10 ms·

You see this in other trades also. The company complaining is not offering a market wage. I remember a story about how in Denver a CNC company was having troub

You see this in other trades also. The company complaining is not offering a market wage. I remember a story about how in Denver a CNC company was having trouble hiring journeyman machinists. Well Denver is almost as expensive to live in as California and the offer was for 50 to 60k...

withinboredom 3y ago
I remember this one time as a dev, I went through this entire interview process and they offered me 30k a year. I was literally laughing so hard I fell on the floor -- I thought it was a joke. Turns out this was the first dev position the company ever had that wasn't contractors. I ended up working with them as a part-time consultant to actually find their first few devs. Everyone else they had interviewed had stormed out, pissed off that they had wasted their time; they didn't even realize what they did until I started asking questions after I got off the floor.
- managingahhs 3y ago
  You actually fell on the floor? Were you in their office?
  - jumpkick 3y ago
    He may have been standing, and his knees gave out. It's worth considering alternative interpretations.
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Or maybe he was in a dunk tank and he was so bowled over that he swung his arm out triggering the latch but someone forgot to fill it with water.
      - jumpkick 3y ago
        Another likely scenario!
        somewhat_drunk 3y ago
        Perhaps a bit less likely, but we'll allow it.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Yes! I literally fell out of the chair, which made it even more hilarious.
    - managingahhs 3y ago
      Yep, must have been hilarious. Thanks.
- yardie 3y ago
  So, Google is free. They were hiring for a very expensive employee class and doing 0 research? I find that hard to believe. I think they knew what a dev would cost and were hoping to be hire from the left side of the salary curve. I've also been in a few interviews where the company was being evasive about the salary range. In every case it was below market and the hiring manager was just too embarrassed or too scammy to state it. Hoping they would hire someone desperate enough (ie "exposure").
  - Invictus0 3y ago
    Have you ever met business owners? They're not all that smart
    - granshaw 3y ago
      In fact intelligence is negatively correlated with success in business. It’s all grit and a certain irrational headstrongness that’s needed
      - reducesuffering 3y ago
        [flagged]
        chasontherobot 3y ago
        This, but not sarcastic.
        reducesuffering 3y ago
        You must be great at business
        baq 3y ago
        I refrain from quoting pg nowadays but he used to be worth reading, here's an article from that period which is of some interest: http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html No words on low IQ but absolutely nothing about being a genius. Also, a paragraph which may point at mild psychopathy as a good trait to have. Which is absolutely in line with top leadership.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  When I was in a similar situation I declined. (I was going to offer to contract, but then an absurdly low offer came in via email.) It turned into a series of email flames from an "entrepreneur" that involved references to Frodo and the Ring. Needless to say, the company burned out super-fast. The guy running the company didn't realize that he has to pay market rate in order to attract talent; and if he can't pay market rate, he has to reset what he's trying to do in order to meet his budget.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  I had a guy literally laugh me off the call in my last search. He kept pressing me for a salary number and I gave him one below market rate, well below what I ended up getting on another offer. To top it off, he went on some dumbass rant about government handouts, "no one wants to work anymore", etc. Dodged a bullet there I guess!
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Ideology doesn’t trump salary, metaphor included.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    > He kept pressing me for a salary number and I gave him one below market rate Were you trying to get hired? If so, why would you do that?
    - snypher 3y ago
      I think any response would be fine as the employer is responsible for the offer. There's really no point asking me how much I would like to be compensated (the answer is always $1b) when the real question is how much are you willing to offer in return for my services.
      - b112 3y ago
        Some employers ask this at the start. Then, you'll go through $x interview rounds. If you say 100 quatloos, then go through 3 rounds of interviews, discussions, and they offer your 100 quatloos, you'd be an asshat to complain about salary. And the employer would have every reason to think you're a dumbass. Note that refusing to answer is fine, but being entirely dishonest (a random number, eg "any response"), would make me believe you are utterly untrustworthy.
        wildrhythms 3y ago
        >Note that refusing to answer is fine I was required to put a "desired salary" in an application form. It was a required field. I wonder if the employer sorts by lowest?
- pengaru 3y ago
  This reminds me of an interview I had @ Wikimedia (Wikipedia) a decade+ ago. They offered less than half what I was earning at a startup.
  - lp0_on_fire 3y ago
    Is that surprising given that Wikimedia is ostensibly a non-profit and was in a much different financial position a decade+ ago? For what it’s worth I do believe that wikimedia could allocate more of the dollars they have to their “core competencies”
    - pengaru 3y ago
      Startups aren't exactly known for good salaries, I expected a comparable salary just without the option grants.
    - speedgoose 3y ago
      Non-profit doesn't mean bad salaries. I can say that because I work for a non-profit and I can compare my salary with many salaries in the industry through my union.
- gitonup 3y ago
  > Everyone else they had interviewed had stormed out, pissed off that they had wasted their time; they didn't even realize what they did until I started asking questions after I got off the floor. Uh, those that stormed out did it right after the salary piece, and they didn't put it together?
