[HN Gopher] "Great resignation" wave coming for companies
___________________________________________________________________
"Great resignation" wave coming for companies
Author : samizdis
Score : 682 points
Date : 2021-06-14 11:03 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| nomy99 wrote:
| I am going to resign today. I was hired as UI developer during
| the pandemic, and my employer was kind enough to not let me go
| when the project ended during the pandemic. Now I'm moving to
| chicago from nyc to do UI work.
|
| The pandemic has been hard because I never enjoyed the work I was
| doing, but I grinded through it considering it was hard to find a
| job.
| xianwen wrote:
| I'm currently living in Europe. I wonder how this affects people
| who are based in Europe and other continents. Can one work
| remotely for a Bay area company in a different continent, and
| receive a salary that is at the level of Bay area salary?
| screye wrote:
| > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are
| thinking about quitting their jobs.
|
| This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my
| circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE
| and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being
| 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and
| actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to
| clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of
| making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal.
| Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)
|
| Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs.
| The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a
| nondescript future date where this suffering ends.
|
| > Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life
| balance or career paths
|
| IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their
| delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good
| health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now
| being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm
| for well educated and employable adults.
|
| > "Hopefully we'll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and
| stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.
|
| Press 'X' to Doubt
| taurath wrote:
| I can't get over how much the financial media drumbeats the
| idea that companies compete with better working conditions.
| They do not on any appreciable timescale - the best you get is
| a bigger signing bonus or one time benefit. At the top 1% they
| compete on perks, but the rest simply do not do anything about
| the fact they can't hire, despite their complaints. It's a
| particular dissonance that I think must come from MBA and
| business school cargo culting. The world would be such a nicer
| place if companies actually competed for labor instead of
| collectively kept all wages and benefits at their absolute
| minimum. This of course doesn't happen, but to hear that it is
| somehow is extra infuriating.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| One thing looks good on a balance sheet and the other
| requires thinking beyond the balance sheet. The vast majority
| of companies and middle/upper management are really only
| looking to the short term and their own individual resume. If
| the cows don't come home to roost (oops mixed the metaphor)
| for a few years and Jim has already moved from Company A to
| Company C by then, and failed upward three places on the
| corporate ladder, why should they care?
|
| Feels like most huge corporations do an executive shakeup
| every 5-8 years or so, and they shake some people out, but
| those people just get picked back up by someone else fresh
| off their own executive shuffle.
| pmlnr wrote:
| A vast amount of my colleagues left in spring last year, well
| before any redundancies were even on the table. All in their
| 30s, most 35+.
| yibg wrote:
| This is me. FIRE was one of the dreams / goals from many years
| ago. I'm technically able to retire now but I'm still working.
| A few reasons I think:
|
| 1) Sense of (in)security. There is the thought of, what if my
| investments lose a lot of value. What if costs suddenly go up.
| So the number keeps shifting up. Just another x dollars and
| I'll retire.
|
| 2) As I get older, the thought of retiring is also starting to
| lose appeal. Life's priorities change and preferences change. I
| wanted to be able to not work and travel the world. Now that
| sounds some what exhausting and unanchored. Personal situation
| also comes into play. Single vs those in relationships. Will
| the partner welcome the FIRE lifestyle etc.
|
| 3) There is a bit of how society will view a 30 something with
| no job and no plans to get a job.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are
| completely different things.
|
| I bet if HC were not employment centered, this would be much
| different. In the US, it's a badge of honor to have a "job with
| benefits". Switching jobs and not having HC benefits that are
| as good or cost more weighs heavy on the minds of most people.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| COVID hasn't made people miserable in their jobs.
|
| COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience
| is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just
| fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to
| get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office
| every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on
| a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office
| while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make
| around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save
| about $2500 in gas alone.
|
| And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a
| software development veteran, professional in their day to day
| activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd
| still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than
| give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the
| office would require.
| jason0597 wrote:
| > In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously
| preparing to FIRE
|
| It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm
| about to FIRE, no big problem".
|
| Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone
| at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries
| flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio
| to live off of.
|
| Be grateful for what you have achieved!
|
| > Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and
| a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful
| about rather than the norm for well educated and employable
| adults.
|
| Do you realise how the bottom ~50% of the US workforce lives
| [1]?! Getting paid six figures or more easily puts you in the
| top 10% of income earners in the US. Why are you talking as if
| these should be the norm? They clearly aren't by all metrics.
| You have such incredible benefits for the work you do, why do
| you believe you shouldn't feel any privilege or gratitude?
|
| [1] https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-
| americ...
| viraptor wrote:
| > Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me
|
| What's FIRE in this context?
| screye wrote:
| FI = Financially independent = Have enough assets to
| sustain an acceptable lifestyle off interest from
| investments + some moderate draw on principal (usually
| totals to 4%) = Finances are not dependent on money from
| job
|
| RE = Retire early = retire from the necessary but
| emotionally unfulfilling jobs. For most people RE means
| pursuing interests that are not financially viable if you
| aren't already FI. It can mean a youtube channel, studying
| whatever you want or working on a side project without
| strict deadlines or the stress that comes with an all-or-
| nothing endeavor.
|
| The key fallacy in FIRE, is that it ignores creeping costs
| and the stubbornness of your dependants. Avoiding lifestyle
| creep in fundamental to the movement. This also means being
| unable to fund fancy private schools for your kids and your
| spouse being fine with the sudden loss of a huge income
| source. FIRE is an empty pursuit without a definite end
| goal. If you don't know what you want to do during RE, you
| might just be condemning yourself to a loss of purpose and
| possibly significantly higher risk of death/mental
| deterioration.
|
| Ofc, you can always pursue a more relaxed form of FIRE.
| Make enough to move to part time / contracts, or move to
| another country with lower wages or fully dedicate yourself
| to a moonshot.
| [deleted]
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Financial Independence Retiring Early.
|
| The basic assumption generally being, anyone who can save
| two-thirds of each paycheque and invest in a portfolio
| yielding 4% per year after inflation can retire in 10
| years. Saving two-thirds of each paycheque is of course
| difficult unless one is in a high pay grade to begin with,
| but there are enough people with the necessary discipline
| to keep the dream alive for many of us.
| jason0597 wrote:
| I presume it means Financial Independence Retire Early,
| most famously known on the relevant subreddit [1]
|
| [1]: https://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/
| passivate wrote:
| Why limit it to the US; there is always going to be someone
| who is worse off than you on the planet. I think its possible
| to be grateful that you're not that person, but also complain
| about things that affect you from time to time. :)
| revel wrote:
| Just a warning to those planning to do this: you are taking
| an incredible risk with your future that I think is
| undervalued. Circumstances beyond your control can make your
| plans financially unviable and by retiring so early you have
| absolutely no room for error. All it takes is one change in
| health or a regulation for your whole plan to be instantly
| invalidated.
|
| For those that have the ability and the desire to retire:
| congratulations! Please be careful!
| wallacoloo wrote:
| I don't know enough about the capital-FIRE group, but any
| techies around me who want to "retire" early in reality
| want to go back to just treating tech as a hobby. I think
| there's a subtly different "financial independence so I can
| quit working for the big guy" mentality that gets lumped
| into the FIRE acronym, even though in this version people
| are likely to retain skills and connections that should in
| theory give them some edge if they ever need/want to go
| back.
|
| But yes: risk is always a part of the game.
| ptmcc wrote:
| Critics of FIRE really like to hone in on the "RE" part,
| but most people I know who are aspiring toward the goal are
| much more focused on the "FI" part.
|
| It's not so much that you can retire to sitting on your ass
| at 35, but it's that you've made your millions and can quit
| the grinding corporate job and do something less stressful
| and/or more meaningful, and quite likely less lucrative,
| without taking a big lifestyle hit. It's about having the
| ability to build the lifestyle you want. Having that big
| bank account gives you options and freedom.
|
| Few people I know working toward FIRE are aspiring toward
| doing nothing in "retirement".
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, whatever you do after the "RE" part could very well
| end up being much more lucrative than being a well-paid
| wage earner could have ever been.
|
| When you take a smart person, make their life boring, and
| throw them enough capital that they can afford to do
| anything they want, the end result is often innovation.
| [deleted]
| geekster777 wrote:
| You do have the option of going back to work if shit hits
| the fan. Maybe it'll be harder to find a job, or to find
| one that pays as well as before, but that's pretty heavily
| tempered by the fat nest egg you have. It's a pretty big
| misconception that by "retiring" you're permanently cutting
| off all abilities to produce income ever again.
|
| It's easy to see "oh if a wealth tax is introduced, you'll
| run out of money by 50" as if it's a huge hole in the plan,
| but if you're 30 that gives you 20 years of draw down time.
| A change in the market or legislation won't sneak up on you
| and suddenly drain you of all your cash - if it does, it's
| probably something affecting the entire population. You'll
| likely have a year or two of drawing down more cash than
| you should before you pivot your plans.
|
| The most vulnerable time during FIRE is the first few years
| of early retirement (where a market crash could wreck you),
| but is simultaneously the point where you're still at your
| most employable (plenty of relevant contacts, skills that
| aren't out of date, and a relatively small gap on your
| resume).
| foobiekr wrote:
| As browsing any discussion on recruiting and interviewing
| with illustrate, hiring is already fucked up, and adding
| age plus a multi year gap would make getting a new job
| quite hard, let alone one that matches the compensation
| one has today.
| geekster777 wrote:
| Sure, landing the same tech job may not be feasible. As I
| mentioned, the big nest egg should ease that blow. You
| can instead get a lower paying tech job you're plenty
| qualified for. You can also get a job doing something
| unrelated to tech, like Uber/gig work, secretary, waiter,
| creating on Etsy, or really anything. A disruption to
| early retirement isn't going to be so dramatic that you
| need to get your same 6 figure income as before in order
| to stay afloat. It's something where an extra $15k a year
| coupled with some cost cutting will get you through a
| recession with minimal damages (cost of living dependent
| of course, but I'm assuming a conservative ~$60k/yr
| expenses). Landing something more lucrative creates a
| noticeable surplus.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is a risk I think that people don't give enough
| consideration.
|
| I know a guy who FIREd a while ago, long before we called
| it FIRE, and he's had a heck of a time landing another
| corporate job. He had a very successful business
| development firm and took a buyout from partners so he
| could move away from NYC and spend time with his kids.
| His kids are all grown up now and he's been looking for
| jobs and...crickets.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you stayed active in relevant circles, perhaps doable
| given personal contacts.
|
| But I agree in general. If someone retires at 40 and
| realizes 5-10 years later this isn't working out, that's
| a pretty big uphill climb for conventional professional
| employment.
| syshum wrote:
| Typically the "RE" part does not mean "sit on a beach and
| do nothing"
|
| For most people FIRE simply means being in a "position of
| Fuck You", which is very empowering and provides you with
| more options to seek out income opportunities that make you
| truly happy with out having to worry about paying the
| mortgage or putting food on the table
| ghaff wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be about an antagonistic
| situation. It's like any other negotiation situation. If
| you're in a position to and not really too unhappy with
| just walking away if you don't like your work, your team,
| your salary/benefits, an organizational change, etc. it
| makes discussions much more relaxing.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > Suddenly, having good health insurance
|
| Just think, we could all pursue our hopes, dreams and soul
| satisfying pursuits, if having good health insurance wasn't
| directly tied to having a "good job".
| omegaworks wrote:
| But then you might have to wait a couple weeks to have a non-
| critical procedure. _gasp_
| ansgri wrote:
| In such countries you can usually pay a reasonable price
| (fully known upfront!) to skip the line.
| the_doctah wrote:
| So people with more money can keep paying to skip me? I'm
| sure that would work well in the US
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's not exactly to skip you. It's to get into another
| place, that you can not access if you don't pay.
|
| It's basically "You have those basic needs filled here
| under those conditions. If you don't want that, there's a
| free market up there where you can bargain something
| better." Of course, how "basic" are the needs filled and
| what conditions vary a lot from country to country.
| swyx wrote:
| ah, base rate neglect, the stock in trade of a newspaper.
| thanks for the reminder!
| scruffyherder wrote:
| I'll press y to quit.
|
| I've been trying for years.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously
| preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed
| jobs despite being 'financially independent'.
|
| I think your circles are rather unusual, if this is true. A
| $900k net worth is in the 99th percentile for 30-34 year olds
| and 95th percentile for 35-40 year olds in the US
| (https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/)
|
| Even among my anecdotal very-highly-compensated NYC tech-salary
| coworkers and friends, having money issues and easily sub $100k
| net worths is way more common than not.
| sokoloff wrote:
| A $900K net worth is not enough to FIRE in my estimation.
| $36K/yr with the need to still buy housing is spartan and/or
| risky with a 60-year outlook.
| geekster777 wrote:
| May not be enough to pull the trigger, but definitely
| enough to transition down to a part time or remote web dev
| gig in a low cost of living area. Once you have such a net
| worth secured, you just have to keep from pulling from it
| for a few years while it compounds.
|
| The big thing is that around 900k is when you get
| diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations.
| Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $90k, which
| is a tall order. Or you could wait for a 10% market
| increase (it's up 14% this year). Not that the market is
| guaranteed to go up, or even by that much (we're in an
| unusually good market at the moment with inflated
| optimism). But at a certain point you hit a tradeoff where
| the market on average increases your wealth faster than
| savings off your salary will. At that point it makes sense
| to transition to a job that just covers your cost of living
| - one that you like more and offers more freedom.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I've never understood this logic. If you're going to be
| working, why take a significant pay cut? It's not like
| other lower tier jobs are actually that much less work;
| you're working with less skilled people in general and
| often poor management. This is the coastfire philosophy
| and it makes no sense. You could work a a few more years
| at high-paying miserable job or an extra decade at low-
| paying probably miserable job.
| geekster777 wrote:
| I think of it more as I could work a few more years at my
| current high paying miserable job, or the same few years
| + 1 at a flexible (arguably less miserable) job.
|
| For me at least, the goal has been to bank big cash
| early, then let the compounding do the heavy lifting
| towards the end. As I mentioned above, getting a 10%
| increase takes a lot more savings late in the game
| whereas the snowballing effect of compounding interest is
| stronger, so I'm coming out ahead just by staying afloat
| without dipping into my savings. I look at the work that
| appeals to digital nomads (pre-covid, this was work FAANG
| and other high paying jobs didn't widely offer), and it
| seems more valuable to spend some mobile years financing
| a nice adventure with the stability of a job that lets me
| work from home. It means a gradual transition to RE and
| that very little in my lifestyle should change once I
| pull the trigger. Personally I'm looking to reach FI
| /then/ transition to a remote/part time job as a way to
| reduce risk while offering some extra flexibility -
| everything I earn in that time should be gravy and it
| should allow me the freedom to travel and enjoy the
| experiences.
| jghn wrote:
| There exist many jobs/fields where the pay is below top
| market but could scratch the person's personal itches.
| Non-profits, research, etc.
|
| At a former job we could _not_ pay anywhere near top of
| the market and yet we attracted decent talent as the
| mission was something that resonated with many people.
| One category of people we 'd attract were those who had
| already made enough money that they didn't have to focus
| on that, and now just wanted to do good in the world.
| syshum wrote:
| the 4% rule is viewed by many to be very very conservative,
| many are looking at 6-8% as a better base line.
|
| Of course if you are retiring in your 40% you may want to
| be pretty conservative...
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, it's easy to look at the last ten years and
| nudge the number up.
|
| Retiring in 40s is a pretty big decision. It's not
| _impossible_ to re-enter the professional workforce in
| your late-40s or 50s, if things don 't work out, but it
| will almost certainly not be easy.
| nly wrote:
| Is it even possible to access US pension savings in your
| 30s or 40s?
|
| In the UK tax advantaged pension accounts cannot be
| accessed until you're 55 (and 58 for my generation)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Yes, it's possible.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sepp.asp
| tunesmith wrote:
| That's not really even close to true anymore... There
| have been a few studies that have attempted to update the
| Trinity study, like this one that gives an 89% chance of
| success even at a 3% SWR:
|
| https://www.financialplanningassociation.org/article/jour
| nal...
|
| People in the FIRE communities are routinely discussing
| 3.5% and 3% SWR's, and see 4% as risky.
| foobiekr wrote:
| These people are not conditioning their withdrawals on
| valuations. If you retired in 1978, yeah, 6% was probably
| fine. In 2000 you'd likely already be beyond recovery
| even today.
| Epenthesis wrote:
| Of course it's unusual. If you're in SF and work in first
| tier startups/FAANG, your social circle is going to be mostly
| people in similar situations. It's a very unusually high
| earning and unusually _rapidly_ high earning career path.
|
| I would be shocked if in _that_ specific cohort the median
| net worth at 30 was less than 500 k$. And if less than 1 /10
| were millionaires at 30.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| SF is a bit of a one-trick pony these days, sure, but to me
| this is a broad over-generalization that is easily proven
| false.
|
| The individuals who occupy the upper-echelons of this world
| in SF tend to be the _unusual kinds_ of unusual people.
| They often have unique upbringings, come from distinctly
| not-obvious academic /work backgrounds, and keep much more
| dynamic forms of company than the typical "Backend Engineer
| 3" at Amazon or Google.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience at all. I know a few
| extremely wealthy folks in SF, a bunch more wealthy folks
| but who still work 9-5, and there is nothing unusual
| about any of them. I've met CEOs and billionaires and
| there's nothing unusual about them, either.
|
| Sure, maybe SF has more _unusual_ kinds of unusual people
| than the average city, but I wouldn 't say that's the
| norm. VC folks are especially boring.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Being subject to constraints on your living standards can
| force you to be more disciplined. I'd bet that there are some
| in your circle that earn less yet are more financially stable
| than you would expect. They just don't talk about it as much,
| partly out of politeness and partly because they think it's
| pretty boring.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Oh, absolutely. My point was more that it's not
| particularly _common_. Having a relatively low-ish FIRE-
| worthy NW (e.g., the $900k in my example) is very uncommon
| for 30-40 year olds.
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't have _any_ substantial savings until I was well into
| my 30s. I didn 't graduate from grad school until I was 28.
| (Worked for a few years prior in engineering but nothing like
| the salary levels in SWE today.)
| jghn wrote:
| Despite being in software I had _no_ savings until my late
| 30s. I am forever grateful that our field is one that
| allows for huge earnings, as it has enabled me to flip that
| all the way around.
|
| I'm now in my mid/late-40s and show up as low/mid 80s on
| that calculator depending on if I include my home equity.
| When I punch in my net worth at 40 I was around 20%. If my
| current glide path holds I'd be low-90s when I turn 50.
| While unlikely to be feasible, it's in the realm of
| possibility that I could retire by mid-50s.
|
| That's a privileged position simply not available to most
| human beings. Really remarkable when one thinks about it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I did OK through the 90s but it was certainly not a
| high-paying job by current coastal software standards. (I
| actually looked at a few west coast jobs in that period
| and, frankly, they'd have been a downgrade because of
| CoL. Stocks were hit pretty hard, including my shares in
| my employer, and for various reasons my job during the
| next decade I generally liked (and it set me up for my
| current job well) but it didn't pay that well.
|
| It was only really my current job and associated stock
| which took savings from just OK to pretty decent. I could
| retire now if I wanted to but not really in a big hurry
| assuming business travel comes back post-COVID.
| djtriptych wrote:
| If you can do it, I recommend it to everyone.
|
| You don't really know yourself until you've spent a month or
| two with ZERO outside obligations. Quite hard to do. I did a
| couple of multi-month gaps in my 30s.
| bit_logic wrote:
| I've realized recently that what I really want isn't FIRE, but
| a kind of soft FIRE. Basically, if I had the money for FIRE, I
| would find (or stay at) a job that is comfortable, has great
| benefits and is low-medium stress. I could forget entirely
| about job hopping for higher pay (never have to leetcode study
| again), getting promoted (don't care about more
| responsibilities, managing, or going up a ladder), and mostly
| ignore office politics. I could just focus on doing good high
| quality work and not care about the rest. Basically, I want
| FIRE money to become immune to any kind of pressure or stress a
| company could put on an employee since I wouldn't care anymore
| about being laid off.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Anecdotal but one of my friends quit an amazing job(good pay,
| wfh, flexibility, etc...) in search of something better and
| can't go 5 minutes without thinking about quitting the new job.
| I can't really imagine moving companies right now in the midst
| of a lot of uncertainly on future office state(maybe that's
| just me tho)
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their
| jobs.
|
| I am far happier in my job and my career. And if my employer
| decides that they require people to come to the office, then I
| shall find a different employer who doesn't.
| notabothonest wrote:
| Well, this is an ultra-cynical take on the article. It's also a
| little myopic in the sense that it assumes increased work
| flexibility _must_ somehow have a high associated cost, such as
| loss of insurance, or lack of job stability. That just isn 't
| the case.
|
| Although I don't believe that we're about to enter some form of
| work/life balance utopia, just from my own circle of friends,
| big changes are inbound.
|
| Firstly, many of us, including me, have for years been told
| that working from home more than a day a week was an
| impossibility, and that we should be _grateful_ for that 1 day
| at all. Although frequently WFH days came with caveats, such as
| no Mon /Fri WFH, and there was the ever present threat of it
| being taken away.
|
| Then, along comes the pandemic, and 'lo and behold, I've been
| working home for over a year without any issue. So have the
| bulk of the people I know, especially those in the technology
| sector. All of a sudden the dozens of arguments I have had with
| clients and employers over the years have all landed firmly on
| what I have been saying all along; we don't need to be in work
| every day, hell, we don't even need to be in work every week.
|
| The cat is out of the bag now, and there isn't going to be
| putting it back in. A lot of the last year has been positive
| for many, including me. I've seen more of my own daughter in
| the past year than I've seen in the previous 7 years combined,
| and I've come to appreciate how important that has been to both
| of us. I'm not about to let that go without a fight.
| lanstin wrote:
| Absolutely this. And it showed that the work output itself is
| better when the knowledge worked is better off. At least for
| the teams I am interacting with. Less BS time and more good
| code.
| [deleted]
| autokad wrote:
| back in 2015 or so, I was complaining about how having to study
| for leetcode is not sustainable for someone to live, thus this
| makes tech a horrendous life choice as a career. Because having
| to keep doing this throughout our life when we get families and
| other life events going on is not a sustainable path. I was
| downvoted, told if you want to make money what's the big deal,
| etc etc.
|
| During the pandemic, the companies that were still hiring
| stepped up the bar. Maybe that was the push needed to tell
| people what the ramifications of this is. Now I am finally
| hearing from a lot of engineers: "Am I going to have to do this
| my whole life? I don't want to do this now let alone for the
| rest of my life". I have dozens of friends from Microsoft to
| Google plotting their exists.
|
| If all goes well, I am out in 8 years (but things rarely go
| well). I have a number and once I get to it, I am out. I dont
| want to deal with this shit anymore
| avidiax wrote:
| Studying Leetcode is no fun to be sure. But, you'll never
| find a greater return on investment than preparing well and
| interviewing well. It often results in a major pay raise, a
| new and often better company, a new and often better project,
| sometimes a promotion.
|
| Even better, the people that are the most averse to Leetcode
| cramming are often the ones that will see the greatest
| benefit, since they usually entered their current position
| with a single offer some years ago, and would be getting
| multiple offers in a very hot market today.
| baccheion wrote:
| I wonder if they really think the powers that be will allow
| them to retire early. Most will be working until 75+, unless
| the socialism/automation conspiracy theory comes to fruition.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| People hit financial independence and retire early all the
| time. It's quite routine.
|
| It is definitely hard for food service workers, and what not,
| but the powers that be really don't have much say.
| baccheion wrote:
| Many do it by 38-42. Less and less likely to happen, given
| what's transpired in the last decade or 2.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The powers that be need to start making offers that are
| harder to refuse for people who don't actually /need/ a job,
| then. For example, allowing part-time work...
| giantg2 wrote:
| I guess I fall into the idle fantasy category. I dream of
| quiting my job. I do look at job postings, but I don't see any
| better jobs in my area (that I'm even remotely qualified for).
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| >In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing
| to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite
| being 'financially independent'.
|
| I think less than 1 in 10 people who talk about FIRE have some
| kind of realistic expectation about FIRE (i.e. you can't stay
| in the USA and also live like a king)
| davidthewatson wrote:
| > Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their
| jobs.
|
| No, people were miserable in their jobs prior to the Covid era.
| The Covid era just gave them the repose they needed to reframe
| their job experience and their relationship to their employers.
| That's a positive development for Americans and their
| employers.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I think this is true.
|
| What I've noticed about the fire people is that they have very
| unrealistic budgets (static based on what they spend at age 30
| often forgetting to include things like healthcare and other
| forms of insurance, as well as changes in lifestyle). Once
| you're in your 40s, and you're at the peak of your earnings,
| it's actually really hard to walk away even if you've hit your
| target. I do know quite a few people first hand who have quit
| but only in there very late 40s or who made north of $10
| million at one point or another.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Agree with the "miserable" comment.
|
| Dissatisfaction will cause people to move around in the market.
| I don't know how much I buy the argument that people are
| looking for WFH, more than that they are looking to not work in
| a service industry which has low benefits low pay, and no
| chance of upward mobility.
|
| The pandemic is giving people a chance to realize their career
| has stalled. I think everyone already knew that the US
| healthcare system was broken, but maybe people are realizing
| changing careers is the only way out of that bind.
|
| Tech workers would be fine under any situation, so I don't
| think it's right to compare your FIRE friends with a cruise
| ship waiter.
|
| It's important to note that tech workers make up no where close
| to 40% of all workers, and that most of the people discussed
| here are lower class seeking upward mobility. Being miserable
| is just the catalyst for seeking a way out of their situation.
| mathattack wrote:
| To your point, stated desire (filling out a survey) isn't as
| strong as revealed preference (people switching).
|
| Stated preference is much noisier.
|
| My observation is there are a lot of people who have learned to
| hate their boss while remote. My SF friends may be surprised
| that wages are resetting to Chicago and Texas levels for new
| workers. That may slow down some of the movement.
| lupire wrote:
| > Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their
| jobs.
|
| contradicts
|
| > This number is meaningless without previous year trends.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their
| jobs.
|
| Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs
| have always been.
|
| All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there,
| and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar
| workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I _can_ give
| legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on
| the conference call either notices or gives a shit. Blue collar
| workers got unemployment benefits that pay a living wage
| without needing to work 3 jobs and die of an early heart attack
| worrying about how they 'll feed their kids.
|
| I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in
| the last year, and it's cause for celebration.
| Accujack wrote:
| >I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up
| in the last year.
|
| Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly
| lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset.
| People hadn't noticed, and now they have.
|
| It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's
| hope for now.
| taurath wrote:
| Don't get caught up in the fantasy that it's stopped in any
| appreciable way. The hammer is just starting to fall as
| vaccination rates go up. This is the start of the first
| battle, not the second act.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Whether we look back at this moment as fantasy or the
| beginning of something truly changing is not the result
| of some deterministic historical process. It's up to us.
| Call your congressman, your senator. Meet with coworkers
| and discuss this stuff. Post shit on the internet and
| challenge yourself and others to think differently. Go
| out into the world, even if individual actions are tiny
| or barely perceptible.
|
| The key thing about the world is that someone made it
| this way. I have to believe that it can be made
| differently.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly
| lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset.
|
| I think it depends on where you work and how the executives
| care or don't care about their employees.
|
| I was working at a large corporation during the 08'
| recession. They took away all of our perks (free coffee,
| free milk, bottled water, bonuses, christmas parties with
| bonuses, etc) all in one year and then never brought them
| back which resulted in a steady flow of people quitting.
|
| Likewise, I was at a much smaller family run company
| shortly after the aforementioned big corporation (less than
| 300 employees) and we had amazing Cadillac health care,
| yearly bonuses and generous salary increases and four weeks
| of vacation (double the norm at any other company) to
| start. Most of the company employees were 'lifers' for
| obvious reasons.
|
| Right now? I work at a huge health care company. Its
| somewhere in the middle. We get a lot of technology perks,
| three weeks vacation, decent salary increases and yearly
| bonuses that are competitive. The health care plans
| ironically are some of the worst I've had, but its offset
| by the other things I get.
|
| Everything is relative and I think people just need to find
| what works best for them. Its also a great time for all the
| people complaining they can't seem to find work anywhere.
| LOTS of mid tier gigs right now for those who want to get
| out there and find a solid gig, instead of staying home and
| collecting unemployment to the tune of $1,200/month.
| nonotreally6 wrote:
| You mean the Fed printed a ton of money and sent it to
| everyone making less than a certain amount, and the
| government guaranteed wages for those who no longer wish to
| work, and caused a labor shortage and inflation.
|
| Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation,
| if the government continues to print money, and the real
| wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value
| for the good of society by working are eroded and
| redistributed to those who don't wish to work.
|
| If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a
| living wage, but at least it will be equitable!
|
| Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is
| borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in
| order to pay those who choose not to work at all
|
| It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short
| term wages that are the same for working and for doing
| nothing, that people choose the latter.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > for those who no longer wish to work
|
| > to those who don't wish to work
|
| > those who choose not to work at all
|
| > the same for working and for doing nothing, that people
| choose the latter
|
| You're making my point for me with the _arbeit macht frei_
| dog-whistles here. So let me be clear: if "work" is
| defined as "millions of white and blue collar professional
| lives before Covid, lives replete with Kafka-esque
| meaninglessness in the former group and actual, medieval
| misery in the latter", then what I am saying is:
|
| 1. Yes guy, exactly: people no longer wish to "work", by
| that definition.
|
| 2. This is a good and deeply hopeful thing.
|
| A society that's serious about human flourishing will
| grapple with these questions on a deeper level than "what's
| the unemployment rate?" or "should Amazon be lauded for
| 'creating jobs?'" Covid has _forced_ us to grapple with
| them.
|
| The usual Cato Institute talking points all involve
| pointing at the poor and moralizing about how they don't
| want to work, but comments like yours hold less and less
| water as time passes, largely because of shit like Covid.
| The notion - _your_ notion - that there 's an enormous
| class of people out there who are nothing but shiftless
| layabouts who fundamentally want to leech off of the rest
| of us is a strawman. While I'm sure there's a parasite or
| two out there, human beings of every class find deep
| meaning in labor. _But the labor has to be meaningful!!_
| Or, at least, not soul-crushing or immiserating. (And let
| 's not even get into the really fun side-claim I'd make
| that there are proportionally way more parasites at the top
| of the socioeconomic pile than the bottom.)
|
| So: to the extent that anyone doesn't want to work, _they
| don 't want to work because the labor available to them is
| innovatively life-ruining and in most cases vastly
| underpaid_. To _want_ to work in such conditions when there
| are suddenly alternative choices, as you imply they should,
| is to be deeply ill. Actually insane. And more of a
| reflection of where your heart is than anything else.
| ineptech wrote:
| > those who no longer wish to work
|
| This reminded me of an old political cartoon I saw at the
| Abraham Lincoln museum:
| https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.04994/
|
| It shows Lincoln with his (supposed) supporters and their
| requests, one of whom is depicted as saying, "I want a
| hotel established by government, where people that ain't
| inclined to work can board free of expense, and be found
| in rum and tobacco."
| ssklash wrote:
| Very very well said. This needs to be shouted from the
| rooftops. Along with a line from a reply below: 'There's
| no "labour" shortage. There's a "wage" shortage.'
| jgon wrote:
| I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this
| comment. Thank you for absolutely crystalizing so many of
| the thoughts and feelings that have been floating around
| in my head over the past 15 months.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Cheers but no need -- I'm just repeating what other
| smarter people have told me. Take whatever you got from
| my comment and put it to good use: pass it along to
| someone else, or just go out into your community and lend
| a hand to those in need. Good luck
| Accujack wrote:
| >if the government continues to print money, and the real
| wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce
| value for the good of society by working are eroded and
| redistributed to those who don't wish to work.
|
| I bet I can guess which group you think you belong to.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| >caused a labor shortage and inflation.
|
| The US Government printing money is why used cars, washing
| machines, and hotels are getting more expensive, while
| other categories stay generally below historical levels?
| astrange wrote:
| The only reason people think "inflation" is bad is that
| it was bad one time in the 70s, except that was actually
| stagflation, and the cause was running out of a resource
| (oil) and not because the wage/price increases didn't
| match up. I guess some people might think Weimar
| hyperinflation lead to the Nazis, but it didn't really.
| rapind wrote:
| There's no "labour" shortage. There's a "wage" shortage.
|
| Companies aren't really complaining about a labour
| shortage. They're complaining that no one wants to work for
| their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail
| around in their yachts.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Yeah it really is hilarious in a way, because you can
| take many business owners' constant blathering about the
| so-called free market and throw it right back in their
| faces:
|
| _" No one wants to work for poverty wages in my shitty
| restaurant!"_ Sucks bro, that's the market. Raise your
| wages.
|
| _" If I raise my wages I can't stay in business!"_ Sucks
| bro, that's the market. Make your restaurant less shitty
| and get more business. Innovate. This is just competition
| - we like a little competition in America. You're not
| against America, are you?
|
| They're just as reactive / emotional as the liberals they
| decry for being emotional. I know that _schadenfreude_
| isn 't a workable foundation for a political outlook, but
| watching these people become ever so slightly
| uncomfortable about their position in the world before we
| inevitably return to pre-Covid _status quo ante_ is worth
| a good chuckle.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > Sucks bro, that's the market.
|
| Sure it is, but who pays the price at the end?
