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The same forces that enable high tech salaries, also make layoffs more likely. - The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max

The same forces that enable high tech salaries, also make layoffs more likely. - The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max they can - The market for managers is also competitive. Creating dynamics that lead to larger teams and raises for team members - Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done The end result is that if companies are spending their max, if there's a shock to the market/system etc they have to cut. You'd see this less if there was more padding/ less competitive pressure/lower salaries. I think that's fine and the system is working as intended. People should be freed up to move to other roles where they can be productive. Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields.

njtransit 2y ago
A somewhat sensible take, but the issue isn’t just healthcare. A lot of your life is based off of long-term, fixed cost cash flow. E.g. you can’t pay less on your mortgage just because you got fired. Even with savings, getting laid off is highly disruptive, and, if done as part of a broader downturn in the market, you may never recover the required cash flow to enable your lifestyle.
- wbl 2y ago
  Avoid lifestyle creep! I have to say I'm bad at this myself: somehow it all adds up, while each individual expense doesn't look so bad.
  - dixie_land 2y ago
    Exactly, I feel a lot of my coworkers fell under this trap: if you need cashflow for mortgage on your 4m mansion in (affluent neighborhood), you can't really afford it.
    - Brystephor 2y ago
      The only mortgages that don't require cashflow are the paid off mortgages. Even if someone has a year of savings, or two years, or three, after that amount is drained, they need cash flow again. So how does one buy a house without being dependent on cash flow?
      - mulmen 2y ago
        Well the most obvious approach would be to pay cash. The more fiscally conservative option is to only borrow money if you have capital which is earning income at a higher rate than the mortgage. This probably necessitates having more capital than the house costs.
        xeromal 2y ago
        The problem with that is that unless you have an extremely well paying job or rich parents, you have to outsave inflation and rising house prices. You may never own. Getting a loan just locks you into an inflation proof price as a "forced" savings. I don't think it's realistic at all for 85% of Americans to save for a new house.
        mulmen 2y ago
        Yes, it’s a tragedy of the commons. That doesn’t make taking on a loan you can’t afford less of a bad idea. House prices are unaffordable because people take on loans they can’t afford. This reinforces the unaffordable prices. If milk was $40.00 a gallon you’d just stop putting it on cereal and eventually farmers get the message. Houses are the same thing. If you can’t comfortably afford a house then don’t buy it. You’re stuck renting or buying something more modest. This isn’t complicated. The idea that house prices can only go up is delusional. Nothing about a house is uniquely inflation proof or even inflation resistant. This isn’t the only investment vehicle available to you. This idea that houses are an important part of financial security is putting the cart in front of the horse. It leads to the NIMBYism that prevents additional supply from being built because prices must always go up. We all exist in the same economy and no action happens in a vacuum. When you buy something you have reduced supply and applied upward pressure on price. Individually this effect is so small it is immeasurable. In aggregate it isn’t.
  - GiorgioG 2y ago
    Can I avoid inflationcreep? How?
    - krambs 2y ago
      Index funds?
      - GiorgioG 2y ago
        I can't eat index funds.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I can't eat index funds You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your asset metric, buy long-lasting preserved foods.
        basiccalendar74 2y ago
        you can sell index funds and buy stuff. you will mostly be ahead of inflation.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I can't eat index funds You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your metric, buy army rations.
        Cthulhu_ 2y ago
        Army rations are much more expensive than human food though.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I don't know why we treat large stock portfolios as if it's a convinient savings account in these talks. My financial teachings were always emergency fund -> 3-6 months of savings immediately accessible -> consider stocks (hire a financial planner if you don't know stocks) -> consider asset management. your first foray into saving if you're barely spacing by isn't to rely on the S&P 500.
  - nickff 2y ago
    There are also different types of creep, some that you can easily stop, and others that are more difficult. Specifically, everything that involves a medium to long-term obligation (such as a mortgage or vehicle loan) can cause problems if you cannot sustain it through cashflow interruptions or significant declines. Going out to expensive restaurants and Broadway shows definitely costs a lot of money, but you can immediately stop them if you have money trouble.
    - chii 2y ago
      the problem with restaurants and broadway is that you've already spent the money on those things when the going is good, and can't claw it back retroactively when the going is bad. That's why a budget is necessary, and you plan for emergency (of which a layoff is one). Saving up for an emergency fund means you don't spend on luxury until it is saved, which means no broadway or restaurants (unless you're super highly paid, in which case it'd be quite fast).
    - ramblerman 2y ago
      You can still sell your house or car. The first potentially for more money. The restaurants and broadway shows are gone. I’m all for spending on experiences btw. But you have it backwards financially.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        Car market is crazy these past few years, but the common wisdom is "your car loses worth the moment it leaves the lot". and it is probably still an essential so you can ensure cash flow. It's more expensive making a bad bet with a beater and spending hundreds keeping it running. And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely.
        gruez 2y ago
        >And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely. ...not to mention that if you're losing your job and can't find a new one readily, chances are you're in an economic calamity and you'll be selling near the bottom.
  - dvngnt_ 2y ago
    like kids?
  - majani 2y ago
    One thing I've come to realize is that the larger your social circle, the more prone you are to comparisons and hence lifestyle creep. You can see this where the careers that involve a lot of socializing (sales, entertainment, law, finance etc) are known for having flashy people. And the careers that you can do as a loner (programming, quant, researcher etc) are known for having miserly folk
  - neves 2y ago
    This is somewhat a crazy advice. Shouldn't you have a spouse or children or a house that could have their live disrupted if you need to move jobs?
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      and thus why no one is having kids
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      I bought a house than costs 3.5x my salary. I lose my job I can still pay mortgage from savings.
- jes5199 2y ago
  honestly this is one of the reasons I prefer pre-IPO companies, my salary is lower until they do a buyback or an exit, but it ends up basically in the same place over the long term. This is how I was able to put a downpayment on a house without consciously "saving up" for it. Obviously there's some risk but I've had two buybacks, one IPO, and two acquisitions since 2012
- lazide 2y ago
  Just wait until you have to deal with child support and imputed income. Getting fired/laid off is about the only thing that can save you.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Can't relate, dating market is somehow worse than the job market.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Oh believe me, after the experience I’m talking about, the last thing you’ll want to do is date. At least, anyone who can find out where you live. Maybe disappear into the woods, or change countries. Or self delete.