  - ben_w 3y ago
    The typical mind fallacy: amongst other things, unless it was done deliberately, it's really really hard to guess why you've upset someone, especially when they're so upset they don't talk to you any more.
    - TulliusCicero 3y ago
      Nah, if they stormed out right after you told them the salary, it's pretty obvious. It sounds more like an example of 'cultural density' -- not wanting to realize or acknowledge something that's at odds with what your local culture desires (in this case, the desire to pay as little as possible).
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        This was the highest paid position in the company (30k a year) and a salary (which only their managers were paid in a salary). They thought they were offering a really good salary, not realizing it was FAR below market rate. They still hired engineers at below market rate (~60k) but I helped them find some really smart junior engineers who could maintain the existing code; and warned them that these engineers would likely leave in the next year or two, max. They were able to become fairly profitable with full-time engineers, eventually, and ended up paying above market rate, last I heard.
        chongli 3y ago
        What? Was everyone else at the company living in their car and relying on the food bank to feed themselves? Or was this in some strange ultra-low-CoL environment?
- highwaylights 3y ago
  I had something very similar happen a lot of years ago when I was consulting and a client in a bank I'd worked with had asked me what it would take for me to consider joining them full-time. When I told them they stared dumb-founded at me and said "but that's more than I make". We didn't talk about it again, as I don't know where you'd start explaining how capitalism works to a manager in a bank.
- chiph 3y ago
  A former coworker got hired as a young company's DBA. They were more-or-less in the manufacturing space but with an internet sales channel. They had set up cubicles on the factory floor, with a "break room" on the floor consisting of a couple of vending machines with picnic tables. He wasn't getting anything done, what with the constant noise of pneumatic equipment and beeping of fork-lift trucks, plus the constant sweating from not having air conditioning. He gave notice after a week, and one of the founders took him aside and asked why. Turned out he was their third DBA in a couple of months and they didn't understand why they were all leaving on such short notice. He was pretty gentle in letting them know...
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >Turns out this was the first dev position the company ever had that wasn't contractors. The most upsetting part of this is they were most certainly paying insane prices for that contractor, and probably weren't even offering you half of that. Businesses are so comfortable at padding another business's pockets with obscene mark up, but utterly refuse to let even a little of that money go to the "workers"
talldatethrow 3y ago
It's not exactly that simple. I know an employer in the cabinetry field. It's not genius work in the shop but you can't be asleep. He pays guys $60k+ and some approach $100k for dependable people that known the field. He has trouble finding people. The town is full of hundreds of healthy males working for Walmart, oil change shops, non commission retail, and all those sorts. There is some kind of issue that makes it so someone will work stocking a grocery store for $40k a year instead of screwing a cabinet together for $60k, with opportunities to make it up to $100k in the shop and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Usually the issue there is nobody knows it exists. Or they are intimidated by not having skills, and having worked for WalMart, no expectation of any meaningful training.
  - Tangurena2 3y ago
    Also, they don't own a suitable truck, nor own the suitable tools. The job might pay twice as much as WalMart, but if it costs you $40k-80k to enter that line of business, the wage differential is insufficient to pay both the capital expenditure plus depreciation of the required equipment. With auto mechanics, the folks selling tools (such as the Snap-On Tools truck operator) will handle the financing.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  Screwing a cabinet together is actual work, you need to complete things at some expected pace at some expected quality (it's a low bar, but there's a bar). At Walmart most of the time you can just fuck around and not do much work, if you get fired at Walmart you just go fuck around at an oil change shop until they fire you. I know men that have done this their whole lives.
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    Idk if you've been to a Walmart or an oil change place.. but they get people to work pretty hard and efficiently for low wages. That's basically their secret sauce. My Walmart appears to be staffed by zombies, yet for the most part the store functions pretty well day in a day out, 365 days a year.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
citrin_ru 3y ago
> The company complaining is not offering a market wage. It is not always the company. In the UK there is a shortage of driving instructors. Many of them self-employed and can charge for lessons whatever they like but for some reasons they don't - probably people already squeezed by cost of living cannot pay much more and instead ready to wait weeks for lessons which are readily available in countries without a shortage.
- baq 3y ago
  'They can but they can't' Sounds like a functioning market to me :)
  - citrin_ru 3y ago
    Market stop prices from going too high but doesn’t solve the problem of shortage. If part of the problem is that it is hard to get a certification required to be a driving instructor government can work on making it easier/faster (not going to happen unfortunately).
- varispeed 3y ago
  This is caused by IR35 changes where self employed de facto can no longer offer services, as they are being forced into something called deemed employment, where they have no employment rights, but pay both employee and employer taxes without ability to make profit. Many people in the industry simply threw in the towel, because it became pointless to work.
biogene 3y ago