|
| an example is the inner city food deserts
| YarickR2 wrote:
| You're in for a rudest of all awakenings. You cannot
| demand salary to be raised without understanding business
| will be looking elsewhere to fulfill business needs , and
| will be outsourcing actual labor. Business that can't be
| outsourced in such conditions (restaurants, hospitality)
| will be forced to shut down when outsourceable business
| lays out local workers and replaces them with someone
| half a world away.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| That's not a rude awakening. As long as one's invested in
| change, that's a speed bump. Businesses can't outsource
| if outsourcing is severely curtailed by policy or law.
| Leaders, legislators, policymakers -- they have knobs and
| dials to turn on this thing. Indeed, leaders fiddling
| with knobs is what got us here in the first place. In
| South Korea in the 2nd half of the 20th century, not long
| ago, capital flight was severely restricted -- punishable
| by death in some cases! I'm not close to saying we do
| that here; I'm just saying _we have tools_.
|
| Like some other commenters, and many thousands more in
| the broader discourse, you're speaking from a position of
| "this is the way things are and they can't be changed, so
| there".
|
| My main point isn't to argue for this or that particular
| policy. My main point is that the world can be different.
| People motivated to change it will find a way to do so.
| In matters like these, arguments for economic determinism
| are borderline defeatist.
| whydoibother wrote:
| Nah. People tried that already with bad results. Not to
| mention, what happens when the foreigners you are
| exploiting start demanding the same things the locals
| are?
|
| Not only that, but the social and political ramifications
| of having not only blue collar workers out of a job, but
| also the PMC class as well. You want a revolution? Cause
| that is how you get one.
| munk-a wrote:
| In a truly free market this would happen naturally and
| slowly equalize the wages in America and elsewhere. Given
| that the US government exists though it can artificially
| limit this process and require visas and work permits or
| else tax businesses that flee offshore.
|
| Outsourcing has costs on it's own but it makes sense for
| America to artificially inflate those costs to maintain
| its consumer market. America eats the world and through
| doing so provides a lot of liquidity to the international
| market. Whether that is just or whether it should
| specifically be America is up for debate - but it does
| have the power for force others to play by its rules
| within certain limits.
|
| Bare naked capitalism isn't so far off from an anarchic
| free-for-all with spiked clubs.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The businesses who won't figure out how to raise wages
| will go out of business and be replaced by new companies
| who figured out how to have their employees work more
| efficiently.
|
| It sounds like maybelsyrup has it right, and it's these
| business owners who are in for the rude awakening.
| There's a rootbeer stand near me that has a message on
| their menu saying, "if minimum wage is raised to $15, our
| prices will go up 10%." They charge $3.60 for a pretty
| good cheese burger. When I read that message, I sit there
| thinking that the owner is an idiot. At $4.00, the burger
| is still a better deal than McDonalds and $15/hr is a
| solid wage in this area.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > There's a rootbeer stand near me
|
| Yes! I keep seeing stuff like this, and I think "wait a
| minute, you're telling me that you want to slightly raise
| the price of this great product or service, and in
| exchange, your employees will be paid a living wage, or
| get decent health insurance, or another half day off, or
| a vacation? _Please take my fucking money_. "
| scotuswroteus wrote:
| That's not what they meant, actually
| onethought wrote:
| Actually on gdp alone there is enough money in the US for
| everyone to have a living wage... checkout northern euros
| or Australia for example of what that looks like.
|
| The problem with the fed stimulus was the benefits too
| large corps.
| RealDeal123 wrote:
| US GDP has been lower than China GDP since 2019 and if
| anything the pandemic accelerated the process of Chinese
| economic outpacing the US economy. In China there is
| enough money for everyone to have living wage too. And
| you pay for you healthcare in China too even though their
| GDP is enough to cover it for all Chinese citizens.
| Apparently they are focusing on the big picture, i.e.
| becoming No.1 and surpassing US by a long shot. Making
| our currency inflate at 5% a year means we need to deduct
| that 5% from our GDP growth for that year -- its
| economics 101.
| onethought wrote:
| You want to use China as an example? Sure!
|
| China has the fastest growing and largest middle class
| (or middle income earners) in the world. They prove
| exactly the point I'm making. There will come a point in
| time where there are less people (%) living in poverty in
| China than in the US if you follow the current trend
| lines.
|
| Also you are only kind of right with "you pay for
| healthcare". It's heavily subsidised... compared with the
| US.
| munk-a wrote:
| China achieving an equivalent standard of living would
| probably not work out so well for the authoritarian
| government there - but it would work out surprisingly
| well for Marxism. Actually equalizing US and Chinese
| wages would lead to an extreme acceleration of other
| areas with depressed wages and, potentially, lead to the
| world becoming more equal in wages without the current
| assumed approach - that US wages will deflate quite
| significantly.
|
| A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is
| one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need
| to suffer less ourselves.
|
| Also, the world is well beyond being a zero sum game
| economically, most of the biggest economic drivers these
| days are "silly and irrelevant" things like Facebook,
| Banking and the service industry. All the world can be
| well off.
| nightski wrote:
| That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't
| allocate all revenue to payroll. That's not how business
| or the economy works.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| It's a good approximation, inequality is what is skewing
| it in the US.
| standardUser wrote:
| But it is fair to say that economies that look remarkably
| like our own are able to support higher wages with no
| catastrophic downsides. The same argument goes for
| universal healthcare, family and sick leave, etc.
| nightski wrote:
| No I don't think that is fair at all and I feel that you
| need a source that dives deep into the details because it
| is far more complicated than X country's wages > U.S.
| wages.
| onethought wrote:
| Which part do you want to dive deep? High minimum wages?
| Or universal health care?
|
| Australia has both, and a smaller gdp/capita than the US.
| Happy to dive as deep as you like.
|
| On both front, Australia still has effective unions with
| political representation, and thus corporate interests
| don't always win. That's the main difference with the US.
| nightski wrote:
| Stealing from Jeremy Howard on twitter -
|
| "The 5 largest companies in the US are all computer
| software/hardware.
|
| Australia's largest company is in mining, and 4 of the
| next 5 are banks.
|
| Australia really needs to join the modern world..." [1]
|
| --
|
| On top of this you haven't compared -
|
| 1. The quality of life difference between minimum wage
| workers in those countries 2. The quality of health care
| between these countries 3. Median house hold income (not
| everyone is on minimum wage) 4. Differences in taxes and
| "net" pay 5. The differences in the makeup of the
| economies and conditions of jobs
|
| Honestly the factors are endless and I am not going to
| spend more time enumerating them all.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/140362767852
| 8200704
| onethought wrote:
| So you want to dive deep or use Twitter quotes?
|
| You want to talk about quality of life difference between
| $7/hour and $23/hour ??? Sure where do you want to start?
|
| Want to talk about quality of healthcare... the US will
| lose badly here (except in certain types of cancer). And
| skewed statistics because the US just refuses treatment
| to a bunch of folks which hides treatment/mortality
| rates.
|
| You want to talk about median income 33k (us) vs 43k
| (au)?
|
| Or back to the more pressing point: when you only have
| corporate lobbyists and no lobbyists for workers (unions)
| workers get skrewed across the board.
| nightski wrote:
| Look, all I was arguing is that the economies are vastly
| different. So what if Australia wins on all of those? I
| don't believe that is true, but it doesn't matter.
|
| All I was saying is you can't use GDP as a gauge for how
| much money is available for payroll (as suggested by the
| grandparent). That is very dependent on the economy
| producing it.
| onethought wrote:
| ... I don't understand your point. If you are generating
| a net surplus, then your economy is growing. If your per
| capita size is large, then inequality is something
| government can solve with taxation/redistribution it has
| nothing to do with whether it is iron ore or software
| generating the taxable $.
|
| And yes, Australia beats out the US on pretty much any
| metric you like (unless you are looking for corporate
| benefit, then the US will win out, it's much better to be
| a capitalist in the US)
| standardUser wrote:
| I am not saying "X country's wages > U.S. wages".
|
| I am saying there are a dozen countries, including
| several that are extremely similar to the US, that not
| only have higher wages, and higher minimum wages, but
| also extensive paid family and vacation leave, universal
| healthcare and a wide range of quality of life metrics
| around or above what we see in the US.
| nightski wrote:
| I wasn't arguing against those things? I was just
| referring to the parent's comment that based on our GDP
| we could afford to pay everyone a living wage. Maybe we
| can, but using the GDP to gauge that is not a valid way
| to demonstrate that.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > That is too simplistic view of the economy. You can't
| allocate all revenue to payroll.
|
| You may be right about this. In fact I'd wager that you
| are. But the problem isn't that part of what you said;
| it's this:
|
| > That's not how business or the economy works.
|
| You're probably right about this too! The problem is
| that, in these conversations, we usually just stop here.
| Whereas more and more, I'm finding myself asking "can we
| citizens find ways for business or the economy to work
| _in some other way_ , even just a little bit? Are we
| willing to just creatively try and answer some of this
| stuff?"
|
| I think, if you just stop at "that's not how ___ works"
| without pushing things further, well, it feels like
| rolling over. The way "business and the economy worked"
| in the American South as recently as the 60's was that,
| if you had a certain skin color, you were relegated to a
| shitty part of, say, the restaurant, or you were
| prohibited from participating in the economy in any
| meaningful sense at all. But then some people asked "is
| there a way for things to work differently?" It's far
| from sunshine and gumdrops 55 years later but you can't
| be chucked out of a lunch counter for being black
| anymore.
| [deleted]
| sadfasf122 wrote:
| There are a lot of people in tech making a lot of money.
| Particularly at FANG/startups that have exited, they can "FIRE"
| after less than 10 years of working. I know many people in this
| category.
|
| During the pandemic many people also made some changes to their
| lives (bought a house, moved out the city, moonlight second
| job, started consulting remotely, etc.).
|
| Then you throw in the crazy rise in the markets (stocks,
| crypto, real estate) that many people have benefited from.
|
| Coupled with the popularity of FIRE mentality, rise of remote
| work, etc, it doesn't surprise me there are big changes coming.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| > Particularly at FANG/startups that have exited, they can
| "FIRE" after less than 10 years of working. I know many
| people in this category.
|
| Less than 10? I would need to know more details on this
| before believing it at face value. Say a FANG person makes
| 300k/year on average over 8 years.
|
| That's 2.4 million pre-tax, something like 1.4M post-tax, and
| not enough for FIRE for most people.
|
| Maybe if someone was early in a startup that had a massive
| exit, sure. But that definitely doesn't describe the typical
| FIRE person/FAANG worker/etc.
| sadfasf122 wrote:
| 300K is on the lower end of salaries, esp. over 8 years.
| This is also just run-of-the-mill individual contributors
| that got in very late. Early employees,
| senior/leads/managers/directors/vp will make substantially
| more.
|
| You're also assuming they did nothing with their earnings
| over those 8 years - when in reality most are invested in
| the markets which have killed it over the last decade.
|
| I think people in tech are making a shitload more money
| then most realize.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are
| completely different things.
|
| You have to ask yourself, why this is the case. And the simple
| answer is status quo bias. Many dream of a different life, but
| few will actually pull the trigger on a major change.
|
| _However_ if a company suddenly changes an established working
| relationship, then all bets are off the table. If people have
| gotten used to WFH, and now you make them come into the office,
| then you're invalidating the status quo bias. Switching jobs is
| probably _less_ disruptive to their status quo then going back
| to the office.
|
| Corporate managers are forgetting a very maxim. Never piss off
| your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to.
| It's the same reason that it's virtually unheard of to cut
| salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary
| recession.
| cleansingfire wrote:
| I personally frame any cancelled perq as an effective pay
| cut. Usually portrayed by management as somehow expected, &
| as if unearned in the first place, which I find galling. I
| also had an experienced coworker who pointed out that when
| the water cooler went away, the company was circling the
| drain, which my limited experience has borne out.
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| >Never piss off your employees by taking away something they
| feel entitled to.
|
| I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an office
| is to simply take away the snacks. Forget nap pods, or
| walking desks- don't touch my clif bars!!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| You can watch the snacks, but I check the TP quality. Easy
| to verify before you start as well.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Exactly. A lot of people think, if the company is so tight
| or so stingy (whichever the case may be) they can't afford
| bagels anymore, it might behoove me to search for work
| elsewhere.
| lanstin wrote:
| To be honest one of awesome things for work at home is it
| prompted to me to finally setup a half decent bagel at
| home routine. And nice coffee, weak and fifty percent
| milk, just like I like it. I am looking forward to 4 pm
| tea time informal chats with friends, two days a week,
| shortly.
| helge9210 wrote:
| > I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an
| office is to simply take away the snacks
|
| For me this is indication of cost cutting going into
| effect. This means it's time to stop riding a dead horse
| and to start looking for a live one.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| This, it's either the first sign of larger problems or a
| sign of a significant culture shift, either way it
| signals that change that is likely for the worse is
| coming so it might be time to leave before it gets worse.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Steve Blank wrote about this:
| https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-
| ear...
| vidarh wrote:
| I like the one who suggested the answer to the question
| of how much the free drinks cost should be "less than the
| cost of hiring a single engineer".
| sokoloff wrote:
| Used to work at an office where they got rid of free
| drinks. The morning it happened, Top Engineer 1 sent a
| mail to all Boston staff announcing he was thirsty and
| asked if anyone else was similarly thirsty and wanted to
| join him on a grocery trip to buy soda. _Three cars full_
| of engineers went to the grocery store, taking a little
| over an hour. Free drinks returned later that same week.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| I love that guy.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Right, the whole point of free food/drinks was the keep
| the engineer from wanting to leave the office. It was not
| really a perk but a way to entice the employee to working
| more.
| foobiekr wrote:
| This exact event happened at both Cisco and Juniper when
| they got rid of free drinks. Multiple times.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status
| quo then going back to the office.
|
| Maybe for a little while when there are lots of jobs offering
| WFH and competing for a small number of people switching
| jobs. However if you invert that by having lots of jobs
| simultaneously require people to come back into the office
| and lots of people simultaneously seeking new employment,
| then that job hop is likely to be quite difficult. At the
| very least, most people probably won't be able to line up a
| new WFH job before they either need to start going into the
| office or quit and risk extended unemployment. In the long
| run there will be more WFH opportunities than before the
| pandemic, but a lot of people are going to have to go into an
| office whether they want to or not.
| lanstin wrote:
| Not for software in US or India I don't think. I am not
| manager but do lots of interviewing and OMG people who can
| code and think and talk are so so precious. We would hire
| all remote in a jiffy, unless asking salary is higher than
| budget. When it is coming down to it, my company is picking
| lower salary over in office.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > It's the same reason that it's virtually unheard of to cut
| salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary
| recession
|
| Yes, that's why companies prefer lay offs rather than broad
| base salary cuts. Lay offs are a temporary hit to morale,
| while pay cuts are more permanent. Moreover, in lay offs, you
| can fire least productive workers, while after pay cut, it's
| the most productive that will leave first.
| lanstin wrote:
| After a few demoralizing layoffs you have a tendency for
| talented folks to leave once the picture is clear. Does
| management think software is an investment or a cost? If
| you can work where it is an investment, do so.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I've seen more jobs offer like 10% yearly bonuses for the
| reason that I assume is the ability to cut back on costs in
| a pinch without touching the salary itself per se.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I appreciate the alternative perspective and productive-
| pessimism, but anecdotally in my immediate social circle of
| engineers, 5 have changed jobs - all for substantial upgrades,
| and not 1 of them was for a job that required office presence
| or downgrade in quality of environment.
|
| The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is
| a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are
| struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering
| increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries.
| Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go
| work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging
| 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.
|
| Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial
| moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in
| and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now
| in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries
| are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities.
| We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many
| industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality,
| entertainment).
|
| Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or
| none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the
| better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about
| their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll
| add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this
| opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy
| step up from that situation.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are
| offering increasingly high salaries
|
| This has been the case, according to my colleagues who are
| older, since at least 2003 ;-)
| rubicon33 wrote:
| And yet, they still persist on presenting leetcode riddles
| that have very little relevance to the job being
| interviewed for.
|
| If they were hurting that much for devs, you'd think they
| might lower the bar a little by not requiring a years study
| of leetcode.
| kamarg wrote:
| It's more expensive to make a bad hire than to not hire
| someone and move a bit slower.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| while this is true, maybe they should work on how they
| assess candidates instead of continually complaining
| about how there are none.
| kkdaemas wrote:
| So... they double-down on a poor proxy of effectiveness
| on the job?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There are two problems with this phrase, one is that it
| shouldn't. Really, if somebody a bit worse goes way into
| the negative value for you and you are a large company,
| you have some procedural problem that should be fixed.
| Long-time employees also have bad moments, and you should
| be able to survive those.
|
| The second problem is that the onus is on you on making
| sure those bad interviews decrease the odds if hiring bad
| people, instead of increasing them or being irrelevant.
| Without that evidence, this is a non-argument.
| mech422 wrote:
| google admitted years ago, it didn't help..
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/goog
| le-...
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Google found that riddles didn't help, so they stopped
| asking them. They didn't find the same for coding
| questions.
| lanstin wrote:
| Leet code is neither sufficient or necessary to writing
| brilliant software. Your statement is true but Google,
| being mostly people cut from the same cloth, has group
| think about these issues. On the other hand, that
| monolithic culture is probably what has limited their
| success and kept them from being a more harmful monopoly.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Google has gone on record that the best way to hire would
| be IQ tests but they don't because of the blowback it
| would generate. Leetcode is just a shitty proxy for IQ
| testing.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Do do do do...
|
| What are the issues with IQ tests?
| sidlls wrote:
| "Shitty proxy" as in "little to no demonstrable
| correlation whatsoever." Willingness to grind/memorize is
| about as poor a measure of intellectual ability as one
| can get. It does show some level of interest/diligence--
| but perhaps not the best kind.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That seems to imply that they are willing to train you in
| whatever you need give you prove you have an aptitude.
| That too isn't the industry standard as near as I can
| tell, instead it's becoming just enough of an expert to
| barely get whatever it is you need done without an
| understanding of best practice before moving onto the
| next item.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Link to record?
| dmoy wrote:
| The riddle-like questions are trash, I agree. Any
| question that requires you to already know a slightly
| more arcane data structure or algorithm, or involves just
| regurgitating some algorithmic trick, or similar, really
| just gives you signal of "did this person already know
| the question beforehand?", and nothing else.
|
| Not asking those types of questions, and instead asking a
| more straightforward programming question with relatively
| simple data structures, and some tradeoffs to be made,
| plus maybe some follow up optimization questions (but
| like in general systems terms, not code), tend to work
| better. But it's still whiteboard coding for the most
| part.
|
| While I do detest leetcode interviews, I've yet to see
| another interview system that works for extremely large
| companies, that covers all the bases:
|
| * won't result in you hiring someone who can't write a
| for-loop in their language of choice (I know fizz-buzz is
| a meme at this point, but I have interviewed people who
| failed a question easier than fizz-buzz before - not even
| on a whiteboard. People who genuinely cannot program at
| all _will_ apply for programming jobs, and some of them
| will get past the recruiters.)
|
| * is reasonably based on skills
|
| * is not hyper selecting for "people extremely similar to
| people who already work here" (not "what school did you
| go to?" or "who do you know who already works here?" type
| stuff)
|
| * can be made mostly uniform across the company (though,
| even leetcode-like interviews are hard to make uniform,
| it's easier than a lot of other methods)
|
| * isn't trivially cheated (100% remote tests, where
| someone else just does it for you)
|
| * won't be outright rejected by people who already have
| jobs (internships, though this does work well for new
| grads)
|
| * won't be outright rejected by people who have less free
| time outside of the job (e.g. people with families, small
| kids won't go for "work for a week" type take-home
| assignments which say "couple hours" but you're competing
| against people who will dump 40+ hours into it in a
| single week)
|
| A lot of other systems work really well if you're willing
| to slash your candidate pool to a smaller percentage, but
| break down once you start trying to fairly get at more
| candidates. Something that works well for a 1000 person
| company won't work if you have >50,000 developers.
| Something that works well for a company explicitly
| willing to exclude parents won't work well for a super
| large company.
|
| Also, a lot of companies do change up the application
| process for people who are just out of school, in that
| they allow internships/etc, with a different route
| through than just interviews. (Though you usually have to
| go through an interview to get the internship, they tend
| to be way easier - having sat on such an intern hiring
| committee before, you get _very_ few interviewers asking
| riddle /trick questions)
|
| Time-wise, I can generally coach someone to pass a big
| tech interview loop in 1-3 months, not a year.
| massung wrote:
| All those items are so spot on.
|
| There's definitely a difference between hiring Sr. vs.
| Jr. programmers. When it comes to Sr, the best place I
| ever worked had a pretty great process:
|
| 1. Phone interview that was 100% identical for all
| candidates. It was basically a "take me through your work
| history, answering these 5 questions for each job." It
| worked wonderfully and gave a really good indication of
| what the person learned at each position and how they
| were able to apply that knowledge at the next job. And,
| if there was some obvious red flag at each step (e.g.
| "all my bosses have been jerks"). It also had the benefit
| of being more fair. I don't know how many places I've
| worked where if person A conducted the phone interview it
| was a shoe-in, and if person B did it was impossible to
| get through.
|
| 2. While doing #1, make a mental note of a couple things
| along they way they worked on (esp. if they seemed proud
| of them) and then - in a follow-up interview with a
| couple programmers on the call - really dig in deep on
| the technical details. Ask questions. You'll learn
| rapidly if they actually did the work and understand the
| problem or simply worked on it w/o understanding. What
| were the major challenges? What would they change now if
| they could go back? And here it's awesome if you get
| someone who can give answers that aren't always technical
| things (e.g. "I wish I knew early on how best to deal
| with X").
|
| 3. At this point, you're ready for an on-site and have
| already proven to yourself and the team "this person can
| code and solve problems." What's left is any final
| details you want to be sure of. Any odd personality
| quirks that won't work for the culture the company is
| going for? Let non-technical people they'd have to
| interface with interview them.
|
| The best we ever came up w/ for Jr people was a test with
| some basic college class stuff like big-O and for
| problems 1-3 would you prefer linked list, hash table, or
| tree and why? And then try and do #1 and #2 above, but
| using their college classes/team projects as work
| experience. But that didn't always work out all that
| well.
| morelisp wrote:
| If your "couple hours" take-home test has a significant
| difference in results between 4 and 40 hours of work, you
| probably made a bad test.
| xyzelement wrote:
| If I am running the company, I would MUCH rather operate
| short-handed than "fix" my recruiting problems by
| lowering the bar.
|
| You don't have to agree with the bar the companies are
| using, but that is the bar they have converged on, and
| one that plenty of people are capable of passing.
|
| Would much rather compete for those people.
| jjav wrote:
| > If I am running the company, I would MUCH rather
| operate short-handed than "fix" my recruiting problems by
| lowering the bar.
|
| Nobody is talking about lowering the bar, but of putting
| the bar in the right zipcode.
|
| An extremely high bar of leetcode testing is irrelevant
| to the actual job, so that's an irrelevant bar.
| xyzelement wrote:
| This may seem coldly logical but in the absence of my own
| researched opinions, I am evaluating the merit of the
| opinion about these interviews based on their origin:
|
| You have - companies that settled on this process, who
| have been able to attract top tallent that has cleared
| this bar.
|
| You have - employees of these companies that were able to
| clear the interview bar.
|
| And then you have - people who don't work for these
| companies, proclaim to have no interest/ability to clear
| the bar, but claim to have a valid view into where the
| bar should be.
|
| In the absence of other data it doesn't seem like the
| last group is likely to be objectively right
| pianoben wrote:
| Personally I suck at leetcode questions, but nevertheless
| have snuck in to some of these so-called "top-tier"
| companies. And _let me tell you!_
|
| These questions have fuck-all to do with the actual work
| the happens there. Sure, you can usually find someone to
| tell you how much rainwater accumulates into a random bar
| chart, but I see as much brain-dead code at the top as
| anywhere else. As much great code, too, FWIW. Everywhere,
| the key skills that make for a successful IC are the
| same, and they definitely don't require implementing
| splay trees or skip lists from scratch and without
| references. 99% of the time it's shuffling bits around
| and using hash maps.
|
| Honestly the people I work with who advocate the hardest
| for leetcode are the ones who had to grind hard and,
| evidently, want others to suffer too. As if a sane
| process would mean their own suffering was in vain.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am not sure that's the whole picture. I don't care
| about leetcode type problems but if I was applying for a
| job where they were a barrier to entry, I'd go figure out
| what it takes to master them.
|
| The bar may simply be "sober enough to understand what it
| takes to succeed at this task", "committed enough to
| prepare" and "smart enough to solve them"
|
| These attributes correlate strongly with success, I'd
| imagine.
| mcguire wrote:
| And yet, those companies seem to be more successful than
| others with "more relevant" bars.
| Retric wrote:
| Leet code interviews only showed up late in these
| companies trajectories. Internally it's no longer about
| what the company wants so much as what people inside the
| company want which presents huge conflicts of interest.
| Google for example has done significant research and
| found such practices wasteful, but internal culture is
| what it is.
|
| In practical terms the FAANG companies internal processes
| are horrible and they can't seem to innovate at all, but
| as long as they continue to print money there is zero
| reason to risk change.
| jjav wrote:
| Or you could look at it as those companies have so much
| money and fame that they have tens of thousands of
| candidates pounding at their door so they can afford to
| arbitrarily reject approximately everyone.
|
| But if you're running a startup (target audience of
| ycombinator), you'd do well to play a smarter game since
| you can't outspend or out-fame the FAANGs. A big part of
| that is to have better interviewing practices than they
| do.
| mech422 wrote:
| Google actually admitted their 'elite' leet code
| interview process didn't actually help the outcomes...
| This is the first link I dug up about it:
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/goog
| le-...
| dmoy wrote:
| That isn't about the leetcode interviewing.
|
| That's about the microsoft-era actual riddles, like "if
| you were reduced to the size of an ant and put in a
| blender, how would you get out?"
| sbacic wrote:
| This is all contingent on said leetcode riddles actually
| helping with candidate selection. If they aren't, you've
| just limited your pool of potential candidates for no
| reason whatsoever.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
| rubicon33 wrote:
| This always strikes me as the answer that a computer
| science reclusive would take. You would rather throw
| cryptic riddles and math puzzles at your lesser man, than
| pick up the phone and call their previous employer and
| ask how they performed, what projects they worked on,
| etc.
|
| I would bet money that the latter is far more predictive
| of quality candidates than any leetcode problem you
| randomly pluck from the ether and expect them to solve
| under pressure.
|
| But again, I expect nothing less from an industry that
| isn't exactly known for being good at human interaction.
| rkeene2 wrote:
| The company that the candidate previously worked for is
| typically not permitted to say anything about the
| candidate without prior authorization. Your proposed
| solution is not workable.
|
| I've previously hired contractors with minimal
| interviewing because they came from a trusted partner to
| my organization, so I asked the partner about their
| productivity and skills and they were given good reviews
| relative to what we were trying to accomplish.
|
| Each of them were a net negative with respect to the
| project. The time it took me to review their pull
| requests and help them write code which was passable was
| longer than it would have taken me to write the code
| myself. Additionally, the code that was passable has been
| a constant source of bugs.
|
| A more thorough technical interview may have avoided
| hiring them. In retrospect, the correct course of action
| would have been to not hire anyone until someone
| qualified was available. This anecdote does support the
| grand-parent posters theory that operating with fewer
| incompetent people is better.
|
| Additionally, their proposal is generally workable (which
| again, yours is not).
|
| Competence is a spectrum and so at some level of
| competence there will be people who are competent but
| unable to pass overly complex interview questions. The
| fact that this overlap exists seems to be what you are
| complaining about. Even still, not hiring people in this
| overlap is probably safer than hiring people which make
| the system worse in my experience.
| jjav wrote:
| > Competence is a spectrum and so at some level of
| competence there will be people who are competent but
| unable to pass overly complex interview questions
|
| Competence is most absolutely not one spectrum.
| Competence is measured in dozens (hundreds, really)
| different axis. Everyone will have different scores (if
| we could realiably narrow it to a score, which we can't)
| on different axis of skills. Which of the skill axis are
| most relevant for any given role will vary, obviously. A
| generalist will have decent scores in many, a specialist
| may have mediocre scores in many but 99+percentile in
| their chosen areas.
|
| Leetcode interviewing measures along one single
| uninteresting axis, the one corresponding to memorization
| of algorithm puzzles. That axis happens to be entirely
| irrelevant to any job I've ever hired for. So I don't
| test for that because I care as much for your skill doing
| leetcode as I care for your skill juggling frogs. Neither
| is relevant to the job.
| jjav wrote:
| > The company that the candidate previously worked for is
| typically not permitted to say anything about the
| candidate without prior authorization. Your proposed
| solution is not workable.
|
| You're right in that HR of their previous (likely
| current) employes won't say or allow saying anything.
|
| But of course they're likely not giving as references
| their current boss, for obvious reasons.
|
| Their previous bosses though, who have also left that
| company, will speak to you freely.
| rkeene2 wrote:
| The case where you are able to speak to the candidate's
| boss because they have also left is incredibly niche.
| massung wrote:
| I think back-in-the-day, the cryptic riddles were a
| (terrible) way of trying to filter "smart" candidates.
| The people who could come up with a solution to a problem
| never before seen. But almost no problems are truly
| original or new. They are just old problems with new
| packaging or with new/different requirements. So, usually
| what you end up testing for is nothing more than "has
| this person come across something like this before?"
|
| Sometimes you'd get interviewers who were at least smart
| enough to realize that maybe the most you'd get out of it
| is "can this person break down a seemingly impossible
| problem into manageable pieces?" That's fine, but then
| state that or at least give them something real they'll
| actually run into if hired instead of trying to estimate
| how many gas stations there are in LA county in their
| head.
|
| And while those suck[ed], companies having been doing
| similarly ridiculous things for a very long time to try
| and save themselves from hiring the wrong people. IBM's
| infamous "lunch interview" (false on Snopes, but the
| concept is true and I've seen played out) or asking
| candidates to take a personality type test to determine
| if they'd be a good fit before hiring (yes, I did this
| once early in my career and would just walk out if asked
| to do one today).
|
| The most difficult I've found is getting fellow
| programmers to realize that they _don't_ want to hire
| another "you." Yes, you're an expert in networking and
| security. Don't interview for that so you can show off
| your own skills or "teach" in an interview. Interview
| _for the position_.
|
| You want a diverse set of knowledge, skills, experiences,
| communication styles, etc. at your company. And - while
| it can be scary - you always want to hire people who are
| better than you (esp. if you're a manager!). But that is
| so hard to get people to do.
| theferret wrote:
| They're not hurting for devs, they're hurting for
| engineers.
| vmception wrote:
| > Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having
| difficulties filling them.
|
| This has been the same as well, to my knowledge, since 2010
| asdff wrote:
| It depends on your field. I know people whose industries have
| been on a hiring freeze since last march, and have been
| applying for almost a year and a half now to the few openings
| that do appear during this span. Must be a nice time to be a
| software engineer, though.
| reverse_list wrote:
| These comments about how the market is on fire for developers
| always make me sad. Not your fault, but outside the US (and
| maybe western/northern Europe) you get lowballed hard, even
| with years of experience. And the supposedly lower CoL
| doesn't make up for it, at all, not even remotely. I'm not
| even talking about getting crazy bay area compensations, I'm
| talking about hoping something better than a $25k-$45k range
| for experienced engineers.
| screye wrote:
| Filter bubbles are incredibly dangerous.
|
| Every time I hang out my with most ambitious friends, I am
| reminded of how MSFT is 'low balling' company. That I could
| be making 2x if only I kept up with interviewing. On one
| hand, I can't avoid the objective truth of the statement.
| But, on the other hand, the hedonic treadmill is infinite.
|
| I'm glad I am not in the bay area. I would've been
| paralyzed by the persistent reminders around me of my
| monetarily sub-optimal life choices. Get out out of my
| head: 'over-achieving friendo', I am already well into the
| 99th percentile of wage earners of my age in the world's
| richest country.
|
| Over the last 5 years, I've seen a (COL non-adjusted) 100x
| (20x if I use a more practically true number) increase in
| salary. So far, My happiest moments have rarely required
| much money, let alone 100x as much as I had then.
| askafriend wrote:
| > I am reminded of how MSFT is 'low balling' company.
| That I could be making 2x if only I kept up with
| interviewing.
|
| It doesn't take much to interview and double your comp.
| You don't have to interview at Google or Facebook to
| double your comp - many pre-IPO startups are paying up
| and their interview processes are often less rigorous.
|
| If you're happy with your situation then more power to
| you. But something tells me deep down inside, you're not
| OK with it. I'm here to tell you that a couple weeks of
| prep and looking around can go a long way.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Interesting thread. I thought everyone was clinging. How
| would you prepare if you had the rest of the summer?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This is beautifully captured. I work in a city I love
| (consider Charleston, SC - y'all) at a rate that puts me
| in a very similar position to myself. I'm so grateful to
| be able to have the space to not obsess over optimizing
| comp. I also like the knowledge/"feeling" that I can
| choose to focus on this in the future - and realize the
| benefits.
| gumby wrote:
| If it makes you feel better: there was, and remains, a
| tech subculture more focused on the tech than the money,
| but it's been drowned out over the past 25 years because
| a gold rush makes for better press. Unfortunately that
| press attracts people who like that sort of thing.
