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Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

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Re: Panic at the Job Market

#851

Post by weatherlite »

Draiken wrote: post #808
weatherlite wrote: post #701

Sometimes I feel really bummed out I am getting 1/2 (or less?) of Google compensation. But then I open my eyes - see the workers in my daughter's kindergarten slaving away taking care of 30 toddlers for less than half what I make, nurses and doctors working in conditions I wouldn't be able to tolerate for more than a few months without mentally collapsing, the people in the supermarkets, gas stations, police, fire de…

We have to complain about literally everything you just said. The entire system is broken. Everyone should be entitled to live their lives without being subject to these awful conditions, but we as a society keep allowing this to happen because we don't really see them as equals. As long as we individually can get by, we can easily dismiss what everyone else endures. I would happily live with less if everyone else co…

> This attitude of "be happy our bubble isn't as bad as the other bubbles" is a tragedy.

Its not really what I meant. Being a bit more stoic about life (which is what I suggested before without using the term Stoic) doesn't mean you don't care about other people's suffering or that you won't do anything to help. In fact the opposite, a part of being stoic is looking at the ugly parts of life and dealing with them. And its also very much about reframing whatever difficult moments we all have with the appreciation that for most of us things usually can be so much worse. You are probably not dying of cancer, you don't live on the streets etc. To ruminate about those facts every now and then is to me a healthy habit and not a selfish act.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#852

Post by jokoon »

analogwzrd wrote: post #174

My pessimistic take on the world at the moment is that at least 50% of jobs in the US fall into Graeber's BS jobs category. I saw a map a few years ago that labelled the largest employer in each state. In every state except Arkansas (Walmart), the largest employer was a university or a healthcare company. Education and healthcare policies are controversial because everyone wants those things to be as good as possible…

Yes, reading this article gave me antiwork vibes.

I live in the EU, I have savings from previous jobs, and currently I am fine living on welfare, it's not confortable but it's not so bad either, so to me, I already have one form of UBI.

Recently I became a bit skeptical about antiwork because it can diverge into some form of sabotage which is a bit dishonest, but climate change is also another problem so I don't really know anymore.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#853

Post by badpun »

__loam wrote: post #397
tdesilva wrote: post #386

Well this was an entertaining take on the job market. tl;dr he's salty other people ended up better off doing the same work for other companies, based on views of tech compensation that are very divorced from reality: > I look at my own place in the world compared to people who just started at Apple or Microsoft 20 years ago then never left, and now they have made eight figures just over the past 4 years while my lif…

This guy is definitely giving delulu vibes but I think there's some truth to the idea that there are inequities in the market. People who work at FAANGs will often make more money and do less work than the foreign contractors in places like Poland and Ukraine getting paid $35k a year for the same work. It's worth talking about because I honestly don't understand why bay area engineers are paid 3 times as much as thei…

I don't think you can get competent people in Poland for $35k. Double that, and you're getting somewhere.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#854

Post by KptMarchewa »

jimbokun wrote: post #427
gosub100 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that company hire or recruiter hire h1b? In order to get h1b approval, you have to make the case that "we interviewed x,000 people and we just can't find any qualified applicants! ". I'm starting to suspect that the industry has learned to set salaries low and churn enough applicants in order to reduce costs. One way to churn them is to do a phone screen and find a quick way to legally get rid of them. Then once…

This has been going on for decades. 1. Find H1B candidate you want to hire. 2. Write job requirements matching that candidate’s experience so well it’s very unlikely for anyone else to meet those requirements. 3. Advertise position to meet legal requirements and reject any candidates not exactly matching requirements. 4. Hire H1B candidate.

This has been going until 2014 or so.

Later for serious candidates it got completely unpractical, because H1B lottery got too filled with companies mass hiring Indians, that no serious company will spend time on hiring you given they have 20-30% chance of actually being able to get you into US.

