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Those Who Have a Job, Want to Quit. Those Who Want a Job, Can’t Find One.

101 points by robbiea 14y ago

parktheredcar 14y ago
Sort of annoying when sites throw up a big overlay on content I can see rendered just fine because javascript is turned off.
- Wilya 14y ago
  The real question is: Why does it tell me "JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently turned off." when I'm on Firefox on Windows.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    Because they've been spying on my iPhone! I turned it off about 2 hours ago, and now they're broadcasting that fact to you? WTF?
lysol 14y ago
They're using general labor statistics to demonstrate some kind of specific point with the tech sector. This post doesn't make any sense.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  And it overlooks that in the "6+ month" category, some/many aren't in a hurry given the guaranteed living wage for 99 weeks. Awfully simplistic & authoritative conclusion based on very little data.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I think very few people want a 23-month employment gap on their resume if they can help it. Some people get discouraged and perhaps apply less vigorously than they should, but I don't think there are many people using the "guaranteed living wage" to slack off. I'm sure there are a few, but I doubt it's a sizable contingent. The time over which an employment gap is a liability increases dramatically as a function of the size of the gap. At 0-3 months, it's near zero because that's a typical interval between jobs. At 3-6 months, it's about a year (which means it doesn't matter if you hold the next job for that long). At 6-12 months, it's about 2 years; at 12-24, it's 5 years or more. A 99-week employment gap is just too damaging for slacking off to make any economic sense.
    - adambyrtek 14y ago
      Do you think that people who are comfortable slacking off care about hypothetical future repercussions?
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        Yes, actually. I think that most people who slack off do not want a life sentence to mediocrity. They take a couple years out of their careers, underestimating how difficult it will be to get back in the game. There are a lot of people in Williamsburg (and, presumably, every other hipster enclave) who fit that bill. They're "trust fund kids", but most TF kids are only moderately wealthy ($1-3m) and will need to step it up in middle age if they want to keep up their lifestyles. They have no idea how hard it will be after 5-8 years of drug use, partying, and generally wasting whatever intellectual sharpness they had in college. They also have no concept of what it means (and how bad a position it is) to be competing with fresh 22-year-olds for entry level jobs after wasting nearly a decade.
mgkimsal 14y ago
"Sell the dream and sell it hard. It’s your dream vs. their dream. Benefits are no longer a factor. The best dream wins. Good Luck." I've hated for years how words lose some of their original meaning/intent. "benefits" is one. A "benefit" of working at XYZ company is that you get ABC handed to you at no charge. Fair enough. But when all jobs (in particular fields) come with 'benefits', there's no 'benefit' any more. I dunno - the word just bugs me. Oh, maybe it's because it's not a 'benefit' - it's just something that they're providing to you, whether you want it or not. More often than not, it's not a 'benefit' to me or my family. "Scholarship" is another one - having "athletic scholarships" seems an oxymoron, but that's for another day... Yes, your 'benefits' packages don't matter to me. Not really. Not much. Matching 401k contributions are nice, but often they're restricted to some lame company with too-high fees and poor choice of investment options. Healthcare? Currently, I can get it for half what most companies are paying, and personally, I think the continued involvement of employers in providing healthcare insurance is distorting the market way out of whack. So... sell me on the dream. Tell me that your vision and ability to execute on that - and where you see me in your company's execution of that vision and we'll talk. Hint: "Looking for senior PHP developer to work on our Magento store! $75k plus foosball table and weekly movies with the team and XBox in the office!" isn't it.
- taybin 14y ago
  Well, for starters, not all jobs have the same benefits...
  - rpwilcox 14y ago
    ... like benefits at all.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sailfast 14y ago
  Benefits have a huge impact and should definitely be considered as part of compensation / hiring. 401K matching - as you said above, if you're getting a poor match with a bad set of funds, then a company that offers a large flat contribution regardless of your contribution (say 6-10%) and had access to thousands of funds / direct stocks would be preferred and provide a significant benefit to you. Similarly, benefits like Dental, Medical, etc especially if you've got a family means less risk and money in your pocket if it's paid for and you have a great plan. While it would, of course, be better to just get "straight cash homey" and try to deal with it yourself I would argue that benefits are still a signficant factor in the job decision process. As for the foosball table et al - that's more a cultural thing and less a direct benefit in my mind. That said - totally agree that benefits are secondary to the dream and the vision of the company as a part of one's decision.
tmuir 14y ago
"Today, there is another competitor that hiring managers have to compete against: Entrepreneurship." For the first time in the history of civilization, people are starting their own business.
- Retric 14y ago
  It's hardly the first time, but while there has long been a path to starting a restaurant with a bank loan it's been harder to get a software company off the ground.
- TDL 14y ago
  Your statement confuses me. Where did all the existing businesses come from if 'people' did not start them in first place? The costs of starting a new business might be dropping considerably, but this hardly the first time in history that entrepreneurs were being so greatly rewarded.
  - Kluny 14y ago
    (I think he was joking)
    - keithpeter 14y ago
      I thought that as well. Might be worth pointing out that before the rise of manufacturing in large scale with assembly lines &c casual work was normal. Not much in the way of benefits or security.
  - SudarshanP 14y ago