|
| So if you like what you are doing and can live
| comfortably you are at the top of your game. The rest is
| merely froth.
| golergka wrote:
| After 2020, there's much more fully remote openings in us
| that hire from across the globe and pay over $100k.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Out of curiosity, where are you located?
| aurelianito wrote:
| Not the original commenter, but this is the situation in
| Argentina. I would love to do a remote gig and get 100k a
| year. I am a programmer with over 20 years of experience
| and I can program professionally in over 10 different
| programming languages.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| It is worth noting that software salaries are
| artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general
| unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas
| developers.
|
| The second this changes, the bottom drops out of
| software.
|
| I don't know if it will ever happen that big companies
| begin openly accepting overseas applicants but if/when it
| does, you can expect that it wont be for 100k. Suddenly
| when you consider the entire planet, there's no longer a
| shortage of developers, and the employer has all the
| power.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> It is worth noting that software salaries are
| artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general
| unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas
| developers._
|
| Because it's been tried before and for the most part it
| was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing
| some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and
| even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project
| after being outbid a year earlier by an overseas firm
| during the first outsourcing wave. Lots of people on HN
| have horror stories of cleaning up from that era.
|
| We've been here several times before - like literally
| just this past year of everyone saying "oh but now you
| have to compete with remote workers everywhere!" Salaries
| keep rising because software is an arms race. The
| companies making the most profit will continue to invest
| in getting the best people and outside of the odd global
| crisis, the industry will continue to grow as everyone
| else tries to keep up both in technology and in hiring.
| All those firms I cleaned up after as a kid are still
| around today and bigger than ever, yet on this side of
| the ocean we keep making more and more money.
|
| I think we've got at least a century before software hits
| the diminishing returns that the industrial revolution
| did. My local lumberyard is still using DOS machines
| probably made before I was born.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Overall I agree with you, and my experience has been
| similar, but I think the comparison with outsourcing is
| not correct.
|
| I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to
| companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested
| entities whose incentives did not align well. Not
| necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding
| were bad.
|
| Back to the guy in Argentina -- I imagine that he/she is
| actually in a reasonably good position as the amount of
| remote work increases. Indians not so much, because they
| are 12.5 hours ahead (of Pacific time). Argentina is only
| 4 hours ahead, which makes for a _lot_ more overlap.
|
| So I think the field has leveled a little bit in that
| sense, because if you have a remote developer in another
| state, they are not very different than one in another
| country who happens to be in a similar time zone. The
| other big barrier IMO is communication, so someone in
| Argentina who is not merely fluent in English but speaks
| it very clearly could be in a really strong position.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm in regular calls from the East coast US to central
| Europe so, usually, a six hour difference. That feels
| about the limit to me before things get more difficult,
| people need to work outside of normal business hours,
| etc.
|
| You _can_ do bigger differences and many of us do on
| occasion. But on a multiple times a week basis, both 5am
| calls and 11pm calls get old.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to
| companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested
| entities whose incentives did not align well. Not
| necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding
| were bad._
|
| It failed because the intent was to cut costs and they
| got what they paid for. The successful ones were
| genuinely trying to expand their engineering talent pool
| and quickly figured out that the cost savings were a
| marginal benefit that made up for some of the extra
| overhead of international accounting and management.
| Quality engineers are one visa lottery away from Western
| salaries so the local median salary is often completely
| disconnected from what a FAANG might pay for a decent
| engineer, which is a rude awakening for anyone trying to
| cut costs without destroying the quality of their output.
| On top of that, the people most likely to make it a
| smooth transition are also the people most in demand
| (arms race!) and competition for them helps evaporate any
| savings for the business.
|
| The guy in Argentina _is_ in a great position to get
| hired to work remotely for an American company, but I don
| 't seem him as competition regardless of how good he is.
| It's an arms race so my employer's competitor can't
| replace their team with Argentinians because that down
| time will give my employer time to crush them (which we
| learned in the 2000s). They _can_ hire an extra team of
| Argentinians on top of their existing head count but if
| they do that my employer will be pressured to hire a team
| of Brazilians. Before you know it, both companies are
| hiring even more local teams to help manage the flow of
| work between their existing local teams and the
| outsourced ones.
|
| There's more work and money to pay for it than there are
| people to do it. Until that changes, we're not the ones
| competing, the employers are.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| I think a presence in the same legal system is also a
| barrier. If you open a branch office and hire and manage
| them seriously, you can find a sharp team, but this isn't
| all that cheap. If you try to write a small check to some
| contracting company with no reputation, they will deliver
| "tested" tarballs that are littered with syntax errors
| because they know suing them isn't really feasible.
| dcist wrote:
| I recall this period as well (early to mid 2000s) and the
| fears of overseas workers led me to change my college
| major at the time. There was also still a big hangover
| effect from the 2000 dot com bubble. I remember seeing
| low developer salaries and, although I at least somewhat
| enjoyed coding and tinkering around with technical
| things, there were other pursuits I enjoyed more. I kind
| of regret not sticking with computer science but my
| career has turned out fairly well (although I think I
| would have optimized my income faster if I had stayed a
| computer science major).
| mech422 wrote:
| I've been thru off-shorting with India, China, Russia...
|
| I'm sorta wondering what country would be next. It has to
| have a large enough labor pool to fill the positions, and
| still be cheap enough to at least look good on paper..
| Tarsul wrote:
| at least here in Germany the biggest companies like to
| expand into Eastern Europe (think Slovakia, Hungary, also
| Russia), where these IT experts help in the German
| projects. They even get many of those people to learn
| German! The price pressure doesn't really stop there
| because while at first Slovakia was the way to go, now
| Hungary is xx% cheaper.. and so on and so on...
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| For the Hungarian HN readers: these are the salary ranges
| you should aim at when working for a German company
| (remotely or in Germany):
|
| - junior: 45K - 55K - medior: 60K - 75K - senior: 75K -
| 90K
|
| Although getting more than 85K as an individual
| contributor is not easy.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Whether in EUR or USD, those numbers will feel pretty
| good in Hungary.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My guess is most likely Africa, though I think somewhere
| in Central or South America would have a very strong
| advantage due to the narrower time offset.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I have seen succesful outsourced projects. They were more
| expensive than hiring local, because they required a
| massive amount of up-front analysis, requirements
| definition, design documentation, and involvement from an
| expensive middle-management tier of analysts. It took
| understanding that the process was going to be hard and
| have a lot of iterative rework. It took understanding
| that communication is hard.
|
| Markets clear. If outsourcing were so great, it would
| have completely taken over by now. It has been tested for
| decades now and it hasn't.
|
| Outsourcing fits really well for organizations that have
| a lot of explicit, documented, well-understood domain
| knowledge, for which the org is the key inventor. But
| that's not most organizations. Most organizations are
| operating by the seat of their pants, competing in
| markets where a large number of other orgs know their
| business. That they turn a profit at all is more a
| testament to the perseverance of a few, key employees
| than it is the exceptionalism of the organization itself.
|
| Every axis of communication is a potential friction
| point, be it collocation, industry, experience levels,
| language, time zone, culture, personality types, etc. The
| more you can remove those friction points, the more
| successful your project can be. But outsourcing throws
| several of those out the window, never to be touched
| again. So you're left optimizing on the few that are
| left, where most companies only ever optimized on those
| axes that have already been removed.
| JTbane wrote:
| Will it happen though? Hiring someone from a foreign
| country is easy for a temporary contract, but in industry
| we need to "own the code" and continue to maintain it.
|
| Ultimately outsourcing has issues with accountability.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Overseas can range from:
|
| you are a team of people located all over the world. To
| Your being off-shored to India as soon as can figure out
| how.
|
| Worked both, and the culture difference and happiness
| difference is drastic.
|
| Even a hint of offshoring will induced panic for many
| employees/ candidates. Definitely makes hiring and
| retention hard.
| Volrath89 wrote:
| I'm located in Colombia, and all my developers
| friends/acquaintances that speak English are already
| working for US companies. Some of them earning 100k+, but
| most of them earning about 50-70k.
|
| I'd say there is not a general unwillingness to hire
| overseas developers, on the contrary, if more people
| could speak english in south america US companies would
| be more than happy to hire even more here.
|
| There is a shortage in english speaking developers
| globally, but not a shortage on companies' interest in
| hiring anywhere
| aurelianito wrote:
| I could get a 60k USD a year remote thing but I would be
| out of the system (I mean, now I am an Argentinian
| employee with all the rights it entails). For 60k, it is
| not worth it. For 100k it would be worth to solve all the
| issues associated with getting money from abroad (maybe
| make a corporation somewhere?). Anyway, I am listening to
| 100k+ offers.
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| Just curious: what kind of lifestyle does 100k USD get
| you in Colombia?
| Volrath89 wrote:
| You can live in a flat in the best parts of major cities
| comfortably, you could hire one or maybe even two FT
| employees to help you to cook, clean the house, take care
| of kids, etc. If you don't like the city life, you could
| also rent a small "mansion" in the suburbs (but then
| you'd suffer a bit with the internet connection, fiber
| only goes to major cities)
|
| You could dine out at nice restaurants every weekend and
| travel around by plane every time there is a holiday and
| stay at 5 star hotels
|
| Taking into account the minimum salary here is 300 USD /
| month and with 50k per year you are already top 1%, 100k
| gives you an unimaginable level of wealth. You'd earn
| about the same salary as the president of the country and
| more than most CEOs from local companies
|
| But that would be if you spend all your salary every
| month which is not so smart, what most of us (bilingual
| developers) do is continue living a standard middle class
| life and just invest heavily, I invest more than 50% of
| my salary, mostly in real state and US stocks
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree 100%. Aside from time differences, the biggest
| problem we have with remote teams in faraway places is
| communication. We have really sharp folks in our
| Hyderabad office, but some of them really struggle to
| communicate clearly, and a poor Zoom connection doesn't
| help at all. That would be my one piece of advice to
| someone outside the US who wants some of that sweet,
| sweet income we have grown accustomed to. Being a good
| coder is fine, but not really distinctive. Work _hard_ on
| speaking English as clearly as possible. It absolutely
| will give you a competitive advantage.
| majormajor wrote:
| South America is an interesting one for a lot of US
| companies because the timezones line up much better with
| US-local folks than in any other continents.
|
| There are still other substantial collaboration
| challenges, but if more places move to be truly remote-
| first, those places will necessarily have solutions for
| that anyway.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Agreed the time zones are killer.
|
| If I start another company I'd really like to hire a
| competent offshore team in south or Central America but I
| have a lot of trouble getting there from here. If I
| wanted to hire a team in Israel, Pakistan or India, I
| could do it immediately, because I have trusted friends
| who can hook me up with people that they themselves trust
| plus or minus some skeeviness that I know how to manage.
| For south-of-us I have no connections and basically no
| way to start.
| esel2k wrote:
| Agreed. I am a product manager for a startup software
| acquired from Brazil. Nearly all engineering sit in
| Brazil (or some squads in India). I am the EU based PM
| that has to deal with the timezone issues and
| requirements- do I like it? Not really, but it is
| existing and the company might hire a an architect or
| tech lead on europe, the rest will remain outsourced.
| Generally speaking some of the developpers speak good
| English and so with Jira and Figma it works.
| davedx wrote:
| This is absolutely untrue. In The Netherlands the
| government has a 30% tax rebate for devs who come from
| elsewhere and it's leveraged intensely, more than half of
| the devs I work with at bigger companies here are usually
| not Dutch.
| azinman2 wrote:
| So the Dutch government is incentivizing hiring non-Dutch
| people??!
| foobiekr wrote:
| This is not dumb. This is how you kickstart a network and
| trust.
| estebank wrote:
| It is incentivizing highly skilled and highly compensated
| people moving to The Nederlands from beyond 150km from
| the border by not charging the 30% tax for up to 5 years.
| This is similar on intent to the O1 visas in the US.
|
| https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/living/take-care-of-
| official-m...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Oh I see, I thought the GP meant hire elsewhere, like
| outsourcing. That makes much more sense.
| theferret wrote:
| > It is worth noting that software salaries are
| artificially inflated HEAVILY due to a general
| unwillingness or lack of interest in hiring overseas
| developers.
|
| Yes that's right; business hates saving money and loves
| hiring super expensive US talent.
| momirlan wrote:
| Employers had 20+ years to switch to overseas workers.
| The percentage of jobs that went east has stabilized, and
| it's not going to change dramatically.
| sidlls wrote:
| What makes you think that these companies will pay above-
| market (local) rates sufficient to overcome other
| frictions? I think it's more likely they'll look at the
| local market rates and maybe pay a modest premium--not
| enough to create a huge draw of local talent looking for
| remote work, and not enough to make a dent in the labor
| market dynamics in general.
| reverse_list wrote:
| East Asia.
|
| If you are looking to fill a position coming with a
| decent pay, I'm all ears :)
| foobiekr wrote:
| Just to be clear, there's a big difference between China
| and the rest of east Asia in terms of hiring. So it might
| be good to edit that and differentiate.
| jugg1es wrote:
| It's not not just FAANG having a hard time finding skilled
| engineers - everyone is having the same problem.
| draw_down wrote:
| Right but they pay top of market. It says more about the
| market that Google can't find people than some shitty
| company that doesn't pay well.
| screye wrote:
| Agreed. My point was more about taking a break or negotiating
| better QOL. My anecdotal experience is similar to yours in
| terms of compensation. However, I haven't seen anyone be able
| to negotiate lower hours, more vacation or periodic
| employment that would allow them to pursue the 'RE' once they
| have reached the 'FI' of FIRE.
|
| Lifestyle creep only moves in one direction and is usually
| permanent.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think a lot of people are just biding their time, if they have
| job security now then why take the risk? It's a global pandemic,
| it's possible it'll turn around again (example: despite a
| national vaccination rate of nearly 50%, the number of 'rona
| cases is on the rise there because of the even more infectious
| Delta variant).
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > if they have job security now then why take the risk?
|
| Because, at least in the US, and at least in IT, it is a
| buyer's market.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| The increasing acceptance of working from home has allowed me to
| get offers from major cities nearby instead of being low-balled
| by my small town rate.
| ghotli wrote:
| For what it's worth, this was my strategy living in a bigger
| city in the south. Local salaries are so egregiously out of
| line with the national US market that breaking into remote work
| a decade ago is easily, easily the best decision I've
| personally made.
|
| At the time it was hard work and a bit of serendipity. At this
| point I already found a great remote job I have no desire to
| leave. It's wild that currently there is a deluge of recruiters
| from very large west coast companies trying to get me to join
| without any relocation. That's been a big shift in the past
| year. Good time to live somewhere cheap with decent internet.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| At FAANGs?
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| FAANGs take some of the employees at second tier companies
| and the vacancies trickle down and now I'm getting
| opportunities for remote work from the companies at major
| cities nearby (that previously were on-prem only) instead of
| just what is available in Wichita. And with coworkers
| quitting as well it gives me more leverage for a counter
| offer.
| durmonski wrote:
| I guess we all want more free time and less work.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| _And people can still rely on unemployment insurance_
|
| Pretty sure most states won't accept you if you voluntarily
| leave.
| superfrank wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it. There's a massive difference
| between thinking about quitting and actually quitting.
|
| People don't like change and there's tons of it happening right
| now as we transition out of our COVID lifestyles. People are
| upset, but, I think it's much more likely that people will just
| moan about it for a while before eventually accepting it rather
| than actually taking action.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Most people are open for new opportunities and are proactively or
| passively checking at all times anyway. If a recruiter calls me
| and has an up to date cv, I will have a chat with them. This
| might lead to something, if not, at least they have their crm
| updated for the next calls. And when the need arises, you can get
| back at them, one of them placed me in a FAANG with full remote
| recently, totally unexpected. I think many people will consider
| quitting one semi or on premises job for a remote, I certainly
| would not go back to office unless it is a head of or c level
| position, if I can avoid it.
| yosito wrote:
| I get so many recruiters contacting me that I could never do
| this. 95% of them are low quality jobs anyway.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Sorry for the tangent, but have you found any benefit in
| maintaining a traditional CV / resume?
|
| I'm not actively looking for a job, so I just tell them to have
| a look at my LinkedIn profile. But I wonder if that's keeping
| me from some worthwhile opportunities.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I think this is important, not just tangential. The
| traditional cv is still something most companies will check,
| one way or another. At the very least, they will use a tool
| to check for keywords, same thing on job platforms. I
| personally never update my LinkedIn with the current role, I
| always think if my employer checks, they would think I am
| shopping around, so I leave that. But on job platforms, I
| have the most current CV. LinkedIn never gave me good results
| anyway, only currently held roles.
|
| But Glassdoor is pretty ok and some other platforms(I can pm
| if you like) have proven good, they seem to have some kind of
| alert system whenever a keyword of a recruiter portfolio is
| triggered and on cv updates. I do think limiting oneself to
| LinkedIn will definitely make you miss on some opportunities.
| I spend no more than an hour a month to update etc. Most have
| auto apply button etc. It is easy to send 50-100 applications
| within an hour. Of course some of the contacts will be
| rubbish, just delegate to spam I it keeps happening,
| eventually unsubscribe. I got some interviews to places where
| I thought they would never, ever touch me. However, sometimes
| such companies are desperate to hire. I went pretty far with
| bitfinex, just for fun and because it's remote, despite
| knowing sweet little about what is needed to know . Many
| stories like that.
| beforeolives wrote:
| Even if it's true, you'll need an equal hiring wave on the other
| side of the equation. It's not like people are stopping work
| altogether.
| elevenoh wrote:
| If you're freelancing, contributing to OSS, working in crypto
| etc. perhaps there is less than equal ostensible 'hiring' on
| the other side?
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I got laid off a few years ago and took off to Spain to do the
| Camino de Santiago (French route) and it was pretty life
| changing. Met some cool people on the route and completely
| changed my outlook on life.
| throwaway93939 wrote:
| Throwaway since this is private, but I've tendered my resignation
| for pretty much exactly what this article says. To be clear, I'm
| in a very privileged position where both my spouse and I are in
| software and she can more than cover the bills on her own. I have
| the ability to take time off, pursue other projects, do something
| else, etc.
|
| I think remote work, generally works, but there is an incredible
| long term drain on energy from not connecting with co-workers in
| person. It may work for some and there will certainly be a long
| term shift more towards remote work, but I predict it won't be as
| pronounced as maybe some suspect because it's much harder to
| sustain. The flexibility is indeed great and a net win especially
| for parents or those with long commutes, but I think it's harder
| to actually work.
| camhenlin wrote:
| I joined this wave, started a new position last week for nearly
| another $100k/year, similar work, fully remote, great benefits.
| Tried asking for a raise at my previous job twice this year and
| my old boss wouldn't discuss. Good luck to him retaining the rest
| of that team!
| gaoshan wrote:
| I fear that this trend will end up hurting a large percentage of
| the people that buy fully into this trend. The ideal, from my
| perspective, would be a shift in how business as usual is
| conducted, not a wholesale rejection of it. We are just coming
| out of an extreme period and I feel like some of this reaction is
| just rebound that could end up hurting many people.
|
| At my company we are trying to use this sentiment to shift to a
| mix of the old work from the office full time (with flexible
| policies about WFH as needed) to a more hybrid approach where we
| will still provide for a solid collaborative in-person
| environment while baking in even more flexibility for managing
| your WFH needs (maybe in office 3 days a week with WFH available
| 2 days a week... still trying to figure out the right balance).
|
| I'm sure we will still have at least a little attrition but
| suspect this will leave us with a stronger than ever core (while
| allowing those that leave to try to find something more suitable
| to their needs... but again, I worry about this ending up the
| case for them).
| jonplackett wrote:
| > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are
| thinking about quitting their jobs
|
| I wonder what the baseline is for this. I reckon loads of people
| are _thinking_ about it all the same.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Yeah if "I think about quitting my job" is the metric, I'd
| expect the result to be 70-80%.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Anecdotally I've had much more contact from recruiters this year
| and I suspect many greybeard embedded devs have decided this was
| the year to finally take their retirement.
| loopz wrote:
| During crisis decade post 1999, many shifted to better pastures,
| not content with being played like pawns and having bleak
| outlooks. Now, many developers having regretted biting the bullet
| for two f. decades are thinking the same, after quite a bit of
| introspection during COVID. Not saying everyone will jump on the
| same: Some went to work in kindergartens, just sick of everything
| java. However, this situation is exactly the spark that'll make
| people seek more of what they truly are meant to do in this life.
|
| The best advice I can give is, treat other people as you yourself
| would want to be treated, or how you think they wish to be
| treated. Be kind and seek the best in others.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I've worked remotely for over 8 years as a senior software
| engineer, and I'm not going back anytime soon.
|
| This will get interesting for both salaries and global movement.
|
| Being a digital nomad certainly won't be as "hip" when everyone
| else can do the same thing. And now people are going to be
| competing with a lot of low-cost employees with equal skills.
|
| This has already been the issue with offshoring, but now you can
| hire someone in Fargo, SD instead of San Fran, CA and pay them
| going market rate. For the same skills.
|
| In the long-term, this might get people out of packed cities and
| horrific commutes and help become a rebirth of small-town America
| (or small-town Chile and everywhere else).
| elevenoh wrote:
| >In the long-term, this might get people out of packed cities
| and horrific commutes and help become a rebirth of small-town
| America (or small-town Chile and everywhere else).
|
| Perhaps. I think the shift will be to more healthy-livable
| cities, whether thats big or small.
|
| Vast majority of humans seem love the benefits of high
| population density more than they dislike the costs, remote
| work or not.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Vast majority of humans seem love the benefits of high
| population density more than they dislike the costs, remote
| work or not.
|
| Over these 8 years I've lived everywhere from NYC to small
| town America and other countries in AirBnbs.
|
| They each have their benefits, they are just different.
|
| If you have a family, small towns can be amazing. Good school
| districts, tight-nit communities, great charitable events to
| participate in. Of course you can find that in NYC but it's a
| completely different scenario and vibe.
|
| It comes down to what works for the individual, which is
| perfect and exactly where we need to be moving to.
| handrous wrote:
| > If you have a family, small towns can be amazing. Good
| school districts
|
| Your definition of "small town" must be different than
| mine, or small towns in your area are a hell of a lot nicer
| than ours. Or maybe you mean suburban/exurban towns? Those
| are the only "small towns" with good public schools, around
| here. Cities (as in, actually in the _city_ proper)? Bad
| schools. Rural small towns? Bad schools. Smallish cities?
| Bad schools. There 's a belt of good schools in (some of!)
| the suburban and exurban towns around the major cities, and
| that's it. Few or none of those towns have the other
| characteristics you mention, because they're basically
| bedroom communities for the city they're attached to, with
| some lame chain retail and fast-food and you go to the city
| for anything that's actually worth doing.
| elevenoh wrote:
| Agree. More people should try out different living contexts
| to find which tradeoff matrix works best for them.
|
| I'm now in Vancouver BC, quite a high population density,
| yet I find it's super easy to remain healthy & happy (air
| quality, access to nature, safety etc.).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Vancouver BC is quite an outlier in those qualities,
| which is reflected in its land prices.
| ISO-morphism wrote:
| Nit: I think you meant Fargo, ND rather than Fargo, SD.
|
| For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new
| grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely responsible for anything
| above that.
|
| [1] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-
| en...
| dcolkitt wrote:
| You can't really just compare average salaries in different
| metros, because there's major selection bias. The average
| engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San
| Francisco. Less talented workers tend to heavily flow towards
| low COL markets, because they're less to achieve a high
| enough productivity differential to justify the high cost.
|
| This obviously isn't true for every single case. But the
| typical engineer at a sleepy regional bank is nowhere near
| talented enough to make it at a fast-paced, hyper-growth
| venture backed startup.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Having worked in everything from backend systems for sleepy
| banks to hedge funds to the hottest pre-IPO valley
| darlings, anecdotally you are dead wrong.
|
| If there is any correlation at all it's that the venture
| backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is amazing that these lower than average skill level
| people make companies that earn the highest profits, and
| have the highest wages.
| asdff wrote:
| Is that surprising? You can cook up an electron app after
| a few tutorials and two weeks time. All you have to do is
| sell a product, the product can be junk if you can
| convince your buyers otherwise. Charisma gets more
| funding than technical expertise, because consumers buy
| on charisma.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Consumers are not buying iPhones because of charisma.
| They are not using Gmail because of charisma.
|
| Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some
| headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring
| to those that stick around for years and develop products
| that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that
| people who work at companies that have transformed the
| way we live over the past few decades are "lower than
| average skill".
| asdff wrote:
| Apple and google are not the vc backed startup companies
| the other commenter was talking about, though.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| So, I wasn't thinking Apple or Google when I wrote this
| because those are giant companies that hire globally.
| Most of Apples profit comes from products produced far
| from the valley. That said, I've worked with lots of
| veterans of Apple and Google and there quite literally is
| no correlation between having worked at those companies
| and being good. I believe that the current hiring
| environment in software is so broken that being hired by
| someone is effectively arbitrary.
|
| Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations
| but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers
| from a wide variety of regions.
|
| When you hire as much of the industry as those companies
| do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs
| the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it
| would be near impossible not to have a big distribution
| of talent within them.
|
| But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when
| it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the
| biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley
| is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend
| towards being good at the job. And I'll stand by my
| anecdotal opinion.
|
| I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able
| to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global
| pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would say my claim is that offering more money or the
| chance to make more money does make it possible to end up
| with a workforce of people with a higher than average
| skill level.
|
| And if certain geographical locations are known for being
| places where the chances of making a lot more money are
| significantly higher, then I would say the skill level of
| people there is probably higher on average. The proof
| would be the numerous leading companies and products
| coming out of these places.
|
| Of course, those locations can change, and maybe
| widespread access to broadband will cause that to change
| that or reduce benefits of agglomeration. But it remains
| to be seen.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| That presumes a) that hiring good developers is a driver
| for that success b) the valley offers more money
| relatively c) there is actual proof that those firms are
| producing outsized returns.
|
| I for one have made more money in finance than valley
| style tech. That may change one day but there _also_ was
| no correlation in the finance firms for quality.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| c) is pretty clear based on 10-Ks and performance of tech
| companies relative to others in the market.
|
| And while I personally do not know people's financial
| histories, I can say that the part of my college class
| that went to tech seem to work far less than the part
| that went to finance. Even if gross income is similar, I
| doubt that $/hour worked, or the risk was better in
| finance than in tech over the past 15 to 20 years.
|
| That isn't to knock finance, it's just my interpretation
| of the reality of how much access to broadband and
| advancements in certain technologies have underlined much
| of our economic growth.
| ajkjk wrote:
| What's amazing about it? Perhaps they are trying a lot
| harder.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Surely effort is a very big part of success, but I would
| attribute at least some of the magic that makes the tech
| companies hum to above average technical expertise.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as
| one in San Francisco.
|
| How do you know? I've worked with extremely talented
| engineers from all over the globe at this point, 20+ years
| in. Do you think all the engineers in San Francisco were
| born there?
|
| You would never guess where I'm living, and it's not San
| Francisco. I'd love to, but I'm waiting for tech to recede
| a bit and a sense of normalcy to return.
| matheweis wrote:
| I think that time zone bands will temper this somewhat. It's a
| lot easier to work with people on the same schedule than trying
| coordinate with people/teams that are +/- 3 time zones away.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I'm currently managing a team of offshore developers +11 from
| me on top of being the lead developer.
|
| It's chaotic but members of the team adjust their schedule to
| partially overlap so it works, for the most part.
|
| But I agree. We are a US company and we originally looked at
| South American companies to try to keep people around the
| same timezone. I was not involved in the final decision,
| which apparently came down strictly to financials.
| asdff wrote:
| It's actually not that bad. Regular meetings between global
| teams can be scheduled as any others are. People working
| internationally with people in the U.S. are already used to
| taking evening conference calls around convenient U.S. based
| meeting times. For east and west coast teams, in my
| experience they usually just adopt east coast hours, which
| the west coast people prefer because this means they avoid
| traffic entirely.
| pokstad wrote:
| Funny, I think the same thing happened to teachers despite the
| fact that they cannot realistically have a remote option.
| Teachers unions have been holding out for better pay and benefits
| while holding in-school services hostage.
| sb8244 wrote:
| I resigned from my company of 7 years back in April. I gave up
| life-changing amounts of money in order to leave.
|
| I got super burnt out over the last year and there was not really
| another option imo. I had been working on my own company on the
| side and I feel immensely more recharged working on it. For
| people that have been sitting at home and not spending their
| salaries for the past year, that might be an appealing option.
| riccardomc wrote:
| anecdotally, I can confirm this happening in a few companies I
| know... I left my job at the beginning of 2020 to work for
| myself. A lot of ex-colleagues took a similar path.
|
| I guess the "focus on the mission" companies are trying to foster
| among their ranks is also useful to distract oneself from what
| your _own_ mission actually is.
|
| This hiatus on company focus might have been the best thing that
| happened to a lot of engineers I know.
|
| Including, alas, myself.
| dang wrote:
| Related thread from yesterday:
|
| _Forget going back to the office - people are just quitting
| instead_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27493945 - June
| 2021 (386 comments)
| jc_811 wrote:
| I feel like I keep seeing articles on this topic, but nobody is
| addressing the (obvious) elephant in the room: If there is a
| great resignation, and people are quitting jobs they are not
| happy with - how are they going to pay their bills and way
| through life? Am I missing something?
|
| It seems these articles all talk about workers realizing they are
| underpaid, overworked, and after a year don't want to go back to
| the same exploitive job. While I completely agree with all this,
| it doesn't address the question of _how these newly unemployed
| workers will pay their bills and way through life_
|
| Are people just counting on their savings? If so, how many people
| can realistically live out of their savings (esp with rising
| costs of goods)? Do people think the extended unemployment
| benefits are going to continue for longer (this seems wildly
| unrealistic)?
|
| I'm genuinely curious if there are answers to these questions?
| From my point of view, it seems these articles never mention the
| fact that people have jobs they don't like, because they _have
| to_ in order to earn money (in normal non-pandemic times)
| ajkjk wrote:
| > Am I missing something?
|
| If you're making tech salaries and not spending all of it, you
| can easily save enough to not work for a decade in just a few
| years of work. Anecdotally I worked for three years at a big
| company and then didn't work for three years until those
| savings ran out, and that wasn't really even trying.
|
| Of course the calculus changes if you're married or have kids.
| But living in America in a cheap town is not expensive compared
| to income in this field. You can live comfortably on 40k a year
| (lots of Americans do!). And a 200k+ income like you see in
| major tech hubs can easily translate to 100k+ of savings a
| year.
| jc_811 wrote:
| That I can totally understand. However, if we're looking at
| the labor market as a whole, people making comfortable tech
| salaries are definitely outliers. Coupled with the fact that
| (anecdotally) it seems many of the people who don't want to
| return to their old jobs (or want to resign) are either in
| the service industry, or have/had lower paid entry level job
| salaries, I'm still stuck trying to understand how these
| folks will survive financially.
|
| I guess I'm trying to figure out if all these "great
| resignation" articles are referring to high paid skilled jobs
| (eg tech workers), which in my opinion wouldn't effect the
| economy as a whole very much since they are a relatively
| small portion of it, or if these articles are referring to
| the broad economy including lower paid jobs.
| njovin wrote:
| They're not going to be unemployed, they're going to find a
| better job. In my mostly-uninformed opinion I think that remote
| work has allowed a lot of people to search for work in other
| locations and this has radically changed the way the employer-
| employee economy works. In smaller job markets talented workers
| didn't have much choice about where to work and there were
| factors to changing jobs (like commute distance) that made them
| rule out a lot of places.
|
| Now, there's an abundance of positions available remotely all
| over the country and you can shop around for a good fit.
| jc_811 wrote:
| So in this case, instead of a "great resignation" it would be
| more accurate imply a "great company switching". However,
| doesn't this scenario assume that there are an abundant
| supply of "better" jobs just waiting for applicants (that are
| now able to apply due to remote policies)?
|
| There obviously isn't that yet, so is the assumption that
| this will follow _after_ many employees resign and force
| companies to redo their hiring policies?
| amotinga wrote:
| before pandemic started: - I asked more money (so that I can
| afford live alone in high COL) they said no. - I asked to work
| remotely - they sad no - I asked for more money (but less now)
| they still said no.
|
| I left. found a remote job with 25% raise. in 3 months pandemic
| hit and everybody started working remotely.
| systematical wrote:
| HAPPILY just left a company. I'm done working at companies that
| don't offer unlimited PTO. Second to that, I'm not letting a job
| chain me to an overpriced city.
| 41209 wrote:
| This is fantastic
|
| For one life is too short to work like a dog, and for anyone who
| stays they'll be able to demand higher salaries.
|
| Right now I have enough money saved up where I don't really need
| to work for the rest of the year. If it wasn't for the pandemic
| restricting international travel, I would simply up and move to a
| low cost of living country and try and take a full year off.
| ilamont wrote:
| _But human resources may be able to retain some workers by
| offering as much flexibility as possible, says Cathy Moy, chief
| people officer at BDO USA, a financial services company._
|
| It's not just flexibility or WFH. For many people it's about pay,
| policies, management, and a host of other issues, many of them
| well known but never addressed. Good luck to those firms who
| think the old HR playbook - making sympathetic noises while doing
| nothing about these other issues - will suffice.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| For my part, I am guessing none of this is _really_ in HR 's
| hands.