- midhhhthrow 2y ago
  This why we need the tiny home movement combined with progressive property taxes - 0 prop tax bracket for lowest 20% property values If you have mortgage then you don’t really own your house.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Seems like this would hurt those laid off here. They are probably in the top 20% of property values. That said, I think it is a pretty bad idea. Use of public funds dont increase with property value, it just means you have deeper pockets. I would be more in favor of flat taxes on homes independent of value, so people pay their fair share for community resources consumed.
  - Carrok 2y ago
    Tiny homes are great! Provided you have no family, and no hobbies.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Tiny homes like the coffin homes of overpopulated cities, you mean? Or tiny homes like the luxury single occupant container buildings on a bit of land? Tiny homes are not the solution, they are hipster semi-cottage-core fashion homes. You're probably thinking of regular apartments, but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed. Build ten million apartments (for starters) and the cost of living will go down. Satisfy / saturate the market first, then think of gentrifying with fashion homes.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed. crabs in a bucket. Those who got in and got theirs don't want their property value falling. Americans treating housing as a stock instead of a necessary resource for living really ruined a lot of the dynamic of city planning.
- enugu 2y ago
  There seems to be an analogy to servers being capable enough for usual demand(income>spending), but fails due to some downtime for some servers(out of a job) or peak loads(medical emergency). This can be amortized by having data centers serving multiple apps(social security, insurance - but they dont always exist). One main fault in the analogy is that in an economic crisis, there is a vicious cycle of income loss which leads to lower demand leading to more lost jobs. This coordination failure can be handled by fiscal/monetary policy. Whereas server failure, even when widespread due to a virus doesn't happen recursively like that.
sokoloff 2y ago
> bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired That doesn't seem the least bit weird to me. If I choose to leave a job (or relationship), I could quite sensibly feel differently if that same job (or relationship) chooses to leave me.
miningape 2y ago
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. Really? You think its weird that someone leaving impacts that person more than their manager, team, or company? A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. When someone is layed off or fired they have to go find a new job, their income streams dry up, and are forced to rely on savings. People often have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing. Are you fucking kidding me? "Which is a bit weird" I'll tell you what's weird: management who doesn't understand that their employees rely on them more than they rely on the employee. Of course its fine when someone chooses to leave their job, they've made contingencies and planned around it. Whether it's through savings, another job, or the lottery, people have at least some idea of their plan when they leave a job.
- Goronmon 2y ago
  A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. Yeah, I'm curious how someone can have an opinions on workplaces and workers and not seem to have personal experience with the subject, especially in a community like this. Do they just come from a wealthy family so the stance is "Getting fired isn't a big deal, just ask your dad to cover expenses until your next job."?
  - mrthrowaway999 2y ago
    Don't people have savings? Don't people see what's happening in the industry and make sure to have 6+ months of savings? Don't people think that putting away a small portion of their immense tech salary would be a healthy thing to do?
    - muffinman26 2y ago
      If you grew up with even the slightest feeling of financial insecurity, dipping in to savings can already feel like the end of the world. I can't imagine living with only 6 months of savings. There's no guarantee that I could find another job in 6 months, and unexpected expenses (medical, car trouble, housing repairs) can easily wipe out a month of savings anyway. In fact, given that a layoff means likely also an economic downturn, finding a job at the same salary within 6 months seems highly unlikely. I have probably 3 years of no-risk savings at this point, have managed to reduce my living expenses to the point where I could work a 40-hour minimum wage job and still pay for my expenses, and have multiple back-up careers, and I'm only now starting to feel that taking money out of savings is an acceptable risk. That took years of frugal living on a high tech salary. People in their first few years at a tech job or with families will probably never achieve that.
desbo 2y ago
The idea that someone's response to being fired should be the same as a manager's response to one of their reports quitting is hilariously out of touch.
- ironmagma 2y ago
  It kind of ignores the core asymmetry of capitalism, that those with the capital are the ones with the power. Nobody can do a background check on a company to see who they laid off or fired before they work there.
  - nradov 2y ago
    What do you mean? Information about previous layoffs is all over the news, social media, and dedicated sites like Glassdoor. Only a fool or someone really desperate would take a job without doing a thorough background check on the company first. And while I sympathize with workers who have to take whatever job they can get, that doesn't apply to most HN users.
    - ironmagma 2y ago
      Glassdoor itself encourages users not to post anything factual, only opinion-based, because of the legal consequences [1]. Glassdoor is more like a Google business review than a background check anyway. Also your estimation of HN users is probably out of date with the current state of the employment market. [1] https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Tips-on-writing-a-review-to-avoid-defamation?language=en_US https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Tips-on-writing-a-revie...
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        WARN notices are public. > your estimation of HN users is probably out of date with the current state of the employment market You're probably not around start-ups if layoffs are a top concern.
        2y ago
not_your_vase 2y ago
> high tech salaries Are they really high? They are not that different from UPS driver salaries. Just the other day I clicked on the website of some random law firm's career page. I wasn't happy with what I saw (in the context of my own career). Some researchers with 1 year of experience with starting salary of 450k+... tech salaries look high as long as you don't check other professions.
- stoniejohnson 2y ago
  They were high in 2013.
  - stoniejohnson 2y ago
    Revisited this, and while it was tongue-in-cheek, it feels a bit ungrateful. A lot of tech roles are intellectually stimulating and have a wage in the upper distribution of salaries. I think we have a very nice situation going for us.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - not_your_vase 2y ago
      Make sure you don't see the paycheck of your boss, who never wrote a single line of code, but has some bullshit MBA.
      - stoniejohnson 2y ago
        If you're always looking up but never looking down it becomes hard to appreciate things.
- ZephyrBlu 2y ago
  This doesn't really make sense. What is a "researcher" at a law firm? Lawyers at top firms are on fixed pay schedules, starting at 180k as a 1st year going up to something like 450k after 8yrs (?). Tech is high earning. It gets beat out by high finance and partner-level roles in e.g. law though. If someone is earning 450k in their first year it's probably similar to a quant finance role.
mulmen 2y ago
> Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of “productivity metrics” but I have never actually seen one. E: I realize this is a poor choice of words after saying productivity metrics don’t exist. What I mean is my tasks are easier to complete in a WFH environment than they are in an office. I have been far more productive from home. The constraints around communication necessitate effective documentation which enables asynchronous communication which alleviates scheduling challenges which improves delivery. Maybe managers need to go in to the office to rub elbows but ICs definitely don’t.
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >I have been far more productive from home. Same. It's been a boon for me, and I genuinely enjoy my work, so it's win win. But anecdotally, I know people who abuse it. On net, remote work is a plus: less commute, less pollution etc etc. And even the abusers, it's not like those people were highly productive in the office, I'm sure.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Ok but how do you know they are abusers? And what is the net effect?
- gruez 2y ago
  >Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of “productivity metrics” but I have never actually seen one. see: https://archive.is/CKGbV https://archive.is/CKGbV
progbits 2y ago
> remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done If you can't tell remote employees are slacking then you also can't tell if they are slacking in the office, you are just getting fooled by thinking presence implies work. So tired of hearing this "argument".
ghaff 2y ago
There's also COBRA, and the exchanges in the US. Frankly, even if you're eligible for Medicare it really isn't any cheaper if you're a current or recent high earner. But, in any case, it's about $7K/year for an individual who doesn't otherwise have coverage for a spouse etc.
pc86 2y ago
> There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net There is, it's called Medicaid.
- slater 2y ago
  They said reasonable, not "endlessly-patched-up nonsense that conservatives want to gut at every turn"
  - pc86 2y ago
    I feel like "Medicaid could be better" is a statement everyone can agree on, but my point stands that the meme that US healthcare is some Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where you're completely on your own and left to die in the street is categorically false. Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay.
    - slater 2y ago
      > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay. Yes, because that's the law. Then they hand you an exorbitant bill on the way out, which you can't pay. Then you get hounded by collections. Then your credit score tanks. etc. etc. etc. Not everything is a direct line, the end result is the same.
    - jjav 2y ago
      > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay. This is not true. Emergency rooms are required to take you in and stabilize your situation even if you can't pay. Everything else is not available if you can't pay. Think of something like cancer, which an emergency room can't treat since it develops over time. You will indeed be left to die on the streets if you don't have the money or coverage from somewhere.
- jedberg 2y ago
  That's not really a solution. You have to be broke to use Medicaid. They expect you to fully drain all your assets first. I shouldn't have to sell my house to get medical care.
teractiveodular 2y ago
FYI, Dropbox does not merely allow remote work, it's a fully remote-first company. There's a couple of offices for get-togethers and a few people physically staffing data centers, but everybody else works wherever they want to.
marcosdumay 2y ago
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. That's because people have a single employer, while companies have several employees. That's also why employees are protected, while companies are mostly not. And yeah, the US doubles down on the problem by linking health insurance with the job.
deeviant 2y ago
> Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done Do you mind expanding on this? How does remote work change the standards of how much work somebody has to get down?
Powdering7082 2y ago
Being able to stay in the country is also tied to employment for plenty of people
bruckie 2y ago
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. When you leave, your manager loses 1/N of team productivity. When you get fired, you lose 100% of your income. I bet the manager would be more upset if the entire team quit. But even then, they'd still have their job—for a while, at least.
- BobbyJo 2y ago
  Yeah, the stakes for the two sides of that transaction are completely different, so equivocating rational responses on either side makes no sense. OP lost me there.
- nradov 2y ago
  Eventually we all get fired. It shouldn't come as a shock. This is why people working in volatile industries subject to boom/bust cycles should live below their means and keep at least several months of living expenses (including health insurance premiums) in low-risk, liquid investments. I do understand that it can be challenging to save for young people with student debt starting out in a HCOL area. But I see older tech workers who ought to know better buying luxury cars and fancy gaming PCs and taking exotic vacations. Good luck to them when the next recession hits.
  - trod123 2y ago
    > Eventually ... Yes, but the problems start in severe economic crises. Specifically, when those several months turn into years. Many filters during the hiring process, prior to interview will discard those candidates who have gaps since last employment regardless of circumstance. They may use AI as a third-party company to review and obscure the fact that they aren't hiring anyone over 40, female, or otherwise protected classes but that is what is happening regularly, along with other elements such as degrees being weighted higher than experience algorithmically. > I do understand ... I can tell you from personal experience, this opinion of yours isn't reflective of the whole. I've been in Tech for a decade, I was unlucky and was laid off before the major lay offs (2022) as I was involved in workforce reduction for a buyout merger. I've been looking ever since, and I've had to find work elsewhere in the interim once my reserves were expended. I was extremely frugal, cooking everything myself, nothing luxurious. Inflation destroyed my reserves, the lack of jobs forced me to look wider than my given profession since there are no jobs, and I had more saved than most (>50k in liquid reserves at the start). This isn't some recession like before. This is a great depression, potentially a big debt crises like Germany pre-WW2. 70% of my professional network in IT/Tech right now, across the board, is out of work. I'll let that sink in. 70%. We are at peak hiring for seasonal hiring and unemployment is 7.0% in August? Hiring freezes guarantee this will be double digits by the annual count. National unemployment is 1.5%. That's a 4.6x national distortion between the national average unemployment and one sector that impacts everything else as a labor multiplier, and that measurement only counts those currently getting unemployment, any long-term displacement outside 18 weeks isn't counted. Its looking more like we're in the middle of an economic collapse, which makes sense if you know about ponzi's, economics of boom-bust cycles, and how we are entering a bust cycle related to the petrodollar agreement abandonment (by the Saudi's); all those dollars printed for abroad use are now flowing back to compete with the same goods despite high interest rates. BRICS largely isn't about attacking the US economically, its about sheltering from the global economic fallout of fiat money printing, for more than half a century. The bankers are and have been doing this to us since before we were born, and this happens every time large fractions of global assets get concentrated into few hands. Its cyclical. Large market-share companies are funded by preferential loans made by those same bankers. This is how you sieve wealth and marketshare, then drive prices up, and eventually end in deflation or hyper-inflationary collapse, because unlike normal systems economics is both sticky psychologically, and mathematically chaotic (3-body-problem). There is no beautiful deleveraging, the bill always comes due. If this worsens, and I don't see how it cannot, this will be known by the survivors as the folly of one big generation.
frmersdog 2y ago
