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“Great resignation” wave coming for companies

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Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#631

Post by foobiekr »

geekster777 wrote: post #555
sokoloff wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $900K net worth is not enough to FIRE in my estimation. $36K/yr with the need to still buy housing is spartan and/or risky with a 60-year outlook.

May not be enough to pull the trigger, but definitely enough to transition down to a part time or remote web dev gig in a low cost of living area. Once you have such a net worth secured, you just have to keep from pulling from it for a few years while it compounds. The big thing is that around 900k is when you get diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations. Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $…

I’ve never understood this logic. If you’re going to be working, why take a significant pay cut? It’s not like other lower tier jobs are actually that much less work; you’re working with less skilled people in general and often poor management. This is the coastfire philosophy and it makes no sense. You could work a a few more years at high-paying miserable job or an extra decade at low-paying probably miserable job.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#632

Post by asdff »

ciisforsuckas wrote: post #273
dcolkitt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any software company that’s ending remote work right now is basically risking its entire existence. There’s no possible way, in this market, a company will be able to replace 10% of its workforce in a reasonable time. I can understand why management wants to go back to the office, but why would you ever take the risk of being one of the first, before gauging how the market will react.

It's a big company and they are an ERP vendor thus rooted in old fashioned manufacturing ideas. They think their size will protect them.

These companies are probably right that their size will protect them. People who are currently employed know better than to take the abuse. That's why these major companies recruit so heavily at colleges and rope in people who have zero perspective on work who don't know any better.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#633

Post by foobiekr »

syshum wrote: post #567
sokoloff wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $900K net worth is not enough to FIRE in my estimation. $36K/yr with the need to still buy housing is spartan and/or risky with a 60-year outlook.

the 4% rule is viewed by many to be very very conservative, many are looking at 6-8% as a better base line. Of course if you are retiring in your 40% you may want to be pretty conservative...

These people are not conditioning their withdrawals on valuations. If you retired in 1978, yeah, 6% was probably fine. In 2000 you’d likely already be beyond recovery even today.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#634

Post by mahogany »

FinanceAnon wrote: post #97
jokoon wrote: post #85

I've been unemployed for a long time, living on benefits, without guilt or remorse. For health and other reasons. One problem being lack of social integration and interaction. But honestly I don't think I can believe in the necessity of having a job, if I can't see purpose or meaning. There are few jobs that matter, and a lot of barriers and filtering. /r/antiwork is really a viewpoint I can understand and defend.

How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society? Someone has to work to produce food. Someone has to work to produce electricity. Until we can automate everything, most people have to work and contribute to society (unless you choose to be self-sufficient - grow your own food, produce your own electricity etc.)

> How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society?

Does everything have to be scalable to society at large?

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#635

Post by asdff »

frockington1 wrote: post #428
xwdv wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be white hot right now though? I don’t think software would be particularly affected by COVID negatively or positively.

Covid made it clear that many jobs can be automated

The fact that nothing has really changed seems to mean it is still cheaper to hire a minimum wage earner with zero benefits than to hire or contract software engineers to service your software and/or hardware that automates the job.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#636

Post by foobiekr »

geekster777 wrote: post #609
revel wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a warning to those planning to do this: you are taking an incredible risk with your future that I think is undervalued. Circumstances beyond your control can make your plans financially unviable and by retiring so early you have absolutely no room for error. All it takes is one change in health or a regulation for your whole plan to be instantly invalidated. For those that have the ability and the desire to reti…

You do have the option of going back to work if shit hits the fan. Maybe it'll be harder to find a job, or to find one that pays as well as before, but that's pretty heavily tempered by the fat nest egg you have. It's a pretty big misconception that by "retiring" you're permanently cutting off all abilities to produce income ever again. It's easy to see "oh if a wealth tax is introduced, you'll run out of money by 50…

As browsing any discussion on recruiting and interviewing with illustrate, hiring is already fucked up, and adding age plus a multi year gap would make getting a new job quite hard, let alone one that matches the compensation one has today.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#637

Post by ryandrake »

VRay wrote: post #427
ryandrake wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, even if you can save this much, put it in your 401(k), not a vacation savings account. The financial impact of taking a whole year without pay in your 20s probably adds 5 years to your retirement date, due to compounding interest and investment growth. Is it really worth it, just so you can fill your Insta with pictures of you windsurfing in Ibiza?

If you're writing so much software you hang out on HackerNews for fun, and you're not saving enough to max out your 401k AND have savings left over for 6 months off, you're doing your finances wrong (and/or you can get a 4x pay bump in a new job)

Most people here, even most software engineers, don’t make the sky high salaries that “very high-level FAANG engineers who also live in the Bay Area” make. Many have families, kids, education expenses, parents they support, expensive health issues, etc. It’s a huge assumption to think that everyone on HN can max out a 401(k) at all, let alone have any left over to save and blow on extended unpaid vacations.

EDIT: Obviously (from the voting) I hit a raw nerve with that original comment. Who knew “save for retirement” was such controversial advice. I personally plan to ensure I do not have to eat dog food when I’m 80 because I partied in my 20s but I guess to each their own. Given the average American’s retirement savings rate, my plan is clearly unpopular!

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#638

Post by throwaway894345 »

vidarh wrote: post #517
throwaway894345 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority in Sweden pays nothing like "65% tax rate + 25% vat", though. To get to that tax rate you need to earn far above average. First of all, the OP is including the social security tax in the 65% figure. But more importantly, arguing that "the average Swede doesn't pay that much in tax" isn't very consoling for the American who would have to (1) take a salary hit to live in Sweden and (2) have to pay t…

The numbers I quoted also include the social security taxes (I edited to make that clear, so apologies if you replied before I made that edit). Swedish marginal rates certainly are among the highest in Europe, but the proportion who pay that much is tiny. And yes, there are people who will end up paying more, and it sucks for them. The point is there's always this scaremongering about tax rates when it comes to Europ…

> The point is there's always this scaremongering about tax rates when it comes to Europe, and most of the time the tax rates that comes up are marginal rates that are not at all representative.

As an American, I find the tax rates much less scary than the raw differences in salary. If I could keep my US salary, healthcare, tax rates, etc and move to Europe for a few years, I would do so in a heartbeat.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#639

Post by asdff »

mywittyname wrote: post #507
alistairSH wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why. Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend business owners would have us believe.

Because they've never been on unemployment and small business owners largely have a poor opinion of UI in general. My MIL was laid off from a university job at the beginning of the pandemic and her UI ran out a looong time ago. The only reason she even collected it for as long as she did was because nobody is hiring elderly women.

It also doesn't help that it takes forever to get it, at least in CA. There is no one you can call at the EDD, it is so ironic that the unemployment office needs to hire more in the richest state in the richest nation on earth. It took someone I knew two months to get their EDD debit card. Bills don't stop just because you lose your job.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#640

Post by lupire »

joecot wrote: post #347
NationalPark wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seeing the salaries at these smaller companies keeping up? When I was changing jobs just before the pandemic I also saw a ton of interest from small/med companies, but none with competitive offers. Big, publicly traded tech companies were able to offer more than double total compensation in some cases, and that's with equity you can actually sell for cash.

It probably depends where you are on your career path. For me, those silicon valley startups were offering less than my target salary and I was going to try to negotiate up. For the small company I ended up at, I gave my target salary range and they exceeded it by 10k. I wasn't shooting for big publicly traded companies, and I don't know how they're acting currently. From friends I do know that some are seriously con…

Why was your target so low?
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