|
| The conversations I'm having in my social sphere tend to be
| something to the effect of how the past year has really made it
| clear how dysfunctional their company's team social dynamics
| are. And it's often not something you can expect anyone to ever
| fix, because that sort of thing is largely driven by senior
| management.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I can tell you all the market for devs is white hot at the
| moment. I mean it was never cold, but right now seems to be
| insane.
|
| If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you
| like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on
| onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the
| last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in
| the office and would pay them very well are feeling forced to let
| people work from home at least a couple of days.
|
| Salary wise it seems like it's breaking upwards too, though of
| course all I have is my own offers and the word of some
| recruiters. There's also just a lot of firms out there who are
| happy to create roles for people they like, or discuss new
| ventures with new people.
|
| Also, don't forget if you're going to look, absolutely everyone
| is interviewing remotely. You can sit at home at interviews all
| day until you find the job for you, something you might not be
| able to once more firms go back in the office.
| vmception wrote:
| Levels says E-7's at Facebook get a nearly $1,000,000
| compensation package
|
| A) Is this annual? As in their unvested RSUs are nearly 4x this
| amount
|
| B) This is not accounting for stock price appreciation?
|
| or do I have it entirely wrong. Two years ago on Blind I could
| tell people were discussing their compensation packages in
| wildly differing ways. It was impossible to tell if people were
| discussing if they signed an offer that computed a particular
| dollar value that was only relevant a single year and they just
| liked to brag about it, or if they were discussing their annual
| tax filings from employment, or even something else. I feel
| like this discrepancy translates onto Levels as well.
| bagels wrote:
| Yes, annually. Not counting appreciation.
|
| It's pretty rare to see an e7 offer though.
| dmlittle wrote:
| As someone who recently interviewed (although not at
| Facebook) the number is the _annual compensation package at
| the time they signed their offer_ (it includes base salary +
| annual stock grant + bonus). If someone got $1,000,000 in
| annual compensation 2 years ago, the stock portion per year
| will likely be larger now due to appreciation of the stock.
| These numbers are crazy high and before I interviewed this
| time around I was somewhat skeptic of how real these numbers
| were outside of a few outliers but now I'm pretty sure it's
| pretty common.
| MrKristopher wrote:
| Base + bonus + annual refresher should be in the 700s
| annually. Likely the way this gets to $1M is with stocks
| going up and stacked refreshers (getting a couple annual
| refreshers while the initial grant is still vesting).
| nomy99 wrote:
| Yes, I found a job in chicago while interviewing from nyc. It's
| a great time to find a new job.
| joecot wrote:
| This. The WeWorkRemotely posting silicon valley type companies
| are getting flooded and are quite picky currently. But once you
| apply to a few jobs elsewhere that have recruiters, you get
| flooded with small to medium size companies looking for devs.
| And the market is so hot that companies which previously had
| longer interview processes are condensing down to 1-2
| interviews, because if they take any longer all their
| applicants have already taken offers elsewhere. For most devs,
| no matter what you're making someone else would pay you more,
| and they're willing to do it remotely.
|
| Don't wait on your company to make a remote work plan once
| they've got you all back in the office. Start looking around
| now while they don't have a monopoly on your time. That doesn't
| necessarily mean taking interviews during work hours -- my
| previous job was 10-6 eastern, and east coast companies would
| happily interview me at 9, while west coast ones interviewed me
| at 7. Once your current company has you back in the office,
| they have a much stronger grasp on you, and they know it.
| That's why they want everyone back in the office _before_ they
| talk about remote work.
|
| But if you're not going to a company that is itself 100%
| remote, I'd still be wary about being the stranger that they
| only see online. I went with a job where I was only an hour
| away from the office but could still work remotely, and plan to
| be there once every couple months, so I still get some face
| time.
| [deleted]
| NationalPark wrote:
| Are you seeing the salaries at these smaller companies
| keeping up? When I was changing jobs just before the pandemic
| I also saw a ton of interest from small/med companies, but
| none with competitive offers. Big, publicly traded tech
| companies were able to offer more than double total
| compensation in some cases, and that's with equity you can
| actually sell for cash.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of colleagues leaving for substantial
| raises. But I've also noticed that we've been hiring a lot
| of entry-level folks. Not sure if we can extrapolate that
| industry-wide, but I suspect we can.
|
| There are a lot of cities in the USA with an underpaid, but
| experienced workforce. While you might not find these
| offers to be competitive, someone from Springfield making
| $65k would absolutely jump at a $95k offer, even if that's
| still pretty well below the median national salary.
| joecot wrote:
| It probably depends where you are on your career path. For
| me, those silicon valley startups were offering less than
| my target salary and I was going to try to negotiate up.
| For the small company I ended up at, I gave my target
| salary range and they exceeded it by 10k. I wasn't shooting
| for big publicly traded companies, and I don't know how
| they're acting currently. From friends I do know that some
| are seriously considering changing their remote work policy
| obviously.
| lupire wrote:
| Why was your target so low?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Weworkremotely just seem to be targeted at "web"-devs judging
| by filter categories (fullstack, backend, frontend). Is those
| positions maybe easier to do remotely?
| quaffapint wrote:
| Im not seeing a lot of remote/hybrid offers in the midatlantic
| area (from my little checking around my area).
|
| It's a lot more "we're remote right now and haven't determined
| our remote strategy" which like my current place generally
| means we'll expect you back, but might be a little more lenient
| on why you need to do a special WFH day.
|
| I've done both full remote and full open office. I think being
| close enough to go in and get together to determine project
| path and then going remote to work on it seems to be the way to
| go. It doesn't look like my current employer believes the same
| way - even though they are doing very well right now and we're
| all remote.
| joecot wrote:
| That's why people are looking for a new job that will
| specifically let them work remote. Like anything else, it's
| easier to get the change you want from a new company than
| your current one, and you work that out as part of the
| interview and offer. With the jobs in such demand, companies
| that wouldn't normally hire remote people will.
| deagle50 wrote:
| SWE?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| SoftWare Engineer
| MrKristopher wrote:
| Wouldn't checking for remote jobs around your area sort of
| defeat the purpose?
| servercobra wrote:
| Every time a recruiter (especially internal) reaches out to me
| lately about "remote until after Covid" I politely tell them I
| have no intention of ever being forced back into an office
| every week and good luck with their search. Hopefully they'll
| realize quickly enough.
|
| Agreed on the salary uptick now. I'm not actively looking, but
| I'll entertain interesting companies. I've had a lot more
| companies say "yeah, we can do that" when I tell them I want at
| least $200k base (8 YOE, full stack developer) than before.
| lupire wrote:
| What do you mean "base"? Why so specifoc for only one part
| portion of your comp?
| wil421 wrote:
| Cash is king. Stocks, bonuses, and RSU are never
| guaranteed.
| [deleted]
| tunesmith wrote:
| Can I get an ELI5 on how to even start looking around? I'm
| someone that contracted via word of mouth for years, and I have
| zero recruiter relationships. My resume is probably very strong
| (principle engineer / architect level, strong mentor,
| JVM/distributed backend, nodejs react typescript frontend) but
| I haven't updated it for years. I know a lot of recruiters are
| lousy so I don't want to just cold-call one at random.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Here's what to do.
|
| First of all, find out where the jobs are. Some board for
| your niche or something like that. For me it's
| efinancialcareers. Now efinancial is still a black hole if
| you try to use it to apply through, but what you're really
| after is the recruiter details.
|
| You then phone up the rec, or you write to him on LinkedIn. A
| lot of them are crap at responding, but that's how it is.
| Phone a few, and convince them that you are the real deal for
| whatever it is he recruits for.
|
| They'll all want an updated CV. They need it to be able to
| proceed, nobody will place you without one. Good news is it
| isn't that hard, just highlight the relevant bits for reach
| recruiter.
|
| The rec will then say "I've got a job at X, Y, and Z. X is a
| this kind of co, Y is looking for blah..."
|
| When they have some of those details it means they actually
| have something. Otherwise it's just a generic company that
| they will find later. By find, I mean they will forget you by
| the time the job comes. One guy told me straight up the ad I
| responded to was not a specific job, it was a honeypot to
| lure candidates.
|
| So now the companies get your CVs, and they decide whether to
| interview. If the recruiter is good, they will interview you
| maybe 3/4 times. Companies often screw up their own internal
| hiring process and ask for CVs when they aren't ready. But
| the other companies should be willing to interview you. This
| is where you find out if the rec is crap, because a fair few
| of them will just not tell you anything about what happened
| to your CV.
|
| It's still a numbers game. I've got over 20 recruiters listed
| on my Trello, most of them did nothing useful for me.
|
| It's probably worth cultivating some relationships with the
| recruiters. You learn a lot about what the market is doing
| for free from them.
| xwdv wrote:
| Why would it be white hot right now though? I don't think
| software would be particularly affected by COVID negatively or
| positively.
| lostcolony wrote:
| The forced year of remote has led to both a lot of companies
| opening up permanent remote work, and a lot of people to
| change jobs (because their current company doesn't support
| them remotely well, or because without the social component
| normalizing their work they've come to question it more).
| Further, with just the economy reopening, a lot of businesses
| are opening headcount that they've been sitting on the past
| year, reluctant to hire due to COVID uncertainties. Taken
| together, there is a lot of churn. There's a lot of
| opportunity, but also a lot of competition for roles.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Covid made it clear that many jobs can be automated
| asdff wrote:
| The fact that nothing has really changed seems to mean it
| is still cheaper to hire a minimum wage earner with zero
| benefits than to hire or contract software engineers to
| service your software and/or hardware that automates the
| job.
| MrKristopher wrote:
| Stocks (and therefore RSUs) are up. I joined a FANG in 2019
| with $500k RSUs. Now I have $740k in unvested RSUs, including
| $600k remaining from the initial grant.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| At least where I am, companies are realizing that relying on
| people is unreliable, so they are investing more in
| technology.
| xpe wrote:
| Could you elaborate on your experience (as vaguely as
| necessary to protect your privacy)?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I don't work in this space currently, but have colleagues
| and former colleagues that do. So many companies still
| have people running around with clipboards or doing
| routine calculations in Excel or handing loan
| applications by hand or managing contracts by printing
| them out and filing them or having someone sit at a
| monitor and watch for an alert so they can tell someone
| else or manually processing reward point changes or fax
| out hotel booking confirmations.
|
| This is ludicrous to people steeped in tech, but I have
| had former colleagues or classmates or even myself work
| on all of those in the past year and a bit.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| How is it for Product Managers and Product Owners? I've seen a
| slight bump in the past few weeks, but (anecdotally from my
| monitoring) the number of listings was still higher under Trump
| in 2019:
|
| https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Technical+Product+Managers+%26...
| lupire wrote:
| Is Product Owner a job?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| Now, from memory I seem to recall that depending on which
| staffing survey, and how you phrase it, 10-35% of all employees
| say they intend to quit.
|
| I'm _not_ saying that we will won 't see and increase turn over.
| However I suspect that given the level of disruption we've
| already had, I would be skeptical that its going to get worse.
|
| The counter argument to that is of course that the people who
| were forced to change jobs from ones they liked (ones that were
| heavily hit by covid) to ones that existed, will migrate back to
| their old profession.
| chkaloon wrote:
| In the US if the health insurance issue could be taken off the
| table the rate would be even much higher.
| vsskanth wrote:
| Not sure if this was just pent up demand from the limited
| mobility due to lockdowns last year. Now that places are opening
| up, people can actually move.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I've been a consultant for years, and I'd be unable to work as an
| employee for any company, especially a larger one. Seeing all the
| bullshit employees have to put up with at companies would make me
| scream.
|
| I'm not talking about the work, it's everything else. The
| culture.
| vbtemp wrote:
| What do you do? Contact Fortran code?
| fortran77 wrote:
| Ha! Erlang, GPGPU, and FPGA
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I don't particularly want to be remote. I haven't enjoyed it at
| all. But it is potentially opening up possibilities for me
| outside of the area I live in.
|
| I'd be open to the idea if I could find a company that did a
| better job of it than my employer has. I suspect many others are
| in the same mindset, and that greatly weakens the negotiating
| position of employers in our industry -- even for recruiting
| people who don't necessarily want to be remote.
| trentnix wrote:
| > "I don't envy the challenge that human resources faces right
| now," says Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at
| Texas A&M University.
|
| Maybe part of the problem is sitting right there in plain sight.
| Looking back, virtually every work frustration that led me to
| start looking elsewhere was nothing that HR could (or should)
| fix. In my experience, the degree of HR's influence over company
| culture, hiring, and firing directly correlates to the degree
| that the work environment is impersonal, homogenized, and rote.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| HR is mostly there to cross t and dot i in case company runs
| into legal issues.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| In my experience it really depends on the company.
|
| In one company for which I've worked, the HR department had a
| surprising amount of power regarding software developers'
| salaries and (for hiring) qualifications. It was almost
| impossible for hiring managers to override those policies.
|
| Perhaps HR was merely implementing the policies chosen by
| executive leadership; i.e. perhaps they were just the
| messenger. But either way, HR was an additional level of
| bureaucracy that collectively hamstrung the company's ability
| to hire and retain top talent. IIUC this is really coming
| back to hurt them now.
| Arrath wrote:
| Its all there in the name. We're resources, to be marshalled
| and managed by HR for the benefit and protection of the
| company. HR doesn't care a whit about us employees beyond the
| extent of any liability we might leverage into suing the
| company for.
| amyjess wrote:
| Well, I can finally say it: I'm part of the Great Resignation.
|
| I found a new position that's 100% remote, I put in my notice at
| my current job the week before last, and my last day is coming up
| this week.
|
| It's kind of bittersweet: I'm leaving just before my fifth
| anniversary here, and this is the only company where I've even
| made it to three years, much less five, but it is what it is. I
| like what I do, and I like my coworkers, but I just can't go back
| to working in an office after spending the last year working from
| home, so it's time for me to move on.
| calltrak wrote:
| My last company wanted me to wear face knickers at the office
| because of the scaredemic. I told them viruses are invisible.
| Pandemics are NOT. I don't see any signs of a pandemic anywhere,
| except all the maskholes at the grocery store and the fear porn
| on the fake news. Hopefully my ex boss is still trying to shove
| that job up his arse, sideways.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > There's not much firms can do to hold onto employees
|
| Well, they could always offer more money.
|
| Sometimes I crack myself up.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I would personally take more free time over more money any day.
| The only reason I work a full time job is because it is the
| only way to get health coverage that you can actually afford.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think this is a true cause of a lot of people leaving jobs.
| The company I work for has grown revenue 50% during the
| pandemic, but has only hired maybe 10% more people. So now I
| have 1.5 full time jobs and hate it, but I can't complain
| because I see that my coworkers are working 2-3 full time
| jobs.
|
| It's easier to quit. The raise is nice, but the normal
| workload is much nicer.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| of course they can, and facing a labor shortage they eventually
| will, but those changes take time. businesses compete for
| workers and customers in a market, and the market has to
| change. it has a lot of inertia.
| pwned1 wrote:
| I think it's a pretty constant insight that more money isn't
| what generally motivates people to quit, it's work environment.
| martin_a wrote:
| At this point, still not making six figures but it's Germany,
| I'd prefer a nicer office/work environment over more money.
|
| More space, more open-minded culture, fresh food for lunch (not
| even free but let's split cost)...
|
| Things like these would probably benefit me (and my colleagues)
| more than paying us another X hundred Euro.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > more open-minded culture
|
| Could you expand on this a bit?
|
| I've only worked in the U.S., so most of what I "know" about
| working in Germany is based on stereotypes. I'd love to hear
| your first-hand perspective.
| martin_a wrote:
| Hm, maybe that's not specific to Germany, but in this
| company there are lots of people who think something like
| this:
|
| - Totally not my problem, see how you figure it out for
| yourself
|
| - We've never done it that way
|
| - We've always done it this way
|
| - Don't look left and right while doing your work
|
| - I don't want to improve but I don't like where you are
|
| - If you're not physically at work you can't be working at
| all
|
| I think Germans sometimes have a specific sense of order
| and structure for work. Also succesful people, like in
| hard-working and making something out of themselves, are
| often belittled and in general nothing to look up to.
|
| These cultural "problems" creep into workplaces, too. To
| paraphrase a bit more:
|
| Work is a place you go to and leave after 8 hours. 8.5
| hours precisely, because of 0.5 hours of lunch break. Don't
| stay longer, but NEVER leave 15 minutes earlier. You also
| don't hang out with colleagues for a beer or food, except
| for the colleagues from your pack. But you only meet those
| in your free time to talk about the other colleagures.
|
| Also the other packs/departments are probably all idiots.
| "Online people" don't work at all, because I never see them
| on the phone, they just chill and surf the web probably.
| And they even work less now that they stayed at home
| because of Covid.
|
| I've experienced all of this not only in my current but in
| other companies and I start to think it's a workplace-
| culture thing, where Germans don't realise that we're all
| in the same team but some people work just differently than
| others. This leads to a lot of envy, bad mood and stress,
| because I've always got the feeling that I need to fight.
| Fight for how I work, what I work on, how I communicate
| that to clients and so on.
|
| So, I'd like my leaders up in the C-level to work on
| "relaxing the people", connecting the departments, thinking
| more about purpose and mission and vision and less about
| whether we can make 5% more profit this year.
|
| I'd love if we would get something like a
| Skillshare/Udemy/LinkedIn learning membership for all of us
| and you get two hours a week to learn whatever you want, so
| everybody can become better.
|
| I'd love if the company would support renting a bike, but
| "it's too complicated/too much work". I'd also love if I
| could get rid of most of the wall units here in our space
| and instead get a couch and some plants. Best we will get
| (learned that today) is that we can paint one wall in a
| color we'd like. We might even be allowed to paint that in
| our working time, but we'll see.
|
| I don't expect middle to larger companies to be like a
| startup and everything is possible all the time and so on,
| but I think in Germany we need to see work more as a place
| where you are also allowed to have fun and enjoy the
| environment and learn and develop yourself and look next to
| the road and so on...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > If you're not physically at work you can't be working
| at all
|
| Isn't that a deliberate choice as a way to put an end to
| the scourge of unpaid overtime?
| martin_a wrote:
| Hm, I found this more in the context of the work from
| home situation we are in.
|
| More than once I had a call later in the afternoon and
| people (explicitly one of the C-levels) were really
| surprised that I answered the Teams call right away, was
| well dressed and sitting at my desk.
|
| Don't know what they were expecting. Motivated, happy
| people will work a lot from home, too, the lazy ones are
| lazy whether they are sitting in the office or at home...
|
| But there's lots of "old school" leadership people in
| Germany, and they are really looking forward on ending
| WFH. For us it will happen in July, team leads can define
| "exceptions" where their members can stay at home but
| only "once a week" and not regularly.
|
| Old habits die slow, I guess, but I think Germany needs a
| new leadership culture to keep up with the US et al.
| loydb wrote:
| Just lost out on a candidate who was in the 'talking with HR
| phase'. Their existing company offered a 100% salary bonus to
| stay for 12 months.
|
| I'll hit them up again in a year :)
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Hit them up again in two months. That level of raise signals
| "stick around while we find your replacement."
| ciisforsuckas wrote:
| They want us back in the office July 16... I'm going to pass so
| found a new remote role with higher salary and equity. I will be
| part of this wave. I didn't realy even try with how insane the
| market is especially if you are specialzed in the current
| hotness.
|
| Moreso, the rise of fully remote role has opened up our ideas
| about our current living situation. The real estate market in our
| city is shattered and broken. So we will also move 60 miles south
| to a different city... before the pandemic I was remote and
| missed the office. Post pandemic... fuck the office and 1+ hour
| commutes purely because the city, state, and country have
| mismanaged infrastructure for 20 years.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Mine is returning part time on July 19th. When asked if we're
| more productive in the office vs at home we were told flat out
| "we don't have that data".
|
| My commute is 5 miles. 30 minutes by bike (on a few sketchy
| roads) or 15 minutes by car. I need to time out which is
| actually faster end-to-end. I setup an office in my house pre-
| pandemic (It's gaming room with dual monitors on a desktop PC I
| built in college) 3x the space, a couch and much closer walk to
| the bathroom. I'm sad to give it up now.
| ericlewis wrote:
| don't give it up, is the simple answer.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Mostly for more junior people, be very careful with this. Even
| if companies make sure promotions happen equally for on-site
| and remote, you'll learn everything slower. This could be new
| technology, a new language, or things about the company's
| infrastrucutre, but it will all be slower, and don't be
| surprised when people who are on-site seem better at their
| jobs.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Depends on how you learn. Personally I've alway been ultra
| self taught. Even in university would only show up for
| lectures if I didnt understand the material in the text book.
| Else I basically just followed the syllabus and got
| reasonably good grades.
|
| Some are more hands on though and prefer social learning
| ("show me how to do it..."). To each their own, but I
| personally learn faster when left alone than when someone
| tries to put me through their "course".
| cruano wrote:
| It also depends on what you are learning. I'm sure a junior
| engineer would get by just fine if all they had to do was
| learn a language, but if you have to look at a 10-year-old
| system where only senior co-workers know the context for, I
| wouldn't blame them for needing some hand-holding.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| yeah, in that case the Senior co-worker literally is the
| text book.
|
| That being said, just reading the source code is under
| untilized these days. Engineers sometimes ask me how the
| system works, I send them to the repo. It's all right
| there, just have to learn to read the story it tells.
|
| One risk is that often times the co-worker knows the
| business logic in "how it ought to be" not the reality of
| the underlying code. I've had engineers say "It works
| like X" and I have to say "well, only sometimes. The code
| says this..."
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Any software company that's ending remote work right now is
| basically risking its entire existence. There's no possible
| way, in this market, a company will be able to replace 10% of
| its workforce in a reasonable time. I can understand why
| management wants to go back to the office, but why would you
| ever take the risk of being one of the first, before gauging
| how the market will react.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Especially more senior developers.
| ciisforsuckas wrote:
| It's a big company and they are an ERP vendor thus rooted in
| old fashioned manufacturing ideas. They think their size will
| protect them.
| asdff wrote:
| These companies are probably right that their size will
| protect them. People who are currently employed know better
| than to take the abuse. That's why these major companies
| recruit so heavily at colleges and rope in people who have
| zero perspective on work who don't know any better.
| duped wrote:
| I mean things will probably settle down in 6-12 months. But
| that's a problem for companies trying to hire today, who need
| to get shit done in the next 6-12 months
| austincheney wrote:
| I was looking around recently, particularly at startups, but then
| chose to stop. Here is my reasoning:
|
| * I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to
| throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange:
| leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of
| responsibilities. I wasn't seeing this.
|
| * If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody
| wants a tool jockey. They claim to want somebody full stack. But
| when you really press for details the really want somebody to do
| react on the front end and play around with their cloud provider.
| The services piece in the middle is where things get strained in
| a full stack interview. If tools are the direction of work I have
| already lost interest. Why would I want to give up stable
| employment with great benefits to wire tools together? I would
| rather just stare out the window.
|
| * The idea of a senior engineer is incredibly convoluted. It
| sounds like people want somebody who can mentor in a vacuum. You
| can only mentor so much about dicking around with tools. If you
| try to mentor past that and the culture is just go dick around
| with tools you are either mentoring too much or not enough.
| Either way you are a horrible senior incompatible to the new
| organization. Worse is when they ask you to guide and train
| junior developers without leadership support. Really if that
| should work beyond vague hints you need a title. Excellent
| juniors have a passion for learning but many juniors aren't
| excellent, just want a paycheck, and feel insecure when
| challenged.
|
| From going through the exact same conversation several times in a
| row I get the impression many employers kind of know what they
| want to build, kind of guess at what they need, and completely
| guess at what qualifies as execution planning but cannot put any
| of that together into a single vision.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Regarding your second point, I think it's good to know what
| interests you, but there's a lot of quality ideas out there
| that don't have hard tech components, and if they invent hard
| tech problems to keep their engineers interested, they're
| probably not going to last very long.
|
| IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a
| cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the
| faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in
| front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside.
|
| To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do
| all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution
| becomes the fun part.
|
| Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively
| quickly. :)
| handrous wrote:
| IMO the only way to make that stuff engaging is to move "up"
| a level and be the one picking the tools to solve the
| problem, interacting with users/clients, that kind of thing.
| Basically, start your own business or become a product
| manager at a place where product manager is a fairly
| expansive role.
|
| Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating;
| _and_ unrewarding. But, it 's also most of the market for
| developers. :-/
| austincheney wrote:
| The business should be inventing the problems, because that
| is (hopefully) driving the revenue that keeps you employed.
| Usually the business has all kinds of wonderful ideas of
| which some are practical and vetted while others are a
| distraction. If you are thinking in terms of automation,
| internal training, and service fulfillment you probably
| aren't properly aligning solutions to expense reduction. The
| benefit of writing original software is innovation and IP
| (even if open source and liberally licensed) that can
| generate additional revenue for the business.
|
| If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it
| will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility
| is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge
| for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit,
| which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That
| ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can
| have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| For me, there's this fire of urgency that makes it feel
| appropriate to make some long term bad tech choices if it
| helps me get customer feedback/iterate in the nearer term.
|
| Honestly, as long as the tech doesn't fall over at 3am and
| generally lets me know when it's unhealthy, I'm just trying
| to grow enough to hire people who know more about making
| good long term tech choices than I do...
| jitl wrote:
| What do you mean by "tools"? Generally I think of "tools" as
| anything that assists you in building, deploying, or operating
| a (production) service, but not the service itself. For my
| definition, the firebase CLI is a tool, but Google Cloud
| Firestore (a no-SQL data store) is not. At the places you
| talked to, was everything service-y left to a separate back-
| end/infra team?
| austincheney wrote:
| By _tools_ I don't mean your OS or IDE. I mean those things
| so you don't have to write code beyond a couple of
| figurations or text content.
| adaml_623 wrote:
| Can you give examples. I'm not clear on what you mean
| austincheney wrote:
| * State management in the browser. This is stupid easy. I
| even wrote about exactly how to do this: https://github.c
| om/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/state_manag...
|
| * Just about anything to do with the DOM. Its a standard
| tree model. You learn it and get comfortable with it and
| suddenly all that browser tooling you cannot live without
| becomes immediately unnecessary. Hiding from this, making
| a bunch of excuses, and complaining about how hard life
| isn't appealing.
|
| * The file system is also a tree model. If you have an
| abstraction layer that normalizes file system access
| cross OS all you really need is a basic comfort of data
| structures.
|
| * Tools that provide session management are there because
| planning for real time parallel distribution is
| challenging. This is yet another one of those that once
| you go through it a few times you just know how to do it.
| [deleted]
| vincentmarle wrote:
| I guess he/she doesn't want to write glue code, but solve
| actual problems in code.
| m0llusk wrote:
| The record 9.3 million job openings may be evidence that commonly
| used hiring practices have broken down and are not serving labor
| markets efficiently.
| dolmen wrote:
| To prevent this the tech company I work for has just introduced
| world-wide a flexible work policy which allows you to chose (with
| only your manager's approval) if and how you want to return to
| the office.
|
| 100% were in full remote worldwide since August and offices are
| just starting to reopen.
| mLuby wrote:
| > flexible work policy
|
| To me at least, the vagueness of this phrase has made it
| untrustworthy. It can mean way too many different things.
|
| > with only your manager's approval
|
| I'd hope we're beyond tying your (and your family's) physical
| location to your boss's whim.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > To me at least, the vagueness of this phrase has made it
| untrustworthy.
|
| Perhaps that was the GP's choice of wording, to keep the
| comment brief?
| mLuby wrote:
| That could be--I've heard businesses talk about their
| "flexible work policies" too.
| reaperducer wrote:
| There have been so many similar articles over the last three
| months. And every time I see one, I'm reminded of how resistant
| to change the company (and industry) I'm in is.
|
| The company I work for is starting to bring people back to the
| office department by department. People are resisting, and the
| company is telling them not to let the door hit them in their
| asses on the way out. Officially, it's because there is no
| "policy" for long-term work-from-home. But it's just stubbornness
| that comes from its habit of moving at the speed of a glacier.
|
| I've heard that some departments have lost 20% of their people so
| far. I know for a fact that one department I work closely with
| has lost 40%. My observation is that the better the employee, the
| more likely he is to refuse to come back to the office.
| aerosmile wrote:
| Remember how everyone predicted a baby boom in 2021 and instead
| we saw a 8-10% decline in birth rate [1]? It turns out that while
| people had more time to focus on their families, the financial
| uncertainty had a greater impact on their family planning
| decisions. The same thing happened in 2009 - there's a close link
| between the birth rate and recessions [2]. While I don't doubt
| that many people will change their jobs to better fit their life
| styles, I doubt that we'll end up with as big of a dip in total
| employment due to resignations (jobs will just shift from some
| companies to others).
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expected-covid-
| ba...
|
| [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-
| birt...