(Going with the assumption that it's purely due to salary) If you adjust the salary for new-hires, you'll have to also adjust every employees salary otherwise it becomes unfair to existing employees. Lets give a raise to everyone in America to match inflation isn't really a tenable strategy. Most small businesses would simply go under if they had to do that for 50-100 people. I believe this is the unfortunate reality of many businesses in the US which are struggling already.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- polygamous_bat 3y ago
  > Most small businesses would simply go under if they had to do that for 50-100 people. If you can't pay your employees market wage, why do you deserve to stay in business? Do restaurants ever expect to underpay their tomato suppliers using the same logic?
  - biogene 3y ago
    You deserve to stay in business when you are a legal business entity that is following all the laws and regulations. Giving everyone a raise is not required by law. It is not a realistic strategy to get out of this inflationary environment - that's my view.
    - WJW 3y ago
      > You deserve to stay in business when you are a legal business entity that is following all the laws and regulations. You also need to be making a profit though, or at least break even after all costs are accounted for. Otherwise you will run out of money. In our current economic model, a company that is too inefficient to compete in the market does not deserve to stay in business.
      - biogene 3y ago
        There isn't a conspiracy against hiring people who are going to make you money. Anyone who adds value to a company and is going to generate more revenue than their labor cost is likely going to be hired over someone who does not.
highwaylights 3y ago
This is self-evidently true in all cases and I really don't get how some people can't get this. Here in the UK we have a perpetual doctor shortage, except that we don't, because young doctors are worked to the bone in incredibly stressful environments in what seems to be a "paying your dues" model so that you can possibly, maybe earn the fat consultant money that older doctors get on their way to retirement. My understanding is that most leave for better money and living conditions in places like Australia. They exist, they just opt-out. In the UK, independent software contractors are vilified pretty regularly, and there's often a lot of learn-to-code pushes because there's a perceived shortage. Maybe some of those people could just learn-to-medicine instead and solve both problems.
- AdamN 3y ago
  Agreed but there is a time component here as well. There may in fact be a doctor's shortage because getting a supply of new doctors takes X number of years but the demand is now. In the UK with NHS shortages it's all about wages though. The time component just means that whenever they finally get the wages figured out it will still take years to improve.
  - varispeed 3y ago
    We have a peculiar situation where NHS can't raise wages, but they certainly can hire staff from agencies at much higher rates (and agency mark up). Imagine if NHS could hire staff directly at those rates...
    - josephg 3y ago
      I’m not familiar with UK politics. Why can’t they raise wages?
      - varispeed 3y ago
        Bureaucracy, corruption...
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
The complaint is valid. A better title for the article would be trucker shortages are self correcting. The “number of trucking carriers has increased 45% since July 2019;” you don’t see a 50% increase in the quantity supplied without a supply-demand mismatch, which in anything but a perfect market causes localised shortages. When confronted with these shortages, Congress tends to “fund employee driver training and recruitment programs,” which does nothing for independent owner-operators. Given that is the responsive end of the supply curve, the next time something must be done about a trucking shortage, it should be in making it easier for aspiring owner-operators to secure SBA loans.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > Given that is the responsive end of the supply curve, the next time something must be done about a trucking shortage, it should be in making it easier for aspiring owner-operators to secure SBA loans. Government should not be help people by offering them debt with improper underwriting. All it does is screw up prices and long term supply/demand curves such as with education and homes, and screws future taxpayers for the benefit of current taxpayers. If the government wants to encourage more people to become truck drivers, then the government can start paying its drivers more, improve minimum working conditions for truck drivers, and pay truck driving schools directly to offer free truck driving qualifications.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > then the government can start paying its drivers more, improve minimum working conditions for truck drivers, and pay truck driving schools directly to offer free truck driving qualifications Paying its own drivers makes sense. The second two are straight out of the ATA’s playbook for industry capture by large incumbents. The part of the supply curve that’s responding is owner-operators. They don’t benefit from working-condition mandates or driver’s schools; the large incumbents do. The second two advantage them over owner-operators, and could conceivably exacerbate the problem.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
mensetmanusman 3y ago
They might be offering a market wage under their price constraints. If everyone raised wages together, we wouldn’t magically be wealthier. Number of workers is approximately zero sum, but their productivity in regards to wealth generation is not.
- usednet 3y ago
  Wage growth has not matched productivity growth for decades.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    The integrated wage growth has only happened for the very wealthy. Ie they captured the gains.
astanix 3y ago
I recently was headhunted by a company trying to place someone in Denver. The pay was 80k a year, less than I make in the midwest.. a substantial raise in cost of living for a pay cut with no remote work option. I told her she would have a very hard time finding someone in my area to take that job.
winrid 3y ago
I worked at one company in the valley that said they couldn't find any more good developers. In silicon valley! No, they just wanted to pay terrible wages... glad I got out.