    Compared to older times it has become easier to startup(especially internet and mobile) because of maturity and agility of technologies, a huge rush in incubators like ycombinator. Also guys outside the silicon valley can look forward to more probability of success than before as the investor and hacker networks are slowly building up.
- aqme28 14y ago
  The great benefit of the internet is that the capital required to start a profitable business is orders of magnitude lower than ever before.
cageface 14y ago
I remember hiring a sysadmin in 2002. We had stacks of hundreds of resumes from people more than qualified for the job, but we had to whittle them down to one. Most went straight into the bin after a glance. Just a few years earlier people were knocking down your door if you'd ever booted a unix box. We techies have it good right now but don't fool yourself into believing the party will last forever.
- fleitz 14y ago
  It's all about recurring rev, make sure you've got a stable base of clients, good margins, and you're a minor but essential cost, and just ride the bubbles out. Build in the gluts when you've got 200 resumes to choose from.
- SonicSoul 14y ago
  there is a difference between a candidate's resume, and their actual ability, when making the assessment "qualified for a job". There are positions that took us 6-12 months of full time interviewing to staff. Finding good engineers is hard.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    There are positions that took us 6-12 months of full time interviewing to staff. Finding good engineers is hard. And this is the real problem in the tech industry if you are looking for a job. Unlike other industries, there are no externalities forcing companies to hire a poorer employee. Speaking as a farmer, there the job has to be done on time, no matter what. If not, the food will spoil, or the animal will die, or what have you. I see other farmers offering pretty decent wages (around $50/hr) for skilled talent. If you're not skilled, you will be paid closer to minimum wage because your contributions end up costing more to the farmer. But the job has to be done, so in the absence of skilled labour, which is hard to find, you pick the unskilled labour and do your best to make it work. In tech, as you've highlighted, it doesn't really matter if the job gets done and is often better if not done at all, if it was going to be done poorly. If it takes a year for the very best to become available, it is worth the wait. This puts us in a situation where only the top N% of talent is employable, no matter how many have a degree of skill necessary to do the job.
fleitz 14y ago
I think it's just the natural way of things for those that are entrepreneurial and/or party a lot, I've noticed that most of the bootstrapped entrepreneurs I know were heavy into the rave scene either spinning, promoting, or partying. Either that or surfer/snowboarders. What really struck a chord with me is the graphic that said Entrepreneurs want blood. There's something primal about closing a deal, it feels like hunting. There's no hunt on the cube farm, just plowing the fields and planting crops. Grain doesn't taste like meat, and farmed meat doesn't taste like game.
- deleted 14y ago
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  - wahnfrieden 14y ago
    As long as they're understandable, corrections are just noise for everyone reading.
    - ColinWright 14y ago
      Yeah, I get that, hence my hesitation. If you check, I've never done it before. It's just that if I were writing in a foreign language, I'd want it. Even when writing in English, if I make a stupid mistake I'd want a correction. It would be nice to have a way of pointing out the mistake, allowing the person to correct it, and then it all gets tidied. I "time bomb" corrections. Regardless of whether the person fixes it or not, I delete my comment within an hour or so, giving them the option, and yet removing the noise. And I suggest we do that with this exchange as well. Added in edit: Correction made, and I'm deleting my comments. I'll delete this one shortly too. Thanks for your reply - I'll keep it in mind."
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
  - fleitz 14y ago
    thanks, fixed. Too much time today spent dealing with coordinate systems.
sparknlaunch 14y ago
It's a tough one. The 80/20 rule can be applied to must things, and this is another. 20% of the labour force hold 80% of the skills and the perfect jobs. The remaining 80% battle it out or give up. Now the numbers aren't exact and there are exceptions, but with challenges like this you need to adapt. This may mean entrepreneurship or taking a job you don't like or job benefits. It's not ideal but balancing reality against the dream is hard work.
losethos 14y ago
The CIA set-up all my jobs. They were facades, phoney. It would cost more for the CIA to invent or relocate a company here for me. God says... C:\Text\WEALTH.TXT eserved rather for extorting money from the subject, than for the defence of the common liberty against such oppressive monopolies. Upon paying a fine to the king, the charter seems generally to have been readily granted; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation, without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king, for permission to exercise their
luminaobscura 14y ago
hmm, is it only me that see the obvious solution: those who want to quit -> quits -> happy! those who want a job -> takes the emptied position -> happy!
kbronson 14y ago
I was looking for a job, and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now
- bornhuetter 14y ago
  Nice try, Morrissey.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Here's what seems to be happening. First, hyperspecialization. Instead of a "programming" career we have back-end, front-end, embedded, machine learning/data science, and many other silos to the career, and people are expected to be "at level" (i.e. as good as a typical person of their age and experience) in the specific silo for which they're applying. We have a zillion active languages and database technologies and web frameworks. People who choose the right specialty are in high demand. People who don't, or who fail to specialize, are more likely to lose out. When you see a two-sided scarcity problem, that's usually what's happening: a mismatch between sought skills and what is available on the market. This is good and bad. Divergence is when exploration happens (people move away from Java and C++ to Python, Ocaml, Scala, Ruby, Haskell... and find out what works well and what doesn't) and convergence is when they move back, hopefully to better mainstays (in