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| Instead, we saw a dog adoption boom.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| It's sad that so many people get dogs and don't train with
| them. Watching young women get dragged along by their big
| working dogs is a common sight in Uptown Dallas.
| aerosmile wrote:
| So true!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Not a big deal at all. A great number of people are always
| looking to change their job at any given time. During the
| pandemic maby were reluctant to act on it, so it could have
| created a big delayed volume of resignations. It is not a problem
| because would be a lot of candidates to fill in the ranks, who
| too have quit their previous jobs.
| blowski wrote:
| I can imagine a few other factors that might be playing into
| this:
|
| * People who have moved, and now want a job closer to home if
| they want/need to go into the office.
|
| * Companies who have hoarded cash during the recession and can
| now offer big salaries.
|
| * Looser bonds with colleagues they only see remotely
|
| I've no idea whether and to what extent any of these things are
| true, but it's definitely easy to imagine a big move around.
| That said... I'm not seeing much change in volume on the
| typical job boards so perhaps it's all hypothetical.
| kkirsche wrote:
| You may be right but this seems extremely presumptuous--how do
| you know the people will go back vs taking a gap year or other
| extended hiatus or field change?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Not GP, but most people are not secure enough (either
| financially or psychologically) to just quit for a year. The
| overwhelming default is trading one job for another rather
| than trading your job for margaritas on the beach.
| sleepychu wrote:
| Synchronized resignations are definitely more of a headache
| than staggered ones. For example, in a normal situation if I
| quit my boss will be able to hire someone to replace me,
| knowing what my strengths and weaknesses are and what gaps my
| departure has created for the team. If they quit then I am a
| source of information to whoever is hired to replace them.
|
| Of course anyone is replaceable but some knowledge will be
| lost. Also your model does not account for businesses which are
| aggressively expanding and doing a better job than the average
| employer retaining their employees by either being a genuinely
| great place to work or LTIPs
| chrisweekly wrote:
| LITP: Long-Term Incentive Plan
| dandellion wrote:
| Thank you.
| quititor wrote:
| I'm not sure I believe the conclusion based on the survey.
| Resigning and "thinking about quitting [your] job" are very
| different things. I've spent my whole working life thinking about
| quitting but I've rarely actually quit, the pandemic hasn't
| changed that.
| celticninja wrote:
| I know a lot of people who are looking for alternative jobs
| because their companies expect a full return to the office.
| They are all looking for more flexible, or remote-first,
| employers.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The difference is that there's not normally a mass catalyst
| like the end of WFH. Many people think of quitting their job,
| few actually do.
|
| That's largely because of status quo bias. People don't like to
| make any major changes to their life situation unless prompted.
| But if a company exists on ending the WFH arrangements that
| people have become accustomed to over the past year, all bets
| are out the window.
| arbol wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time thinking about quitting and have had 6
| jobs in 14 years. The first 1-2 years of employment is usually
| fairly interesting and then you hit a rut in which you're no
| longer learning, IMO.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am curious to know if it still has an impact. An employee who
| no longer plans to stick around has substantially different
| motivations.
| mabbo wrote:
| I suspect what the authors are presuming is a relationship
| between the variable "proportion of workers thinking about
| quitting" and the variable "near future quitting rate".
|
| Imagine if I told you that the number of people "thinking of
| buying a Tesla" had gone up dramatically. Now, most people
| can't afford a Tesla, so no, not everyone is going to buy a
| Tesla. But if overall the proportion of people thinking about
| it went up, you wouldn't be surprised if the number of Tesla
| sales went up soon, and would probably be surprised if it fell.
|
| What I'm saying here is that it would be weird if those two
| variables are completely independent.
| PeterisP wrote:
| But that's kind of the point - the article is _not_ saying
| that the proportion of workers thinking about quitting has
| gone up dramatically. They 're saying that "25% to upwards of
| 40%" are thinking about this, but it seems a completely
| reasonable rate even in normal conditions, for all we know it
| may not be an increase at all.
| mabbo wrote:
| Then I think you make a very good point.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Meanwhile I've thought about quitting and then also quit a
| whole bunch of times. Business as usual over here.
|
| (Turns out the grass is pretty much the same in most places.)
| nvr219 wrote:
| Yeah I think 100% of workers _think_ about quitting their job.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Unless rent and mortgage payments somehow evaporate, there
| won't be some massive wave of resignations.
| markh wrote:
| And health insurance.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Damn, America really needs to get their act together.
|
| Being from England, I hadn't even considered that
| healthcare is something that has to be factored into
| whether someone could take time off
| jitl wrote:
| After I left Airbnb, I paid $680 a month to keep my
| previously employer-paid health insurance. Very cool,
| loved to have the "freedom of choice" to "participate in
| the market". Insurance feels like another little way
| businesses seek to own people in the US. Want to own
| yourself? Gotta pay the lease... on your own body.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I'm not clued up on US healthcare, but is $680 a lot,
| average, low?
|
| Does it cover all procedures? Is there an excess? Value
| of coverage?
| bsenftner wrote:
| It covers the basics, and very little beyond that.
| handrous wrote:
| Low-cost-of-living (that is: undesirable) US state here.
|
| ~$1800/m for bad family (married couple + kids) health
| insurance on the HCA Marketplace. There are _no_
| providers beyond the _two_ on there still selling
| individual insurance to anyone in this state. Other
| providers are only interested in selling group insurance.
| Check with insurance providers directly, check with
| insurance brokers, that 's what you hear. No, no-one
| sells individual insurance in this state except those two
| providers you've never heard of. Other providers will
| only deal with businesses or other organizations.
|
| How is the insurance bad? Well, for one thing, it still
| leaves you with ~$25,000 of risk exposure per year. That
| is, if things go very poorly (two family members get very
| sick, basically--nb, because US healthcare is actually,
| no-joke, insane, "gets very sick" includes "gets
| pregnant"), you could potentially have to pay $25,000,
| total, in a given year, _on top of_ the monthly premiums.
| For another, US insurance plans have a concept of a
| "network", that is, particular places (hospitals,
| clinics, testing centers) where the insurance applies.
| For most insurance, you'll pay most or all costs if you
| go "out of network". These two providers each have very
| different networks, such that, for our location, one must
| choose between having the only children's hospital in the
| area "in network" (and of course said hospital is itself
| a "network" of locations and they've bought up
| everydamnthing related to children's healthcare in our
| city, because healthcare in the US is batshit insane)
| _or_ having _either_ of the two nearest normal hospitals
| to us be in-network.
|
| Oh, and get this: US healthcare plans like to restrict
| coverage geographically. I think they all have to cover
| emergency room visits anywhere, but I wouldn't want to
| see what happens if you get in a bad car wreck, or have a
| heart attack, or whatever, in another state and can't be
| moved and are transferred out of the ER to any other part
| of the hospital. My guess is you get hit with five to six
| figures of bills that insurance won't touch. That's
| right: it's probably advisable to get travel healthcare
| insurance _to travel in your own goddamn country_.
| Further, lots of people live within tens of miles of a
| state border and might routinely travel--even just to
| commute to work--outside the area their insurance covers.
| Hope they never need anything but ER care while doing
| that!
|
| US healthcare: fucked top-to-bottom, and we pay a huge
| premium for the "privilege" of "enjoying" it, because
| freedom or something.
| ddingus wrote:
| +1 similar scenario here
| bingidingi wrote:
| $680 is probably somewhat typical, I pay $1000/mo for
| family coverage.
|
| It only covers "medically necessary" procedures as deemed
| by the insurance company (there are some laws requiring
| certain procedures to be covered). You have to use
| specific doctors and facilities.
|
| Typically you have a deductible as well. I have to pay
| $4,000 out of my own pocket before insurance kicks in.
| Preventative care (check-ups) are usually covered by a
| co-pay, mine is $30.
|
| There's usually an out-of-pocket maximum you can pay
| every year (mine is $9,000). That's the real value of the
| insurance... if you're in a catastrophic event hopefully
| it caps your costs (but it doesn't always depending on
| facility, procedures, etc).
|
| Not sure what you mean by excess or value of coverage,
| but the answer is probably no.
|
| This does not include dental or vision services.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Medically necessary is still a rule in the UK NHS. It
| doesn't cover cosmetic surgery unless there's a very good
| reason (like something affecting a person's quality of
| life)
|
| I think excess is what you call a deductible, as in if I
| have an accident in my car, I pay for the first PS250 and
| that's the excess.
|
| The value of the coverage is the maximum amount they'll
| pay out. I don't know if I have that on my car, but my
| house contents insurance is insured up to a certain value
| gambiting wrote:
| I have insurance with Hastings Direct(because they were
| cheap) and their 3rd party liability maximum is 25
| million pounds. When I was with Aviva last year theirs
| was 20 million.
|
| I pay PS300/year to insure my car.
|
| And yeah, excess in US can be crazy I think. We have
| private health insurance from work and when I had to use
| it there was a PS100 deductible for the year - I thought
| that was quite steep.
| martin_a wrote:
| > I don't know if I have that on my car
|
| This should be fairly standard around the EU. In Germany
| this is capped at around 1 million, I think.
|
| Which sounds a lot, but bigger accidents can ramp up a
| lot of costs...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Here is a good pdf where you can calculate it for your
| age:
|
| https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ih
| cra...
|
| Basically, the metal levels are as follows: bronze,
| silver, gold, platinum are priced so that you the
| insurance company pays 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% of the
| healthcare costs.
|
| Of course, this is an actuarial calculation, so it's only
| true over a large population over a long timeline. But
| healthcare is a pretty certain need for everyone, so the
| cost for healthcare for everyone from age 0 to 65 (when
| government starts offering it called Medicare) is
| amortized into health insurance premiums for all of the 0
| to 65 years.
|
| The ACA law of 2010 requires a few things which cause the
| premiums to be adjusted such that younger people
| subsidize older people. The age rating factor table at
| the bottom of the linked pdf shows that the riskiest
| person (64 year old) must cost at most 3x what a 21 to 24
| year old costs.
|
| Also, healthy people subsidize unhealthy people because
| your health condition cannot be taken into account when
| determining premiums, and men subsidize women since
| gender cannot be taken into account (due to birthing).
|
| As far as I know, smoking is the only activity that
| causes one's premium to be higher.
|
| Let's take a silver HSA plan for example:
|
| https://www.horizonblue.com/qhp/files/2021/2021_IHC_OMNIA
| _HS...
|
| The out of pocket maximum for in network providers is
| $6,550. The premium is $350 per month. So $4,200 premium
| plus $6,550 out of pocket means a 21 to 24 year old pays
| at most $11k per year for healthcare if they get into
| trouble (most will only pay the $4.2k premiums since they
| are 21 to 24 and probably will not need healthcare).
|
| A complication to these calculations is when employees
| pay, they can pay with pretax money, and HSA plans allow
| you to invest your HSA contributions tax free (max of a
| few thousand dollars per person per year).
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Wait, so insurance doesn't even cover 100% of the costs?
|
| So when you hear about those people who get lumped with
| $100k medical bills they still have to pay like $20k of
| that on top of your insurance?
|
| What happens if you can't afford the remaining
| percentage?
| ghaff wrote:
| Decent insurance plans typically have an out of pocket
| maximum--at least for what they cover.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| All US health insurance plans have an out of pocket
| maximum, by law per ACA of 2010.
|
| https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-
| maximum-li...
|
| And they have to cover all non elective procedures.
| wincy wrote:
| You just get the care anyway and get a bill later. It's
| all pretty weird.
|
| My wife got a medical bill for $100k after being
| hospitalized with a life threatening illness years ago
| called and told them she'd send them $6,000. They said
| fine and considered it paid in full. The whole system is
| really bizarre.
|
| My uncle has cancer and no insurance and is on Medicare
| so all his costs are covered.
|
| My daughter is disabled and is also on Medicare, which is
| a weird mix of private and public where Medicare pays her
| primary insurance deductible so if she gets a surgery any
| surgery or doctors visits we might need after that in the
| year are going to be free.
|
| I was unemployed when my disabled daughter was born so it
| didn't cost us a dime, if I'd been employed it would have
| cost at least several thousand dollars. I started a job a
| week later but that didn't retroactively change the cost
| owed.
|
| When my disabled daughter was in the NICU for six months
| while a recruiting firm was technically my employer, she
| ruined their health insurance plan by racking up a
| million dollars in fees because they only had 60 or so
| employees, so the cost was extreme and their health
| insurance renewal rates were more expensive for a worse
| plan. I left the plan and used a Health Insurance
| marketplace plan instead which was cheaper and better
| than what their organization was offering for the
| following year.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > she ruined their health insurance plan by racking up a
| million dollars in fees because they only had 60 or so
| employees
|
| That is really bad. The gov or insurance providers
| (whoever is responsible) are essentially discouraging
| employing people with sick family members.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There was a lot of uproar from middle and upper middle
| class people when the original healthcare reform
| proposals in 2009 involved getting rid of all employer
| sponsored health plans.
|
| Many leaders at that time did want to dump everyone into
| one insurance market so all healthy people subsidized all
| sick people, but there was tons of politics blowback from
| people who already had access to good healthcare who
| would see their costs rise because until then, they only
| had to share costs between healthy, employed workers.
|
| Even today, you will read people lamenting how the ACA
| increased their health insurance premiums. Nevermind that
| it enabled millions more to actually get healthcare, so
| obviously the money was going to have to come from
| somewhere.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Medical bills are considered to be the most frequent
| reason for personal bankruptcies in USA.
| ghaff wrote:
| Medical illnesses are the most frequent reason. Which can
| include bills of course. But also includes inability to
| work, a requirement for ongoing home help, etc.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Insurance in general typically has deductibles (auto,
| home, renters, etc). for which you are responsible for
| first before the insurance kicks in. This is beneficial
| since it allows for lower premiums and lets customers pay
| out of pocket for expenses that they can afford. As a
| concept, it only makes sense to purchase insurance for
| expenses that you cannot afford.
|
| >So when you hear about those people who get lumped with
| $100k medical bills they still have to pay like $20k of
| that on top of your insurance?
|
| It depends if the person was insured or not, and if the
| care was provided by healthcare providers who have
| contracts with the insurance company or not (referred to
| as being in network).
|
| In the US, when you go to a healthcare provider, the
| first thing they will ask you to sign is a form
| acknowledging you know you are responsible for anything
| your insurance company does not pay for (unless you go to
| a vertically integrated healthcare / health insurance
| company like Kaiser Permanente). In fact, health
| insurance companies are better referred to as managed
| care organizations (MCOs) in the US.
|
| What happens is people are not capable of knowing what
| healthcare services they need or do not need. They have
| no way to determine if they are being ripped of or not.
| So the MCOs employ legions of doctors and pharmacists and
| whatnot to double check the doctors performing the
| services. They also have enough knowledge about pricing
| healthcare procedures that they are more able to
| determine a "good" price to pay.
|
| Anyway, after the ACA law, there is an out of pocket
| maximum for in network providers, so you would not get a
| $100k bill. the out of pocket maximum for individual /
| family is $8,550 / $17.1k in 2021:
|
| https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-
| maximum-li...
|
| So you would only be liable up to that amount at most in
| a calendar year for all healthcare you receive from an in
| network provider. Everything else is paid for by
| insurance.
|
| >What happens if you can't afford the remaining
| percentage?
|
| The healthcare provider can choose to go after you for
| it, since you signed the form that says you will pay them
| if insurance does not. If you feel your insurance denied
| the doctor inappropriately, you can appeal to a third
| party to determine if insurance is obliged to pay it (if
| it is evidence based medicine, then they most likely have
| to pay it).
| koheripbal wrote:
| Most businesses would very much prefer NOT to have to
| deal with employee health plans. Forgetting the cost to
| them - it's a massive annoying overhead and nightmare to
| manage.
| sidlls wrote:
| That may be true, but it's not annoying enough for them
| to prioritize doing anything about it. We'd see them
| forming coalitions to counter the insurance lobby were it
| otherwise.
|
| Also I'm skeptical that they don't actually want it, per
| the sibling commenter's remarks. I think bigger
| businesses are all too happy to have another lever of
| informational asymmetry to pull to manage their actual
| biggest cost: salary.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Big businesses would prefer it. They already have the
| huge HR departments to manage it, and it serves as price
| obfuscation so the worker cannot accurately compare
| alternative employers' offerings.
|
| It also works against small businesses that cannot afford
| to offer health insurance, because the small businesses'
| employees cannot purchase health insurance with pre tax
| money, while the big businesses can compensate people
| with pretax health insurance that they subsidize.
| acdha wrote:
| It's also a huge disincentive to switching jobs: I've
| known people who took or stayed at jobs they didn't love
| just for the benefits who would have preferred to be
| independent or at small companies but had families,
| various conditions which didn't prevent working normally
| but would have made individual insurance prohibitive. The
| ACA helped, but not enough and not in every state --
| especially because large group plans can mean less
| pushback on every charge.
| tfehring wrote:
| It's much less of an issue than it was a decade+ ago.
| Unemployed people in the US get free health coverage
| through Medicaid pretty much everywhere but the Deep
| South, albeit with a limited selection of doctors.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| What does free health coverage entail? If there's free
| coverage, why doesn't everyone have it?
| tfehring wrote:
| You get an insurance card that you can take to any doctor
| that accepts Medicaid, they'll treat you for free or for
| a nominal (say, $5) copay and bill the state. Mental
| health treatment is covered, prescription drugs are
| covered, the only major thing it's missing, as far as I
| know, is dental. But the main catch is that many doctors
| don't accept it, since Medicare generally reimburses at a
| lower rate than private insurance. Anecdotally, I was on
| Medicare in the rural Midwest several years ago and I
| think I had two choices of GP within a 25 mile radius.
|
| Everyone doesn't have it because it's means-tested - if
| you make more than very roughly $1,200 a month you don't
| qualify. You still qualify for income-based subsidies at
| that point (under a totally different government
| program), but at higher income levels the expectation is
| that either you pay for your own health insurance
| premiums out of pocket, or your employer pays them for
| you. It's all very complicated, but that complexity is
| the price we pay so that we higher-income Americans can
| say that our employer is paying a "premium" and not a
| "tax." Evidently some of us care an awful lot about that
| sort of thing.
| wreath wrote:
| But thats the same as Germany, no? You still have to pay
| for health insurance when you quit your job, so thats
| something to take into consideration before you resign,
| not only in USA.
| bsenftner wrote:
| The US's healthcare system is a crime against humanity. A
| nation's population is it's greatest asset, and to manage
| healthcare as it is handled in the 'States is a recipe
| for 360 degree stagnation, cronyism, and the destruction
| any reason for the non-wealthy to live there at all,
| unless trapped.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Unless rent and mortgage payments somehow evaporate, there
| won 't be some massive wave of resignations_
|
| The prediction isn't a massive wave of unemployment. It's
| people switching jobs. They will still be earning money, just
| perhaps elsewhere.
| koheripbal wrote:
| There might be a bump as a few employers try to capitalize
| on the work-from-home to get good talent. ...but in the
| long term, employee performance will be better in the
| office, and so most employees will end up back at work.
|
| The thing the that the article misses is that the vast
| majority of CEOs want all employees back in the office.
| [deleted]
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I think that's the whole point. It doesn't really matter
| what the CEO'S want. It's about what the employees want.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| This is why "quit rate" is a sign of economic strength. If
| workers are confident enough that resigning will result in
| both speedy re-employment and a better job than before,
| there is probably good overall confidence in the markets.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Circle jerk, anyone?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| in 2017, I left my job of 27 years.
|
| Back then, the market was flooded with young folks out of
| bootcamps. So much so, in fact, that several companies had
| absolutely no problem treating me in quite shabby fashion, as I
| have committed the crime of Eld, along with a rather disturbing
| level of Provable Competence. These seem to be characteristics
| that immediately mark people for ridicule, humiliation, and
| indignity.
|
| Fortunately, I had been quite frugal, and have enough to retire
| anytime I wanted. I won't be zipping around in any learjets, but
| I'll be OK.
|
| I have never worked harder in my life; but I'm not making a dime.
| I'm working on the kind of software I find interesting, and that
| will actually have some real social impact, with people that
| treat me with basic human dignity and simple respect. It's cool.
| I'm also trying out and refining all kinds of ideas for high-
| quality, flexible software development, that no one was ever
| interested in exploring. They are working out fairly well. My GH
| Activity Graph has been solid green, for a couple of years. I
| _like_ writing software (and _delivering_ it).
|
| I'm in no hurry to put myself in a position again, where my work
| can be destroyed by others; even if I do make decent money at it.
| I have found that the pain of having my work ruined is far
| greater than I had thought. It took several years of being able
| to do things the way that I want, to realize that[0].
|
| This is actually what I have wanted all my life. I just didn't
| know it, as I had never taken the risk to give it a go.
|
| This would not have happened, if the door had not been slammed in
| my face, forcing me to adapt.
|
| I'm really quite happy to see that people younger than I am, are
| getting a chance to make this realization, and I wish them all
| the luck in the world, in following their muse. The tech industry
| should be engaging, fun, and a source of wonder. We have amazing
| tools, technology, and a maturity of community that was
| unavailable, when I started.
|
| It would be great to see the tech field return to a greenfield,
| and a garden of pride in craftsmanship, real creativity, and joy
| in exploration, as opposed to the rather sordid, low-quality,
| mercenary mess, that it is now.
|
| [0] https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-02
| cweill wrote:
| I love this comment. Thank you for sharing this experience.
|
| I also underestimated the impact of having my work burned in
| front of me after 2 years of overtime and sacrifice. The money
| afforded me some level of financial Independence which at least
| gives me the optionality to choose whether I want to suffer
| this again.
|
| I'm thinking of following in your footsteps. Wish me luck!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Definitely. Godspeed.
| [deleted]
| TX0098812 wrote:
| > Surveys show anywhere from 25% to upwards of 40% of workers are
| thinking about quitting their jobs.
|
| How does this compare to the figure over a longer period of time?
| ndonnellan wrote:
| This is the important question. At my previous job the results
| of internal surveys would have these fairly high numbers, like
| 20% of employees don't think they will be here in a year.
|
| But if you looked at the previous year's numbers, it was
| something like 18% or 15%. And the previous year's actual
| attrition was closer to 5-8%. So perhaps you could extrapolate
| if you had the attrition rates combined with survey data, but
| surveys are a much weaker signal.
| c618b9b695c4 wrote:
| I am more impressed that people would confess to thinking of
| leaving their position to an internal survey. I have no
| confidence that a company sponsored survey will be
| confidential and 'worrisome' results would not be shared with
| my direct management.
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Good point. That said, in many countries employee
| protection is solid enough that people would not need to
| worry. If within the EU, then GDPR regulations could also
| lead to pretty massive fines if a supposedly anonymous
| survey turned out not to be.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Exactly. I'm sure people are often thinking about quitting
| their jobs, but are they actually likely to quit within the
| next 12 months or are they just thinking about it?
| kevstev wrote:
| Well another way to frame this is "X% are willing to quit
| their jobs if they can find a better offer" but only a
| fraction of that actually manage to find that something
| better. Not being able to do so could be due to those
| employee's shortcomings, but more likely its about how many
| better jobs there are and how competitive it is to get those
| jobs.
| DeBraid wrote:
| A few charts showing 20-year quit rates via FRED:
|
| * ALL Non-Farm: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSQUR
|
| * Professional and Business Services (which I believe captures
| software) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS540099QUL
|
| List of all the options
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32247
| TX0098812 wrote:
| Interesting. Looks like a rising trend since the last
| financial crises. The effect of corona seems to be limited to
| a dip around the beginning of the pandemic, presumably due to
| uncertainty. No great resignation wave though, judging by the
| graph.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This is the real question. How many people are never actually
| considering leaving their job if another better opportunity
| comes along? The journalists asked a loaded question to
| exaggerate the idea that employees are ready to quit in droves
| because they don't want to go back to the office or something.
| In reality many people are always looking for the next step in
| their career.
|
| There was a similarly hyperbolic headline yesterday about a
| spike in resignations. Buried in the article it said that
| monthly employee turnover had moved from typical mid 1% to a
| higher mid 2% rate.
|
| There might be a slight increase in turnover due to the hot job
| market and booming economy, but journalists like this one are
| working hard to make the situation sound like a dramatic change
| that's going to change everything.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| The next step is to ask yourself -why- journalists are asking
| loaded questions and pushing certain narratives. I don't
| believe it's coincidence, or just that they're just not very
| good at their jobs. There's economic, political, and social
| power to be gained for them and their ideology if they push
| these narratives.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or they need to land clicks to put food on the table. Which
| individual journalists would you qualify as having
| economic, political, and social power?
| dcist wrote:
| 100% agree that journalists emphasize the sensational for
| the clicks instead of the moderate and reasonable.
|
| That said, I don't agree with this framing of your
| question with regard to "individual" journalists. It's
| unlikely that any "individual" journalist has economic,
| political, and social power. Journalists' power results
| from their collective efforts as a group. I would be
| hard-pressed to name more than five individual NYT
| reporters but collectively, the NYT has unquestionable
| social and political power, if not economic. The NYT's
| angles on stories, its decisions to pursue certain trends
| and not others, its portrayals as somethings as good and
| others as not good, etc. - these efforts have tremendous
| power and shape society.
|
| Why do you think someone like Bezos was so interested in
| buying WaPo? To anyone who fails to appreciate the power
| of journalism, start with Walter Lippmann's Public
| Opinion.
| hooande wrote:
| What I don't understand is that everyone still has roughly the
| same expenses as they did before. The basic economics of rent,
| groceries, child care, car payments, etc have not changed. I'd
| think people might move from one industry to another. But how can
| a wave of people afford to quit?
|
| I guess people are living off of their savings, but that seems
| like a temporary solution. At the least I'd expect to see a
| similar wave of people re-entering the job market in 6-12 months.
| I'm still not sure what to make of this general trend, though
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Capital assets went up a surprising amount during the pandemic.
| My stock portfolio and my house are worth a lot more than they
| were 2 years ago.
|
| I feel a temptation to use that money. I also have a nagging
| feeling that it's somewhat artificial (the govt pumped a ton of
| money during the pandemic) so I should cash out before it
| falls.
| csomar wrote:
| Stocks, sure. But don't sell your house (if you only have
| one).
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I was lucky enough to buy into a great neighborhood in a
| city years ago. If I sold now and quit my job, I could live
| farther out and get more property for less money, and
| pocket the difference.
|
| In the U.S., capital gains on your primary residence can be
| kept _tax free_ up to $250,000 ($500k if you're married).
| travoc wrote:
| You don't have to sell your house to feel richer.
| putnambr wrote:
| I'm curious about this as well. In my market we've seen rent
| and child care costs go up roughly 40% in the past year. But,
| it may well be the people leaving higher COL areas driving up
| the prices here.
| mtberatwork wrote:
| I think by "quit" they mostly mean look for a job elsewhere
| with a different employer. "1 in 4 workers (26%) plans to look
| for a job at a different company once the pandemic has
| subsided, ... " [1]
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/post-pandemic-job-turnover-04cdedcb-
| dd...
| ajkjk wrote:
| Lots of people are spending less than a quarter of their income
| on those expenses. So it's pretty easy to quit and use their
| savings on it for multiple years.
| asdff wrote:
| 20% of Americans don't have $400 to cover an emergency.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/four-in-ten-cant-cover-
| an-...
| ajkjk wrote:
| I'm guessing most of the people we're talking about are
| well into the other 80%.
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| > The basic economics of rent, groceries, child care, car
| payments, etc have not changed.
|
| For some people, they have though. Quite a few people moved out
| of the bay area/NYC, some have partners that lost jobs and have
| chosen to focus on child care instead, some have sold 1 of 2
| cars because remote work no longer requires a commute.
| [deleted]
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Hiring is just picking up. If you didn't grab the best people
| during the pandemic because you had an incredible glut of
| qualified people applying, good luck doing that shit now.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| Should be good for wages then.
|
| Unfortunately my company already did our yearly compensation
| adjustment. 2%, of course.
| madengr wrote:
| Sounds like my employer, and I've been on-site for 1 year.
| Their excuse for 2% raises was that the economy was bad,
| despite record earnings and productivity during the pandemic.
| Now that inflation is 5%, I'm gone with another 2% raise.
| Sanguinaire wrote:
| Found the Amazonian
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| Google's yearly raises are generally the same as Amazon
| I've learned, for what it's worth. The difference is the
| bonus and refreshers, and the fact that there are more
| evaluation periods with more achievement buckets.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| +1. We froze all hiring during the initial lockdowns, while
| continuing to advertise our positions. Now we're hiring again
| but, in aggregate, all of the good engineers who were made
| redundant have already been hired and those that remain are the
| bad ones.
| fnord77 wrote:
| During the pandemic it was almost impossible to find qualified
| engineers.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Because everyone is clinging to their jobs in times of
| uncertainty.
| dreen wrote:
| Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the
| savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I
| want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too?
|
| I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration,
| work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home.
| I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap
| years, so thats what Im doing.
|
| edit: thank you all for advice, encouragement as well as for
| cautious pessimism. By the amount of upvotes Im hoping Im not the
| only one doing this. See you out there!
| mmastrac wrote:
| I'm literally on that right now, working on fun projects. When
| you get older you just call it a sabbatical.
| elevenoh wrote:
| >Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too?
|
| Yep, that's what I'm seeing already.
|
| Financially incentivized OSS (much of which falls under the
| label 'crypto') is very attractive if you're in the top
| percentiles of competence & drive.
|
| Has there ever been an open, competitive, global, beurocracy-
| free, low barrier to entry market like this?
| AlexDanger wrote:
| Can you give some examples of this financially incentivized
| OSS that falls under 'crypto' ?
| elevenoh wrote:
| Much of crypto codebases are open source, where at the end
| of the day you're pushing to an OSS codebase.
|
| If you're paid by a crypto co., foundation, grants, or are
| financially incentivized by your crypto holdings to
| contribute, you're often within the bounds of both OSS &
| crypto.
|
| example: devs that've contributed to Defi projects e.g.
| uniswap, or received ethereum or solana grants for their
| OSS code (i think nearly everything user-facing in these
| organizations is OSS).
| Jenk wrote:
| Best of luck!
|
| I didn't do a gap year either. I left education at 16 and
| immediately went into FTE and have been there ever since (for
| longer than I dare count) and now that I am all wrapped up in a
| mortgage and kids I'm not sure I'll be taking a gap year any
| time soon (voluntarily, anyway!)
|
| FWIW I have worked with several colleagues who took a gap year
| and never stopped. They pick up remote contract work along
| their travels and continue living the life of a modern day
| nomad. Not one of them is unhappy :)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take
| gap years, so thats what Im doing.
|
| You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in
| reality.
|
| Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough but I
| don't know ANYONE who's taken a "gap year" where they weren't
| doing something for ~40hr/wk in order to make a buck. I know a
| few people who didn't jump right into career stuff after
| college but even they did low pay large applicant pool type
| jobs at least tangentially related to their careers (e.g.
| working as basically unskilled labor on tourist fishing
| charters in Miami before getting a real entry level job on a
| container ship). Heck, even the people who took a year off
| before college were doing stuff tangentially related to their
| career/skillset in that time (e.g. working for geek squad prior
| to going to school for CE). I know a couple people who went
| from full time to part time or to less demanding jobs in their
| field prior to retirement. I know a couple people who did jobs
| not related to their vocational training for less than a year
| after they got out of the military but that was more of a
| stopgap to keep a roof over their head. I don't know anyone
| who's gone from full time to part time or less unless it's part
| of a career transition or approach to retirement. I'm sure
| there's someone somewhere who's managed to pay their rent by
| waiting tables and stripping for a grand total of 15hr/wk and
| spent the rest of the time doing art or writing a book or
| something. I'm sure there's someone who's banked a ton of money
| and taken a year off in the middle of their career. I don't
| know anyone who's pulled something like that off.
| rvn1045 wrote:
| It's not very difficult to do financially if you don't mind
| moving to a lower cost of living country. You can live pretty
| well for 20k USD in many parts of the world.
| dolmen wrote:
| Few do that in France. Is it because we already have plenty
| of PTO (5 weeks, plus often 12 more days because the legal
| week is 35 hours but we usually do more)?
|
| Anyway, I took a gap time at age 36 for a 3 months trip in
| South America. And this allowed me to take an turn in my
| career when I came back.
| reverend_gonzo wrote:
| You do not need to be a trust fund kid to travel the world
| cheaply. I did when I was 23 (2004-ish) and realized I didn't
| like working. Took out a credit card with 5k credit limit,
| saved money for a month or two (I was making 40k so not
| exactly tons). Bought a ticket to Eastern Europe, kicked
| around hostels for a few months, when I finally almost ran
| out of money, bought a ticket back. I met other people who
| picked up side jobs in hostels or bars to help cover their
| costs too.
|
| What you can't do is continue to have an expensive quality of
| life if you're no longer producing income.
| dreen wrote:
| I only heard about it from friends here in UK, and they would
| typically do it between collage and uni. Thats when I came
| here and had to start working to support myself.
| splithalf wrote:
| This differs by gender. A married woman taking time off for
| domestic/child rearing/continuing education is very common.
| An adult male, it's very uncommon unless you're rich, which
| most posters here obviously are.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I know quite a few people from various background (finance,
| multinational corporations, non-profits) doing things like
| these. Depends on employer. In hindsight always regarded as
| one of the best decisions of their lives (along with reducing
| workload to 80%, usually 4 days/week).
|
| We all know that once old, the amount of money earned/saved
| will mean absolutely nothing in terms of
| happiness/achievement. Work achievements for office type jobs
| mean mean even less. The life lived well will mean
| everything. So some act accordingly when/if possible.
|
| I haven't done gap year myself, but did a shorter variant - 2
| times 3 months backpacking around India and Nepal. Remote
| Himalaya in the north, swimming in coral reefs on Amdamans,
| Thar desert in the west, and thousands of years of history,
| culture and people to meet everywhere in between. I still
| barely scratched the surface of what this place can offer.
|
| Literally the best decision in my life. It changed me for the
| better. It motivated me to make changes in my career, go for
| consulting, move to Switzerland etc.
|
| Have met tons of people from all over the world who were like
| this - traveling like this for 3-24 months, and then
| continuing work/study/beginning someplace else.
|
| These trips I've done when having a pretty high mortgage and
| very little savings, and they both meant losing at least 2
| salaries each time while expenses mounted. No rich family to
| cover for me anyhow if I would hit the financial wall. Still
| well worth the risk. If one doesn't have kids yet, there is
| practically nothing to lose with doing this, just gain.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > We all know that once old, the amount of money
| earned/saved will mean absolutely nothing in terms of
| happiness/achievement.
|
| I dont think this is true at all. Money in retirement means
| the difference between mostly maintaining your standard of
| living after work an "choosing between medicine and food
| each week". I think a lot of people saving up and then
| spending all their savings to party every 5 years are in
| for a shock when they are 60 and their joints are sore and
| their knees don't work and they can no longer make a
| salary.
| girvo wrote:
| Pretty common for a sizeable portion of high school graduates
| in Australia to take a gap year either immediately after
| graduation or after their first year of uni
| imNotTheProb wrote:
| Is it a gap year if you do something in-between jobs? I've
| done that
| ramraj07 wrote:
| A good fraction of people I've come across in uni in the US
| have taken gap years (or just take forever to finish
| college). This is not normal for regular immigrants these
| days. I did not have saturdays off from when I was 15 till I
| turned 32. Even then I was in a tech job which had great
| vacation but still not months at a time. It's literally alien
| for folks like us to have an entire year where we don't need
| to report to anything at all. I wish the OP the best, I'm
| still waiting for the day I can do the same but that's at
| least years away.
| embwbam wrote:
| I have many rock climbing friends who live on less than 15k a
| year. They often do it for years, working seasonally 3-5
| months a year. the trick is to go somewhere with a very cheap
| lifestyle. It can be accomplished by living in your car in
| the mountains, or traveling to SE Asia, etc. The climbing
| provides something to do and a sense of community.
|
| There are other cultures like this. I've seen kids from
| Europe doing a gap year staying in hostels for very little
| (they sometimes do some light work for the hostel to get a
| free place to stay)
| toyg wrote:
| I learnt of this sort of thing only after I moved to the UK,
| where it's traditional for wealthy and middle-upper-class
| kids to take a long break between college and university - a
| habit that probably comes from the times of the "grand tours"
| of continental Europe in XVIII and XIX century.
|
| I've met people who do it on a 6-months basis - 6 months
| travelling, 6 months earning. They don't make much, their
| career is somewhat stalled, it would have probably ended
| when/if they had a kid, but they did it. They were conscious
| that they were sacrificing something (money, comforts) in
| exchange for this lifestyle.
| tzs wrote:
| I wonder if maternity/paternity leave laws in UK have any
| affect on making this more feasible?
|
| My understanding is that workers get a year of maternity
| leave, a few weeks of paternity leave, and there is some
| sort of sharing arrangement whereby maternity leave can be
| used to extend paternity leave.
|
| When maternity/paternity leave ends, the worker must be
| given their job back.
|
| I'd expect that at many employers they can't just have the
| work that someone on leave would have done go undone so
| they are going to have to bring on someone else to do it--
| someone who knows that they will only be needed until the
| person they are filling in for comes back from leave.
|
| Thus, I'd expect there to be a need across nearly all
| industries and at nearly all skill levels for people who
| want to fill a 6 month to a year opening.
|
| Compare to the US (Federal 12 weeks maternity leave if your
| company has 50 people, no legally required maternity leave
| otherwise--individual states sometimes add more), where
| openings for people to work a temporary job for a few
| months tend to either be low end jobs or very specialized
| consulting jobs. The former don't pay enough to afford a 6
| on/6 off lifestyle, and the latter are out of reach of most
| people. There aren't many good middle-class jobs to support
| 6 on/6 off.
| itronitron wrote:
| In the US, before Jerry Garcia died, it used to be called
| 'touring with the Dead'
| hughrr wrote:
| I did this. I worked for the year cleaning toilets. It's
| not all rich middle class folk who do it :)
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Its pretty common for ordinary middle class kids - and
| remember in the UK a degree is three years not the US four
| years (or even longer in Europe)
|
| Bit harder now post Brexit though
| jen20 wrote:
| Between Brexit and COVID most of the typical destinations
| are out for a while, by the sound of it.