So now only H1B hiring you have is mass hiring, where company does not care if you or someone else gets through lottery, as long as they'll get their 20-30% of candidates through.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#855

Post by baublet »

mk89 wrote: post #720
zombiwoof wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This comment tries to imply that you just need to be DEI and everything will be fine. I wonder if you know whether these people actually do a good job or you're just talking out of some "envy" or whatever? PS: FAANGs have thousands of employees, and so it means they have also more bad apples/managers.

I wouldn’t overthink their comment. It’s just a standard racism. Using DEI as slang for people of color is a 2023/2024 era dog whistle.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#856

Post by ascendantlogic »

ericskiff wrote: post #344
Aurornis wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. I’ve done some mentoring of CS grads for the past few years. We some times get people with unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process. We advise them to decline the really excessive ones. However, it’s rare to see tha…

For over 10 years we've had people do a paid ~4 hr take-home which is very similar to the work they'll actually be doing (here's a dummy codebase, add a few features fix a few bugs). If they're not interested in getting paid to do that work now, it's a good signal for us that they won't be happy doing it when they're working with us. It's helped us find really wonderful people to work with.

Paid take homes are probably the least worst way to suss out signal in today's hiring market. The only time I had better was when I just set up a nights/weekends arrangement with a company and just started ripping through real tickets. Ended up getting hired on full time and they cut me a check for a few thousand dollars up front. It was very nice.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#857

Post by xyzniels »

simoncion wrote: post #623
mr90210 wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the following assumption: You must be based in Europe. I assumed that because in certain countries in the EU, such as Germany, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, companies are quite used to working with independent contractors. I am not sure that’s the case in the US.

It's also a lot easier to make contract work work when you live somewhere where your taxes pay for your routine (and not-so-routine) healthcare and your education. In places that don't have that sort of system, it's rough as fuck to create the safety net required to catch you when you work dries up, and at least as rough to watch the net burn as it was to create it.

Yes, I'm in Europe.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#858

Post by lnxg33k1 »

weatherlite wrote: post #701

Sometimes I feel really bummed out I am getting 1/2 (or less?) of Google compensation. But then I open my eyes - see the workers in my daughter's kindergarten slaving away taking care of 30 toddlers for less than half what I make, nurses and doctors working in conditions I wouldn't be able to tolerate for more than a few months without mentally collapsing, the people in the supermarkets, gas stations, police, fire de…

We have to complain about people who are exploiting all of us, instead of looking at the people in the kindergarten look at people like Elon musk stealing billions

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#859

Post by mempko »

guywithahat wrote: post #686
mempko wrote: post #525

I blame the tax changes that went into affect at the time of the peak tlfrom the Trump tax cuts. It made engineers more expensive. While interest rates make bank money more expensive, they make government bonds more attractive and the government last year gave bond holders 1.2 trillion. That money is free money. I don't think layoffs happened because of the rise in interest rates since most of these big tech companie…

Well it made high-paid engineers in the highest tax states more expensive, which is basically just google execs or major project leads who live in California. If anything it made the average engineer cheaper to hire (unless you’re referring to something other than the reduced SALT deductions), but the real solution is CA needs to rely less on federal tax breaks and fix their tax code.

No, I'm talking about the section 174 update.

Great explanation here.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#860

Post by myth_drannon »

bostik wrote: post #372
jldugger wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have many friends (in Europe) EU kind of in a recession though. And there's a well known link between interest rates and unemployment. So it's really not surprising to hear that employment in the EU is harder after the ECB raised rates. And good news: they're lowering them now. What really needs explaining is why, despite the unusually strong general US job market[1] for several years now, the US tech market spec…

> EU kind of in a recession though. And there's a well known link between interest rates and unemployment. So it's really not surprising to hear that employment in the EU is harder after the ECB raised rates. I am fully aware that this may sound emphatically void, but what the devs in the rest of EU are going through right now looks a lot like what the hiring scene was in Finland back in the 1990's and 2000's. And ye…

That's why the demoscene was so amazing in Finland... all those unenmployed kids.
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