withinboredom 3y ago

I remember this one time as a dev, I went through this entire interview process and they offered me 30k a year. I was literally laughing so hard I fell on the floor -- I thought it was a joke. Turns out this was the first dev position the company ever had that wasn't contractors. I ended up working with them as a part-time consultant to actually find their first few devs. Everyone else they had interviewed had stormed out, pissed off that they had wasted their time; they didn't even realize what they did until I started asking questions after I got off the floor.

managingahhs 3y ago
You actually fell on the floor? Were you in their office?
- jumpkick 3y ago
  He may have been standing, and his knees gave out. It's worth considering alternative interpretations.
  - peteradio 3y ago
    Or maybe he was in a dunk tank and he was so bowled over that he swung his arm out triggering the latch but someone forgot to fill it with water.
    - jumpkick 3y ago
      Another likely scenario!
      - somewhat_drunk 3y ago
        Perhaps a bit less likely, but we'll allow it.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Yes! I literally fell out of the chair, which made it even more hilarious.
  - managingahhs 3y ago
    Yep, must have been hilarious. Thanks.
yardie 3y ago
So, Google is free. They were hiring for a very expensive employee class and doing 0 research? I find that hard to believe. I think they knew what a dev would cost and were hoping to be hire from the left side of the salary curve. I've also been in a few interviews where the company was being evasive about the salary range. In every case it was below market and the hiring manager was just too embarrassed or too scammy to state it. Hoping they would hire someone desperate enough (ie "exposure").
- Invictus0 3y ago
  Have you ever met business owners? They're not all that smart
  - granshaw 3y ago
    In fact intelligence is negatively correlated with success in business. It’s all grit and a certain irrational headstrongness that’s needed
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - chasontherobot 3y ago
        This, but not sarcastic.
        reducesuffering 3y ago
        You must be great at business
      - baq 3y ago
        I refrain from quoting pg nowadays but he used to be worth reading, here's an article from that period which is of some interest: http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html No words on low IQ but absolutely nothing about being a genius. Also, a paragraph which may point at mild psychopathy as a good trait to have. Which is absolutely in line with top leadership.
gwbas1c 3y ago
When I was in a similar situation I declined. (I was going to offer to contract, but then an absurdly low offer came in via email.) It turned into a series of email flames from an "entrepreneur" that involved references to Frodo and the Ring. Needless to say, the company burned out super-fast. The guy running the company didn't realize that he has to pay market rate in order to attract talent; and if he can't pay market rate, he has to reset what he's trying to do in order to meet his budget.
soupfordummies 3y ago
I had a guy literally laugh me off the call in my last search. He kept pressing me for a salary number and I gave him one below market rate, well below what I ended up getting on another offer. To top it off, he went on some dumbass rant about government handouts, "no one wants to work anymore", etc. Dodged a bullet there I guess!
- happytiger 3y ago
  Ideology doesn’t trump salary, metaphor included.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  > He kept pressing me for a salary number and I gave him one below market rate Were you trying to get hired? If so, why would you do that?
  - snypher 3y ago
    I think any response would be fine as the employer is responsible for the offer. There's really no point asking me how much I would like to be compensated (the answer is always $1b) when the real question is how much are you willing to offer in return for my services.
    - b112 3y ago
      Some employers ask this at the start. Then, you'll go through $x interview rounds. If you say 100 quatloos, then go through 3 rounds of interviews, discussions, and they offer your 100 quatloos, you'd be an asshat to complain about salary. And the employer would have every reason to think you're a dumbass. Note that refusing to answer is fine, but being entirely dishonest (a random number, eg "any response"), would make me believe you are utterly untrustworthy.