|
| Almost all of the people I knew who did gap years before
| or after university went to either Australia or New
| Zealand (from the UK) following a three teaching-year
| degree with an extra industrial placement year -
| Australia in particular have (had?) a scheme where
| someone can live and work for a year with few
| restrictions provided they are under 30, and could extend
| that to two years if working in a rural area for some of
| that time.
| ProZsolt wrote:
| It's called the working holiday visa. I went to New
| Zealand on that after my first job. You have to work in
| agriculture for 3 months to extend your one year visa.
| zerkten wrote:
| This is my experience too. The impact on career
| progression is very minimal when it done intentionally.
| There are of course people who think it's a lark, but
| before 2020 there were many folks developing skills that
| will catapult them forward after they graduated.
|
| I've moved to the US and can see how things are very
| different culturally with regard to travel. Others have
| mentioned that the US is not into backpacking. I think
| it's less about that, and more about travel being a prize
| for retirement.
|
| I've seen this changing a bit in my time in the US, but
| it's still the norm for a lot of people who then end up
| being unable to travel. The US has many more people who
| are skilled and equipped for a backpacking lifestyle than
| I found in the UK.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Others have mentioned that the US is not into
| backpacking.
|
| I assume "backpacking" in this context tends to mean
| riding trains around Europe, staying in
| hostels/couchsurfing/etc.
|
| The US has a fair bit of backpacking and camping in
| National Parks/Forests/long-distance trails although it's
| not necessarily a fully mainstream activity. But much
| less of the "European-style" backpacking.
|
| I think it's partly a difference of scale and ability to
| get around without a car once you get out of a handful of
| (mostly expensive) cities.
| arethuza wrote:
| There is no UK wide education system - first degrees in
| Scotland are usually 4 years.
| siva7 wrote:
| well, it's not usual for first-gen immigrants doing a gap
| year unless rich, so i applaud parent for living his dream.
| it's pretty usual in western europe for middle-class children
| doing this.
| nanidin wrote:
| You might be surprised by what is possible when you set goals
| and live below your means. You might also be surprised by how
| little money it costs to take off a year mid-career.
|
| When I finished university, I had a few weeks between
| graduation and my start date at a well known Midwestern
| embedded electronics company. I had a $7k signing bonus and I
| found a $500 round trip ticket to Rome, so I went to Rome.
| While I was there, I learned about the world of backpacking
| and hostels. I ended up spending 6 weeks in Europe before
| returning home. During that time I decided that travel was
| something I wanted to pursue in my life.
|
| The salary at my entry level SWE job was $58k, which was
| pretty modest. I didn't buy a new car. I didn't buy a new
| house. I cooked most meals at home and I brought lunch to
| work. I tracked my expenses and budget using Mint, and set a
| goal to save $30k so I could leave and travel in SE Asia
| where I calculated the daily burn rate should be around
| $30/day. After three years I hit my savings goal and bought a
| one way ticket to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to Thailand. I
| ended up spending over a year outside of the country and
| returned home with a $10k cushion to get back on my feet.
|
| The biggest leg up I had was graduating with $2000 in student
| loan debt, but that was made possible mostly through merit
| based scholarships. No trust fund.
|
| I inspired a friend to do the same thing, except with a
| destination of Australia on a working holiday visa. Also no
| trust fund, just living below his means and saving over time.
|
| My advice to you is to find a way to do the things you want
| to do instead of limiting yourself with beliefs that only the
| ultra-rich can take time off from work to pursue personal
| passions.
| samvher wrote:
| I guess we have different social circles, but I know many
| people who have done this and none of them are "trust fund
| crowd". Have done it myself for multiple half-year-or-so
| periods as well. Maybe it's more of a European thing to do.
|
| I spent 3 months as a research assistant in Australia and
| used savings from that period to travel in South-East Asia
| and South America for 6 months or so. Shortly after
| graduating, having saved a bit as a student (again - Europe,
| I managed without student debt, having done web development
| next to my studies), I went to a conference in Taiwan with my
| MSc thesis and traveled back home over land. Then after
| working a little bit on my first job again I traveled,
| hitchhiking to/through the Middle East and Russia.
|
| It's all very doable if you don't spend a lot - during many
| of these trips I spent $400-$1000/month.
|
| Highly recommend it, traveling in
| Turkey/Iran/Oman/Georgia/Russia/Ukraine definitely shaped my
| perspective on the world.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Maybe it's more of a European thing to do.
|
| Yeah, for Americans it means buying health insurance which
| is quite a lot more expensive than what you get from your
| employer.
| FabHK wrote:
| In Germany, I can buy travel health insurance that covers
| an unlimited number of trips abroad of up to 8 weeks each
| (including basically any doctors and hospitals abroad, as
| well as transport back home when medically recommended)
| for about 15 USD a year, and similar insurance for trips
| up to 1 year for about 500 USD a year. (Valid worldwide,
| or excluding North America for a cheaper rate.)
|
| (Recommendations (in German): https://www.finanztip.de/kr
| ankenversicherung/auslandsreisekr... )
| vc8f6vVV wrote:
| Travel insurance doesn't cover chronic stuff, its goal is
| to make you able to travel home as soon as you able to in
| case you need long-term treatment.
| Orou wrote:
| You can get travel insurance for extended trips. I'm
| American and I've taken multiple 6-month trips abroad
| (usually after quitting a job). Backpacking just isn't
| part of the American culture.
| ghaff wrote:
| Regular travel insurance != health insurance. It will
| basically cover you getting stabilized and shipped back
| home but then you're on your own. (And lost travel
| deposits.)
| tellmelies wrote:
| Don't even bother with the travel insurance, pay for
| health care out of pocket in another country. Travel
| insurance is only needed for traveling in America for the
| reason you stated.
| refurb wrote:
| No. A two week stay at a private hospital in SE Asia
| could set you back more than the deductible and co-
| insurance in the US.
|
| And trust me, you want a private hospital in some of
| those countries. Even the locals wouldn't go to a public
| hospital if they had a choice.
| ghaff wrote:
| IMO travel insurance sometimes makes sense. Circumstances
| like high altitude trekking that may require expensive
| evacuation. Expensive non-refundable trips, especially
| those that a broken ankle before or during the trip could
| put a rapid stop to.
|
| That said, I've only purchased travel insurance maybe a
| half-dozen times out of probably hundreds of trips.
| rexarex wrote:
| You need to make sure it covers that altitude. They top
| out around a certain altitude in the fine print you
| usually need to pay a little extra for altitudes like
| Kilimanjaro. Make sure it has helo evacuation covered for
| all altitudes.
| ghaff wrote:
| Good point. The few times I was up at that sort of
| elevation or higher, the insurance was always through
| someone the guide company specifically recommended.
| Fortunately, I've never had any significant altitude
| issues.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can continue your employer insurance for 18 months.
| But, as you say, it's more out of your pocket because
| your employer is now no longer subsidizing it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| You're referring to COBRA, and when my wife and I had a
| month lapse because of her switching jobs, it would have
| cost us $1300/month to continue her insurance. Not cheap.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I just got off 2 months of it between jobs, was around
| $1,100 for me as well. Certainly not cheap without the
| subsidization but also probably not a real concern if
| you're looking at taking a year off work anyways.
| jjcon wrote:
| If you aren't earning an income you can get free
| healthcare
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Citation?
| jjcon wrote:
| How about the entirety of the US medicaid program? If you
| literally have no income you get free healthcare, even if
| you have limited income you may qualify for Medicaid or a
| heavily discounted marketplace plan.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
| ghaff wrote:
| Though I suspect it's a lot more complicated than calling
| them up, telling them you've decided to take a gap year,
| and asking for your insurance card. It also wouldn't
| surprise me, never having looked into it, if the coverage
| is US only.
| ragnarok451 wrote:
| There's an online form where you upload your info, they
| verify your income level (duration does not matter), and
| that's it (at least in NY). I don't think any government
| healthcare programs cover care outside that government's
| country, do they? I suppose the EU ones cover care in
| other EU countries but that's the only case I can think
| of.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Based on that article, the programs vary widely by state
| including eligibility standards and rates of
| reimbursement.
|
| > As of 2013, Medicaid is a program intended for those
| with low income, but a low income is not the only
| requirement to enroll in the program. Eligibility is
| categorical--that is, to enroll one must be a member of a
| category defined by statute; some of these categories
| are: low-income children below a certain wage, pregnant
| women, parents of Medicaid-eligible children who meet
| certain income requirements, low-income disabled people
| who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or
| Social Security Disability (SSD), and low-income seniors
| 65 and older.
|
| This makes it seem like it's not just "low income", but
| also membership in one of those other categories.
|
| I also didn't see anything on the page that indicated
| what share of expenses were covered by medicaid, but
| perhaps I missed it.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Though anyone that has bought global health insurance
| will note that if you opt out of coverage for the US, the
| price is usually reduced by half.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It might get a bit more common since after the ACA you
| can stay on your parent's health insurance till you're 26
| now if they have it.
| ragnarok451 wrote:
| If you live in NY or CA (not sure about other states) and
| are under retirement age, Medicaid is a thing and works
| great. No asset limit, just income, so regardless of what
| you've saved you're likely eligible - so you can quit
| your job and without paying COBRA things will be ok
| voisin wrote:
| I don't think any country with single payer national
| health care covers travel insurance, so this would not
| put Americans in any different situation than others who
| are travelling for that gap year, which seems to be the
| topic here.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It assume it depends on the destination. I suspect most
| European healthcare systems cover you in most of Europe
| (maybe Schengen or EU?) while American systems only cover
| you in America. But yes, I suspect traveling to Africa or
| Asia puts the American and the European on equal footing.
| treis wrote:
| Most gap years happen in the early 20s where most
| Americans can be on their parents coverage. Even if
| they're not, it's pretty cheap with subsidies for a young
| healthy person to buy insurance on the marketplace.
| Possibly even free depending on income.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| You are not getting health insurance in most European
| countries unless you are working or registered as
| unemployed and remain at disposal of the local job
| centre.
|
| And the whole meme that a 65% tax rate +25% vat on most
| products on top of it (I am in Sweden) is somehow worth
| it financially because "fReE HeAlThCaRe" is laughable.
| tshaddox wrote:
| How many medical bankruptcies occur in those European
| countries?
| kube-system wrote:
| That might not be an accurate way to measure it, because
| "bankruptcy" can mean very different things by country.
|
| In some countries, individuals often don't qualify for
| bankruptcy. In others you might be able to restructure
| your debts, but they might not be discharged. In some,
| you may need to give up significant possessions to pay
| for your debts.
|
| The US, for all of its healthcare issues, actually has a
| relatively progressive and accessible bankruptcy system.
| The majority of people in the US who file Chapter 7 have
| _all_ of their assets exempted from liquidation by law.
| For these people, bankruptcy is literally as simple as a
| matter of trading all of their debt for 10 years of a bad
| mark on their credit report.
| ajuc wrote:
| > You are not getting health insurance in most European
| countries unless you are working or registered as
| unemployed and remain at disposal of the local job
| centre.
|
| Or your partner has health insurance. Or you are studying
| (even if you take gap year at university). Or you happen
| to have farming land. Etc, etc - lots of exceptions.
|
| Or you pay for it yourself from your savings (under 100
| USD a month last I've checked).
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| To be clear, I'm merely saying "the complexities of the
| American healthcare system might be why Europeans are
| more inclined to take gap years". That said, I didn't
| know that European public health insurance was commonly
| contingent on employment. I would be curious to know more
| about this.
| morelisp wrote:
| Most (all?) European health care is not contingent on
| employment. With a few exceptions (notably the UK) it
| _is_ contingent on being able to afford it, and one way
| to do that is following the rules to have the gov 't pay
| for it. It's guaranteed, and highly regulated in price;
| it's not free.
|
| The easiest way to afford it is to have a job. However,
| if you are willing to pay more (still much less than
| equivalent US health insurance, e.g. in Germany around
| 180EUR/mo) you can buy it directly. Or, you can
| participate in that country's social safety net which,
| yes, usually requires you to actively seek a job (often
| for some loose definition of "actively.")
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is just semantics. If you have to pay more because
| of your employment status, then the system in question is
| _contingent on employment_ for all useful purposes.
| morelisp wrote:
| The claim is that "European public health insurance _is
| commonly contingent on employment_ ", not "European
| public health insurance _monthly payments vary based on
| employment status_. "
|
| The only way you could end up paying more is if you
| previously made an average amount of money, have a lot of
| savings, but now make nothing. Normally this is called
| "retirement" and if you didn't save enough for it, you
| don't do it.
| Nursie wrote:
| > I didn't know that European public health insurance was
| commonly contingent on employment
|
| I'm not sure it is! It's not in the UK, certainly.
| pyb wrote:
| Nor is it in France.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| I am honestly very bitter about Americans glorifying the
| European system while happily taking home 2/3rds of their
| 100k+ developer salaries and enjoying much lower prices
| of everything.
|
| With regards to insurance:
|
| - in some countries (UK, Sweden) - the insurance is
| contingent on having a social security number, so the
| coverage is pretty much universal for residents, but
| people coming from other EU countries will still need to
| work or register as unemployed to get it.
|
| - in other countries, you generally need to be working or
| looking for work (i.e. answer phones / invitations from
| job centre and attend any interviews/courses they send
| you to) to be covered.
|
| Some countries (Poland for example, I'm Polish) allow you
| to buy insurance if you are neither working nor looking
| for work. But as of December 2020, about 1.5 mln Poles
| are not insured at all. [1]
|
| [1] https://tvn24.pl/polska/szczepionka-na-koronawirusa-
| czy-osob...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I am honestly very bitter about Americans glorifying
| the European system while happily taking home 2/3rds of
| their 100k+ developer salaries and enjoying much lower
| prices of everything.
|
| I agree, although I think the ignorance extends to
| Europeans as well. Europeans are often surprised to hear
| that American software professional salaries are ~60%
| higher than European salaries even after adjusting for
| taxes, healthcare, vacation, etc. Some will argue that
| the US cost of living is more expensive, but they're
| almost always comparing some major US metropolis with
| some European village or perhaps an Eastern European
| city. I've seen other arguments that the cost of housing
| in the US is comparable or more expensive, but they're
| typically comparing some relatively tiny European
| apartment with a much larger American home. Europeans
| seem to fixate on medical bankruptcies, as though these
| are commonplace for upper-middleclass Americans.
|
| This was all a surprise to me, an American, who has tried
| earnestly to live in Western Europe for a few years, but
| found that I can either live in Europe or I can travel in
| Europe but trying to do both would likely be economically
| infeasible (even if I can find gainful work as a software
| professional, it would specifically be difficult for my
| wife who isn't in a hot field). Fortunately, now that
| remote work is catching on, it seems likely that my wife
| and I will be able to do more frequent 1-3 month stints
| in Europe while remaining employed by our American
| companies.
|
| To be clear, I think the United States healthcare system
| should be reformed, because it doesn't serve the poorest
| Americans very well. However, the US healthcare system
| works pretty well for the upper middle class (if not the
| whole of the middle class) and above, contrary to
| perceptions I frequently hear from some Americans and
| Europeans.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| How difficult is it to work remotely in a different
| country? I've thought about doing this but it seems like
| it's be a lot of hassle with my employer and navigating
| local laws in Europe.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| My wife and I work for smaller firms. Both of our
| managers seem okay with it provided we keep American-ish
| hours. I get the vibe that they're just not worried about
| it, perhaps out of ignorance or perhaps because it just
| seems unlikely that a single employee working remotely
| for a short amount of time is likely to provoke the ire
| of any tax authorities.
| majormajor wrote:
| > I am honestly very bitter about Americans glorifying
| the European system while happily taking home 2/3rds of
| their 100k+ developer salaries and enjoying much lower
| prices of everything.
|
| Why do you believe those salaries are the result of the
| American healthcare system? Per-capita, Americans pay
| _more than anyone_ for healthcare, just in a very
| unbalanced way that dramatically favors those with a job
| over those without.
|
| Regarding comparing tax rates, those six figure job
| numbers don't include the substantial amount the employer
| is paying to the healthcare company.
|
| Bitterness about the salary gap is understandable, but
| it's misguided to say that the fucked-up parts of the US
| system are what has produced the high-revenue/high-profit
| companies that are driving the compensation levels.
| vidarh wrote:
| Notably, Americans pay more per capita _for Medicare and
| Medicaid alone_ than many European countries pay per
| capita for universal coverage.
|
| > Regarding comparing tax rates, those six figure job
| numbers don't include the substantial amount the employer
| is paying to the healthcare company.
|
| To be fair, in many European countries - and certainly
| for Sweden - there's substantial payroll taxes paid by
| employers as well. Though to end up at 65% in Sweden even
| _with_ employers payroll taxes tacked on, you 're already
| earning a multiple of an average salary.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Why do you believe those salaries are the result of the
| American healthcare system? Per-capita, Americans pay
| more than anyone for healthcare, just in a very
| unbalanced way that dramatically favors those with a job
| over those without.
|
| It doesn't really matter whether or not the salary
| difference is _caused by_ healthcare or indeed that
| Americans pay more for healthcare. The only thing that
| matters is the post-healthcare take-home pay; if that
| figure is larger in American than Sweden for a given
| individual, then that individual is economically better
| off in America pretty much tautologically.
| majormajor wrote:
| But what matters from the perspective of the American
| complaining about their healthcare system, though, is if
| they would be _even better off_ with their same salary
| but a less fucked up healthcare system.
|
| As long as that seems to be true, you'll see people
| complaining about it, and they'll have a valid reason for
| their complaints.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Your point is valid, but I don't think that's what we're
| talking about in this thread. Rather, we're talking about
| Europeans and Americans who have the perception that the
| overall economic situation of professional employees is
| dramatically rosier in Europe.
|
| Personally, I think we should have a single payer system
| if only for the fact that it likely better serves poorer
| Americans.
| majormajor wrote:
| Yeah, I was talking specifically about the "it would be
| nice to easily take a gap year"-sourced comparison of
| healthcare alone - though even that apparently is not so
| pro-Europe after all, with the folks discussing how you'd
| have to be actively seeking work to be covered.
| mhroth wrote:
| In Switzerland at least, health insurance is definitely
| _not_ contingent on employment. It is specifically a
| private issue.
| jhrozek wrote:
| Even worse: Unless you pay private insurance yourself,
| the quality of the free insurance (at your nearest
| vardcentralen) is absolutely laughable.
|
| My family of 4 pays about 1800 SEK/month for private
| insurance to actually have a chance to see a competent
| doctor.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| In the US, we pay 5x-10x that amount for a crappy high
| deductible plan that has measurably worse outcomes than
| your free insurance.
|
| It is hard to overstate how bad US healthcare is for the
| typical American. If you are wealthy, you have access to
| some of the best doctors in the world, but for the rest
| of us we are entirely dependent on our employer for
| access to reasonable health care.
| refurb wrote:
| Indeed. In Canada if you're out of the country longer
| than 6 months you're not longer insured (in Canada). And
| in fact, insurance doesn't cover you outside the country
| anyways.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Anything that starts "In Canada, ..." is generally
| suspect. Canada is a confederation. Most things are in
| the purview of the provinces, so there's rarely a
| globally applicable rule. Canada does not have a single
| healthcare system, but thirteen separate provincial and
| territorial healthcare plans.
|
| You're not guaranteed to be covered for 6 months. If you
| leave permanently and settle within Canada, BC will cover
| you for the remainder of the month plus two months
| (enough time to establish residency in the destination
| and get coverage). If you leave the country, you are
| covered for the remainder of the month.
|
| If it's a temporary leave, however, several of the
| provinces do cover you outside of the province, and many
| will extend your coverage for quite a long time depending
| on the circumstances. BC allows you to retain coverage
| for a 2 year trip during every 5 year period. They also
| (like many provinces) will extend your coverage as long
| as you're in school full time in another location.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Varies by province. In Quebec, they have a similar
| absence rule to what you described (for being outside
| Quebec even if in another Canadian province), but they
| entirely exclude absences of under 21 days from the
| calculation, and they have a bunch of exceptions,
| including a "once every 7 years" exception for
| miscellaneous personal reasons including leisure
| vacations that just requires you to notify them in order
| to qualify. And in theory they will reimburse expenses
| outside of Quebec, even outside of Canada, but only at
| Quebec's very low rates.
|
| Still, yeah, very different than how US health insurance
| works, agreed.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > You are not getting health insurance in most European
| countries unless you are working or registered as
| unemployed and remain at disposal of the local job
| centre.
|
| Not the case in France (at least for the past 20 years),
| and I doubt it's the case in most other European
| countries.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Not the case in France (at least for the past 20
| years), and I doubt it's the case in most other European
| countries._
|
| Nope, your parent is right, in Austria you also don't get
| healthcare if you don't work or are looking for work via
| your local job center.
|
| Maybe France is an exception due to having stronger
| social system that heavily favors the workers (insert
| memes about strikes) while in Austria the system is very
| rigid, designed to favor businesses and the government
| rather than the workers and to discourage abuse.
| himinlomax wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's not the case in the UK either,
| given how it's financed.
| campl3r wrote:
| definitely the case in Germany. If you're unemployment
| and not looking for a job or exempt from it(sickness,
| poverty, ...), you're going to need to pay on your own.
| morelisp wrote:
| So... _not_ the case in Germany. You don 't need to be
| employed or in social programs, you can just pay money.
| In Germany it's a fixed amount, less than you would pay
| if you had income, and they can't refuse you.
|
| I know to a European this might sound like the only two
| options, but pre-Obamacare, and very possibly again if
| the US can't get its shit together, it was impossible to
| buy health insurance _no matter how much money you had_
| for a large number of unemployed or self-employed people.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > You don't need to be employed or in social programs,
| you can just pay money
|
| If there are different pricing tiers _based on employment
| status_ , then the healthcare system is contingent on
| employment by definition. It's commendable that the
| American and European healthcare systems aren't
| contingent on pre-existing conditions, but that's a
| distinct issue.
| morelisp wrote:
| If you are employed the employer pays half and if you are
| not they don't (somewhat obviously, since if they don't
| exist they can't). This is only "pricing tiers" in the
| most vapid sense.
| kube-system wrote:
| That description could just as easily be for the US.
| Maybe you disagree with the terminology, but when people
| talk about their health insurance being predicated on
| their employment, this is what they are talking about.
| ghaff wrote:
| Obamacare, for all its controversy and limitations,
| removed the ability to screen for pre-existing condition
| which was a very important feature. Prior, some people
| who weren't covered by an employer's group policy simply
| couldn't get insurance for any amount of money.
|
| Now, yes insurance is expensive, but anyone can get it
| for about 2x what most people who get healthcare as a
| benefit are paying into an employer's health care plan.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Right, but since that's no longer a feature of American
| healthcare, that's not what we're talking about when we
| compare the US and European systems.
| vidarh wrote:
| The vast majority in Sweden pays nothing like "65% tax
| rate + 25% vat", though. To get to that tax rate you need
| to earn far above average.
|
| Someone who is single with no child earning 167% of an
| average wage pays ~35% income tax and social security
| contributions [1].
|
| The effective VAT also for most ends up far lower as a
| proportion of income, as most people don't spend anywhere
| near their whole income on VAT-rated products. For
| starters, you can't spend what you've already paid in
| tax. As such the VAT rate has a relatively low impact on
| total tax paid - the difference between the UK vat rate
| when I moved here (at the time 17.5%) and the Norwegian
| VAT rate of 25% added up to only about 1 percentage point
| difference in total taxation for me.
|
| [1] Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2021
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The vast majority in Sweden pays nothing like "65% tax
| rate + 25% vat", though. To get to that tax rate you need
| to earn far above average.
|
| First of all, the OP is including the social security tax
| in the 65% figure. But more importantly, arguing that
| "the average Swede doesn't pay that much in tax" isn't
| very consoling for the American who would have to (1)
| take a salary hit to live in Sweden and (2) have to pay
| that higher tax rate. Universal healthcare doesn't
| remotely make up the difference in take-home pay.
|
| As a reference point, taxes, retirement/pension/social-
| security, and healthcare account for ~30% of my gross
| salary in the U.S. If I moved to just about any Western
| European country (not sure about Sweden in particular),
| my take-home pay would likely fall by 40%
| (conservatively) while taxes and cost of living would
| likely rise.
|
| Of course, the tradeoff for the Swedish system is that
| you have a stronger social safety net, which is certainly
| worth something. But the issue at hand is the notion that
| the European systems are better than the American system
| _for professional employees_.
| vidarh wrote:
| The numbers I quoted also include the social security
| taxes (I edited to make that clear, so apologies if you
| replied before I made that edit). Swedish marginal rates
| certainly are among the highest in Europe, but the
| proportion who pay that much is tiny.
|
| And yes, there are people who will end up paying more,
| and it sucks for them.
|
| The point is there's always this scaremongering about tax
| rates when it comes to Europe, and most of the time the
| tax rates that comes up are marginal rates that are not
| at all representative.
| admissionsguy wrote:
| As a self-employed person, my marginal rate starts at
| over 50% (ignoring the rather insignificant yearly
| allowance).
| vidarh wrote:
| As self-employed, you'll be paying social security rates
| set to cover what would otherwise be paid by the employer
| via payroll taxes, as otherwise using self employed
| people would be an easy way of evading tax.
|
| (My point was not to dismiss that you might well pay a
| very high tax rate, by the way, because the rate you gave
| is certainly possible, but to point out that paying a
| rate that high is highly unusually high, even in Sweden)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The point is there's always this scaremongering about
| tax rates when it comes to Europe, and most of the time
| the tax rates that comes up are marginal rates that are
| not at all representative.
|
| As an American, I find the tax rates much less scary than
| the raw differences in salary. If I could keep my US
| salary, healthcare, tax rates, etc and move to Europe for
| a few years, I would do so in a heartbeat.
| vidarh wrote:
| I don't think that's a considerations for most. Salary
| differences internally in both the US and Europe are
| large enough that there's a huge overlap. For my part in
| the instances where taking US jobs have come up the
| salary differences ended up being small enough not to be
| worthwhile.
|
| Tax rates also depends greatly on which locations you're
| comparing. Between e.g. California and the UK the
| difference was small enough when I looked into it that
| it'd be easily eaten up by healthcare.
|
| For my part, I spend about $5k/month total on living
| costs including sending a kid to private school and
| mortgage on a 3 bedroom house in London, and ordering
| food in most days, and I'm being hugely wasteful and
| could make do with far less of I had to.
|
| The rest goes into investments.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I don't think that's a considerations for most. Salary
| differences internally in both the US and Europe are
| large enough that there's a huge overlap.
|
| How does that work? Presumably if the median salary for a
| given field is 40% lower, then the jobs which pay at my
| well-above-the-median salary are going to be much fewer
| and farther between with more competition. Add to that
| laws that (understandably) favor EU citizens and it seems
| like it would be quite difficult to get one's hands on
| those positions?
|
| > Tax rates also depends greatly on which locations
| you're comparing. Between e.g. California and the UK the
| difference was small enough when I looked into it that
| it'd be easily eaten up by healthcare.
|
| Yeah, like I said, I'm less concerned about tax rates. No
| surprise that California tax rates are comparable to
| London tax rates though; California is notoriously
| expensive and many Californians seem eager to move to
| other parts of the country.
| mrunkel wrote:
| How do you figure you have a 65% tax rate in Sweden? Are
| you including social security contributions?
| admissionsguy wrote:
| I certainly am.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Mostly this.
|
| Maybe it's more lax in the more worker friendly socialist
| regions like France or Scandinavia but in Austria you
| only get healthcare coverage if you work or are
| unemployed and registered as a job seeker which means
| staying in the country and proving to your local job
| center on a regular basis that you are looking for work.
|
| Traveling abroad for leisure while unemployed
| automatically disqualifies you from receiving any
| healthcare coverage and unemployment benefits until you
| return.
|
| Doesn't mean there aren't people cheating the system and
| taking vacations abroad while receiving unemployment but
| the rules are strict and being caught cheating is really
| bad for you.
|
| Also doing courses on your own dime during unemployment,
| that are not on the job center's curriculum, like a boot
| camp in data science, automatically disqualifies you from
| unemployment benefits during that period. I tried
| explaining to my case worker at the job center that a
| data science certification gives me the opportunity for a
| better paid job afterwards and I need the unemployment
| benefits for that period and her response was "sorry sir,
| that's the law".
|
| Yeah, the system is extremely stupid and archaic in some
| cases here and if you're an ambitious high achiever it
| can screw you over sometimes more than it helps you.
| mhitza wrote:
| I find that strange for Austria, considering that in
| Romania; when unemployed, and not being registered as a
| job seeker, you can still have insurance.
|
| It's automatic in those situations you've described, but
| you can buy into the system otherwise.
|
| At today's exchange rate if you'd like to benefit from
| the healthcare system, for a year, you'd have to make a
| 271 EUR contribution, with no other criteria required.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The system in Austria is extremely rigid and sometimes
| verges on idiotic in some cases due to how archaic and
| pro-business it is.
|
| As a Romanian I can say you'd be surprised how many
| things the Romanian system gets right in favor of the
| workers in comparison to some western countries. At least
| on paper.
| FabHK wrote:
| In Germany, there is obligatory health insurance (when
| you're employed in a normal job up to certain income, or
| receiving welfare), and voluntary insurance (otherwise),
| but having health insurance is compulsory. In other
| words, if you're not obliged to have obligatory health
| insurance, you must take out voluntary insurance.
|
| With some historical context it can be made to make some
| sense, but when dealing with it the first time it is
| prima facie absurd.
| emptyfile wrote:
| Maybe a western/northern european thing to do.
|
| In eastern Europe it's normal for your degree to take
| anywhere from 1-3 year longer than it should have for
| various reasons including "taking a year off to chill", but
| actual, planned gap years where you're not in education are
| basically unheard of. Let alone gap years where you travel
| around and spend money.
|
| I know a few people who signed up for master degrees in say
| Germany and found that almost everyone in the program is a
| few years older then them.
| jdmichal wrote:
| > I know a few people who signed up for master degrees in
| say Germany and found that almost everyone in the program
| is a few years older then them.
|
| Is that because of gap years, or an interest in actually
| getting industry experience before continuing academic
| education? I think I was about 6 years into my career
| before I thought I could really squeeze a lot of value
| out of a graduate program. (I didn't ever go back for
| one, though.)
| morelisp wrote:
| The Bologna alignment in Germany created a lot of weird
| situations. The old _Diplom_ degree varied a lot and
| could be counted as a bachelors or masters (https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Diplom#International_compariso...)
| leading to some Germans to go back to get a firm masters.
| Also if it was more than 10 years ago, some Germans I
| know did their first degree, then their conscripted
| service, then their second, which caused a 1-2 year gap.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| It is a very popular thing to do in the UK before or after
| university. Around 20% of people at my university did the
| whole travel around Europe or Australia thing.
|
| Edit - Sorry, see all the peer comments made the same
| point.
| jason0597 wrote:
| I'm studying at a UK university too, and I always scratch
| my head as to how on earth people get the money to travel
| around Europe or Australia before they go to uni. Who
| funds it?
