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Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

latimes.com

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Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#81

Post by nottorp »

samsolomon wrote: post #40
dijit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same message in Sweden, shame they can't find to operate business without abusing user data. Still there's an archive.is link listed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17506215

Would you pay for an LA Times subscription? Do you know anybody that would? The newspaper business is struggling as is. Every time a publication is blocked in Europe people complain. Ads were the answer for most online publications, but showing targeted ads now pose a legal risk. I don't know about their business ops, but I'd suspect they've done the math and decided it isn't worth the effort to change their platform…

Item one: I wouldn't subscribe to any old school newspaper from the anglo-saxon world because they make it extremely hard to unsubscribe. About the same respect for their readers as their targeted ads they can't give up on.

Item two: I wouldn't subscribe to a newspaper just because i read articles linked from HN occasionally, so I'll just pass on LA times.

Item three: whenever someone comes up with a working micropayment platform, I might throw them 2-3 cents if they get linked on HN. No more.

Yes, I haven't read the original article. I won't even through the free links. They don't want me, they don't get me.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#82

Post by thg »

Zeebrommer wrote: post #20
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

Can you read this article? I'm in Europe and run into a message saying "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism." with the LA time…

Here you go: https://outline.com/vKj7vM

Basically, whenever there's a website like this that annoys me, I just copy the URL and Outline it: outline.com/$url

No clicking through annoying dialogs, or having to use a vpn.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#83

Post by vfc1 »

merinowool wrote: post #55
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

[flagged]

Personal taxes in Belgium are huge, to the point that most companies will give you an awesome leased car to compensate for a lower personal wage.

The state caught up on that eventually, and you now have to pay a monthly fee for the car of a couple hundred euros.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#84

Post by Cthulhu_ »

merinowool wrote: post #55
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

[flagged]

If it wasn't for "socialist Europe", our health care would be shit (see the US where people die on the streets because they can't afford an ambulance), my brother would be homeless and probably dead, my dad would've been without any income at age 60, years before his retirement, my sister wouldn't have been able to attend university, and I wouldn't have been able to attend college and land a job in Amsterdam where I ended up out-earning my dad within a couple years.

This "taxes pay for lazy fucks" meme needs to die.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#85

Post by laurent123456 »

Nursie wrote: post #58
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

I see this a lot in the UK, and it's why I'm now a contractor. You will have 10 years experience, a relevant degree, security clearance and no boundaries when it comes to overtime. We will pay you £35k! The sad thing is, they will fill that position, with someone not very good, with low expectations and no confidence in themselves. And they will get mediocre work, which they expect.

The difference in pay between contractor and permanent position in the UK is almost weird. The job is exactly the same, often for a duration of several months to years, and full time, except as a contractor you get paid like 2 or 3 times more. There are advantages to work in a permanent position but that doesn't make up for the massive loss in revenue.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#86

Post by maccard »

merinowool wrote: post #55
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

[flagged]

> and yet you have to give away sometimes more than half of it

It's not being given away. How are the roads, police, schools, defense budgets funded?

> so that people who don't give a flying toss get their benefits

I just checked. The US and the UK both have a 4.1% unemployment rate. Many of those people are unable to work at all. our social security net means that if you're disabled you shouldn't end up honeless. Note it also pays for healthcare, so there's no chance of me being bankrupted from being hit by a car.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#87

Post by madengr »

nimish wrote: post #64
madengr wrote: post #9

I’d like to earn more, but I also want the market to keep on going up for my retirement investments. At mid career, my 401k performance over the next 20 years is now market driven, rather than by contributions over the next 20. So at this point, I’d rather have better investment returns than a higher salary.

If you read the article you would know that labor wage increases are laughably low compared to share buybacks. Raising salaries 10% would barely even touch cash returns to shareholders

You conveniently ignored the 8% drop in AA stock. Doesn’t matter if that was due to dividend reduction or spooking investors, it’s still a big drop.

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#88

Post by fifnir »

merinowool wrote: post #55
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

[flagged]

Well have fun paying off your student debt and ridiculous health insurance

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#89

Post by dddw »

muse900 wrote: post #41
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the min…

'undocumented stack du jour' love it!

Re: Employers will do almost anything to find workers except pay them more

#90

Post by dmichulke »

muse900 wrote: post #41
sametmax wrote: post #11

And if you think it's bad, it's even worse in Europe. Taking the French example: I'm an freelancer, but I used to have a contract with an American company. They gave me 3x the salary most of my French colleagues would get, while keeping the exact same social advantages (they paid me through a French branch). However, to them, the salary was twice lower than what they would have paid for the same guy in the Valley. No…

My example comes from Greece where I reside for the past 9 months. People owning touristic buisnesses on the islands are moaning about how much they need more staff and can't find any, and they are arguing why younger people tend to not work and just receive benefits instead of going to work. The argument here that they won't understand though is that, 1st they are paying very low. They are all willing to pay the min…

The thing you describe is the narrative of the evil capitalist owner exploiting poor workers.

Here's a thought experiment - those (tourism businesses) owners are making lots of money, so why not create such a business yourself (maybe with help of some external capital) and pay better wages and treat your staff better and pay taxes? Your clients will be much happier with you while having to pay the same. Other capitalists are probably happy to get a piece of the cake.

Of course, you cannot blame workers to not work in this industry right now, but obviously there are still enough people accepting that type of employment, otherwise salaries would have improved already.

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