It comes down to the concentration of wealth. Companies wouldn't have the capital to bid up salaries if they faced stiffer competition or couldn't access investment from a limited pool of investors (who all think the same), as is the case now. I know that "diversity" is a dirty word these days, but it's key. A large middle class, where each family has a small amount of money to put towards their diverse desires, is going to lead to a more stable economy than all of the money pooled in the hands of a small group with a much smaller set of needs. Dropbox should never have been able to hire so many people; that capital should have been in the hands of the larger public, who could have spent it supporting a more diverse set of hundreds or thousands of jobs (who wouldn't all be competing with each other for a limited number of seats in the "not laid off" lifeboat). Put simply, these kinds of things are going to keep happening until our wealthiest (individuals/families/companies) are a lot less rich.
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> The market for talent is competitive. A couple months ago interviewing.io posted something bragging about how "we do anonymous mock interviews. If people perform well in those interviews, they get introduced directly to a decision-maker at top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper." ( https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-meritocracy-but-all-the-recent-anti-dei-rhetoric-is-bad https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-meritocracy-but-all-the-... ) This annoyed me enough that I sent in an email complaining that their introduction process specifically notes that I am not eligible for anything, despite performance measured by the site as "highest ever achieved: 94th percentile" (so, knock that down a bit for being a high water mark), because of an insufficient number of years of experience. They responded: > It really sucks, especially in this market, but this policy is a function of us having tried for years to get companies to take junior intros, and it didn't work. We offered to do it completely for free, too, fwiw, and no dice. How competitive is the market for talent? Let's stipulate that, because of a lack of prior employment, I'm not qualified to have a job. How exactly would that situation change?
- leeny 2y ago
  Founder of interviewing.io here. Clarification: Just because companies don't want a 3rd party like us providing them with junior candidates, it doesn't mean they don't want them. Even back in 2017-2019, when the market was booming, we couldn't get employers to take our juniors... because they generally have their own robust pipeline. So the solution is to go to companies directly, rather than relying on a 3rd party service like ours, which companies tend to use specifically for roles they can't fill on their own.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    I'm not really sure what you're saying here. My point was that the market for talent is not particularly competitive, with the opinion of interviewing.io given as an illustration of that. You seem to be confirming that the market for talent isn't competitive - in your view, companies have more applications than they want. Or maybe you're going for a different point? For the suggestion, my experience is that companies won't consider direct applications either, and in the general case do not ever even list junior positions. (An observation which is not unique to me; see e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/from-my-email-on-the-market-for-programmers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/fr... ) If you're worried that I'm implicitly slamming interviewing.io for claiming to do something very different than what they actually do, I don't think you've rebutted that - "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies as long as we think their resume looks good" isn't particularly similar to "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper".
midhhhthrow 2y ago
Healthcare attached to employment makes no sense ina world where people constantly need to switch jobs
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. How is this weird? Your take is like the famous saying about the chicken and the pig both contributing equally to the egg and ham sandwich.
trod123 2y ago
I disagree with your conclusion, you have several flawed premises. The market has been slowly shrinking into fewer and fewer hands over time, which is why it has become more competitive over time. This has also led to cooperative behavior among the large marketshare companies in the sectors to disadvantage competitors, and employees. Companies do not bid up to the max they can, because the executives take their cut first. The companies bids can only ever be the max of what is left after that, and varies by the greed of those people. Interest rates would be the shock you described, but Tech unemployment as far as I can tell has until now been bulletproof, and uncorrelated with interest rate rises or falls. Its not rational to assume this market shock is a result of interest rates, AI is the only competitive alternative. The issue is not that you're getting fired. Its that you can no longer get base goods needed for survival arbitrarily and without notice, and without capital reserves which are finite you are living on the street. When the entire market as an entirety is contracting, there are no new jobs to move to in other fields. Worse, the concentrated market is naturally incentivized to impose high costs on any job seekers to interfere in labor relations to create barriers to entry for competitors while suppressing wages for prospective workers. This natural progression occurs when anti-trust fails, and money printing makes it worse potentially leading to either deflation (a collapse to non-market socialism) or hyper-inflation (a collapse to non-market socialism). Debt issued as preferential loans from a money-printer makes a company state-dependent/controlled apparatus even if its claim is that it is held privately. The economy today is worse than 2008, much worse then the dotcom bust, and if you plot the trend with good data going back and starting around the 1970s, the trend shows progressive ruin as time passes, with seiving and consolidation occurring regularly. That is the force driving this problem, and it doesn't enable tech salaries. > There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn. There is a limit to what government can provide, it takes awhile to get to those limits (we're in a super-cycle going back to the 1920s) but we'll be there in the next 5-10 years thanks in large part to deficit spending and the FED picking winners and losers. The main issues with academia also applies to government. They are structurally the same. Education today is not about learning skills, that is always secondary to instilling the qualities a loyal unthinking worker. That is what the entire prussian-model of schooling is about (which is what we have in this country). These structures for training follow the same structure as guild socialism, and the same intractable failures (ref Mises for related details). It inevitably ends up being a cult of qualification, where you are automatically considered unqualified without a piece of paper even if you have the actual skills to do the job. Once a target market size is identified and reached, new candidates are put on an endless escalator of suffering with arbitrary filters/requirements where the claimed outcome is nothing but an unobtainable pipe dream.
raydev 2y ago
> weird how people feel so differently when they get fired It's weird that the average person working these jobs has bills to pay, and perhaps additional family members to care for?
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. No the issue is that I get fired after the prior townhall saying "we are not doing layoffs". Companies will outright lie to get little ounces of productivity and treat you like a criminal the moment they break the news, as if we're all school shooters waiting to happen in anger and rage over betrayal. The circus of the 2023/2024 job market doesn't help either. Even pre-pandemic the process was padded, but now I'm not even convinced 80% of companies have a human reading my resume. >There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields. I'd rather not "hit hard times" while shareholders are making a killing and make a conclustion that my entire career needs to shuffle so they can save pennies.