PL, Scala and Clojure are the front-runners; it's obvious that dysfunctional programming in the style of Java-esque AbstractVisitorHandlerFactoryFactory patterns is over) than those that were in the mainstream before. People do eventually get sick of having to change tech stacks every time they take a new job. Convergence sets in at some point, and it will, soon. We're late in a divergent phase. Both divergent and convergent phases are necessary and healthy. When we move into a convergent phase, it's going to be easier for typical programmers to find matching jobs (a reduced "curse of dimensionality" as there are fewer dimensions of variation) but some specialties are going to dry up. Second, short job tenures. Another factor for which both sides are to blame. There are "job hoppers" out there who seek a new environment and a pay raise every 9 months, and there are companies that fire rashly, or that do such a bad job of mentoring their employees that anyone sane will leave in 6 months. Job fluidity is good to a point, but it's passed the optimal point. Now it's in a vicious cycle: an environment of short job tenures discourages companies from investing in their people, which leads to high turnover. Some startups welcome turnover with the self-satisfied and cultish belief that those who leave "weren't good enough" but that just shows a lack of introspection to a degree that's irresponsible. Extremely high turnover is just bad. Third and most importantly, we need to handle the education problem. We will see technological convergence and increasing job tenures for macroeconomic reasons... to a point. However, technological change is going to remain rapid and continuing education is going to stop being a luxury (for programmers and in general) in no more than 10 years. People will need to access educational resources continually in order to direct their career growth, and they'll need some way to prove they've mastered skills necessary for the transitions they need to make. The best solution for this problem, for a forward-thinking company, is to drop to 3-4 days of metered work (for most jobs) and require people to pursue some kind of education in the other 1-2 days/week. That reduces unemployment of the "not enough work to go around" sort, and it reduces the friction caused by mismatches in experience. That said, I've seen "20% time" type programs, as wonderful as they are in intention, fail more often than they succeed. Google's 20%T is only used by about 10% of engineers because there's absolutely no anti-retaliation insurance (i.e. managers can punish employees in performance reviews for taking 20%T and employees have no recourse, which means, in effect, that employees only really have it if the manager wants them to have it). Building a robust 20%T program is really not easy. Tuition reimbursement is a good policy, but people rarely use it because it requires them to plan in ways that most professionals simply can't. How many people can predict that they won't face a badly-timed drop-everything production crisis or other hourage spike over a 15-week semester? Very few. The solution is going to have to be more asynchronous than the typical university schooling model, but also more open and self-directed than most in-house corporate training.
moocow01 14y ago
If there is anything I've learned over having a "successful" career as an employed person its that it eventually comes to a point where the benefits of moving forward/up in my opinion outweigh the benefits. (and in my experience this happens pretty quick in tech) You get to a point where you increasingly can take on responsibility but the relative upside is no longer commensurate with the increasing value you are adding to the company. On top of it you inevitably start to become at odds with your employer in that as your abilities expand you wonder why you work for the person above you. I guess from my perspective, its become apparent to me that moving up is generally a fools game at a certain point while "moving out" is the real version of moving up. I'm not going to say that taking that step of being independent is easy in that I'm still working on it myself but its hard for me to get excited about that next promotion these days no matter what perks it comes with.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I think a big part of the problem is that, when a company becomes political or factionalized (and many companies do) external leadership becomes the more "lightweight" option. An internal promote, in a politicized environment, can be taken as a statement about which faction is favored and the future of the company. An external promotion is an unknown, so people are more likely to see what they want to see in the change and, at least in the short term, less likely to be pissed off. However, I think external sourcing for leadership positions is more politically risky in the long-term. First, people can get a sense that it's impossible to move up. Second, the new CTO or VP/Eng is going to bring other people in with whom he has pre-existing relationships, those people will be regarded as presumptive favorites... and then the transplants along with those they invite into their clique become the new faction. You can't solve a factionalism problem with external promotions; it tends to create new ones.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- verisimilidude 14y ago
  Here, here. Watch this problem explode among traditionally non-tech professions. Increasingly, you see super smart late-20s–early-30s professionals, with five or six years of solid domain-expertise, teaching themselves to code. They start using their programming knowledge to solve big problems and generally kick ass. Sounds great, right? The problem: it's much better politics for the leadership to stuff these forward-thinkers into the lower castes, take credit for all their awesome work, and poach all their wisdom by proxy. Few entrenched managers will admit that "the help" has become the master. Moving out is the only way for these new hybrid-pros to move up. (Thank your deity for YC, etc.)
p_sherman 14y ago
Yay for generalizations and buzzwords!
achompas 14y ago
