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Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

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Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#61

Post by gruez »

weard_beard wrote: post #59
gruez wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I suspect that WSJ held back such topics until after the election… Why?

The current administration's poor messaging on inflation and the economic problems faced by many Americans was a significant contributing factor to their loss of the election. ( https://www.barrons.com/articles/economy-2024-election-why-h... ) The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power. They are largely responsible for s…

>The WSJ and other major publications have a vested interest in brokering access by tailoring their coverage to be friendly to those in power

Are you thinking of the Washington Post? You realize that the WSJ has been described as "right-centrist"[1]? It's unclear why they'd want to support a Democratic administration. Even the "friendly to those in power" excuse doesn't work too well. For most of the election Trump was leading in election models, and near the end it was a coin toss. Being anti-Biden and pro-Trump would be the rational choice, even if they were apolitical and just wanted to be "friendly to those in power"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_Street_Journal#Editor...

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#62

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

thw09j9m wrote: post #12

Tech market is rough. I think BigTech currently thinks that there's a better ROI spending $300k on compute (training an LLM) than $300k on an employee. All the startups I've interviewed with are HEAVILY leveraging LLMs (via Cursor) to keep engineer count and burn rate low.

> HEAVILY leveraging LLMs (via Cursor) to keep engineer count and burn rate low.

Absolutely make believe FUD

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#63

Post by vegetablepotpie »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Ghost jobs doesn't help things any. Posting fake jobs should be considered wage theft. Multiply the number of applications for a fake job by the average time to apply and then by the hourly rate (or salaried rate calculated down to the hour). Charge those responsible for theft of that figure, which easily will push it into felony territory. Bet the ghost job phenomenon disappears overnight.

This reminds me of a thread posted on HN last week. Someone used LLMs to write cover letters and post on job sites for them. He was able to spam out hundreds of job apps [1].

To me that sounds like a perfectly rational response to fake job apps. When there exists the possibility of 0% chance of a response for a given application, the only rational move is to minimize the investment of all submissions and maximize the number of submissions.

Recruiters and hiring managers spun it as a problem being inflicted on them because of AI tools and the attitude of people applying, with one commentator writing

> Recent cohorts have been infected with a sense that the job market is nothing more than a game that they need to min-max… The problem is so bad that one company withdrew from partnering in our internal job board, citing rampant LLM-generated applications and obvious LLM cheating in interviews.

On the other side of your argument you have people who see no problem posting ghost jobs, and think it’s a harmless way to boost company morale and increase investor confidence. They see hundreds of “low effort” applications being submitted to them, believe it is a cost being imposed on them, and think it’s 100% a problem caused by the applicants. They see no connection between their behavior and the response they get back from the environment and would see your proposal as absolutely ridiculous.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42531695

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#64

Post by franktankbank »

afpx wrote: post #57
uptownfunk wrote: post #16

My observations for the last two years: Employers are hyper hyper selective There are a lot a lot of fake job postings The bar has gone way way up It is in general very difficult and gruelling to get a job If engineering roles are hard to find, product is 10-100x worse If you have a job, be thankful, don't rock the ship OBVIOUSLY there will be statements to the contrary, but this is really more in the spirit of - if…

The change was quite shocking. For 25 years, to get a new job I’d send out 5 resumes, get 4 interviews, and 3 offers. This time around, I sent 200+ resumes, got 2 interviews, and ghosted on both.

I think employers are bracing for another employee sided market and trying to juice their hand as long as they have it. My belief is a lot of F500 companies are running on skeleton crew H1B which might be a crumbly foundation. They will neg-neg-neg until the clock runs out.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#65

Post by JeremyNT »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #3

I can definitely attest to this statistic. Got thrown overboard at my last job for not wanting to sign my name to things we weren't doing (no I'm not telling the IRS we encrypt our data at rest when we don't!) Finally got brought on a week ago at a PC repair shop of all things. It's not glamorous but it's the only "IT related" thing I could find. In Seattle of all places! The FAANG's doing their massive layoffs cause…

I think we (tech workers) have seen this for a while. The tech bubble was real - surely we all noticed this at the time - and it stands to reason that a correction is well past due.

