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I can't speak for any other country, obviously culture plays a role, but in Germany we just had an article in one of the top two news sites (and this is the muc

I can't speak for any other country, obviously culture plays a role, but in Germany we just had an article in one of the top two news sites (and this is the much more reputable one of the two) [0] that says in a poll [1] 1/3rd of students said they'd like to become a "Beamter", which is a special status for life-term government employees who cannot be fired and have their own pension scheme. Job security was the number one concern overall (63% of said so). Income was only in fifth place. There was a big difference between the sexes, the share of women who wanted to work for the government was much higher (42% vs. 23% of men). But that's not all - most students prefer to work for very large companies, giants like Siemens, BMW etc. regularly top the ranking of places where students want to go to. Few want to go to small and medium companies, even though we have a lot of them. Even fewer want to work for a startup or even found one. I am certainly not critical of that attitude, I doubt that throughout history there ever was a big part of humanity that preferred insecurity and excitement and (often dubious) "chances" that actually depend on quite a bit of luck quite heavily over friends, family and a solid secure basis. That is if that was available of course, often people were forced into being more adventurous by circumstances. [0] (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsstart/jeder-dritte-student-will-beamter-werden-a-1109900.html http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/berufsstart/jeder-dritte-stud... [1] (PDF) http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-Studentenstudie-2016-Branchen/$FILE/EY-Studentenstudie-2016-Branchen.pdf http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY-Studentenstudie-...

vacri 10y ago
A survey of the general population is not really appropriate for a hyper-niche demographic like talented hackers (the ones they want to hire). There's plenty of mooks out there who want to do the minimum work possible and unsurprising that a general poll would account for a lot of them. That's not to say that you are a mook if you want that, but that idea of a 'safe job' is not something that's particularly big in the hacker world.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > That's not to say that you are a mook if you want that, but that idea of a 'safe job' is not something that's particularly big in the hacker world. The article is from German media. I can't speak for the US, but in Germany it leaves a bad impression if you switch jobs too often. Also in the last 15 years (in particular under the Schröder administration (from 1998-2005)) in Germany there were lots of reforms of the job market that lead to the feeling of many people that the jobs are much less secure and if you lose the job you will move downward socially much faster. This in my opinion explains pretty well why now lots of people want jobs that are more safe. And I see no evidence that this doesn't hold for hackers, too, since it is well-known that it is much more difficult to find a new job in the technology sector in Germany if you are, older than say, 45 years.
  - vacri 10y ago
    It seems that you guys are trying to have your cake and eat it too. So... you're saying that the FBI is having trouble hiring hackers because... they don't pay the salaries of Silicon Valley, and don't offer job permanence of a German government job. Besides, if talented hackers were so majorly set on permanence in their jobs, there'd be no game studios.

vacri 10y ago

A survey of the general population is not really appropriate for a hyper-niche demographic like talented hackers (the ones they want to hire). There's plenty of mooks out there who want to do the minimum work possible and unsurprising that a general poll would account for a lot of them. That's not to say that you are a mook if you want that, but that idea of a 'safe job' is not something that's particularly big in the hacker world.

wolfgke 10y ago
> That's not to say that you are a mook if you want that, but that idea of a 'safe job' is not something that's particularly big in the hacker world. The article is from German media. I can't speak for the US, but in Germany it leaves a bad impression if you switch jobs too often. Also in the last 15 years (in particular under the Schröder administration (from 1998-2005)) in Germany there were lots of reforms of the job market that lead to the feeling of many people that the jobs are much less secure and if you lose the job you will move downward socially much faster. This in my opinion explains pretty well why now lots of people want jobs that are more safe. And I see no evidence that this doesn't hold for hackers, too, since it is well-known that it is much more difficult to find a new job in the technology sector in Germany if you are, older than say, 45 years.
- vacri 10y ago
  It seems that you guys are trying to have your cake and eat it too. So... you're saying that the FBI is having trouble hiring hackers because... they don't pay the salaries of Silicon Valley, and don't offer job permanence of a German government job. Besides, if talented hackers were so majorly set on permanence in their jobs, there'd be no game studios.