njtransit 2y ago

A somewhat sensible take, but the issue isn’t just healthcare. A lot of your life is based off of long-term, fixed cost cash flow. E.g. you can’t pay less on your mortgage just because you got fired. Even with savings, getting laid off is highly disruptive, and, if done as part of a broader downturn in the market, you may never recover the required cash flow to enable your lifestyle.

wbl 2y ago
Avoid lifestyle creep! I have to say I'm bad at this myself: somehow it all adds up, while each individual expense doesn't look so bad.
- dixie_land 2y ago
  Exactly, I feel a lot of my coworkers fell under this trap: if you need cashflow for mortgage on your 4m mansion in (affluent neighborhood), you can't really afford it.
  - Brystephor 2y ago
    The only mortgages that don't require cashflow are the paid off mortgages. Even if someone has a year of savings, or two years, or three, after that amount is drained, they need cash flow again. So how does one buy a house without being dependent on cash flow?
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Well the most obvious approach would be to pay cash. The more fiscally conservative option is to only borrow money if you have capital which is earning income at a higher rate than the mortgage. This probably necessitates having more capital than the house costs.
      - xeromal 2y ago
        The problem with that is that unless you have an extremely well paying job or rich parents, you have to outsave inflation and rising house prices. You may never own. Getting a loan just locks you into an inflation proof price as a "forced" savings. I don't think it's realistic at all for 85% of Americans to save for a new house.
        mulmen 2y ago
        Yes, it’s a tragedy of the commons. That doesn’t make taking on a loan you can’t afford less of a bad idea. House prices are unaffordable because people take on loans they can’t afford. This reinforces the unaffordable prices. If milk was $40.00 a gallon you’d just stop putting it on cereal and eventually farmers get the message. Houses are the same thing. If you can’t comfortably afford a house then don’t buy it. You’re stuck renting or buying something more modest. This isn’t complicated. The idea that house prices can only go up is delusional. Nothing about a house is uniquely inflation proof or even inflation resistant. This isn’t the only investment vehicle available to you. This idea that houses are an important part of financial security is putting the cart in front of the horse. It leads to the NIMBYism that prevents additional supply from being built because prices must always go up. We all exist in the same economy and no action happens in a vacuum. When you buy something you have reduced supply and applied upward pressure on price. Individually this effect is so small it is immeasurable. In aggregate it isn’t.
- GiorgioG 2y ago
  Can I avoid inflationcreep? How?
  - krambs 2y ago
    Index funds?
    - GiorgioG 2y ago
      I can't eat index funds.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I can't eat index funds You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your asset metric, buy long-lasting preserved foods.
      - basiccalendar74 2y ago
        you can sell index funds and buy stuff. you will mostly be ahead of inflation.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > I can't eat index funds You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your metric, buy army rations.
        Cthulhu_ 2y ago
        Army rations are much more expensive than human food though.
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        I don't know why we treat large stock portfolios as if it's a convinient savings account in these talks. My financial teachings were always emergency fund -> 3-6 months of savings immediately accessible -> consider stocks (hire a financial planner if you don't know stocks) -> consider asset management. your first foray into saving if you're barely spacing by isn't to rely on the S&P 500.
- nickff 2y ago
  There are also different types of creep, some that you can easily stop, and others that are more difficult. Specifically, everything that involves a medium to long-term obligation (such as a mortgage or vehicle loan) can cause problems if you cannot sustain it through cashflow interruptions or significant declines. Going out to expensive restaurants and Broadway shows definitely costs a lot of money, but you can immediately stop them if you have money trouble.
  - chii 2y ago
    the problem with restaurants and broadway is that you've already spent the money on those things when the going is good, and can't claw it back retroactively when the going is bad. That's why a budget is necessary, and you plan for emergency (of which a layoff is one). Saving up for an emergency fund means you don't spend on luxury until it is saved, which means no broadway or restaurants (unless you're super highly paid, in which case it'd be quite fast).
  - ramblerman 2y ago
    You can still sell your house or car. The first potentially for more money. The restaurants and broadway shows are gone. I’m all for spending on experiences btw. But you have it backwards financially.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      Car market is crazy these past few years, but the common wisdom is "your car loses worth the moment it leaves the lot". and it is probably still an essential so you can ensure cash flow. It's more expensive making a bad bet with a beater and spending hundreds keeping it running. And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely. ...not to mention that if you're losing your job and can't find a new one readily, chances are you're in an economic calamity and you'll be selling near the bottom.
- dvngnt_ 2y ago
  like kids?
- majani 2y ago
  One thing I've come to realize is that the larger your social circle, the more prone you are to comparisons and hence lifestyle creep. You can see this where the careers that involve a lot of socializing (sales, entertainment, law, finance etc) are known for having flashy people. And the careers that you can do as a loner (programming, quant, researcher etc) are known for having miserly folk
- neves 2y ago
  This is somewhat a crazy advice. Shouldn't you have a spouse or children or a house that could have their live disrupted if you need to move jobs?
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    and thus why no one is having kids
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    I bought a house than costs 3.5x my salary. I lose my job I can still pay mortgage from savings.
jes5199 2y ago
honestly this is one of the reasons I prefer pre-IPO companies, my salary is lower until they do a buyback or an exit, but it ends up basically in the same place over the long term. This is how I was able to put a downpayment on a house without consciously "saving up" for it. Obviously there's some risk but I've had two buybacks, one IPO, and two acquisitions since 2012
lazide 2y ago
Just wait until you have to deal with child support and imputed income. Getting fired/laid off is about the only thing that can save you.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Can't relate, dating market is somehow worse than the job market.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Oh believe me, after the experience I’m talking about, the last thing you’ll want to do is date. At least, anyone who can find out where you live. Maybe disappear into the woods, or change countries. Or self delete.
midhhhthrow 2y ago
This why we need the tiny home movement combined with progressive property taxes - 0 prop tax bracket for lowest 20% property values If you have mortgage then you don’t really own your house.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Seems like this would hurt those laid off here. They are probably in the top 20% of property values. That said, I think it is a pretty bad idea. Use of public funds dont increase with property value, it just means you have deeper pockets. I would be more in favor of flat taxes on homes independent of value, so people pay their fair share for community resources consumed.
- Carrok 2y ago
  Tiny homes are great! Provided you have no family, and no hobbies.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Tiny homes like the coffin homes of overpopulated cities, you mean? Or tiny homes like the luxury single occupant container buildings on a bit of land? Tiny homes are not the solution, they are hipster semi-cottage-core fashion homes. You're probably thinking of regular apartments, but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed. Build ten million apartments (for starters) and the cost of living will go down. Satisfy / saturate the market first, then think of gentrifying with fashion homes.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed. crabs in a bucket. Those who got in and got theirs don't want their property value falling. Americans treating housing as a stock instead of a necessary resource for living really ruined a lot of the dynamic of city planning.
enugu 2y ago
There seems to be an analogy to servers being capable enough for usual demand(income>spending), but fails due to some downtime for some servers(out of a job) or peak loads(medical emergency). This can be amortized by having data centers serving multiple apps(social security, insurance - but they dont always exist). One main fault in the analogy is that in an economic crisis, there is a vicious cycle of income loss which leads to lower demand leading to more lost jobs. This coordination failure can be handled by fiscal/monetary policy. Whereas server failure, even when widespread due to a virus doesn't happen recursively like that.