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| There is a wide distribution of wealth in capitalist
| societies, and a lot of it is hidden from sight.
| Financing a relatively low-budget formative and
| educational gap year is something thrifty and financially
| conservative people would do for their kids.
|
| I had my moments, worrying about a friend's finances and
| professional decisions, only to learn later that, well,
| there was clearly nothing to worry about.
| jlokier wrote:
| > Who funds it?
|
| Generally, I think family does. Some families have more
| money than others. It also depends how much the parents
| are willing and able to sacrifice, of course.
|
| The same way you might scratch your head wondering how
| some fellow students pay for rentals you can't imagine
| affording, and alcohol binges you can't imagine
| affording. Students from poorer families rarely go on gap
| years. But even some poorer parents will sacrifice a lot,
| if they can find a way, to pay for their children to
| travel.
|
| That said, the costs aren't outrageous. Travelling around
| Europe or Australia is fairly cheap for a young person
| (or at least used to be). There are schemes to allow
| travelling costs to be lower for young people, visas tend
| to be cheaper and easier to get, and people do local,
| temporary work e.g. in bars in kitchens to supplement the
| money they brought with them, to make it last longer.
|
| I went to university in the UK a long time ago. And I
| struggled to understand how people afforded gap years (or
| rent) then, too. I never had a gap year, and it makes me
| a little sad. But as I couldn't even afford to eat
| regular meals, and certainly couldn't join people for
| socialising when they went out to places like Pizza Hut
| (too expensive), it was the right decision not to take a
| gap year :/
| gota wrote:
| The exchange rate is what makes it possible. Any $1000USD
| goes a long way in many places. If you save $24.000USD you
| can live like an itinerant mid-to-upper-middle-class for a
| full year in most or all of Latin America, for example.
| creamynebula wrote:
| Here in Brazil minimum wage is currently in USD a bit
| less than $200/month. In my city, which is one of the
| biggest, you can live confortably with $400/month in my
| lifestyle, which admitedly is quite frugal. $2k month is
| quite high-class imo.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Yup. When I played online poker for a living for a bit
| after college, coming home for a few months and staying
| with my parents was more expensive than traveling.
| obstacle1 wrote:
| > trust fund crowd
|
| You're on a discussion board filled with software developers
| and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such
| workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and
| you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your
| finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the
| hedonic treadmill and save up.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, I easily make twice as much as I spend.
|
| So I take a year of now and then, if I feel like it.
| ericd wrote:
| Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on return
| difficult?
| anoncake wrote:
| If you make twice as much as you need without being
| extremely frugal, you likely have the skills to
| compensate that.
| [deleted]
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> Do you ever find this makes finding a new job on
| return difficult?_
|
| I am not the same person you asked the question to, but I
| guess if you work on a couple of hobby projects and
| actually release those in your break year, you won't have
| holes in your CV.
| ericd wrote:
| Good point. I guess it depends on what kind of break you
| want...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Job searching with "stranger" companies becomes harder.
|
| But if you leave enough coworkers who want to work with
| you again at each job, you can always find jobs through
| them.
| ericd wrote:
| Yep, makes sense :-)
| rchaud wrote:
| > If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to
| take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong.
|
| Why would you assume to know what other people's financial
| situations are, let alone their wage scale in an industry
| where not everyone is a US-based SWE?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not to mention, even if you _can_ save this much, put it
| in your 401(k), not a vacation savings account. The
| financial impact of taking a whole year without pay in
| your 20s probably adds 5 years to your retirement date,
| due to compounding interest and investment growth. Is it
| really worth it, just so you can fill your Insta with
| pictures of you windsurfing in Ibiza?
| mateo411 wrote:
| It depends on the person. I think I'd rather go
| windsurfing in my 20s then try to do it in my 60s when my
| health is not as good. I probably won't remember posting
| it on Instagram, but I will remember going wind surfing.
| nanidin wrote:
| Why wait until one is old to have fun? Why assume one
| will even live to enjoy retirement? Can one even pick up
| windsurfing at a typical retirement age?
|
| I took off 3 years in my 20's. 34 now, and back on track
| to retire in my early 40's. Saving for retirement and
| enjoying life today are not mutually exclusive.
| psychomugs wrote:
| This sums up my (admittedly naive) view towards
| retirement. Why would I sacrifice so much of my youth for
| a future so far down the road that I will 1) most
| definitely be in worse shape for, and 2) may not even
| reach? I think the wringer of grad school is enough of an
| investment in my future.
| sbarre wrote:
| Counter-point: Enjoy your youth while you're young.
|
| There's a balance to find between saving for retirement
| and not spending your entire adulthood just working
| towards it.
|
| You may not be able to windsurf anywhere in your 50s...
| VRay wrote:
| If you're writing so much software you hang out on
| HackerNews for fun, and you're not saving enough to max
| out your 401k AND have savings left over for 6 months
| off, you're doing your finances wrong (and/or you can get
| a 4x pay bump in a new job)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Oh I hang out on Hacker News for fun but it comes at the
| expense of not "writing so much software" ;)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Most people here, even most software engineers, don't
| make the sky high salaries that "very high-level FAANG
| engineers who also live in the Bay Area" make. Many have
| families, kids, education expenses, parents they support,
| expensive health issues, etc. It's a huge assumption to
| think that everyone on HN can max out a 401(k) at all,
| let alone have any left over to save and blow on extended
| unpaid vacations.
|
| EDIT: Obviously (from the voting) I hit a raw nerve with
| that original comment. Who knew "save for retirement" was
| such controversial advice. I personally plan to ensure I
| do not have to eat dog food when I'm 80 because I partied
| in my 20s but I guess to each their own. Given the
| average American's retirement savings rate, my plan is
| clearly unpopular!
| VRay wrote:
| So you're saying that you're single-handedly pulling in
| between 2x and 5x the median household US income, yet
| can't set aside $20k a year for your 401k?
|
| That means you're either not living on a budget at all,
| or you're doing something ridiculous like paying out of
| pocket for prescription medication without using the ACA.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| "Is it really worth it, just so you can fill your Insta
| with pictures of you windsurfing in Ibiza?"
|
| Do you really think all these folks want to do is fill
| their Instagram with pictures of windsurfing in Ibiza?
|
| That misses the entire point of travel. It isn't to show
| off on instagram (although that can be a fun component,
| it isn't the driver for 99% of people); it isn't to tell
| other people you did it.
|
| It is to have this amazing experience with a foreign
| culture and place. And that is very hard to value.
|
| Yes, planning for retirement is important. But you may
| also be dead before you get there. It takes balance.
| ls612 wrote:
| Heck, I'm a poor grad student who gets a stipend from my
| program and is lucky enough to have parents willing and
| able to pay my rent. My total income including that family
| support is probably around $40k and I saved a ton of money
| this past year since I couldn't do anything. I can only
| imagine how much someone in my situation with a FAANG
| income would have saved.
| [deleted]
| baseballdork wrote:
| Obviously if your parents are paying your largest
| expense, you can save a ton of money. I would assume most
| people aren't that fortunate.
| ls612 wrote:
| My point is even with that money my income isn't that
| high compared to software engineers.
| baseballdork wrote:
| Understood, but your expenses as a student are also
| unlikely to be very high, especially if your parents are
| covering rent/medical/etc, especially if you're comparing
| to SWEs in SV.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If you were suddenly responsible for your room and board
| how long could you coast without a job or other support?
| ls612 wrote:
| As long as my grad school stipend keeps going. I just
| wouldn't be able to save anymore.
| hpoe wrote:
| Sure if you don't have a family to provide for. It turns
| out that it becomes a lot harder to take a gap year when
| you've still got a spouse and little people depending on
| you.
| obstacle1 wrote:
| I don't see this as much different from "sure, if you
| don't have a million dollar mortgage and 2 car payments
| to cover!"
|
| Having a family is partially a financial decision. People
| should make the decision with eyes wide open, having
| planned for it. Achieving a financial position above
| sustenance before having the expensive family is
| generally a good idea. Same as buying the house and cars.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Having a family is the bedrock of society. If only the
| top 10% of earners had one, we'd find ourselves in some
| trouble.
| toto444 wrote:
| You are thinking from the point of view of someone with
| no mortgage, no family and you can choose what to do with
| your spare income. Some of us have a family or a house
| and that means they have renounced traveling.
|
| You can have a family, a house be sustainable but not
| earning enough to be able to pay for a year off of work.
| Which is the lot of 99.99% of people on this planet.
| mateo411 wrote:
| You can travel with your family too. You won't be able to
| quit your job, go backpacking, and stay in youth hostels.
|
| But, you can go on road trips, go camping, you can take a
| cruise, or find an all inclusive resorts. You won't have
| as much time for yourself like you did in your youth, but
| you can still travel and you'll make memories with your
| family, and show them new things about the world.
| obstacle1 wrote:
| > You can have a family, a house be sustainable but not
| earning enough to be able to pay for a year off of work.
|
| I think we have different definitions of "sustainable",
| then.
|
| What you're describing sounds one step up from living
| paycheck to paycheck. And the fact that "most people are
| in that position!" doesn't make it a good position to be
| in, or a necessary one.
| toto444 wrote:
| That's not true everywhere.
| apercu wrote:
| Yes and no. Depends on your seniority and where you live to
| some degree. I was pretty burnt out at 28 after a year that
| included things like a 110 hour work week. At the time I
| couldn't afford 6 months or a year off.
|
| I did take a year off 2 years later.
| Semaphor wrote:
| In Germany, gap years after school or sometimes university
| are pretty common (at least for the middle class). They do
| often work, but rarely in a field related to what they
| studied or want to do. Instead, it's travel-financing jobs.
|
| It used to be that it was more a thing for women, but that
| probably changed since draft was abandoned (before that the
| gap year for men would usually have been military service or
| alternative civilian service)
| ho_schi wrote:
| Are you sure about middle class O_o
|
| Higher-middle and upper class more likely? Kids which need
| to earn their money usually go straight into apprenticeship
| or university and earn money promptly.
| ta988 wrote:
| Do we really have a precise scale for those things?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| People tend to flip flop between the classical "wealthy
| people but not born into centuries old familial wealth on
| the top end and successful doctors, lawyers and financial
| professionals on the bottom end" definition and the "blue
| collar workers plus or minus a little" definition based
| on whichever is more convenient for the point they are
| trying to make that minute.
|
| Basically the GP is using the former definition and the
| person you're replying to is using the latter definition.
|
| Crap on the Marxists all you want but they do at least
| have a fairly unambiguous taxonomy for these
| distinctions.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Basically the GP is using the former definition
|
| I actually oriented myself more on the numbers for
| Germany. Which means middle class is a single household
| with about 2000EUR net income per month. That includes a
| lot of trade workers. It is perfectly possible to finance
| a gap year without or just minor parental support.
| pc86 wrote:
| Most HN readers would be more than a little flummoxed at
| what "middle class" _actually is_ in the US. The median
| household income is somewhere between $50-60k depending
| on where you look. The median individual income is a
| solid $15-20k less than that. And yet people will still
| nearly break their own spine trying to convolute a $200k
| cash comp tech worker as "middle class" because they
| happen to pay $4k/mo for a shared apartment in San
| Francisco.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Its "class" we are talking about here and it does exist
| in the US compare Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs and Woz.
| pc86 wrote:
| Are those three not in the same "class"?
| ghaff wrote:
| While Gates was richer than Jobs, once you're in the
| $100B vs. $10B, you're mostly in the keeping score
| category. Woz is apparently worth about $100M which is
| still in the you can buy pretty much anything you want
| category. So I would say yes.
|
| On the other hand, someone who is worth, say, $10M or
| $20M is obviously still quite wealthy. But not
| necessarily in the doesn't need to think twice about
| hopping on a private plane or owning a private island
| category.
| ska wrote:
| > at what "middle class" actually is in the US.
|
| I think it is deeper than that, the country just has a
| confused relationship with the entire concept of class by
| both rejecting and embracing it.
| jdmichal wrote:
| Well that depends on whether you're defining middle class
| as an income or a lifestyle. If the latter, I would
| certainly not consider any shared living arrangements as
| "middle class" in the US. Even if your income band puts
| you in the top 1%. Now, it's quite possible that they're
| choosing a lesser lifestyle now in order to save and
| transition to another lifestyle elsewhere. That's what my
| brother did -- two years in SV saving as much as
| possible, then moved back to Seattle and bought a house.
|
| This is why any of these definitions get really murky,
| fast.
| pimterry wrote:
| In the UK it's very common. https://assets.publishing.ser
| vice.gov.uk/government/uploads/... is some UK gov
| research that suggests it's about 20% of UK university
| students, which matches my experiences.
|
| Obviously it's easier with rich parents, but it doesn't
| really require as much cash as you're imagining. It's
| pretty common to work a little first then use all the
| cash to travel later for example, or to work while you
| travel, e.g. by teaching English (TEFL -
| https://www.tefl.org/blog/why-tefl-on-your-gap-year/).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Doesn't university student already imply financial
| security? I don't know how socialist education is in the
| UK nowadays. I know in the Netherlands it used to be that
| your education is effectively paid for (either free / you
| get a scholarship like I did, or a very attractive loan
| scheme). But they changed the system so it's a loan for
| everyone now, which will put a damper on how many people
| go to college / university AND everybody that graduates
| will be in debt, which works against them if they're
| looking for a house in an already overheated market.
| pimterry wrote:
| Not really. It's not free, but its dramatically cheaper
| than the US, and usually paid via government-provided
| loans with good terms (low interest, fixed repayment of
| 9% percent of your salary above a reasonable minimum,
| taken automatically by employers). It's closer to a
| graduate tax than a traditional loan.
|
| Everybody can have a loan for the full cost if they want
| one, people from poorer families get outright grants
| instead.
|
| Certainly not perfect, but my impression is it hasn't
| significantly hindered uptake from lower income students
| and its not a major financial burden in practice.
| joeberon wrote:
| It's a bit above PS9000 a year but everyone gets a
| student loan guaranteed, same with some level of means
| tested maintenance loan. This means that it's usually a
| "free" upfront cost to go to uni, however you eventually
| have to pay it off once you become financially eligible
| to do so
| alibarber wrote:
| The loan in the UK is effectively a tax, and doesn't
| really directly play into anything when getting a
| mortgage for example (but of course your take home is
| reduced)
|
| The point is though - you don't get anything at all until
| you actually attend classes. So taking a gap year means
| having to fund it yourself, or have generous parents but
| what this comments author describes is closer to 'normal'
| - a large number, not necessarily a majority, of 18year
| olds will plan out a gap year contingent on taking a part
| time job at some point and then using that to fund travel
| or something - before taking up a place on a course (and
| hence receiving the money)
|
| If you have luck/motivation/connections/skillset - you
| might find a job related to your (future) degree too. I
| knew several people on my CS course who worked IT support
| at a local office for a few months whilst living with
| their parents - then set off on a backpacking trip
| somewhere exotic.
| nicoburns wrote:
| That's not been my experience here in the UK. Plenty of
| my friends spent 6 months working to pay for 6 months of
| low-budget travelling before heading off to university or
| whatever they were planning to do next (or sometimes they
| hadn't figured out what they were wanting to do next yet)
| Semaphor wrote:
| Yeah, I am sure (or at least for the time I left school
| around 15 years ago) I'd even include upper-lower class.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Might be a difference in terminology tbh.
|
| In the UK "upper class" is used almost exclusively for
| aristocrats. No matter how rich you are, unless there is
| a viable way for you to hold a title (e.g. Earl), you
| will not be considered upper class.
|
| Middle class is basically anyone who does knowledge work
| and has aspirations of home ownership.
|
| Your description of "Kids which need to earn their money
| usually go straight into apprenticeship or university and
| earn money promptly" would be very likely to be working
| class kids in the UK i.e. unlikely to be middle class.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And technically upper class is doesn't need to work and
| can live of investments / property.
|
| Its a bit more complex in the UK ABc1 is middle but their
| are social distinctions dependant on job not income.
|
| For example A Plumber Miner or train driver might make
| more than an engineer but would be working class.
|
| Basically what sort of honour would you get for doing
| charity work is a good marker
| logosmonkey wrote:
| I did. I took a year and sailed. Sold my house and used some
| savings. I couldn't have done it if I had kept my house
| though. I was mid 30's at the time (40 now). I don't work in
| the valley though, I just do data and analytic design for
| corporations so finding a new job only took a week when I
| moved back to Columbus, OH after sailing.
|
| While I did figure out I didn't love single handing a
| sailboat long term I don't regret any part of that year. I
| came back significantly happier than I was.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in
| reality._
|
| In my industry, and the one my wife works in, if you have a
| gap year it's a red flag that makes potential employers
| wonder if you got fired from your last job and just aren't
| listing it, or did time in prison, or are simply unreliable.
|
| It's great that in the tech bubble people don't think much
| about gap years. But in the real world, they can doom your
| chances of getting a new job.
|
| Especially since these days you don't get to explain the gap
| since your application is vetted, filtered, and ranked by a
| computer and not a person.
| [deleted]
| ryangittins wrote:
| > Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough
|
| I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of people taking
| a gap year, especially people in tech. The industry pays well
| relatively early and there is a surplus of jobs. If you keep
| your expenses low relative to your salary, don't let your
| lifestyle inflate beyond your means, and are fortunate enough
| not to be burdened with debt, health problems, or other large
| expenses, a gap year seems completely doable.
|
| I think failure to save money is by far the most likely
| reason sabbaticals are uncommon, though I've been told by
| hiring managers they're more common in tech than you'd think.
| There's also probably some stigma against being unemployed,
| especially in professional circles, as well as fear of the
| dreaded "resume gap." As far as I can tell, that concern is
| fairly overblown for those in tech as well.
| distances wrote:
| In the Europe I know, "sabbatical" means unpaid time off
| (commonly 6 months) while staying with the company. You
| don't get paid and don't accrue holidays/other benefits,
| but continue right where you left off when you're back.
|
| I think option for this is required by law in some
| countries, though I've never taken it so I'm not exactly
| sure.
|
| My former company allowed this after two years of
| continuous employment to let employees try their wings with
| building their own product. I thought this was pretty cool,
| and definitely a recruitment carrot. On the downside (for
| the company) lots of those colleagues ended up leaving
| after their sabbatical was up, but I figure that those
| people would have left soonish anyway. It's not like they
| would've had a problem getting a new job.
| Frost1x wrote:
| It's interesting reading the comments on HN because, although
| everyone isn't making say $300-600k+ TC/yr here, I think it's
| safe to assume the TC distribution shifts the median earner
| here safely above the median US earner, perhaps by even a
| multiple of two. This, in theory means if you lived a
| lifestyle akin to a median labor earner, you should only need
| to work about half the amount--part time, every other year,
| FIRE / retire early strategies and so on.
|
| Most the advice is quite the opposite (and I would agree with
| them). To me, this really shows just how toxic the control is
| across the labor force. Job mobility is about the only vote
| or voice you have if you're in the labor force and if empty
| positions can be readily filled, you have no voice. The only
| reason things are interesting now is because the mass layoffs
| and turnover haven't been well stagged due to the pandemic so
| labor has more leverage. When true unemployment returns to
| norms, positions are largely re-filled, and attrition begins
| to follow traditional rates, the voice of the labor market
| voting will their feet will again fall on deaf ears and your
| voice will again disappear in the noise. It would take
| another global catastrophe to change this balance and give
| labor a voice again.
| gizdan wrote:
| Here in the UK _most_ of the people I met at university
| didn't know gap years were an option. Post university it's
| been the same. The few who do take it absolutely love it. I
| personally didn't know either until I met a few people at
| university who got to the UK through the Erasmus programme.
|
| It's sad really. As a young person this is the time to be
| able to do it. Often as you get older life gets in the way.
| I've been wanting to do it ever since I found out about it
| but every time something else has gotten in the way. If
| you're young and reading this, and everything has aligned for
| you, take a gap year or two.
| rexarex wrote:
| I did a gap year at 25 and I only had 20k in savings and I
| traveled all over SE Asia and East Africa on that. Was a
| blast.
| apercu wrote:
| I did. I took almost a year off. It cost me about $35k in
| 2005 USD.
|
| I was really burnt out. But I'm not sure that taking the time
| did anything for me. I was a little stressed about the
| "unknown" the whole time and I mostly wish I had left that
| money in my savings.
|
| Your mileage may vary.
| donretag wrote:
| I have taken a year off before and a couple of months in
| between jobs. I think many of us have undergone once-in-a-
| lifetime type of stress in the past year that few would
| consider taking some time off as toxic. We all processed the
| events of the past year differently, and we all coped in
| different ways, but it still took a toll. I would encourage
| taking time off.
|
| The one major issue of taking some time off right now to travel
| is that it is incredibly difficult to do so. Many countries are
| still closed, or if open, have some sort of curfew. In the US,
| national parks are overwhelmed with tourists. If traveling
| solo, social distancing (either laws or new culture) makes it
| difficult to connect with strangers.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Obviously "the West" is a big place and there are lots of
| cultures and in-groups within it.
|
| I can tell you as a non-elite, middle-class American that I've
| almost never heard of someone taking a gap year after beginning
| professional work. The one case that comes to mind was an ex's
| father who was burnt out on his accountant career. He took a
| year to follow his dreams on music-related stuff, which didn't
| pan out in terms of turning a passion into a career, and he
| went back to being an accountant (also, after causing his wife
| and kids some stress related to running low on money).
|
| I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years back.
| I think things like that are common enough. I flew to Costa
| Rica, intending to spend a month backpacking around the country
| ... and honestly I got kind of bored after 2 weeks so I flew
| home early. Then I hopped in the car and drove cross-country at
| my own pace, seeing sights that I wanted to see, etc.
| Absolutely one of my favorite memories and I'd love to do
| something similar again.
|
| The important thing to remember is that this is for your
| growth, happiness, and well-being. You set the rules for your
| time off. If you travel the whole time or stay at home, or a
| mix, that's your call. If you do something to try to set
| yourself up for your next opportunity professionally or you
| completely stay away anything related to your profession,
| that's up to you. Don't follow a path just because you think
| it'll look good on Instagram or because you think it'll sound
| cool when you talk about it at parties in the future. (Or do,
| if those are high enough priorities for you). Good luck!
| ghaff wrote:
| >I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years
| back.
|
| I've never had enough time off between (my few) jobs since
| grad school. The circumstances have never been quite right. I
| did get a 3-4 week vacation the last time and that was mostly
| because I had done everything except pull the trigger while
| waiting to see if an offer came through--then pushed things
| out as far as I could.
|
| I actually had a month off the prior time as well but that
| was because of a post-9/11 layoff. As it turned out a
| conversation I had with someone I knew pretty much the
| following day panned out. But I didn't know that of course
| and it wasn't the time to just head off and vacation.
| Matumio wrote:
| As an European tech-sphere data point: it seems somewhat
| normal to travel the world for half a year before your first
| job. Gap time later on is not so common. Still, I can easily
| name five colleagues who took one to six months off, some as
| unpaid vacation, some between jobs.
|
| Personally, six weeks sounds more like an extra-long
| vacation. I always took four to six months off before looking
| for a new job, or when on-job an unpaid month or two every
| other year. But that's definitively nowhere near the norm,
| many people don't understand it. I usually end up coding 20h
| per week on geek projects or random open source stuff. After
| six months I predictably get bored with it.
|
| I rarely end up doing the project I planned to do. So if you
| want any advice from me: Don't force yourself to do what you
| thought you wanted to do, before you had time. Look around
| and don't feel guilty for following that new interest you
| just discovered.
| Qw3r7 wrote:
| Good luck, and have fun!
| notjustanymike wrote:
| A 6 month gap was the healthiest emotional choice I ever made.
| Just be prepared that you have no idea how you'll react to it
| until you do it. I strongly recommend setting very light goals
| for the first month while you adjust, otherwise you'll stress
| yourself out.
|
| For me, I went with "Take one great photo a day."
| psychomugs wrote:
| I've done two 366 photo-a-day projects (the first was in
| 2012, the second was 2020). Last year was simultaneously the
| worst and best time to do one; worst because of obvious
| reasons, but best because it was a quarantine monotony
| barometer ("monotometer") and helped me plan my days so that
| at least one interesting photographable thing would happen. I
| definitely felt burnout and oversharing, but I'd probably do
| it again and just keep the photos in a private album or print
| them immediately.
| ggggtez wrote:
| I did something similar between school and a job, but it wasn't
| so much intentional as acute burnout.
|
| In tech, we luckily have the luxury to take time off and
| recover when we need to.
|
| I worked on some closed source personal projects and worked on
| getting into shape. When I was ready to return, the employer
| didn't really care that I had taken time off.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I recommend traveling. See all the places, you want to see,
| with no pressure of having to go back to work by a fixed date,
| soon. Meet people, make new connections, chances are, you will
| find new opportunities to work, along the way.
|
| Bonus points, if you have all your stuff packed somewhere and
| not have to pay any rent. But it depends what you want, if you
| like your home, keep it. Have projects in your home ...
|
| There are lots of things to be done. Doing nothing is also fine
| for a while, but gets booring very soon and puts you in
| lethargic state ... wasting your time.
| paulcole wrote:
| I took 3 years off, didn't do anything other than read, watch
| tv, go to the movies, and walk/ride my bicycle. Never
| traveled once. Loved every minute of it.
|
| Doing nothing doesn't get boring for everyone. And it's my
| time not yours so who's to say what a waste is?
|
| My biggest advice is to do what you want and don't feel like
| you have to live up to some HN-gap-year fantasy. You might
| regret sitting in your apartment surfing the internet (I
| didnt) but you might also regret traveling. It's your time.
| Do what you want.
| setBoolean wrote:
| I just want to thank you for sharing your story and for me
| it's really a wholesome one. Best of luck to you on your
| further ways.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Doing nothing doesn't get boring for everyone. And it's my
| time not yours so who's to say what a waste is?"
|
| You didn't do nothing for 3 years. You enjoyed your time,
| and you did things, so no, you did not waste it.
|
| Otherwise I very strongly agree with, that you just should
| do, what you really want and not what others want.
|
| After I decided to leave university, I planned a bike trip
| from germany to portugal. I wanted to do this. And I did
| it. But then, along the way, on the border to spain, at a
| nice place I stayed for a while ... I decided I had enough.
| Or I realized, that I had wanted this for a while already.
|
| It was fun, but "accomplishing" my trip would have only
| meaning for my travel blog and the expectations of other
| people - but not for me.
|
| I enjoyed the trip very much, but did not felt like moving
| further and spend the whole winter in the south. So screw
| other peoples expecations, I am doing what I want, so I
| flew back home.
| mrfusion wrote:
| What did you end up doing after the 3 years? Why did you
| end it?
| paulcole wrote:
| Got a job. Had 6 months of expenses left in the bank and
| didn't want to risk dipping into stocks.
|
| I wasn't wealthy in the HN sense though. This was
| 2010-2013 and my rent for a tiny studio apartment was
| $550 a month. Other major expenses were just internet (50
| a month), groceries (few hundred a month), gym (35 a
| month) and electricity (20 a month). No cell phone. No
| car.
|
| For the 5 years leading up to that I was working full
| time during the day and doing freelance SEO writing side.
| Was able to save quite a bit. But I was really fortunate
| to be in the right time/place. Rent in my city had
| basically doubled (and then some) since then, for
| example.
| leesec wrote:
| This is crazy impressive to me man, props. No phone/no
| car is rebellious in this day and age.
| paulcole wrote:
| Lol thanks. I'm nearly 40 and still holding out on both.
| Never driven, never owned a smartphone. I have a pay as
| you go flip phone I got at Office Depot for work in 2015
| but I never turn it on unless I need to make a call that
| won't go through Google Voice.
| aphextron wrote:
| >Im quitting and not looking for another job. Gonna use the
| savings to take a gap year, or a couple, work on some stuff I
| want maybe. Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too?
|
| Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd strongly
| reconsider. A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive
| to potential employers. And that cash goes quick when there's
| none coming in. Trust me I know. It's alluring to just walk
| away. But trying to get a job when you're unemployed is
| literally 10x harder than while employed, regardless of the
| actual circumstances of your departure.
|
| Just try taking a few weeks off first. And if that's not
| enough, ask for a sabbatical. At the very least have something
| lined up for a few months after you leave. Don't fall for the
| "I can have another job in two weeks" meme. It's rarely true in
| reality for all but the very top of the market.
| Blackstone4 wrote:
| I disagree. Whilst some employers would be dead against it,
| others may look positively on people taking sabbaticals/gap
| years. As long as you have a good CV/resume and if you are
| older, consistent work history and are taking the time off in
| a manner which is within your means, I would say go for it.
| malozite wrote:
| The only places I have known who would care much about 'CV
| gaps' have been toxic workplaces who also discriminated
| against other groups for spurious reasons unrelated to their
| competence or likelihood of succeeding in the job.
|
| Your attitude reinforces the corresponding attitude by many
| employers. If 50% of us signed a pledge not to have children,
| never to take any health risks, never to join a union, not
| sue our employers, etc, many employers would be delighted and
| would hire them preferentially, making things harder for the
| other 50%.
| sfeng wrote:
| I think this is horrible advice. I've hired all sorts of
| people with voluntary time off on their resume. Your
| experience doesn't 'expire' in a single year. Life is about
| more than just working, if you have the money to take time
| off to enjoy your life you shouldn't not do it out of fear.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| He's right about it being harder to get a job while
| unemployed. You finish your gap year and then spend another
| 6 months trying to get hired. Maybe if you lived in SF it'd
| be easier.
| sthu11182 wrote:
| Key thing, when you quit, don't burn bridges. I took a
| year off, did some traveling after working at my job for
| 8 years. At the end of the year, I applied to a few jobs,
| but my old boss contacted me to rehire me. I went back as
| if I never left. I am in a different field, so you
| experience may vary, but if you are in a good team, your
| old boss is likely to rehire you instead of investing in
| someone they don't know and have to train.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| There are 200 resumes in this pile. 199 of them need to
| go for one reason or another. 'no recent experience' is
| one of those reasons.
| xtqctz wrote:
| Old economy jobs in the midwest, sure. I applied to FAANG
| jobs after a year off and no one even brought it up.
| PeterisP wrote:
| My experience with tech hiring is getting three decent
| resumes for 5 open positions, everyone qualified gets an
| interview and serious consideration. It's not that way
| for junior people in entry level positions and non-IT
| staff (there the "200 resumes, no reason to interview
| most of them" scenario often applies), but if we're
| talking about e.g. mid-level developers, then every
| decent manager I know is in a "always be hiring" mode.
| coryrc wrote:
| It was easier for me to get into Google when I had lots
| of free time for leetcode.
| aphextron wrote:
| >Your experience doesn't 'expire' in a single year
|
| You're right, it doesn't. But it brings up all sorts of
| questions in the mind of your interviewer as to the true
| nature of your departure, and it immediately puts you at a
| huge disadvantage.
| mden wrote:
| I've done about a 10 mo break after my first job and
| after my second and it has never been an issue with
| employment. You're overestimating how much hr and hiring
| managers care.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Depends how you present it.
|
| Being open-minded, seeing something different, meeting
| other people, working hard to be able to follow your
| objectives and take calculated risks. That can be a
| valuable experience and an advantage over ten similar
| candidates.
| thom wrote:
| I can't imagine wanting to work for someone who thinks
| this way, and it's certainly not a common mindset in my
| experience.
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming I would even notice a six month gap, if someone
| told me they had taken a year off to work on an open
| source project, hike the Appalachian Trail, or whatever,
| I'd find it far more of a conversation starter than a
| negative. Maybe you're either imagining things or talking
| to the wrong employers.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| As an interviewer I recognize people might take time off
| work for a variety of reasons and never give a lot of
| thought to unemployment gaps. I've found very short stays
| at previous positions (say less than a year) to be more
| of a warning; I want people who are likely to stick
| around.
| jen20 wrote:
| > and it immediately puts you at a huge disadvantage.
|
| Great - it can add to the list of disadvantages I have
| with companies I would never want to work for.
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Life is about more than just working
|
| Are you an employer in the US? Because that way of thinking
| is pretty rare in that group.
| dccoolgai wrote:
| Learn to prevaricate better... And meet a friend who will do
| it for you.
|
| "Yeah, I was the CTO of a startup. I learned a lot. Call this
| guy who was the CEO, he'll tell you about it."
| tasuki wrote:
| If my prospective employer has an issue with me having
| taken a sabbatical, I'd rather not work with them.
| aphextron wrote:
| >"Yeah, I was the CTO of a startup. I learned a lot. Call
| this guy who was the CEO, he'll tell you about it."
|
| Ah yes, an intricate lie. The very foundation of a solid
| working relationship.
| dccoolgai wrote:
| No one you work for has a "relationship" with you unless
| there is nepotism involved. They will lie to you. They
| will throw you out when you don't make them money. The
| only "lie" is that there is a "relationship" and if you
| believe it, it will end up making you very unhappy. Live
| for yourself and your family.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I've never had reason to embellish my resume, but let's
| not pretend employers don't exaggerate, are
| "aspirational" or outright lie what the job is about
| "You'll be working on cutting-edge technology" vs. _"
| Actually, we plan on migrating to that cutting-edge
| platform soon, in the meantime, add features to our
| 'legacy' PHP5 and Java 1.7 platforms"_ and "We offer
| unlimited vacation" vs. _" Everyone usually only takes
| the week between Christmas and new years as our clients
| shut down then. Currently, the team really needs your
| contribution to make the release deadline, so now is not
| a good time"_
|
| Both interviewer and interviewee have to be diligent
| during interview process to dig out the truth about
| _important_ aspects of what they expect, and not just
| take it at face-value (asking pointed questions usually
| reveals the truth, for either party)
| Frondo wrote:
| > Ah yes, an intricate lie.
|
| Not a joke -- what do you think resumes are?
| polytely wrote:
| Wait, is putting fake jobs on your resume a common
| occurrence? I must say that that never even occurred to
| me.
| dccoolgai wrote:
| There's a thick line between _putting an out-and-out fake
| job on your resume_ and _embellishing_ a little bit to
| optimize your profile.
| kesselvon wrote:
| Companies lie to employees all the time; it's literally
| not illegal.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Its far more nuanced than that.
|
| you won't be marked as radioactive, but you will have to
| reassure people that you're not planning to do it again with
| little to no notice. apart from that, I would plan to get
| back a month earlier than planned so you have a money buffer
| to get a job you want, rather than _need_
| ebiester wrote:
| Always assume that you will have bad luck and will need a
| few months to get a job. More importantly, you will have
| higher standards for your next job if you have the
| financial security to do so.
|
| That said, I forsee a lot of gap years in 2021-2023. The
| key is to have something to show for it. Did you spend a
| year in another country and learn the language? Do you have
| a series of open source pull requests? Do you have a game?
| A novel, even if unpublished? We live in a capitalist
| society and people expect that you are always working on
| _something_.
| ghaff wrote:
| I feel like I'm seeing a larger than normal wave of
| retirements. Which isn't surprising. People who were
| thinking that way anyway probably figured they might as
| well keep collecting a salary during the pandemic given
| everything was closed anyway. But now that travel is
| creaking back to life, etc. people are ready to pull the
| trigger.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Beyond the distasteful idea that we should always act in a
| way demonstrating obedience to potential employers, the
| solution to this is extremely easy. Gap year? No! I am merely
| doing independent consulting. Do I actually have any
| contracts? So many questions!
|
| Plus if you actually use the time to work on OSS instead of
| traveling or whatever I have no idea how an employer (that
| you'd want to work at) could fault you for that. Seems like a
| huge asset.
|
| You may enjoy this article by our friend NNT:
| https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-
| person...
| aphextron wrote:
| >Gap year? No! I am merely doing independent consulting. Do
| I actually have any contracts? So many questions!
|
| People aren't stupid. They'll have questions. And lies are
| extremely hard to keep straight in the long term. The sad
| fact of the matter is that you are not a person to them in
| the initial hiring process. You are a piece of paper. And
| unless you are some rock star 10x top level candidate with
| impressive credentials, they'll have a dozen other pieces
| of paper that look just as appealing and don't have those
| questions attached.
| ahelwer wrote:
| See my other comment on why this isn't lying. And stop
| being scared of your own shadow around interviewers.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Seconded one of my regrets was not really going for a
| place on a round the world boat race a few years ago and
| taking a sabbatical to do the whole thing.
|
| Id just been diagnosed which a chronic illness and though
| it would have been fair on the rest of the crew.
| mikeodds wrote:
| fwiw, I hire people and a 6 month gap on a CV doesn't
| weigh negatively at all for me vs the relevant experience
| they have.
|
| Ultimately I'm looking to hire the most effective person
| for that job.
|
| I've got my own views on how terrible some HR depts. can
| be for an initial CV elimination round, esp. when hiring
| for technical positions.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Beyond the distasteful idea that we should always act in
| a way demonstrating obedience to potential employers
|
| Maybe even more than distasteful, perhaps soul nullifying?
| (Pardon the awkward phrase, it's what I get when looking
| for an antonym for affirming.)
|
| For myself, when I leave the engineering field it will not
| be to return to engineering again unless it's strictly on
| my own terms. More than likely teaching or similar would
| follow a "gap year".