The chart shows progress, but when you dig into the text above from the BLS website, there are some glaring metrics staring at you in the face. "Dig into" a two-paragraph blurb? Instead of looking at raw BLS statistics? Uh-oh... Why are there so many people out there who can’t find jobs for a long period of time? [...]The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech skills that companies want. Wat? No. This is head-spinning interpolation backed by zero real data. People are unemployed because we're experiencing a significant structural economic shift, not because these people have "generic business" skills (wow, what a hand-wavey statement). Domestic manufacturing has been hit hardest, so those with double-digit years of manufacturing experience have had their responsibilities outsourced to other countries unless they're (a) building aircraft, or (b) working on specialized, highly-precise, machine-produced parts. This is a great example of the tech-obsessed writing produced by the startup craze. Does anyone really believe people are unemployed because they can't code, given that software makes up less than 5% of our GDP? [0] I can't believe this type of self-congratulatory pseudo-economic article hits the front page of HN. What a load of crap. [0] See Table 3 of the latest BEA GDP release. Look for "information processing equipment & software" on Table 3, compare to the level of GDP in 2012q1: http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2012/pdf/gdp1q12_2nd.pdf http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2012/pdf/gdp1q12_2n...
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Actually, this recession and China's growth have led some manufacturing to finally start coming back to the West.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sedev 14y ago
  The article also hits one of my pet peeves about BLS stats: referring to "the unemployment rate" without qualification. U3 and U6 unemployment are distinctly different things - the main difference is that the average person's idea of "unemployed" includes a lot of able-bodied willing-to-work individuals who are counted in U6 and ignored by U3. Unfortunately, when someone talks about "the unemployment rate," they're almost always talking about the U3 measure of unemployment, because that's the one that presidents, senators, and congresscritters trumpet (on account of their incentive to understate unemployment).
kzahel 14y ago
"Now, it’s less of what company had the best package, but more of who’s dream do the talented people believe in the most." It always bugs we when people don't know that "who's" is grammatically equivalent to "whose"
yashchandra 14y ago
I fall in the category of "I have a job. want to quit".
m104 14y ago
From the article: "Why is hiring so tough? Because talented people don’t need you anymore. They don’t need the benefits because they know if worse comes to worse, they will find a comfy job. The options are there for them, therefore the risk of starting their own company isn’t an all or nothing deal." While this has been true for years, I think, more than ever, talented and driven people are realizing that a comfy career isn't an aspiration but a fallback.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
As glib as the article is, if you work for someone else you will never reach your full potential.
systematical 14y ago
The article sums it up. To keep certain people you have to make a compelling reason for them to stay, else they will chase the dream of being their own boss. This is an evolution of Gen-X, to Gen-Whatever, coinciding with the ease of starting up a tech company (low cost barrier). It's only going to increase, look at kickstarter. I need a share in a company, more than just benefits, and I need to believe in what they are doing...not just creating more and more re-skinned sites and crud like that. I also need more freedom. Do I sound demanding? Maybe, but the fact is I can demand this expectation right now. Because I could easily go start my own freelance dev shop if I wanted too...
kfcm 14y ago
What employers and (especially) employees need to understand is "employees" are nothing more than long-term contractors, under a contract which provides certain "benefits" in lieu of cash money.
chives 14y ago
I would amend this statement (from the article): "The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech skills that companies want. It’s simple supply & demand. Their skills are generic business & have no coding / technical background. " to read: "The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech degrees and years of tech experience that companies want. It’s simple supply & demand." Anyone can learn how to code. Anyone can learn how to code well. The problem is learning technically skills would help you do a new job, but they wouldn't help you get one. Minimum requirements include tech degrees and years of technical experience in the field. Having project work helps, but if you can't meet the minimum requirements on experience and degrees, then it doesn't matter what your technical skills actually are. There are a small handful of companies that make an exception to this tradition, but as it turns out I would say they make up less than .01% of employers (of course this is a ballpark estimate, based on my personal experience, but I would invite anyone to pick out major employer that fits this category and is actively hiring). I also agree with michaelochurch regarding technical silos and just bad employer expectations in general.
dsandrowitz 14y ago
Decent points, but too simplistic an approach. The forces at play in the IT/tech job market are quite different than the rest of the labor market. And, while it might seem like the answer is to tell the rest of the country to act like techies (which has a million connotations), that is not a legit solution. We can't have a nation of coders all building their own stuff or working in companies to build stuff. Most people are not cut out to work in the industry and the methods, approaches, and mindsets that work in tech are not likely to translated successfully to other markets. As a society, we need to have a serious conversation about what to do with the millions of undereducated and low/moderately skilled workers who are simply losing jobs to technology, business process improvement, and productivity gains. Becoming techies isn't the answer, but focusing on moving more workers towards a "creation" based style of employment might be a reasonable start. A move toward local agriculture, a rise in trades and craftsmanship instead of overseas production, a re-examination of the wages and requirements for critical service industries like primary education and healthcare...that is where I'd focus energy instead. No, we don't need 190 million coders, but we could use more teachers, more nurses, more good plumbers, more people making high quality goods domestically, and a lot more people growing food that isn't shipped halfway across the planet or covered in a bioengineered chemical soup.