sokoloff 2y ago

> bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired That doesn't seem the least bit weird to me. If I choose to leave a job (or relationship), I could quite sensibly feel differently if that same job (or relationship) chooses to leave me.

miningape 2y ago

> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. Really? You think its weird that someone leaving impacts that person more than their manager, team, or company? A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. When someone is layed off or fired they have to go find a new job, their income streams dry up, and are forced to rely on savings. People often have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing. Are you fucking kidding me? "Which is a bit weird" I'll tell you what's weird: management who doesn't understand that their employees rely on them more than they rely on the employee. Of course its fine when someone chooses to leave their job, they've made contingencies and planned around it. Whether it's through savings, another job, or the lottery, people have at least some idea of their plan when they leave a job.

Goronmon 2y ago
A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. Yeah, I'm curious how someone can have an opinions on workplaces and workers and not seem to have personal experience with the subject, especially in a community like this. Do they just come from a wealthy family so the stance is "Getting fired isn't a big deal, just ask your dad to cover expenses until your next job."?
- mrthrowaway999 2y ago
  Don't people have savings? Don't people see what's happening in the industry and make sure to have 6+ months of savings? Don't people think that putting away a small portion of their immense tech salary would be a healthy thing to do?
  - muffinman26 2y ago
    If you grew up with even the slightest feeling of financial insecurity, dipping in to savings can already feel like the end of the world. I can't imagine living with only 6 months of savings. There's no guarantee that I could find another job in 6 months, and unexpected expenses (medical, car trouble, housing repairs) can easily wipe out a month of savings anyway. In fact, given that a layoff means likely also an economic downturn, finding a job at the same salary within 6 months seems highly unlikely. I have probably 3 years of no-risk savings at this point, have managed to reduce my living expenses to the point where I could work a 40-hour minimum wage job and still pay for my expenses, and have multiple back-up careers, and I'm only now starting to feel that taking money out of savings is an acceptable risk. That took years of frugal living on a high tech salary. People in their first few years at a tech job or with families will probably never achieve that.

desbo 2y ago

The idea that someone's response to being fired should be the same as a manager's response to one of their reports quitting is hilariously out of touch.

ironmagma 2y ago
It kind of ignores the core asymmetry of capitalism, that those with the capital are the ones with the power. Nobody can do a background check on a company to see who they laid off or fired before they work there.
- nradov 2y ago
  What do you mean? Information about previous layoffs is all over the news, social media, and dedicated sites like Glassdoor. Only a fool or someone really desperate would take a job without doing a thorough background check on the company first. And while I sympathize with workers who have to take whatever job they can get, that doesn't apply to most HN users.
  - ironmagma 2y ago
    Glassdoor itself encourages users not to post anything factual, only opinion-based, because of the legal consequences [1]. Glassdoor is more like a Google business review than a background check anyway. Also your estimation of HN users is probably out of date with the current state of the employment market. [1] https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Tips-on-writing-a-review-to-avoid-defamation?language=en_US https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Tips-on-writing-a-revie...
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      WARN notices are public. > your estimation of HN users is probably out of date with the current state of the employment market You're probably not around start-ups if layoffs are a top concern.
      - 2y ago

not_your_vase 2y ago

> high tech salaries Are they really high? They are not that different from UPS driver salaries. Just the other day I clicked on the website of some random law firm's career page. I wasn't happy with what I saw (in the context of my own career). Some researchers with 1 year of experience with starting salary of 450k+... tech salaries look high as long as you don't check other professions.

stoniejohnson 2y ago
They were high in 2013.
- stoniejohnson 2y ago
  Revisited this, and while it was tongue-in-cheek, it feels a bit ungrateful. A lot of tech roles are intellectually stimulating and have a wage in the upper distribution of salaries. I think we have a very nice situation going for us.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - not_your_vase 2y ago
    Make sure you don't see the paycheck of your boss, who never wrote a single line of code, but has some bullshit MBA.
    - stoniejohnson 2y ago
      If you're always looking up but never looking down it becomes hard to appreciate things.
ZephyrBlu 2y ago
This doesn't really make sense. What is a "researcher" at a law firm? Lawyers at top firms are on fixed pay schedules, starting at 180k as a 1st year going up to something like 450k after 8yrs (?). Tech is high earning. It gets beat out by high finance and partner-level roles in e.g. law though. If someone is earning 450k in their first year it's probably similar to a quant finance role.

