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> "Dan Lyons, a fifty-one-year-old Newsweek reporter, gets his first shock when he’s laid off. “They can take your salary and hire five kids right out of colleg
by whack 9y ago
> "Dan Lyons, a fifty-one-year-old Newsweek reporter, gets his first shock when he’s laid off. “They can take your salary and hire five kids right out of college,” he’s told"
I wonder to what extent, the above is the reason behind senior workers having a harder time finding/maintaining their job. It almost sounds like a Keynesian liquidity trap. People expect their salaries to continually grow over the course of their career, but at some point, the value they bring, relative to a fresh-grad, may not justify that salary level. Other industries may sidestep this problem since work output often depends on connections and reputation, both of which keep growing in your 40s and 50s, but engineering is different in that people's abilities grow exponentially in the first 10-15 years, but not as dramatically afterwards.
If people were willing to continually update their salary expectations, accept pay cuts when necessary, and signaled this to their current/prospective employers, I wonder if this problem would mostly disappear.
As an employee myself, I fully encourage all my colleagues to negotiate hard for every dollar they are worth. But at the same time, I wouldn't begrudge any employer who's trying to get the most bang for his buck.
- danielvinson 9y agoThe problem isn't ageism, the problem is capitalism. For a long period of time in the (not too distant) past, one of the the main purposes of a company was to pay employees. Corporations in the U.S. have continually shifted goals to eschew all goals other than raw profit and growth (leading to more profit). It is EXTREMELY rare to see a tech company which offers its employees more than they are worth on the market or spends more money than is absolutely necessary to keep its employees on benefits.
- jrhurst 9y ago>For a long period of time in the (not too distant) past, one of the the main purposes of a company was to pay employees. I don't really disagree with your sentiment, but I don't think that statement has been ever true.
- jpindar 9y agoHow do you signal that you'd be willing to work for low pay though? That would look really weird on a resume.
- ryandrake 9y agoYou signal it with a college graduation date close to today's date.
- ryandrake 9y ago> but engineering is different in that people's abilities grow exponentially in the first 10-15 years, but not as dramatically afterwards. This is only true if you're doing it wrong. I think, at least for most people, their skills and the value they bring tend to grow steadily and linearly throughout their careers until they retire. It's just that, after a certain point companies believe they'd rather have another fresh body than a more skilled professional. So, skills and salaries grow linearly for a few years, at which point companies are willing to pay no more, salaries plateau and people jump ship to other careers. I'd still be coding today if I could count on even a few % year-on-year salary growth, but I hit the same plateau we all do and moved on to other things.