But now, there are anecdotes of other sectors being hit as well.

Note that all of this is "working as intended." The way the fed manages inflation generates unemployment to knock out high salary workers and keep wages down. The target unemployment rate is not zero.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#66

Post by jncfhnb »

normie3000 wrote: post #48
thw09j9m wrote: post #12

Tech market is rough. I think BigTech currently thinks that there's a better ROI spending $300k on compute (training an LLM) than $300k on an employee. All the startups I've interviewed with are HEAVILY leveraging LLMs (via Cursor) to keep engineer count and burn rate low.

> HEAVILY leveraging LLMs (via Cursor) to keep engineer count and burn rate low Does this strategy work?

Not even close

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#67

Post by franktankbank »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #63
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Ghost jobs doesn't help things any. Posting fake jobs should be considered wage theft. Multiply the number of applications for a fake job by the average time to apply and then by the hourly rate (or salaried rate calculated down to the hour). Charge those responsible for theft of that figure, which easily will push it into felony territory. Bet the ghost job phenomenon disappears overnight.

This reminds me of a thread posted on HN last week. Someone used LLMs to write cover letters and post on job sites for them. He was able to spam out hundreds of job apps [1]. To me that sounds like a perfectly rational response to fake job apps. When there exists the possibility of 0% chance of a response for a given application, the only rational move is to minimize the investment of all submissions and maximize the…

I don't know I want to spam my personal details with impunity. It's not the freeby it might seem.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#68

Post by franktankbank »

tjpnz wrote: post #42
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #7

Ghost jobs doesn't help things any. Posting fake jobs should be considered wage theft. Multiply the number of applications for a fake job by the average time to apply and then by the hourly rate (or salaried rate calculated down to the hour). Charge those responsible for theft of that figure, which easily will push it into felony territory. Bet the ghost job phenomenon disappears overnight.

Without the ghost job they're unable to prove due diligence locally. That's not just thievery but fraud.

Due diligence is so fucking dumb though. Here's my understanding of how getting a GC works:

1) Company applies on behalf of employee.

2) Company advertises for employees job.

3) Company interviews local suitors

  3a)  If local suitor aces it do they get the would be immigrants job?  No and also no GC for immigrant.
  
  3b)  No local suitor found then immigrant gets GC.
Finding a local suitor is bad for everyone involved!

H1B should die. Exceptional immigrants can come here and be an American after some determinant amount of time (not in a hundred plus year backlog or some nonsense). My problem is that I can't work with an underclass, their is no joining the cultures because we are pitted against each other.

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#69

Post by franktankbank »

anal_reactor wrote: post #45

1. The field got oversaturated. Everyone signed up for coding classes, not everyone has graduated from coding classes. 2. Lack of information transparency: everyone involved has huge incentives to lie, so it's extremely difficult for a company to say "we are a good company wanting to hire a good dev" and someone to respond "I am a good dev looking for a good job". Same problem as dating. 3. Moving jobs to cheaper cou…

> Moving jobs to cheaper countries: the flipside of work-from-home is having companies realize that they don't need to have butts in chairs is San Francisco, they can have butts in chairs in India, 75% of performance for half the price.

They had to be brain-dead to only consider that as an option now. What was keeping them from figuring it out sometime post-Reagan?

Re: Unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs

#70

Post by uptownfunk »

afpx wrote: post #57
uptownfunk wrote: post #16

My observations for the last two years: Employers are hyper hyper selective There are a lot a lot of fake job postings The bar has gone way way up It is in general very difficult and gruelling to get a job If engineering roles are hard to find, product is 10-100x worse If you have a job, be thankful, don't rock the ship OBVIOUSLY there will be statements to the contrary, but this is really more in the spirit of - if…

The change was quite shocking. For 25 years, to get a new job I’d send out 5 resumes, get 4 interviews, and 3 offers. This time around, I sent 200+ resumes, got 2 interviews, and ghosted on both.

I have gone through something similar where I won’t feel motivated to even pursue the interview properly because I’ve been burnt so many times already. Yes you just need one yes (ideally more for negotiating leverage) but those 1-2 offers are damn hard to come by these days
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