mulmen 2y ago

> Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of “productivity metrics” but I have never actually seen one. E: I realize this is a poor choice of words after saying productivity metrics don’t exist. What I mean is my tasks are easier to complete in a WFH environment than they are in an office. I have been far more productive from home. The constraints around communication necessitate effective documentation which enables asynchronous communication which alleviates scheduling challenges which improves delivery. Maybe managers need to go in to the office to rub elbows but ICs definitely don’t.

itsoktocry 2y ago
>I have been far more productive from home. Same. It's been a boon for me, and I genuinely enjoy my work, so it's win win. But anecdotally, I know people who abuse it. On net, remote work is a plus: less commute, less pollution etc etc. And even the abusers, it's not like those people were highly productive in the office, I'm sure.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Ok but how do you know they are abusers? And what is the net effect?
gruez 2y ago
>Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of “productivity metrics” but I have never actually seen one. see: https://archive.is/CKGbV https://archive.is/CKGbV

progbits 2y ago

> remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done If you can't tell remote employees are slacking then you also can't tell if they are slacking in the office, you are just getting fooled by thinking presence implies work. So tired of hearing this "argument".

ghaff 2y ago

There's also COBRA, and the exchanges in the US. Frankly, even if you're eligible for Medicare it really isn't any cheaper if you're a current or recent high earner. But, in any case, it's about $7K/year for an individual who doesn't otherwise have coverage for a spouse etc.

pc86 2y ago

> There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net There is, it's called Medicaid.

slater 2y ago
They said reasonable, not "endlessly-patched-up nonsense that conservatives want to gut at every turn"
- pc86 2y ago
  I feel like "Medicaid could be better" is a statement everyone can agree on, but my point stands that the meme that US healthcare is some Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where you're completely on your own and left to die in the street is categorically false. Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay.
  - slater 2y ago
    > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay. Yes, because that's the law. Then they hand you an exorbitant bill on the way out, which you can't pay. Then you get hounded by collections. Then your credit score tanks. etc. etc. etc. Not everything is a direct line, the end result is the same.
  - jjav 2y ago
    > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay. This is not true. Emergency rooms are required to take you in and stabilize your situation even if you can't pay. Everything else is not available if you can't pay. Think of something like cancer, which an emergency room can't treat since it develops over time. You will indeed be left to die on the streets if you don't have the money or coverage from somewhere.
jedberg 2y ago
That's not really a solution. You have to be broke to use Medicaid. They expect you to fully drain all your assets first. I shouldn't have to sell my house to get medical care.

teractiveodular 2y ago

FYI, Dropbox does not merely allow remote work, it's a fully remote-first company. There's a couple of offices for get-togethers and a few people physically staffing data centers, but everybody else works wherever they want to.

marcosdumay 2y ago

> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. That's because people have a single employer, while companies have several employees. That's also why employees are protected, while companies are mostly not. And yeah, the US doubles down on the problem by linking health insurance with the job.

deeviant 2y ago

> Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done Do you mind expanding on this? How does remote work change the standards of how much work somebody has to get down?

Powdering7082 2y ago

Being able to stay in the country is also tied to employment for plenty of people

bruckie 2y ago

> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. When you leave, your manager loses 1/N of team productivity. When you get fired, you lose 100% of your income. I bet the manager would be more upset if the entire team quit. But even then, they'd still have their job—for a while, at least.

BobbyJo 2y ago
Yeah, the stakes for the two sides of that transaction are completely different, so equivocating rational responses on either side makes no sense. OP lost me there.
nradov 2y ago
Eventually we all get fired. It shouldn't come as a shock. This is why people working in volatile industries subject to boom/bust cycles should live below their means and keep at least several months of living expenses (including health insurance premiums) in low-risk, liquid investments. I do understand that it can be challenging to save for young people with student debt starting out in a HCOL area. But I see older tech workers who ought to know better buying luxury cars and fancy gaming PCs and taking exotic vacations. Good luck to them when the next recession hits.
- trod123 2y ago
  > Eventually ... Yes, but the problems start in severe economic crises. Specifically, when those several months turn into years. Many filters during the hiring process, prior to interview will discard those candidates who have gaps since last employment regardless of circumstance. They may use AI as a third-party company to review and obscure the fact that they aren't hiring anyone over 40, female, or otherwise protected classes but that is what is happening regularly, along with other elements such as degrees being weighted higher than experience algorithmically. > I do understand ... I can tell you from personal experience, this opinion of yours isn't reflective of the whole. I've been in Tech for a decade, I was unlucky and was laid off before the major lay offs (2022) as I was involved in workforce reduction for a buyout merger. I've been looking ever since, and I've had to find work elsewhere in the interim once my reserves were expended. I was extremely frugal, cooking everything myself, nothing luxurious. Inflation destroyed my reserves, the lack of jobs forced me to look wider than my given profession since there are no jobs, and I had more saved than most (>50k in liquid reserves at the start). This isn't some recession like before. This is a great depression, potentially a big debt crises like Germany pre-WW2. 70% of my professional network in IT/Tech right now, across the board, is out of work. I'll let that sink in. 70%. We are at peak hiring for seasonal hiring and unemployment is 7.0% in August? Hiring freezes guarantee this will be double digits by the annual count. National unemployment is 1.5%. That's a 4.6x national distortion between the national average unemployment and one sector that impacts everything else as a labor multiplier, and that measurement only counts those currently getting unemployment, any long-term displacement outside 18 weeks isn't counted. Its looking more like we're in the middle of an economic collapse, which makes sense if you know about ponzi's, economics of boom-bust cycles, and how we are entering a bust cycle related to the petrodollar agreement abandonment (by the Saudi's); all those dollars printed for abroad use are now flowing back to compete with the same goods despite high interest rates. BRICS largely isn't about attacking the US economically, its about sheltering from the global economic fallout of fiat money printing, for more than half a century. The bankers are and have been doing this to us since before we were born, and this happens every time large fractions of global assets get concentrated into few hands. Its cyclical. Large market-share companies are funded by preferential loans made by those same bankers. This is how you sieve wealth and marketshare, then drive prices up, and eventually end in deflation or hyper-inflationary collapse, because unlike normal systems economics is both sticky psychologically, and mathematically chaotic (3-body-problem). There is no beautiful deleveraging, the bill always comes due. If this worsens, and I don't see how it cannot, this will be known by the survivors as the folly of one big generation.

frmersdog 2y ago

It comes down to the concentration of wealth. Companies wouldn't have the capital to bid up salaries if they faced stiffer competition or couldn't access investment from a limited pool of investors (who all think the same), as is the case now. I know that "diversity" is a dirty word these days, but it's key. A large middle class, where each family has a small amount of money to put towards their diverse desires, is going to lead to a more stable economy than all of the money pooled in the hands of a small group with a much smaller set of needs. Dropbox should never have been able to hire so many people; that capital should have been in the hands of the larger public, who could have spent it supporting a more diverse set of hundreds or thousands of jobs (who wouldn't all be competing with each other for a limited number of seats in the "not laid off" lifeboat). Put simply, these kinds of things are going to keep happening until our wealthiest (individuals/families/companies) are a lot less rich.

