #455
karlshea wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna have to hold your hand when I tell you this: when you tell the younger generation to "save" or "invest" they are going to walk away from that conversation knowing they were just speaking with one of the most mind-numbingly naive Olds they're going to encounter in probably the next several months. Please, if you ever want any respect from anyone younger than you ever again in your entire life, do not say tho…

This is so condescending and infantilizing of young people. Of course many of them have it hard. They’re not the first, and they won’t be the last, but they’ll figure it out. I graduated right before the collapse in 2008, and I’ve spent the last 17 years hustling, scraping, and clawing to make, save, and invest every dollar I could. It wasn’t easy, and after a divorce and a recent layoff, it’s still not. Particularly…

What's condescending is telling a whole generation of people who are working two jobs and barely able to make rent to "save".

I'm older than you and now doing fine AND able to save/invest but after multiple once-in-a-lifetime events that reset all of my progress each time, the last thing I need to hear from some out-of-touch old person is bullshit avocado toast pull yourself up by your bootstraps comments.

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

#572

Post by guywithahat »

mollusc-engine wrote: post #26
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #20

From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it to 2008, but I've been laid off before and I've never seen it this bad.

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.

It's funny how everyone wants to get into deliveries as they get older, my dad who's been an engineer for decades talks about it a lot. Something about walking around and doing things really appeals to people as they reach the end of their engineering career

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

#573

Post by jiveturkey »

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…

Try taking 10-12 years off of your resume. Especially if you don't have grey hair this might help a lot.

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

#574

Post by fleroviumna »

modo_mario wrote: post #367
donatj wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of just straight out NO's I've gotten has been surprising and disheartening. I've been a developer for 20 years and genuinely don't think I've gotten an outright "no" before this year. Usually just no response. I've gotten maybe eight or nine actual rejections this year. It's honestly worse, emotionally. Ideally I want a job outside my wheelhouse to learn and move forward, but it seems like no one these da…

>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.

[dead]

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

#575

Post by Esophagus4 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #32
glimshe wrote: post #11

No. Source: Betteridge's law of headlines

Bettridge’s Law of Bettridge’s Law: there will always be someone in the comments section mentioning Bettridge’s Law.

We’re really just tired of news slowly morphing into Buzzfeed style clickbait, and this is our only outlet to complain about it.

Other annoying headlines:

“This is why interest rates are so high”

“What I learned about X from one month doing Y”

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

#577

Post by reactordev »

dizlexic wrote: post #556
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…

Probably not helpful, but as a high school dropout and self-taught developer in the industry since 2012. It seems like new grads are being stuck in a similar situation to what the self taughts had to go through to break into a job. Companies care about your work-related experience and dgaf about your college experience. The advice I have is build and contract. Focus on projects and results. If worse comes to worse ju…

I would echo this as well. When I started, I was still in high school (mid 90s) and the only thing they cared about was “make it work”.

Post college, it was about “what have you done?” vs “where did you go?” and so I demonstrated several projects I had done for the passion. A game engine. A graphics website community. Some novel networking libraries. A MUD. Finally, a database. By the time they got to the mud and database they were ringing me non-stop.

All of these projects done over a weekend or two while working other jobs to afford rent. Call centers are a personal level of hell.

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

#578

Post by SoftTalker »

potato3732842 wrote: post #490
ux266478 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will roll out the trades whenever employment is mentioned, but do you have tradies in your family? Do you have friends who are tradies? It's not easy to get in, it takes a long time to make journeyman, and work can have seriously spotty periods no matter who you are. Fact of the matter is, it's not really an alternative to anything except other types of bluecollar work.

It's easy to get a foot in the door to any of the trades but you're gonna slog out 5+yr of doing "bitch work" before you even have a chance to make real money because that's the nature of the licensing systems that these trades have that are enshrined by various degrees of law.

About the same amount of time most people spend in college and at least you're making a little money.

Like anything, it's important to spend time networking and building a reputation for doing high quality work. This gets noticed as it does in any job and will get you better opportunities and better customers.

Trades have a higher percentage of people at the bottom tiers who have trouble showing up for work on time and sober. Avoid being associated with that and you can rise fairly quickly.

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

#579

Post by tavavex »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #575
Waterluvian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bettridge’s Law of Bettridge’s Law: there will always be someone in the comments section mentioning Bettridge’s Law.

We’re really just tired of news slowly morphing into Buzzfeed style clickbait, and this is our only outlet to complain about it. Other annoying headlines: “This is why interest rates are so high” “What I learned about X from one month doing Y”

I'm not seeing how this article is clickbait of any kind. Betteridge's Law really only works for articles that manufacture a provocative question out of nowhere to attract readership, and then have to sheepishly back down in the article body because obviously it's not true. But this article is formulated as a question because it has genuine speculation about the future that nobody is quite sure about. It has points for both sides of the argument. There's no Yes/No answer here. How else would you format the title of such an article?

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

#580

Post by reactordev »

karlshea wrote: post #571
senordevnyc wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so condescending and infantilizing of young people. Of course many of them have it hard. They’re not the first, and they won’t be the last, but they’ll figure it out. I graduated right before the collapse in 2008, and I’ve spent the last 17 years hustling, scraping, and clawing to make, save, and invest every dollar I could. It wasn’t easy, and after a divorce and a recent layoff, it’s still not. Particularly…

What's condescending is telling a whole generation of people who are working two jobs and barely able to make rent to "save". I'm older than you and now doing fine AND able to save/invest but after multiple once-in-a-lifetime events that reset all of my progress each time, the last thing I need to hear from some out-of-touch old person is bullshit avocado toast pull yourself up by your bootstraps comments.

So you have two options. One, you can change your habits and save your money. Two, you can get a higher paying job and save your money.

Both options require effort and discipline. If someone working two jobs can’t make rent, then who is to blame for it not working out? Society? The government? Your landlord? Who? Who do you be angry towards if not yourself?

It’s out of touch because they are out of touch. I was out of touch. We all go through this and realize this is it. This is all there is. This is life. Welcome to being fully grown.

As I’ve said before - I’m here for the revolution if that’s what it takes. I’ll be on the front. I’m not rich. I’m not a home owner. I just know there’s only one path carved and they’re at the bottom of the slide hoarding it, taxing us more for each body down.

Capitalism is a disease but it’s been that way for multiple millennia. Humans vs humans. Survival of the fittest. Stuff they don’t teach in private school. Only the school of hard knocks. So, again, who do we blame, if not ourselves? Why do we buy the boomer products? Why do we subscribe to the boomer media? Why do we put up with it?

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