      - wildrhythms 3y ago
        >Note that refusing to answer is fine I was required to put a "desired salary" in an application form. It was a required field. I wonder if the employer sorts by lowest?
pengaru 3y ago
This reminds me of an interview I had @ Wikimedia (Wikipedia) a decade+ ago. They offered less than half what I was earning at a startup.
- lp0_on_fire 3y ago
  Is that surprising given that Wikimedia is ostensibly a non-profit and was in a much different financial position a decade+ ago? For what it’s worth I do believe that wikimedia could allocate more of the dollars they have to their “core competencies”
  - pengaru 3y ago
    Startups aren't exactly known for good salaries, I expected a comparable salary just without the option grants.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    Non-profit doesn't mean bad salaries. I can say that because I work for a non-profit and I can compare my salary with many salaries in the industry through my union.
gitonup 3y ago
> Everyone else they had interviewed had stormed out, pissed off that they had wasted their time; they didn't even realize what they did until I started asking questions after I got off the floor. Uh, those that stormed out did it right after the salary piece, and they didn't put it together?
- ben_w 3y ago
  The typical mind fallacy: amongst other things, unless it was done deliberately, it's really really hard to guess why you've upset someone, especially when they're so upset they don't talk to you any more.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Nah, if they stormed out right after you told them the salary, it's pretty obvious. It sounds more like an example of 'cultural density' -- not wanting to realize or acknowledge something that's at odds with what your local culture desires (in this case, the desire to pay as little as possible).
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      This was the highest paid position in the company (30k a year) and a salary (which only their managers were paid in a salary). They thought they were offering a really good salary, not realizing it was FAR below market rate. They still hired engineers at below market rate (~60k) but I helped them find some really smart junior engineers who could maintain the existing code; and warned them that these engineers would likely leave in the next year or two, max. They were able to become fairly profitable with full-time engineers, eventually, and ended up paying above market rate, last I heard.
      - chongli 3y ago
        What? Was everyone else at the company living in their car and relying on the food bank to feed themselves? Or was this in some strange ultra-low-CoL environment?
highwaylights 3y ago
I had something very similar happen a lot of years ago when I was consulting and a client in a bank I'd worked with had asked me what it would take for me to consider joining them full-time. When I told them they stared dumb-founded at me and said "but that's more than I make". We didn't talk about it again, as I don't know where you'd start explaining how capitalism works to a manager in a bank.
chiph 3y ago
A former coworker got hired as a young company's DBA. They were more-or-less in the manufacturing space but with an internet sales channel. They had set up cubicles on the factory floor, with a "break room" on the floor consisting of a couple of vending machines with picnic tables. He wasn't getting anything done, what with the constant noise of pneumatic equipment and beeping of fork-lift trucks, plus the constant sweating from not having air conditioning. He gave notice after a week, and one of the founders took him aside and asked why. Turned out he was their third DBA in a couple of months and they didn't understand why they were all leaving on such short notice. He was pretty gentle in letting them know...
mrguyorama 3y ago
>Turns out this was the first dev position the company ever had that wasn't contractors. The most upsetting part of this is they were most certainly paying insane prices for that contractor, and probably weren't even offering you half of that. Businesses are so comfortable at padding another business's pockets with obscene mark up, but utterly refuse to let even a little of that money go to the "workers"

