4 ms·

Why not? > crisis (noun) > 1. A crucial or decisive point or situation, especially a difficult or unstable situation involving an impending change. -- Americ

Why not? > crisis (noun) > 1. A crucial or decisive point or situation, especially a difficult or unstable situation involving an impending change. -- American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Ed.

nradov 5y ago
There's nothing difficult or unstable about this situation. There are workers available. If companies want to hire them then just offer higher compensation or better working conditions.
- softwarebeware 5y ago
  > There's nothing difficult or unstable... Sure there is. There are companies that are going to go out of business if they can't hire. > ... just offer higher compensation or better working conditions Not if they are a startup and simply can't. They only have so much funding. And besides that, it's not even a question of offering more. It's a classic low supply and high demand situation. Only those with the most are going to win the bid in the end. The rest will go out of business for failure to hire. That's the crisis.
  - fzzzy 5y ago
    World's tiniest violin is now playing
  - nradov 5y ago
    That's not a crisis. The majority of startups have always failed. So nothing has changed. You can't reasonably describe a permanent situation as a "crisis". While I'm not currently a hiring manager, I've done plenty of software developer hiring in recent years. It's not that hard. I always found candidates who could do adequate work. The managers and founders complaining about the difficulty of hiring either have unrealistic expectations, or they're just incompetent and don't know how to do it well. There's no limit to supply as long as you're willing to hire people with potential and invest in training them. Funding isn't fixed. For startups there is effectively infinite investment capital available. You can always do another funding round if investors like your story.
- gwern 5y ago
  This seems "crucial or decisive" to me. Do you think that people are going to write one day about the move to remote working and coronavirus is not going to be mentioned..? Or that you won't be able to look at a long-term graph and see a spike? It looks like for a lot of organizations, this is forcing the decision to make a permanent major change that they would have postponed for years or decades to come - see my quote comment.
  - nradov 5y ago
    The move to remote working has been fairly limited, and only ever applied to certain white-collar occupations. Most employees still show up in person every day. Work location is part of the total effective compensation plan. Employers have always been able to pay people less and have a wider pool of candidates by offering remote work.
    - gwern 5y ago
      That addresses a completely different strawman claim like "the majority of workers are working remote", which no one here has made.
- cutler 5y ago
  .... and stop being ageist while pretending to support equal opportunities.
  - dudul 5y ago
    Isn't it funny how the DE&I department never has a slide with a pie chart showing age distribution during the all hands meeting? "Age" doesn't really seem to be the right kind of diversity.
    - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
      The C-level are probably the oldest employees. There’s your age diversity!

Why not? > crisis (noun) > 1. A crucial or decisive point or situation, especially a difficult or unstable situation involving an impending change. -- American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Ed.

nradov 5y ago

There's nothing difficult or unstable about this situation. There are workers available. If companies want to hire them then just offer higher compensation or better working conditions.

softwarebeware 5y ago
> There's nothing difficult or unstable... Sure there is. There are companies that are going to go out of business if they can't hire. > ... just offer higher compensation or better working conditions Not if they are a startup and simply can't. They only have so much funding. And besides that, it's not even a question of offering more. It's a classic low supply and high demand situation. Only those with the most are going to win the bid in the end. The rest will go out of business for failure to hire. That's the crisis.
- fzzzy 5y ago
  World's tiniest violin is now playing
- nradov 5y ago
  That's not a crisis. The majority of startups have always failed. So nothing has changed. You can't reasonably describe a permanent situation as a "crisis". While I'm not currently a hiring manager, I've done plenty of software developer hiring in recent years. It's not that hard. I always found candidates who could do adequate work. The managers and founders complaining about the difficulty of hiring either have unrealistic expectations, or they're just incompetent and don't know how to do it well. There's no limit to supply as long as you're willing to hire people with potential and invest in training them. Funding isn't fixed. For startups there is effectively infinite investment capital available. You can always do another funding round if investors like your story.
gwern 5y ago
This seems "crucial or decisive" to me. Do you think that people are going to write one day about the move to remote working and coronavirus is not going to be mentioned..? Or that you won't be able to look at a long-term graph and see a spike? It looks like for a lot of organizations, this is forcing the decision to make a permanent major change that they would have postponed for years or decades to come - see my quote comment.
- nradov 5y ago
  The move to remote working has been fairly limited, and only ever applied to certain white-collar occupations. Most employees still show up in person every day. Work location is part of the total effective compensation plan. Employers have always been able to pay people less and have a wider pool of candidates by offering remote work.
  - gwern 5y ago
    That addresses a completely different strawman claim like "the majority of workers are working remote", which no one here has made.
cutler 5y ago
.... and stop being ageist while pretending to support equal opportunities.
- dudul 5y ago
  Isn't it funny how the DE&I department never has a slide with a pie chart showing age distribution during the all hands meeting? "Age" doesn't really seem to be the right kind of diversity.
  - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    The C-level are probably the oldest employees. There’s your age diversity!