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Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

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Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#71

Post by tombert »

munificent wrote: post #39
VonGuard wrote: post #5

The United States is weird in that you are defined, here, by your job or profession. TV shows put your job title under your name when you appear on them. People's first question is always "What do you do?" at parties and at events. In other countries, this isn't always the case. When I'm in Europe, people ask where you're from, what's for dinner, and what's happening? The question of your job is rarely asked up front…

> People's first question is always "What do you do?" at parties and at events. ... When I'm in Europe, people ask where you're from A charitable interpretation is that it's better to ask someone about an aspect of themselves they control over one that was a product of purely random chance. Both tell you many things about the person, but the former gives the person more influence over how they are perceived. I grew u…

I'm in the same boat; having grown up in Florida, I don't really like telling people, since I know about all the dumb Florida Man memes, and I don't want people lumping me into the same bucket. If they ask what I do for a living, and I tell them "Eccentric math dude" or "Software Engineer", that's something I worked hard to cultivate, and I don't get nearly as defensive about.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#72

Post by bluntfang »

tombert wrote: post #23
Ididntdothis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" It's how Americans define themselves, which, in the end, generally comes down to how the US doesn't value human life, only the potential earnings thereof." I agree with your observations but this conclusion goes way too far.

I was about to write the same thing. Maybe I'm just being defensive as an American, but I feel like the reason that we tend to define ourselves by what we do tends to be that we put a lot of emphasis on taking pride in our work. I would agree that this is probably done too much, since I was being drilled on what I want to do for a living even in grade school, but I don't know that the conclusion of "omg Americans don…

Or it puts an emphasis on our social class, creating an immediate hierarchy to those who don't have the choice to have such a prestigious job.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#74

Post by Someone1234 »

matz1 wrote: post #59
Someone1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is an interest concept but it wouldn't solve this. If you go from e.g. $5K/month (job) to $1K/month (UBI) you'd still have to adjust your living standards (and if people expect to lose their jobs, even with UBI, they'd still make more cautious decisions which would still trigger the same indicators). UBI and other social safety nets are "good ideas." But they aren't a one size fits all solution to every problem.…

Still better than going from $5k/month to $0k/month. No solution are one size fit all solution to every problem. What is your point?

That with UBI we'd still be in exactly the same position as now? Your point was that UBI would somehow play a relevant role in low consumer confidence. I am pointing out that may not be the case.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#75

Post by cptnapalm »

Miner49er wrote: post #6
botwriter wrote: post #3

[flagged]

A recession will eventually happen, it happens about every 10 years. The mainstream media isn't talking about it to get rid of Trump. EDIT: not sure why I'm being downvoted, but I'm guessing it's because I messed up the average length of the cycle. I guess it's probably closer to 5 years: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071315/what-average...

Remembering the 1992 election, the press kept hammering "recession recession recession" despite the recession itself being over for about a year. Job numbers had been growing for months, but still it was "recession recession recession" over and over again in the press right up through the election, but not after. The New York Times was talking about the "Clinton Recovery" months before Clinton was even in the White House. The mainstream media is more than willing to exaggerate, even beyond the point of deception, in order to elect the candidates they are campaigning for.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#76

Post by bluntfang »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
bluntfang wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choice is a really funny word when it comes to employees. Most employees don't have a "choice" if you look a little further beyond the surface.

By employees, I’m referring to American customers, who opted for the low prices at Walmart versus their local store. My point is employers didn’t have a choice either, if they wanted to stay in business. This is the end result of arbitrage opportunities due to differences in nations’ wealth.

Poor people don't choose to not support their communities. They've been put in a position to be forced to "choose" between supporting their local store vs having a warm, safe(ish) place to sleep for their families.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#77

Post by mmierz »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #44
glitchc wrote: post #35

I think this reflects a general erosion of trust between employers and employees, which I blame Corporate America for. It used to be a tacit agreement in the workforce that if you worked hard, the boss and the company would take care of you. This illusion has been shattered first by the employers (outsourcing, at-will employment, gig economy), and now the employees (ghosting, switching firms without notice). The lack…

The employees also chose to patronize businesses that outsourced and offered lower prices. Other than forcing Americans to buy products made with American labor, what options are there?

Historically, labor unions.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#78

Post by mywittyname »

bonoboTP wrote: post #45
mywittyname wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially now with the record enrollment in CS/CE programs over the past 5-10 years. The industry has been awash with fresh talent for the past few years and I don't see it slowing down.

Maybe it's different in the US but in Europe companies still struggle to find good job candidates. They get tons of applications of course but they aren't good/experienced enough. Basically many companies' bottleneck is hiring.

The past two companies I've worked for had nearly as many interns as FTEs on some teams. My current company has about 1/8th of the building dedicated to engineering intern cubes, and they are packed in like sardines too.

When speaking with former colleagues, the topic of interns often comes up. I had drinks with some last week who mentioned her team had so many interns that some FTEs needed to double-up to manage them all.

It could be regional. When I was coming up, internships were rarely a thing. I was never one and hadn't even seen an CS intern until a few years back. Seeing companies go from 0% to 40% of engineering staff as interns over the course of four years is pretty striking.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#79

Post by war1025 »

matz1 wrote: post #59
Someone1234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is an interest concept but it wouldn't solve this. If you go from e.g. $5K/month (job) to $1K/month (UBI) you'd still have to adjust your living standards (and if people expect to lose their jobs, even with UBI, they'd still make more cautious decisions which would still trigger the same indicators). UBI and other social safety nets are "good ideas." But they aren't a one size fits all solution to every problem.…

Still better than going from $5k/month to $0k/month. No solution are one size fit all solution to every problem. What is your point?

You don't go to 0k/month. For as much as people like to hate on the American safety net, it does exist.

Re: Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows

#80

Post by ncr100 »

glitchc wrote: post #35

I think this reflects a general erosion of trust between employers and employees, which I blame Corporate America for. It used to be a tacit agreement in the workforce that if you worked hard, the boss and the company would take care of you. This illusion has been shattered first by the employers (outsourcing, at-will employment, gig economy), and now the employees (ghosting, switching firms without notice). The lack…

> ...I blame Corporate America for.

> Once the trust is gone, it takes a long time to rebuild...

Go deeper. What can we do as technologists to protect the economy from untrusty "corporate Americans"?

Why would corporate Americans be so untrusty? >> I speculate it's inculcated in colleges, anti-ethical scientific approaches to management, insufficiently modeling reality, providing a sense of "distance" for those who would join higher levels of management resulting in a lack of feeling for the suffering they might inflict through their quest for optimizing the business. >> As a technologist we can take away the scientific management aspect from the humans, effectively replacing senior management with robots, restricing the humans to being human, and promoting into senior management individuals with good people skills, with the hopeful side-effect of normalizing wages to reflect the cost-savings of a true scientific management of the business.

Why is there even a need for trust of corporate Americans? >> I speculate there is no need and that obstruction of progress by senior management and colleges where these subjects are ingrained into young minds is more the culprit. Centralization of power may be seen as efficient. It's also "one size fits all" and actually inefficient; no-one at the top can synthesize all the feedback from all reports in a reliably timely fashion. >> As technologists we can help corporations model and encode their businesses, feeding that data into a system that aids in machine- or human-based decision making.

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