“Great resignation” wave coming for companies • Hacker News Board

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#771

Post by dcist » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #574

rubicon33 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth noting that software salaries are artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas developers. The second this changes, the bottom drops out of software. I don't know if it will ever happen that big companies begin openly accepting overseas applicants but if/when it does, you can expect that it wont be for 100k. Suddenly when you consider the entire plane…

> It is worth noting that software salaries are artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas developers. Because it's been tried before and for the most part it was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project after being outbid a year earlier by a…

I recall this period as well (early to mid 2000s) and the fears of overseas workers led me to change my college major at the time. There was also still a big hangover effect from the 2000 dot com bubble. I remember seeing low developer salaries and, although I at least somewhat enjoyed coding and tinkering around with technical things, there were other pursuits I enjoyed more. I kind of regret not sticking with computer science but my career has turned out fairly well (although I think I would have optimized my income faster if I had stayed a computer science major).

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#772

Post by the_doctah » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

ansgri wrote: post #756

omegaworks wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you might have to wait a couple weeks to have a non-critical procedure. gasp

In such countries you can usually pay a reasonable price (fully known upfront!) to skip the line.

So people with more money can keep paying to skip me? I'm sure that would work well in the US

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#773

Post by RealDeal123 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

onethought wrote: post #718

nonotreally6 wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation. Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society b…

Actually on gdp alone there is enough money in the US for everyone to have a living wage… checkout northern euros or Australia for example of what that looks like. The problem with the fed stimulus was the benefits too large corps.

US GDP has been lower than China GDP since 2019 and if anything the pandemic accelerated the process of Chinese economic outpacing the US economy. In China there is enough money for everyone to have living wage too. And you pay for you healthcare in China too even though their GDP is enough to cover it for all Chinese citizens. Apparently they are focusing on the big picture, i.e. becoming No.1 and surpassing US by a long shot. Making our currency inflate at 5% a year means we need to deduct that 5% from our GDP growth for that year -- its economics 101.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#774

Post by RC_ITR » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

nonotreally6 wrote: post #709

maybelsyrup wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been. All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call…

You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation. Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society b…

>caused a labor shortage and inflation.

The US Government printing money is why used cars, washing machines, and hotels are getting more expensive, while other categories stay generally below historical levels?

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#775

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

tunesmith wrote: post #764

lordnacho wrote: post #52

I can tell you all the market for devs is white hot at the moment. I mean it was never cold, but right now seems to be insane. If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in the office and would pay them ver…

Can I get an ELI5 on how to even start looking around? I'm someone that contracted via word of mouth for years, and I have zero recruiter relationships. My resume is probably very strong (principle engineer / architect level, strong mentor, JVM/distributed backend, nodejs react typescript frontend) but I haven't updated it for years. I know a lot of recruiters are lousy so I don't want to just cold-call one at random…

Here's what to do.

First of all, find out where the jobs are. Some board for your niche or something like that. For me it's efinancialcareers. Now efinancial is still a black hole if you try to use it to apply through, but what you're really after is the recruiter details.

You then phone up the rec, or you write to him on LinkedIn. A lot of them are crap at responding, but that's how it is. Phone a few, and convince them that you are the real deal for whatever it is he recruits for.

They'll all want an updated CV. They need it to be able to proceed, nobody will place you without one. Good news is it isn't that hard, just highlight the relevant bits for reach recruiter.

The rec will then say "I've got a job at X, Y, and Z. X is a this kind of co, Y is looking for blah..."

When they have some of those details it means they actually have something. Otherwise it's just a generic company that they will find later. By find, I mean they will forget you by the time the job comes. One guy told me straight up the ad I responded to was not a specific job, it was a honeypot to lure candidates.

So now the companies get your CVs, and they decide whether to interview. If the recruiter is good, they will interview you maybe 3/4 times. Companies often screw up their own internal hiring process and ask for CVs when they aren't ready. But the other companies should be willing to interview you. This is where you find out if the rec is crap, because a fair few of them will just not tell you anything about what happened to your CV.

It's still a numbers game. I've got over 20 recruiters listed on my Trello, most of them did nothing useful for me.

It's probably worth cultivating some relationships with the recruiters. You learn a lot about what the market is doing for free from them.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#776

Post by mabbo » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #200

mabbo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect what the authors are presuming is a relationship between the variable "proportion of workers thinking about quitting" and the variable "near future quitting rate". Imagine if I told you that the number of people "thinking of buying a Tesla" had gone up dramatically. Now, most people can't afford a Tesla, so no, not everyone is going to buy a Tesla. But if overall the proportion of people thinking about it w…

But that's kind of the point - the article is not saying that the proportion of workers thinking about quitting has gone up dramatically. They're saying that "25% to upwards of 40%" are thinking about this, but it seems a completely reasonable rate even in normal conditions, for all we know it may not be an increase at all.

Then I think you make a very good point.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#777

Post by rapind » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

nonotreally6 wrote: post #709

maybelsyrup wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been. All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call…

You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation. Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society b…

There’s no “labour” shortage. There’s a “wage” shortage.

Companies aren’t really complaining about a labour shortage. They’re complaining that no one wants to work for their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail around in their yachts.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#778

Post by break_the_bank » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

dreen wrote: post #7

Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too? I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing. edit: thank you…

I'm considering this too but I might just wait till the beginning of 2022 hoping thats when the entire world opens up. I can't break my lease before November, so that helps me stay at my job. So many ideas though for 2022,

1. Cycle Eurovelo 6

2. Drive through the Pan American Highway

3. Learn different things at different places, Muay Thai in Thailand, surfing in Bali, Kali in the Philipines

4. Just travel doing nothing for a few months and then try 12 month 12 startups or something.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#779

Post by kasey_junk » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #677

asdff wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that surprising? You can cook up an electron app after a few tutorials and two weeks time. All you have to do is sell a product, the product can be junk if you can convince your buyers otherwise. Charisma gets more funding than technical expertise, because consumers buy on charisma.

Consumers are not buying iPhones because of charisma. They are not using Gmail because of charisma. Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "l…

So, I wasn’t thinking Apple or Google when I wrote this because those are giant companies that hire globally. Most of Apples profit comes from products produced far from the valley. That said, I’ve worked with lots of veterans of Apple and Google and there quite literally is no correlation between having worked at those companies and being good. I believe that the current hiring environment in software is so broken that being hired by someone is effectively arbitrary.

Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers from a wide variety of regions.

When you hire as much of the industry as those companies do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it would be near impossible not to have a big distribution of talent within them.

But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend towards being good at the job. And I’ll stand by my anecdotal opinion.

I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.

Re: “Great resignation” wave coming for companies

#780

Post by maybelsyrup » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #777

nonotreally6 wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to everyone making less than a certain amount, and the government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation. Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society b…

There’s no “labour” shortage. There’s a “wage” shortage. Companies aren’t really complaining about a labour shortage. They’re complaining that no one wants to work for their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail around in their yachts.

Yeah it really is hilarious in a way, because you can take many business owners' constant blathering about the so-called free market and throw it right back in their faces:

"No one wants to work for poverty wages in my shitty restaurant!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Raise your wages.

"If I raise my wages I can't stay in business!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Make your restaurant less shitty and get more business. Innovate. This is just competition - we like a little competition in America. You're not against America, are you?

They're just as reactive / emotional as the liberals they decry for being emotional. I know that schadenfreude isn't a workable foundation for a political outlook, but watching these people become ever so slightly uncomfortable about their position in the world before we inevitably return to pre-Covid status quo ante is worth a good chuckle.