talldatethrow 3y ago

It's not exactly that simple. I know an employer in the cabinetry field. It's not genius work in the shop but you can't be asleep. He pays guys $60k+ and some approach $100k for dependable people that known the field. He has trouble finding people. The town is full of hundreds of healthy males working for Walmart, oil change shops, non commission retail, and all those sorts. There is some kind of issue that makes it so someone will work stocking a grocery store for $40k a year instead of screwing a cabinet together for $60k, with opportunities to make it up to $100k in the shop and up to $140k in the office as a project manager once you really know how things are built.

Spooky23 3y ago
Usually the issue there is nobody knows it exists. Or they are intimidated by not having skills, and having worked for WalMart, no expectation of any meaningful training.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  Also, they don't own a suitable truck, nor own the suitable tools. The job might pay twice as much as WalMart, but if it costs you $40k-80k to enter that line of business, the wage differential is insufficient to pay both the capital expenditure plus depreciation of the required equipment. With auto mechanics, the folks selling tools (such as the Snap-On Tools truck operator) will handle the financing.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
Screwing a cabinet together is actual work, you need to complete things at some expected pace at some expected quality (it's a low bar, but there's a bar). At Walmart most of the time you can just fuck around and not do much work, if you get fired at Walmart you just go fuck around at an oil change shop until they fire you. I know men that have done this their whole lives.
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  Idk if you've been to a Walmart or an oil change place.. but they get people to work pretty hard and efficiently for low wages. That's basically their secret sauce. My Walmart appears to be staffed by zombies, yet for the most part the store functions pretty well day in a day out, 365 days a year.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

citrin_ru 3y ago

> The company complaining is not offering a market wage. It is not always the company. In the UK there is a shortage of driving instructors. Many of them self-employed and can charge for lessons whatever they like but for some reasons they don't - probably people already squeezed by cost of living cannot pay much more and instead ready to wait weeks for lessons which are readily available in countries without a shortage.

baq 3y ago
'They can but they can't' Sounds like a functioning market to me :)
- citrin_ru 3y ago
  Market stop prices from going too high but doesn’t solve the problem of shortage. If part of the problem is that it is hard to get a certification required to be a driving instructor government can work on making it easier/faster (not going to happen unfortunately).
varispeed 3y ago
This is caused by IR35 changes where self employed de facto can no longer offer services, as they are being forced into something called deemed employment, where they have no employment rights, but pay both employee and employer taxes without ability to make profit. Many people in the industry simply threw in the towel, because it became pointless to work.

biogene 3y ago

(Going with the assumption that it's purely due to salary) If you adjust the salary for new-hires, you'll have to also adjust every employees salary otherwise it becomes unfair to existing employees. Lets give a raise to everyone in America to match inflation isn't really a tenable strategy. Most small businesses would simply go under if they had to do that for 50-100 people. I believe this is the unfortunate reality of many businesses in the US which are struggling already.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
polygamous_bat 3y ago
> Most small businesses would simply go under if they had to do that for 50-100 people. If you can't pay your employees market wage, why do you deserve to stay in business? Do restaurants ever expect to underpay their tomato suppliers using the same logic?
- biogene 3y ago
  You deserve to stay in business when you are a legal business entity that is following all the laws and regulations. Giving everyone a raise is not required by law. It is not a realistic strategy to get out of this inflationary environment - that's my view.
  - WJW 3y ago
    > You deserve to stay in business when you are a legal business entity that is following all the laws and regulations. You also need to be making a profit though, or at least break even after all costs are accounted for. Otherwise you will run out of money. In our current economic model, a company that is too inefficient to compete in the market does not deserve to stay in business.
    - biogene 3y ago
      There isn't a conspiracy against hiring people who are going to make you money. Anyone who adds value to a company and is going to generate more revenue than their labor cost is likely going to be hired over someone who does not.