101 points by robbiea 14y ago

Sort of annoying when sites throw up a big overlay on content I can see rendered just fine because javascript is turned off.

Wilya 14y ago
The real question is: Why does it tell me "JavaScript for Mobile Safari is currently turned off." when I'm on Firefox on Windows.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  Because they've been spying on my iPhone! I turned it off about 2 hours ago, and now they're broadcasting that fact to you? WTF?

lysol 14y ago

They're using general labor statistics to demonstrate some kind of specific point with the tech sector. This post doesn't make any sense.

ctdonath 14y ago
And it overlooks that in the "6+ month" category, some/many aren't in a hurry given the guaranteed living wage for 99 weeks. Awfully simplistic & authoritative conclusion based on very little data.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I think very few people want a 23-month employment gap on their resume if they can help it. Some people get discouraged and perhaps apply less vigorously than they should, but I don't think there are many people using the "guaranteed living wage" to slack off. I'm sure there are a few, but I doubt it's a sizable contingent. The time over which an employment gap is a liability increases dramatically as a function of the size of the gap. At 0-3 months, it's near zero because that's a typical interval between jobs. At 3-6 months, it's about a year (which means it doesn't matter if you hold the next job for that long). At 6-12 months, it's about 2 years; at 12-24, it's 5 years or more. A 99-week employment gap is just too damaging for slacking off to make any economic sense.
  - adambyrtek 14y ago
    Do you think that people who are comfortable slacking off care about hypothetical future repercussions?
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      Yes, actually. I think that most people who slack off do not want a life sentence to mediocrity. They take a couple years out of their careers, underestimating how difficult it will be to get back in the game. There are a lot of people in Williamsburg (and, presumably, every other hipster enclave) who fit that bill. They're "trust fund kids", but most TF kids are only moderately wealthy ($1-3m) and will need to step it up in middle age if they want to keep up their lifestyles. They have no idea how hard it will be after 5-8 years of drug use, partying, and generally wasting whatever intellectual sharpness they had in college. They also have no concept of what it means (and how bad a position it is) to be competing with fresh 22-year-olds for entry level jobs after wasting nearly a decade.

mgkimsal 14y ago

"Sell the dream and sell it hard. It’s your dream vs. their dream. Benefits are no longer a factor. The best dream wins. Good Luck." I've hated for years how words lose some of their original meaning/intent. "benefits" is one. A "benefit" of working at XYZ company is that you get ABC handed to you at no charge. Fair enough. But when all jobs (in particular fields) come with 'benefits', there's no 'benefit' any more. I dunno - the word just bugs me. Oh, maybe it's because it's not a 'benefit' - it's just something that they're providing to you, whether you want it or not. More often than not, it's not a 'benefit' to me or my family. "Scholarship" is another one - having "athletic scholarships" seems an oxymoron, but that's for another day... Yes, your 'benefits' packages don't matter to me. Not really. Not much. Matching 401k contributions are nice, but often they're restricted to some lame company with too-high fees and poor choice of investment options. Healthcare? Currently, I can get it for half what most companies are paying, and personally, I think the continued involvement of employers in providing healthcare insurance is distorting the market way out of whack. So... sell me on the dream. Tell me that your vision and ability to execute on that - and where you see me in your company's execution of that vision and we'll talk. Hint: "Looking for senior PHP developer to work on our Magento store! $75k plus foosball table and weekly movies with the team and XBox in the office!" isn't it.

taybin 14y ago
Well, for starters, not all jobs have the same benefits...
- rpwilcox 14y ago
  ... like benefits at all.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sailfast 14y ago
Benefits have a huge impact and should definitely be considered as part of compensation / hiring. 401K matching - as you said above, if you're getting a poor match with a bad set of funds, then a company that offers a large flat contribution regardless of your contribution (say 6-10%) and had access to thousands of funds / direct stocks would be preferred and provide a significant benefit to you. Similarly, benefits like Dental, Medical, etc especially if you've got a family means less risk and money in your pocket if it's paid for and you have a great plan. While it would, of course, be better to just get "straight cash homey" and try to deal with it yourself I would argue that benefits are still a signficant factor in the job decision process. As for the foosball table et al - that's more a cultural thing and less a direct benefit in my mind. That said - totally agree that benefits are secondary to the dream and the vision of the company as a part of one's decision.

tmuir 14y ago

"Today, there is another competitor that hiring managers have to compete against: Entrepreneurship." For the first time in the history of civilization, people are starting their own business.