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> The market for talent is competitive. A couple months ago interviewing.io posted something bragging about how "we do anonymous mock interviews. If people perform well in those interviews, they get introduced directly to a decision-maker at top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper." ( https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-meritocracy-but-all-the-recent-anti-dei-rhetoric-is-bad https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-meritocracy-but-all-the-... ) This annoyed me enough that I sent in an email complaining that their introduction process specifically notes that I am not eligible for anything, despite performance measured by the site as "highest ever achieved: 94th percentile" (so, knock that down a bit for being a high water mark), because of an insufficient number of years of experience. They responded: > It really sucks, especially in this market, but this policy is a function of us having tried for years to get companies to take junior intros, and it didn't work. We offered to do it completely for free, too, fwiw, and no dice. How competitive is the market for talent? Let's stipulate that, because of a lack of prior employment, I'm not qualified to have a job. How exactly would that situation change?

leeny 2y ago
Founder of interviewing.io here. Clarification: Just because companies don't want a 3rd party like us providing them with junior candidates, it doesn't mean they don't want them. Even back in 2017-2019, when the market was booming, we couldn't get employers to take our juniors... because they generally have their own robust pipeline. So the solution is to go to companies directly, rather than relying on a 3rd party service like ours, which companies tend to use specifically for roles they can't fill on their own.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  I'm not really sure what you're saying here. My point was that the market for talent is not particularly competitive, with the opinion of interviewing.io given as an illustration of that. You seem to be confirming that the market for talent isn't competitive - in your view, companies have more applications than they want. Or maybe you're going for a different point? For the suggestion, my experience is that companies won't consider direct applications either, and in the general case do not ever even list junior positions. (An observation which is not unique to me; see e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/from-my-email-on-the-market-for-programmers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/fr... ) If you're worried that I'm implicitly slamming interviewing.io for claiming to do something very different than what they actually do, I don't think you've rebutted that - "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies as long as we think their resume looks good" isn't particularly similar to "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper".

midhhhthrow 2y ago

Healthcare attached to employment makes no sense ina world where people constantly need to switch jobs

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. How is this weird? Your take is like the famous saying about the chicken and the pig both contributing equally to the egg and ham sandwich.

trod123 2y ago

I disagree with your conclusion, you have several flawed premises. The market has been slowly shrinking into fewer and fewer hands over time, which is why it has become more competitive over time. This has also led to cooperative behavior among the large marketshare companies in the sectors to disadvantage competitors, and employees. Companies do not bid up to the max they can, because the executives take their cut first. The companies bids can only ever be the max of what is left after that, and varies by the greed of those people. Interest rates would be the shock you described, but Tech unemployment as far as I can tell has until now been bulletproof, and uncorrelated with interest rate rises or falls. Its not rational to assume this market shock is a result of interest rates, AI is the only competitive alternative. The issue is not that you're getting fired. Its that you can no longer get base goods needed for survival arbitrarily and without notice, and without capital reserves which are finite you are living on the street. When the entire market as an entirety is contracting, there are no new jobs to move to in other fields. Worse, the concentrated market is naturally incentivized to impose high costs on any job seekers to interfere in labor relations to create barriers to entry for competitors while suppressing wages for prospective workers. This natural progression occurs when anti-trust fails, and money printing makes it worse potentially leading to either deflation (a collapse to non-market socialism) or hyper-inflation (a collapse to non-market socialism). Debt issued as preferential loans from a money-printer makes a company state-dependent/controlled apparatus even if its claim is that it is held privately. The economy today is worse than 2008, much worse then the dotcom bust, and if you plot the trend with good data going back and starting around the 1970s, the trend shows progressive ruin as time passes, with seiving and consolidation occurring regularly. That is the force driving this problem, and it doesn't enable tech salaries. > There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn. There is a limit to what government can provide, it takes awhile to get to those limits (we're in a super-cycle going back to the 1920s) but we'll be there in the next 5-10 years thanks in large part to deficit spending and the FED picking winners and losers. The main issues with academia also applies to government. They are structurally the same. Education today is not about learning skills, that is always secondary to instilling the qualities a loyal unthinking worker. That is what the entire prussian-model of schooling is about (which is what we have in this country). These structures for training follow the same structure as guild socialism, and the same intractable failures (ref Mises for related details). It inevitably ends up being a cult of qualification, where you are automatically considered unqualified without a piece of paper even if you have the actual skills to do the job. Once a target market size is identified and reached, new candidates are put on an endless escalator of suffering with arbitrary filters/requirements where the claimed outcome is nothing but an unobtainable pipe dream.

raydev 2y ago

> weird how people feel so differently when they get fired It's weird that the average person working these jobs has bills to pay, and perhaps additional family members to care for?

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. No the issue is that I get fired after the prior townhall saying "we are not doing layoffs". Companies will outright lie to get little ounces of productivity and treat you like a criminal the moment they break the news, as if we're all school shooters waiting to happen in anger and rage over betrayal. The circus of the 2023/2024 job market doesn't help either. Even pre-pandemic the process was padded, but now I'm not even convinced 80% of companies have a human reading my resume. >There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields. I'd rather not "hit hard times" while shareholders are making a killing and make a conclustion that my entire career needs to shuffle so they can save pennies.