highwaylights 3y ago

This is self-evidently true in all cases and I really don't get how some people can't get this. Here in the UK we have a perpetual doctor shortage, except that we don't, because young doctors are worked to the bone in incredibly stressful environments in what seems to be a "paying your dues" model so that you can possibly, maybe earn the fat consultant money that older doctors get on their way to retirement. My understanding is that most leave for better money and living conditions in places like Australia. They exist, they just opt-out. In the UK, independent software contractors are vilified pretty regularly, and there's often a lot of learn-to-code pushes because there's a perceived shortage. Maybe some of those people could just learn-to-medicine instead and solve both problems.

AdamN 3y ago
Agreed but there is a time component here as well. There may in fact be a doctor's shortage because getting a supply of new doctors takes X number of years but the demand is now. In the UK with NHS shortages it's all about wages though. The time component just means that whenever they finally get the wages figured out it will still take years to improve.
- varispeed 3y ago
  We have a peculiar situation where NHS can't raise wages, but they certainly can hire staff from agencies at much higher rates (and agency mark up). Imagine if NHS could hire staff directly at those rates...
  - josephg 3y ago
    I’m not familiar with UK politics. Why can’t they raise wages?
    - varispeed 3y ago
      Bureaucracy, corruption...

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

The complaint is valid. A better title for the article would be trucker shortages are self correcting. The “number of trucking carriers has increased 45% since July 2019;” you don’t see a 50% increase in the quantity supplied without a supply-demand mismatch, which in anything but a perfect market causes localised shortages. When confronted with these shortages, Congress tends to “fund employee driver training and recruitment programs,” which does nothing for independent owner-operators. Given that is the responsive end of the supply curve, the next time something must be done about a trucking shortage, it should be in making it easier for aspiring owner-operators to secure SBA loans.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> Given that is the responsive end of the supply curve, the next time something must be done about a trucking shortage, it should be in making it easier for aspiring owner-operators to secure SBA loans. Government should not be help people by offering them debt with improper underwriting. All it does is screw up prices and long term supply/demand curves such as with education and homes, and screws future taxpayers for the benefit of current taxpayers. If the government wants to encourage more people to become truck drivers, then the government can start paying its drivers more, improve minimum working conditions for truck drivers, and pay truck driving schools directly to offer free truck driving qualifications.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > then the government can start paying its drivers more, improve minimum working conditions for truck drivers, and pay truck driving schools directly to offer free truck driving qualifications Paying its own drivers makes sense. The second two are straight out of the ATA’s playbook for industry capture by large incumbents. The part of the supply curve that’s responding is owner-operators. They don’t benefit from working-condition mandates or driver’s schools; the large incumbents do. The second two advantage them over owner-operators, and could conceivably exacerbate the problem.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago

mensetmanusman 3y ago

They might be offering a market wage under their price constraints. If everyone raised wages together, we wouldn’t magically be wealthier. Number of workers is approximately zero sum, but their productivity in regards to wealth generation is not.

usednet 3y ago
Wage growth has not matched productivity growth for decades.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  The integrated wage growth has only happened for the very wealthy. Ie they captured the gains.

astanix 3y ago

I recently was headhunted by a company trying to place someone in Denver. The pay was 80k a year, less than I make in the midwest.. a substantial raise in cost of living for a pay cut with no remote work option. I told her she would have a very hard time finding someone in my area to take that job.

winrid 3y ago

I worked at one company in the valley that said they couldn't find any more good developers. In silicon valley! No, they just wanted to pay terrible wages... glad I got out.