Retric 14y ago
It's hardly the first time, but while there has long been a path to starting a restaurant with a bank loan it's been harder to get a software company off the ground.
TDL 14y ago
Your statement confuses me. Where did all the existing businesses come from if 'people' did not start them in first place? The costs of starting a new business might be dropping considerably, but this hardly the first time in history that entrepreneurs were being so greatly rewarded.
- Kluny 14y ago
  (I think he was joking)
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    I thought that as well. Might be worth pointing out that before the rise of manufacturing in large scale with assembly lines &c casual work was normal. Not much in the way of benefits or security.
- SudarshanP 14y ago
  Compared to older times it has become easier to startup(especially internet and mobile) because of maturity and agility of technologies, a huge rush in incubators like ycombinator. Also guys outside the silicon valley can look forward to more probability of success than before as the investor and hacker networks are slowly building up.
aqme28 14y ago
The great benefit of the internet is that the capital required to start a profitable business is orders of magnitude lower than ever before.

cageface 14y ago

I remember hiring a sysadmin in 2002. We had stacks of hundreds of resumes from people more than qualified for the job, but we had to whittle them down to one. Most went straight into the bin after a glance. Just a few years earlier people were knocking down your door if you'd ever booted a unix box. We techies have it good right now but don't fool yourself into believing the party will last forever.

fleitz 14y ago
It's all about recurring rev, make sure you've got a stable base of clients, good margins, and you're a minor but essential cost, and just ride the bubbles out. Build in the gluts when you've got 200 resumes to choose from.
SonicSoul 14y ago
there is a difference between a candidate's resume, and their actual ability, when making the assessment "qualified for a job". There are positions that took us 6-12 months of full time interviewing to staff. Finding good engineers is hard.
- randomdata 14y ago
  There are positions that took us 6-12 months of full time interviewing to staff. Finding good engineers is hard. And this is the real problem in the tech industry if you are looking for a job. Unlike other industries, there are no externalities forcing companies to hire a poorer employee. Speaking as a farmer, there the job has to be done on time, no matter what. If not, the food will spoil, or the animal will die, or what have you. I see other farmers offering pretty decent wages (around $50/hr) for skilled talent. If you're not skilled, you will be paid closer to minimum wage because your contributions end up costing more to the farmer. But the job has to be done, so in the absence of skilled labour, which is hard to find, you pick the unskilled labour and do your best to make it work. In tech, as you've highlighted, it doesn't really matter if the job gets done and is often better if not done at all, if it was going to be done poorly. If it takes a year for the very best to become available, it is worth the wait. This puts us in a situation where only the top N% of talent is employable, no matter how many have a degree of skill necessary to do the job.

fleitz 14y ago

I think it's just the natural way of things for those that are entrepreneurial and/or party a lot, I've noticed that most of the bootstrapped entrepreneurs I know were heavy into the rave scene either spinning, promoting, or partying. Either that or surfer/snowboarders. What really struck a chord with me is the graphic that said Entrepreneurs want blood. There's something primal about closing a deal, it feels like hunting. There's no hunt on the cube farm, just plowing the fields and planting crops. Grain doesn't taste like meat, and farmed meat doesn't taste like game.

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- wahnfrieden 14y ago
  As long as they're understandable, corrections are just noise for everyone reading.
  - ColinWright 14y ago
    Yeah, I get that, hence my hesitation. If you check, I've never done it before. It's just that if I were writing in a foreign language, I'd want it. Even when writing in English, if I make a stupid mistake I'd want a correction. It would be nice to have a way of pointing out the mistake, allowing the person to correct it, and then it all gets tidied. I "time bomb" corrections. Regardless of whether the person fixes it or not, I delete my comment within an hour or so, giving them the option, and yet removing the noise. And I suggest we do that with this exchange as well. Added in edit: Correction made, and I'm deleting my comments. I'll delete this one shortly too. Thanks for your reply - I'll keep it in mind."
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- fleitz 14y ago
  thanks, fixed. Too much time today spent dealing with coordinate systems.

sparknlaunch 14y ago

It's a tough one. The 80/20 rule can be applied to must things, and this is another. 20% of the labour force hold 80% of the skills and the perfect jobs. The remaining 80% battle it out or give up. Now the numbers aren't exact and there are exceptions, but with challenges like this you need to adapt. This may mean entrepreneurship or taking a job you don't like or job benefits. It's not ideal but balancing reality against the dream is hard work.

losethos 14y ago

The CIA set-up all my jobs. They were facades, phoney. It would cost more for the CIA to invent or relocate a company here for me. God says... C:\Text\WEALTH.TXT eserved rather for extorting money from the subject, than for the defence of the common liberty against such oppressive monopolies. Upon paying a fine to the king, the charter seems generally to have been readily granted; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation, without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king, for permission to exercise their

luminaobscura 14y ago

hmm, is it only me that see the obvious solution: those who want to quit -> quits -> happy! those who want a job -> takes the emptied position -> happy!

kbronson 14y ago

I was looking for a job, and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now

bornhuetter 14y ago
Nice try, Morrissey.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Here's what seems to be happening. First, hyperspecialization. Instead of a "programming" career we have back-end, front-end, embedded, machine learning/data science, and many other silos to the career, and people are expected to be "at level" (i.e. as good as a typical person of their age and experience) in the specific silo for which they're applying. We have a zillion active languages and database technologies and web frameworks. People who choose the right specialty are in high demand. People who don't, or who fail to specialize, are more likely to lose out. When you see a two-sided scarcity problem, that's usually what's happening: a mismatch between sought skills and what is available on the market. This is good and bad. Divergence is when exploration happens (people move away from Java and C++ to Python, Ocaml, Scala, Ruby, Haskell... and find out what works well and what doesn't) and convergence is when they move back, hopefully to better mainstays (in PL, Scala and Clojure are the front-runners; it's obvious that dysfunctional programming in the style of Java-esque AbstractVisitorHandlerFactoryFactory patterns is over) than those that were in the mainstream before. People do eventually get sick of having to change tech stacks every time they take a new job. Convergence sets in at some point, and it will, soon. We're late in a divergent phase. Both divergent and convergent phases are necessary and healthy. When we move into a convergent phase, it's going to be easier for typical programmers to find matching jobs (a reduced "curse of dimensionality" as there are fewer dimensions of variation) but some specialties are going to dry up. Second, short job tenures. Another factor for which both sides are to blame. There are "job hoppers" out there who seek a new environment and a pay raise every 9 months, and there are companies that fire rashly, or that do such a bad job of mentoring their employees that anyone sane will leave in 6 months. Job fluidity is good to a point, but it's passed the optimal point. Now it's in a vicious cycle: an environment of short job tenures discourages companies from investing in their people, which leads to high turnover. Some startups welcome turnover with the self-satisfied and cultish belief that those who leave "weren't good enough" but that just shows a lack of introspection to a degree that's irresponsible. Extremely high turnover is just bad. Third and most importantly, we need to handle the education problem. We will see technological convergence and increasing job tenures for macroeconomic reasons... to a point. However, technological change is going to remain rapid and continuing education is going to stop being a luxury (for programmers and in general) in no more than 10 years. People will need to access educational resources continually in order to direct their career growth, and they'll need some way to prove they've mastered skills necessary for the transitions they need to make. The best solution for this problem, for a forward-thinking company, is to drop to 3-4 days of metered work (for most jobs) and require people to pursue some kind of education in the other 1-2 days/week. That reduces unemployment of the "not enough work to go around" sort, and it reduces the friction caused by mismatches in experience. That said, I've seen "20% time" type programs, as wonderful as they are in intention, fail more often than they succeed. Google's 20%T is only used by about 10% of engineers because there's absolutely no anti-retaliation insurance (i.e. managers can punish employees in performance reviews for taking 20%T and employees have no recourse, which means, in effect, that employees only really have it if the manager wants them to have it). Building a robust 20%T program is really not easy. Tuition reimbursement is a good policy, but people rarely use it because it requires them to plan in ways that most professionals simply can't. How many people can predict that they won't face a badly-timed drop-everything production crisis or other hourage spike over a 15-week semester? Very few. The solution is going to have to be more asynchronous than the typical university schooling model, but also more open and self-directed than most in-house corporate training.

moocow01 14y ago

If there is anything I've learned over having a "successful" career as an employed person its that it eventually comes to a point where the benefits of moving forward/up in my opinion outweigh the benefits. (and in my experience this happens pretty quick in tech) You get to a point where you increasingly can take on responsibility but the relative upside is no longer commensurate with the increasing value you are adding to the company. On top of it you inevitably start to become at odds with your employer in that as your abilities expand you wonder why you work for the person above you. I guess from my perspective, its become apparent to me that moving up is generally a fools game at a certain point while "moving out" is the real version of moving up. I'm not going to say that taking that step of being independent is easy in that I'm still working on it myself but its hard for me to get excited about that next promotion these days no matter what perks it comes with.

michaelochurch 14y ago
I think a big part of the problem is that, when a company becomes political or factionalized (and many companies do) external leadership becomes the more "lightweight" option. An internal promote, in a politicized environment, can be taken as a statement about which faction is favored and the future of the company. An external promotion is an unknown, so people are more likely to see what they want to see in the change and, at least in the short term, less likely to be pissed off. However, I think external sourcing for leadership positions is more politically risky in the long-term. First, people can get a sense that it's impossible to move up. Second, the new CTO or VP/Eng is going to bring other people in with whom he has pre-existing relationships, those people will be regarded as presumptive favorites... and then the transplants along with those they invite into their clique become the new faction. You can't solve a factionalism problem with external promotions; it tends to create new ones.
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verisimilidude 14y ago
Here, here. Watch this problem explode among traditionally non-tech professions. Increasingly, you see super smart late-20s–early-30s professionals, with five or six years of solid domain-expertise, teaching themselves to code. They start using their programming knowledge to solve big problems and generally kick ass. Sounds great, right? The problem: it's much better politics for the leadership to stuff these forward-thinkers into the lower castes, take credit for all their awesome work, and poach all their wisdom by proxy. Few entrenched managers will admit that "the help" has become the master. Moving out is the only way for these new hybrid-pros to move up. (Thank your deity for YC, etc.)

p_sherman 14y ago

Yay for generalizations and buzzwords!

achompas 14y ago

The chart shows progress, but when you dig into the text above from the BLS website, there are some glaring metrics staring at you in the face. "Dig into" a two-paragraph blurb? Instead of looking at raw BLS statistics? Uh-oh... Why are there so many people out there who can’t find jobs for a long period of time? [...]The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech skills that companies want. Wat? No. This is head-spinning interpolation backed by zero real data. People are unemployed because we're experiencing a significant structural economic shift, not because these people have "generic business" skills (wow, what a hand-wavey statement). Domestic manufacturing has been hit hardest, so those with double-digit years of manufacturing experience have had their responsibilities outsourced to other countries unless they're (a) building aircraft, or (b) working on specialized, highly-precise, machine-produced parts. This is a great example of the tech-obsessed writing produced by the startup craze. Does anyone really believe people are unemployed because they can't code, given that software makes up less than 5% of our GDP? [0] I can't believe this type of self-congratulatory pseudo-economic article hits the front page of HN. What a load of crap. [0] See Table 3 of the latest BEA GDP release. Look for "information processing equipment & software" on Table 3, compare to the level of GDP in 2012q1: http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2012/pdf/gdp1q12_2nd.pdf http://bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2012/pdf/gdp1q12_2n...

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Actually, this recession and China's growth have led some manufacturing to finally start coming back to the West.
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sedev 14y ago
The article also hits one of my pet peeves about BLS stats: referring to "the unemployment rate" without qualification. U3 and U6 unemployment are distinctly different things - the main difference is that the average person's idea of "unemployed" includes a lot of able-bodied willing-to-work individuals who are counted in U6 and ignored by U3. Unfortunately, when someone talks about "the unemployment rate," they're almost always talking about the U3 measure of unemployment, because that's the one that presidents, senators, and congresscritters trumpet (on account of their incentive to understate unemployment).

kzahel 14y ago

"Now, it’s less of what company had the best package, but more of who’s dream do the talented people believe in the most." It always bugs we when people don't know that "who's" is grammatically equivalent to "whose"

yashchandra 14y ago

I fall in the category of "I have a job. want to quit".

m104 14y ago

From the article: "Why is hiring so tough? Because talented people don’t need you anymore. They don’t need the benefits because they know if worse comes to worse, they will find a comfy job. The options are there for them, therefore the risk of starting their own company isn’t an all or nothing deal." While this has been true for years, I think, more than ever, talented and driven people are realizing that a comfy career isn't an aspiration but a fallback.

ChristianMarks 14y ago

As glib as the article is, if you work for someone else you will never reach your full potential.

systematical 14y ago

The article sums it up. To keep certain people you have to make a compelling reason for them to stay, else they will chase the dream of being their own boss. This is an evolution of Gen-X, to Gen-Whatever, coinciding with the ease of starting up a tech company (low cost barrier). It's only going to increase, look at kickstarter. I need a share in a company, more than just benefits, and I need to believe in what they are doing...not just creating more and more re-skinned sites and crud like that. I also need more freedom. Do I sound demanding? Maybe, but the fact is I can demand this expectation right now. Because I could easily go start my own freelance dev shop if I wanted too...

kfcm 14y ago

What employers and (especially) employees need to understand is "employees" are nothing more than long-term contractors, under a contract which provides certain "benefits" in lieu of cash money.

chives 14y ago

I would amend this statement (from the article): "The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech skills that companies want. It’s simple supply & demand. Their skills are generic business & have no coding / technical background. " to read: "The simple answer is: Those who want a job, don’t have the tech degrees and years of tech experience that companies want. It’s simple supply & demand." Anyone can learn how to code. Anyone can learn how to code well. The problem is learning technically skills would help you do a new job, but they wouldn't help you get one. Minimum requirements include tech degrees and years of technical experience in the field. Having project work helps, but if you can't meet the minimum requirements on experience and degrees, then it doesn't matter what your technical skills actually are. There are a small handful of companies that make an exception to this tradition, but as it turns out I would say they make up less than .01% of employers (of course this is a ballpark estimate, based on my personal experience, but I would invite anyone to pick out major employer that fits this category and is actively hiring). I also agree with michaelochurch regarding technical silos and just bad employer expectations in general.

dsandrowitz 14y ago

Decent points, but too simplistic an approach. The forces at play in the IT/tech job market are quite different than the rest of the labor market. And, while it might seem like the answer is to tell the rest of the country to act like techies (which has a million connotations), that is not a legit solution. We can't have a nation of coders all building their own stuff or working in companies to build stuff. Most people are not cut out to work in the industry and the methods, approaches, and mindsets that work in tech are not likely to translated successfully to other markets. As a society, we need to have a serious conversation about what to do with the millions of undereducated and low/moderately skilled workers who are simply losing jobs to technology, business process improvement, and productivity gains. Becoming techies isn't the answer, but focusing on moving more workers towards a "creation" based style of employment might be a reasonable start. A move toward local agriculture, a rise in trades and craftsmanship instead of overseas production, a re-examination of the wages and requirements for critical service industries like primary education and healthcare...that is where I'd focus energy instead. No, we don't need 190 million coders, but we could use more teachers, more nurses, more good plumbers, more people making high quality goods domestically, and a lot more people growing food that isn't shipped halfway across the planet or covered in a bioengineered chemical soup.