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. There's no doubt age discrimination and people in PR
| who filter on meaningless stuff. But the idea that you can
| never do anything non-standard seems pretty ridiculous to
| me. And I'm pretty sure that no one who has hired me would
| think twice about it. I never have taken a real sabbatical
| --never seemed like a great time--but I have taken a number
| of month-long vacations and it's never been an issue.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd
| strongly reconsider.
|
| You're talking to the HN crowd. I get the impression that a
| lot of the people here think of $200k/yr as poverty level.
| "FU money" to them is probably on the order of $100M.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to
| potential employers.
|
| I'm not sure where you got this idea in your head but it is
| demonstrably false in tech right now.
|
| I took a gap year after getting fired from an extremely toxic
| company. I didn't want to rush into a new role right away
| after such an awful experience.
|
| Once I was ready to go back it took ~1 month to go from
| starting my search to signing an offer letter. I interviewed
| at a large range of companies and was pretty picky after my
| previous experience.
|
| My apply -> interview rate was consistent with what it had
| been in the past, and nobody cared about either my being
| fired or taking time off.
|
| > trying to get a job when you're unemployed is literally 10x
| harder than while employed
|
| The only thing that changed for me interview wise was that I
| was much pickier after not having to work for an organization
| for such a long time.
|
| The rest of the interview is much easier since you have much
| more time to do things like practice for coding interviews,
| doing take home work etc.
|
| On top of all that, because I was so grossed out from looking
| at linkedin during that time, I've never bothered update my
| profile, and I still get the same constant stream of
| recruiters reaching out even though it looks like I'm still
| unemployed.
|
| In retrospect I wish I had had the sense to just quit
| earlier. Very often interviewing when you're employed at a
| place you are not happy with makes you too eager to find
| someplace else, making you more likely to ignore warning
| signs during the interview.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _I interviewed at a large range of companies and was pretty
| picky after my previous experience._
|
| I wonder, realistically, how many people out there actually
| get to be "pretty picky after my previous experience"?
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I did when my previous place made me redundant, I didn't
| need to jump into the first job and I could claim
| unemployment whist waiting to.
|
| It well be more experienced people though and you will
| need enough $ to do this.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| In the world? Very, very few. I know it's it a tremendous
| fortune and privileged to be able to search for a job you
| think is a good match. Most people work in near slavery
| conditions with little choice.
|
| At the same time, squandering that privilege out of some
| misplaced guilt only helps employers exert control of
| employees.
|
| In tech? Virtually everyone has that level of privilege
| so long as they have some experience. I'm fairly certain
| I couldn't get hired by a FAANG company (I don't have too
| much interest in it, but I won't deny the possibility of
| sour grapes), so I'm not in some super-elite category of
| tech worker.
|
| In addition, not everything lasts forever. I used to work
| for minimum wage in customer support jobs and I wouldn't
| be surprised if in 10-20 years (or sooner) I'm back in a
| much less desirable role.
|
| It took me a long time to recognize that my market value
| had increase over time, and one of my biggest career
| mistakes was underestimating that and not acting on it
| sooner. As the saying goes, from a time when most people
| had to work on farms, "make hay while the sun shines".
| dominotw wrote:
| > A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to
| potential employers.
|
| Nope. Not true in tech at all.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I think the advice is a reasonable thing to consider; a lot
| of responses (and presumably downvotes) are either "It
| doesn't matter to potential employers", which is
| categorically untrue - it'll matter to some, raise a question
| to others, and be irrelevant to others yet. How you answer
| that question is important, and it's fascinating that other
| half of comments is, basically, "Lie!".
|
| When I'm interviewing candidates, a gap year is a data point
| - no more, no less. It may lead to more substantial data
| points, or it may be a non-issue. If you do as many here
| suggest and lie through your teeth about it ("I was a CTO! I
| was working on startup! Independent consulting"), you may get
| away with it, but likely not (even if you think you did); and
| if caught in prevaricating or lying about your experience and
| work activities, _that_ is a far far bigger and more
| immediate red flag than the gap year itself.
|
| Also - sure, knowledge doesn't expire, but oh boy skills do
| get rusty! A year into my new management-y role, I felt how
| rusty my sysadmin skills were getting. Two years in and you
| shouldn't give me root access again without some catchup :-).
| ghaff wrote:
| Someone who has been doing "independent consulting" for six
| months or a year is pretty transparently obfuscating that
| they were unemployed. I'd probably view it in a better
| light--not that there's anything wrong with doing or trying
| to do some consulting on the side--if they were just open
| about taking some time off.
| jlokier wrote:
| Heh, I did "independent consulting" for over a decade.
|
| It's also the most densely packed section of my resume
| because it was by far the most interesting and diverse
| range of work in that time.
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't express things very well, Sure, I know lots of
| independent consultants who are legitimately work full-
| time or at least on a regular basis. I was more referring
| to someone who just sticks "consulting" on their resume
| so they don't have a gap but didn't actually do anything.
| jen20 wrote:
| > Someone who has been doing "independent consulting" for
| six months or a year is pretty transparently obfuscating
| that they were unemployed.
|
| Lol, what? I did exactly that after getting pissed off
| with $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER. Worked for 3-4 companies for
| 6-8 week periods over that time on a short term basis,
| and made more than $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER by a factor n >
| 2, and did some work on a startup. But then
| $LARGE_EMPLOYER came along with an offer I couldn't
| refuse.
|
| Don't project what "independent consulting" might mean
| for you onto everyone. It would be interview-ending if I
| caught a hiring manager suggested this was a euphemism,
| and I'd subsequently recommend every person that asked me
| about said company steered clear.
| ahelwer wrote:
| You mind seems to be trapped in the employment binary where
| you're either a full-time W-2 employee or you're
| unemployed. With contracting and startups it isn't so
| simple. Contractors (especially ones working in boutique
| niches on scoped projects) might work for a month with much
| time between contracts. During that down time maybe they
| write blog posts or contribute to OSS or hang out with
| someone else prototyping some neat ideas that don't pan out
| (which might reasonably be called a startup after the fact)
| or just do literally nothing so as to recover from burnout,
| which is lethal to the contractor in a way it isn't to an
| employee. All of which feed into more people dropping into
| their inbox inquiring about their contracting availability.
| It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid
| contract is time spent in service of contracting.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| 1. All of it is true in general and explicitly not the
| case for the OP/GP I was responding to, which indicated a
| traveling/no-work year, so it feels you're fighting a
| straw man.
|
| As well, all of it is easily discussable during
| interview, and my team and myself will not see any of
| these in a negative light.
|
| 2. >> "It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on
| a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting."
|
| Of course not. At the time of my post however, a lot of
| advice in comments was _explicitly to lie_ and "Say you
| were in a startup / independent consulting / working on
| OSS / CTO even if you weren't, rather than admitting to
| gap / traveling year", and my reaction to them is: That
| lie will harm you much more than any honest discussion of
| the gap year.
|
| So again, I feel we are talking past each other here a
| bit. I've been a contractor, I've been a consultant, and
| I'm a full-time employee now; I've taken a time to write
| a book/techmanual, I've run a photography business for a
| bit,and I've taken extended paternity leave; so I don't
| think my mind is trapped into thinking of employment as
| binary. But I do think honesty during interview is
| paramount - on my team, I don't care how good your
| technical or functional skillset is, if we cannot trust
| your integrity. I understand that this is a tricky
| position for the candidate as market at times rewards
| dishonesty; but I try to be convincingly upfront in what
| we're looking for.
| f6v wrote:
| If you want and can take it - take it. You never know if you'll
| be able to afford it in the near future.
| ludamad wrote:
| Careful with gap years to clear your plate to work on slower
| pace stuff - if you're anything like me, you'll have trouble
| doing the one thing day in and day out. Even with full freedom,
| it is hard to manage one's output
| wsc981 wrote:
| In 2016 I took about half a year off, staying in Thailand and
| working on my hobby projects.
|
| Was one of the best, most happy periods in my life.
|
| It made me more focused on trying to reach early "retirement"
| so I can work fulltime on my hobbies. Hopefully I can achieve
| this goal before I'm 45 years old.
| the_fire_friar wrote:
| Me too! I made this site to help: https://fiers.co
| wsc981 wrote:
| Nice, seems like a useful tool!
| saucymew wrote:
| Good for you, I hope this is a new journey of self-reflection
| and recharging for your next adventure.
| rychco wrote:
| I've not taken a gap year or heard of anybody else that has
| either. My peers and I are all 1-2 jobs out of college, and
| we're all terrified of having a gap in our resume. Apparently
| this concern is overblown, but we all seem to have learned it
| from our parents.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Gap years, or as they used to be called sabaticals, are
| common once you reach 8+ years of experience. If you are a
| good engineer, you can take mutiple years, and still be ok,
| as long as you keep your skills sharp. (i.e. have some kind
| of personal project that you work during those times)
| [deleted]
| libria wrote:
| > we're all terrified of having a gap in our resume
|
| I took a 1 year break and have had to answer a simple
| recruiter/interview inquiry regarding it for the next 5
| years. I don't think it ever eliminated me from consideration
| but it was more like a necessary precaution. Not so great
| answers would include:
|
| * Anything beginning with "uh uh uh". Answer confidently.
|
| * "I was searching for work the whole time and just couldn't
| pass interviews"
|
| * criminal activity
|
| * anything indicating a bad work ethic or difficult employee
|
| * apathy, indifference, numb, lazy. Even if you felt that way
| the whole time, LIE. You took a year off, you want to look
| like you had an undying passion for something every day even
| a hobby.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I started a startup, but it failed.... how about that.
|
| Easy peasy. It really depends on what you did. If you are
| an engineer and were keeping your skills sharp by doing a
| side project, then you shouldn't have any problem saying: I
| was working on my project/trying to do a startup.
|
| 99% of people will understand. Failed startups are neither
| a plus but not a negative thing either.
| mullen wrote:
| > I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then
| immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you
| fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the
| west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
|
| As a Westerner, I have never taken a gap year but I never met
| anyone who took one and wish they didn't. If you can make it
| work, take it, especially after the Pandemic because it's going
| to be an awesome time to travel.
| setgree wrote:
| I left my job in May and I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail now.
| I saved more than enough for living in a tent for 5 months
| (admittedly the tent was expensive but I already had it). So
| far it's been great. I've met a lot of folks who are burned out
| and taking some time to think.
|
| If long-distance hiking appeals, I'd be happy to discuss it.
|
| Long-distance hiking isn't for everyone but
| karanke wrote:
| Could you leave your email in your bio? Or email me?
| Definitely interested to learn more about your experience.
| setgree wrote:
| Happy to! It's my HN username at gmail dot com
| bytematic wrote:
| How much savings for that 5 months?
| setgree wrote:
| I saved low five figures but I don't expect to need all of
| that. On very rainy days, or when I need to do laundry, I
| typically go to a hostel or split a hotel room with fellow
| hikers. Other than that it's really just food and
| miscellany...having said that I am carrying like
| $1500-$2000 worth of gear at any given time so there is a
| real startup cost.
| bavila wrote:
| I hiked the northern half of the trail a couple years back.
| You should expect to spend $1,000/month at a minimum for a
| good experience. I spent $2,000/month and felt like I was
| living large. (I'd eat like a pig at every
| hotel/bar/restaurant I entered when arriving into a town.
| Most people lose weight on the trail; my weight stayed the
| same.) Expect your gear to cost around the same as your
| monthly budget.
| jhickok wrote:
| My brother and I both got burnout last year and picked up
| thru-hiking, albeit more of the weekend warrior (3-7 days)
| variety. It has been a life-changer for both of us. We are
| planning on hiking part of the PCT for a month next year.
|
| Good luck on the AT!
| break_the_bank wrote:
| Have you done something like this before or was this on a
| whim?
|
| Trying to figure out how much training / prep one needs to
| do. I want to do long distance cycling, I am not concerned
| about the stamina. I am concerned about camping in the wild,
| packing and repairing the bicycle when it breaks.
| setgree wrote:
| I had done a 10-day section hike 7 years ago, yes; and a
| few 3-4 day trips in the meantime.
|
| A week or so out there was invaluable to me, YMMV
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I had a buddy who disappeared for 6 months after our
| deployment, who we eventually found out was just hiking the
| Appalachian trail. It ended up being very helpful for him,
| and it's something I've considered for myself on occasion.
|
| Good luck out there.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| A cousin of my was a multiple-tour forward observer for the
| U.S. Army in the Korean War. He spent a lot of time doing
| extended hiking after that.
|
| I'm not sure if it was a result of his experience in Korea,
| but I get the impression he really wanted some extended
| alone time. I never asked because I didn't want to risk
| dragging him into some terrible memories.
| gen220 wrote:
| It's a fairly popular activity for people in the military
| to get engaged in, for many reasons. Particularly people
| who were deployed in the field.
|
| The back country is an environment where one is able to
| apply physical skills and tools, earned over years of
| experience, and to which most civilians attribute no
| value. The solitude is nice, however I think most
| veterans actually prefer company on activities like this,
| there just aren't many people who can cope with the
| mileage or the off-the-grid aspects.
|
| I've never been in the military myself, but I'm a
| reasonably experienced backpacker. Discussions on the
| subject have made friends out of many coworkers, who had
| been deployed in the field while serving in the military.
|
| You should ask your cousin about it, maybe even ask if
| you can join him sometime; he'd probably actually really
| enjoy you expressing an interest and wanting to tag
| along.
| jnurmine wrote:
| That sounds superb and I wish you good luck and lots of trail
| magic. The AT looks beautiful (I've only seen pictures of it
| in blogs).
|
| Forests are wonderful. I grew up around forests, playing in
| them as a child. A few years ago while day hiking in a forest
| I came to a Sun-warmed opening in pine barrens from amidst
| taller pines. That specific scent of the ground and the pines
| etc., the heat and the wind -- all these, but mostly the
| strong scent, took me vividly back to my childhood. I
| remembered so many things as if I were there again, I saw
| these memories just flowing at me. For a moment, I was
| transported back to my grandparents place at a summer when I
| was 6-8 years old. I felt how much they loved me and what a
| good and carefree place I had been in.
|
| For some time, I stood there in awe with my mouth open,
| trying to process what just happened. It was such a powerful
| influx of memories.
|
| I don't know if you've experienced something like this, but I
| hope you will! Maybe some years from now your hike will come
| back to you.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I haven't taken a gap year myself but a good friend took a six
| month unpaid travel-leave period in the company we both used to
| work for. He had a great time. When he finished and got back
| into work he realised that his break very similar to a female
| employee taking maternity leave. As it happened, our company
| was quite good with maternity leave, and many of the women who
| took it resumed very successful careers. So, perhaps worth
| checking at your own place to see how maternity leave is
| handled.
|
| He didn't notice any long term career effects although he had
| to re-establish himself somewhat with new people and projects
| that had appeared in his absence.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > When he finished and got back into work he realised that
| his break very similar to a female employee taking maternity
| leave.
|
| I have not met a single woman who would compare maternity
| leave to a travel leave and a "great" time.
|
| Infants are a ton of work, and between recovering from the
| birthing process (a vaginal tear with a few stitches is
| considered one of the best outcomes), learning how to
| breastfeed, only sleeping 2 hours at a time due to
| breastfeeding, diastesis recti ruining your abs and making
| your core weak, pain from clogged milk ducts, pumping breast
| milk for storage since the US does not provide adequate leave
| so the kid has to go in daycare, hemorrhoids for a good
| portion of women, etc.
|
| I have no doubt anyone who has been through this would rather
| work an office job for 6 months.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I think all he meant was it was a similar break in terms of
| length of time and the company did a good job of re-
| integrating women who went on maternity leave for that
| length of time, leading to a good company culture in
| general for getting employees out for long amounts of time
| back into the thick of things.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I should have considered that! However, I do not
| think it is tenable for most employers due to the risk of
| the employee leaving permanently.
| pmichaud wrote:
| My interpretation of the post you're responding to wasn't
| that the experiences were similar, but that the work
| culture responses and company infrastructure for handling
| extended absences worked the same way for him as they did
| for mothers. I think the point was that if there are good
| systems in place at a company for maternity leave, that
| maybe people can use those same system to take non-
| maternity time off.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, that's a good point! However, the biggest risk to
| employer is the employee using those systems to try out a
| new employer and then resigning just after the
| sabbatical.
| kristopolous wrote:
| When hiring I totally Want gaps in people's resumes. I've even
| asked people who hadn't why and whether they really want to be
| looking for work right now at all.
|
| I honestly try to maximize humanity, unhappy people can't do
| good work.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Maybe more involvement in OSS is coming too?
|
| Maybe not this directly, but I expect more people quitting
| "megacorp" jobs, will lead to another big wave of "innovation"
| in tech in the next few years as people spin up small companies
| to 'scratch that itch' they've had for a while.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| I never too time off. Even not between from job to owning a
| business.
|
| During the early Covid lock down was the best time. Had a
| really good sleep. Learned cooking. Biked with my son everyday.
| Walked in the evening everyday.
|
| Right before the covid-19, I visited my parents for a month in
| India and didn't do anything. Screen time reduced to 1-2 hrs a
| day - hardly any emails, no business calls, no Reddit, no HN or
| no news. That was the best time. Slept from 10pm - 6am
| everyday.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| FYI, frame this as freelance consulting when you apply for your
| next job. You can talk about wanting something new and striking
| out on your own for a bit.
|
| IMO what you find out is a year is a long time without work
| from a time perspective. Hope you enjoy your year off!
| pbourke wrote:
| Just chiming in that I absolutely detest this way of
| thinking. This isn't a dig at you personally, but against the
| idea of living or presenting your life as some series of
| neatly explainable resume bullet points. I have been
| susceptible to it myself to a greater or lesser degree
| throughout my career.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| 100%.
|
| My "independent consulting" time was a mask for burnout. I
| certainly did consult independently, right down to paying
| too much for health insurance. My time off was extremely
| valuable and made me realize I needed to rest and reinvent
| myself. Plus, as I get older I realize I can use the b-word
| at certain stages of interviewing as a way to filter out
| toxic people and institutions.
|
| But yeah, it's all a big game. Nobody is owed a tidy
| explanation of this.
| break_the_bank wrote:
| I'm considering this too but I might just wait till the
| beginning of 2022 hoping thats when the entire world opens up.
| I can't break my lease before November, so that helps me stay
| at my job. So many ideas though for 2022,
|
| 1. Cycle Eurovelo 6
|
| 2. Drive through the Pan American Highway
|
| 3. Learn different things at different places, Muay Thai in
| Thailand, surfing in Bali, Kali in the Philipines
|
| 4. Just travel doing nothing for a few months and then try 12
| month 12 startups or something.
| hkrgl wrote:
| If you have the financial means to do so, I highly recommend
| taking a gap year. It was a very rewarding time for me - just
| working on projects that interested me (tech and non-tech) and
| at my own pace, instead of racing towards arbitrary deadlines
| set by the employer. It was also the time where I could
| actually learn some new skills, which is quite difficult when
| you have a full time job. I cannot wait for the next time I can
| take a year off!
| dominotw wrote:
| Same same!. I am going to start my gap yea in September and
| focus on finally getting that ski instructor certification that
| i've been dreaming about for years.
|
| I am going to start off my gap year with full time skiing and
| working on side projects on off/rest days and evenings.
| rikroots wrote:
| I've done this twice: the first time back in 2007 when I got
| made redundant and decided to use the time and money to study
| and indulge in my dream of writing a book; more recently (which
| is still ongoing) to recover from burnout and rediscover the
| joy of coding.
|
| I do not consider this time to be "gap year", but rather an
| investment in, and a reward for, myself. Why do I need such
| luxuries? Because time is short and nothing is destined. None
| of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement age. My Dad died
| when he was 54; my brother when he was 53. My sister survived
| her heart attack when she was 60 - luckily it happened when she
| was at work; she was a cleaner at a hospital.
|
| Keep a roof over your head, make sure you have enough food to
| live on. Don't leave it until the last minute to start looking
| for paid work. Most importantly, enjoy your time away from the
| capitalist treadmill - with good fortune this can become an
| investment in yourself that you'll never regret!
| mrfusion wrote:
| Any tips on rediscovering the joy of coding?
| rikroots wrote:
| Make the work fun, and the result something that gives you
| (quiet) pride: https://codepen.io/kaliedarik/pen/ExyZKbY
| tunechiboat wrote:
| I graduated in 2020 and immediately started working full time
| during covid. I didn't have time to do anything once I
| graduated.
|
| Quit my SE role to drive across the country with my cousin.
| Definitely recommend taking time off to pursue anything you
| want to do for yourself.
| marvin wrote:
| Huh. Funny that you mention it. I decided this exact same thing
| for myself this winter, and just started. Same reasoning too.
| Is it only among technologists who have great recent returns in
| the stock market, or is this a wider trend?
| the_fire_friar wrote:
| I think the FIRE movement is going to see a huge surge.
|
| Financial Independence Retire Early
| malozite wrote:
| I find the FIRE movement fascinating but also slightly
| depressing.
|
| Among the actually old (my parents' generation - in their
| 60s and 70s) retirees I know, around half of those retiring
| from decent 'knowledge worker' jobs have kept on working
| part-time to some extent. They are consultants, advisers,
| board members, independent researchers, and so on. They
| seem to be very happy - they are working at something they
| are good and believe in, while not having any economic
| constraint forcing them to work more than they want to, or
| for anyone they don't get along with.
|
| I can't imagine having 'Financial Independence', but not
| wanting to do something like this. I enjoy my work in
| general, and I would enjoy it much more if I had almost
| complete freedom to plan my day and to walk away from toxic
| situations. But all the FIRE people that I see online seem
| to be basing their lives on the other type of retiree - the
| ones who take leisure activities and sports such as bowling
| and tennis far too seriously, read and watch constantly but
| quite aimlessly, and go on endless trips to 'tick off'
| different world destinations.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I would suspect that the online communities skew a
| certain way that may not be reflective of the people
| actually doing it. One of the most well-known FIRE
| bloggers is known for saying that he is as active after
| retiring as he was before, but that he now gets to choose
| his projects - and despite his blog bringing in an income
| comparable to his pre-retirement income, blogging was not
| one of the major 'pulls' in his life after a while. I
| imagine people who spend a lot of time contributing to
| such forums may temperamentally enjoy the fantasy better
| than the reality.
| marvin wrote:
| I've been following this movement for well over a decade
| now, and it's not a heterogenous community. You see the
| entire spectrum, from people who just want to get really
| rich and indulge in expensive hobbies like keeping their
| own private jet, people who end up working and earning
| _more_ after they 're financially independent, to people
| who are burned out and can only imagine a retirement
| existence consisting of beaches and Netflix, plus quite a
| few bitter folks who mostly care about tearing others
| down.
|
| The 'RE' sort of implies not working, but I've seen
| plenty of accounts of people who ended up with varying
| degrees of work and income after they quit their regular
| jobs. For the folks who seem to seek retirement above all
| else, I wouldn't be surprised if burnout is both a big
| part of the motivation _and_ the reason for why that is
| their main focus.
| the_fire_friar wrote:
| Yeah - FIRE comes in many flavors depending on what
| you're goals are.
| https://partnersinfire.com/finance/fire-fundamentals-
| basics-...
| foobiekr wrote:
| I think for people who got two very senior levels but
| stayed as hands-on engineers don't really have the option
| of consulting. I am extremely senior and while I could do
| contract dev, they are actually aren't that many low-
| commitment consulting jobs for people like me.
| imtringued wrote:
| Yes, it kinda doesn't make sense. You don't want to
| "retire". You want to work on the things you care about.
| There are jobs that pay poorly but are still very
| interesting. Retirement is what you do when you can't
| work anymore.
|
| Traveling the world is fun but it's not incompatible with
| work. You just need to ask for long chunks of vacation,
| say two to four weeks in a row. If all you do is work a
| 40 hour work week then given the right schedule you still
| have half a day plus weekends left for leisure.
|
| What people truly want is FU money. They want negotiation
| power.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _Retirement is what you do when you can 't work anymore._
|
| I wouldn't get hung up on the name. The main part is the
| FI, so you can pick and choose what you want to work on
| or if you want to work on anything. Arguing over whether
| it's a _real_ retirement or not is missing the point.
| poodler wrote:
| Good on you. You will probably love it.
|
| I'm about 15 months into my "gap year," similar story (except
| no immigration). I traveled on the cheap, switched careers,
| found a new city I love (and is way cheaper), and settled down
| with my gf.
|
| Word of warning: depending on what kind of friends and family
| you have, you might lose some people along the way. Taking a
| leap like that brought out a new side of people I thought I
| knew. Most were supportive, but some not at all. Focus on the
| "keepers" instead of the "haters," stay positive, and enjoy it!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Curious, what city? I'll take the easy way out and guess,
| Austin.
| blank_fan_pill wrote:
| IME 3-6 months is not uncommon but a full year is.
| [deleted]
| theferret wrote:
| Yeah not seeing it in my world. Moving jobs has never been easier
| - just change Zoom meetings.
| myko wrote:
| I've interviewed a lot of devs in the midwest (Columbus, OH) the
| past few months and everybody, even new college grads, expect
| $120k+ salaries. Mind blowing to me as I know devs who've been
| around ~10 years in the midwest who are only approaching those
| numbers.
| busterarm wrote:
| And they can get it easily. I think if a lot of seniors started
| looking at their pay compared to new hires they would realize
| that they are severely underpaid right now.
|
| Unfortunately the trend right now seems to be companies bulking
| up on expensive, lower quality talent hoping it has more upside
| potential.
|
| I think if you can't offer at least $90k with a significantly
| great benefits package you are really going to struggle.
|
| You're talking about a group of people that can just sit at
| home for two months grinding Cracking The Code Interview as an
| alternative to your job offer and land FAANG employment at a
| 3x-4x multiple of what you're balking at paying.
| myko wrote:
| > And they can get it easily. I think if a lot of seniors
| started looking at their pay compared to new hires they would
| realize that they are severely underpaid right now.
|
| Oh yes, a lot of the folks doing the interviewing at my org
| are seeing this (myself included).
| handrous wrote:
| 3rd-tier (considered nationally, not regionally) city in the
| Midwest checking in, here. For one thing, starting salaries
| around here were already pushing that for mid-level and better
| devs before the pandemic. There are definitely small, crappy
| shops in tech stacks that tend to pay worse (ahem, PHP)
| shooting well under that, but starting salaries for new grads
| at places that actually both _have_ and _make_ money (mostly
| bigger companies or hotshot startups) were creeping to around
| 6-figures even before the pandemic. Anyone offering much lower
| than that was already bidding on the bottom-of-the-barrel,
| especially if their benefits suck (bad benefits and low pay
| tend to go hand-in-hand, so...). Local firms have been bidding
| up local talent _fast_ since, oh, 2012 I 'd say, as there were
| more seats to be filled than there were good local developers.
|
| Remote work has definitely been a factor. A half-decent
| experienced developer can easily land jobs that outbid the
| local market, and I'm not even talking major West Coast places
| with interview processes resembling torture. A _lot_ of local
| devs have been slow to realize just how much money they 're
| leaving on the table without even needing to move or practice
| leetcode for six months and submit to multiple day-long
| grueling interviews, but I have to assume that's changing fast
| with the pandemic pushing remote work into the zeitgeist. I'd
| imagine local firms are seeing some serious remote competition
| for their best developers, and losing a lot of them. That's
| going to mean rising salaries, or that their dev teams get
| somewhat worse.
|
| Basically I think the only thing keeping salaries as low as
| they were was that a high percentage of local developers
| weren't looking for new opportunities often enough, local _or_
| remote. Now that everyone 's been prompted to pop their heads
| up and take a look around, it'd be very surprising to me if
| salaries _didn 't_ shoot way up. There's been a plain market
| mis-match locally, to begin with, suppressed only by not enough
| developers realizing how much more they could make by switching
| jobs, and add remote work competition to that, and there's
| going to be a lot of upward pressure on salaries.
| deegles wrote:
| Software engineers with 10+ years experience can ask for
| 300-500k year in NYC, Seattle or Bay Area.
| amyjess wrote:
| I have about a decade of experience, I live in Dallas, and I've
| spent my entire career working for local Texas companies.
|
| I never saw a six-figure salary--not even close--until I got
| the offer for the job I'll be starting next week. It's a remote
| position working for an east coast company. Even if my soon-to-
| be-ex-employer allowed me to continue working from home
| forever, I'd be an idiot to leave this salary on the table. I
| should've done this sooner.
| Jenk wrote:
| As well as the pandemic causing employment uncertainty, as
| @Andrew_nenakhov says, there could be a temporary downturn in the
| number of resignations in the last year and a significatnt
| portion of this "great wave" is potentially the numbers catching
| up again.
|
| I also think that because a lot of people lost their jobs as a
| result of the pandemic, some industries moreso than others, the
| market may also be temporarily saturated (at least more so than
| usual) with candidates at the moment, which will dampen the
| number of resignations.
|
| Having said that, I personally am receiving just as much
| recruiter spam as I was before.
| hvocode wrote:
| I'm sure somewhere in the big pile of comments someone else is
| saying this, but as another voice saying it:
|
| 1. The pandemic was weird, and likely a time when people didn't
| want to change jobs due to a need for stability. It seems like it
| would be normal to see a wave of job changes that have been
| basically on hold until people felt safe.
|
| 2. I'm assuming some people have had more of a chance than normal
| to think more about what they want out of their life and jobs
| over the last 18 months. For some people, this means they might
| make a job change that they didn't anticipate making in January
| 2020.
|
| 3. It's one thing to threaten to leave, and a whole other thing
| to actually do it. I've had co-workers who were "ready to quit"
| for my whole career, some of whom are still at the jobs they were
| ready to quit a decade+ later.
| zigzaggy wrote:
| I resigned today. Back to solo work.
| jawns wrote:
| This already happened at the company I left two months ago. We
| had been acquired a few months before the pandemic started, and
| the people who had not left by February 2020 mostly buckled down
| to ride things out. So there was remarkably little turnover for
| about 9 months. Once the vaccines got approved, it was like the
| dams burst, and people started leaving left and right,
| particularly senior engineers. (My guess is that, like me, they
| had dependents, so didn't want to jump ship until they felt like
| the worst was behind us.)
|
| Basically a year's worth of departures in a very compressed
| timeframe. Not a good situation for the acquiring business,
| especially since they prided themselves on a longer hiring
| process than comparable companies.
| elevenoh wrote:
| An anecdote: a handful engineers I've worked with (and they're
| all high quality) have resigned from traditional bigtech to work
| in open source finance within crypto.
|
| It's as though pandemic solitude gave many the mind-time to
| ponder their authentic values hierarchy.
|
| I'm glad more bright minds will be spending less time working
| directly or indirectly on ads. It's hard to watch.
| bronzeage wrote:
| You prefer those minds working on a Ponzi scheme instead?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm not passionately anti-crypto, but moving some of our best
| minds from ads to crypto[currencies/tokens] is not an obvious
| triumph to me.
| rwha wrote:
| Open source finance within crypto has the potential to help
| poor people. Ads are just a way to manipulate.
| michaelt wrote:
| What if they were moving from adtech?
| asdff wrote:
| From snake oil to snake oil.
| elevenoh wrote:
| > crypto[currencies/tokens]
|
| From how I perceive the definition of the 'crypto' domain,
| it's a lot wider in range than currencies/tokens. These are
| just one integral primitive of a p2p economy.
| toyg wrote:
| Money gotta money. At least crypto is a slightly-less-
| obnoxious industry than ads and tracking...
| yunohn wrote:
| > slightly-less-obnoxious industry than ads
|
| I almost never see people obnoxiously talking about how ads
| are great. In fact, it's the opposite - constant ad
| bashing.
|
| Whereas with crypto, while you have the skeptics and the
| haters, there are way more obnoxious fanatics.
| toyg wrote:
| I meant that ads are obnoxious to _everybody_.
|
| Whereas with crypto, you can just ignore the subject
| entirely if you so wish. You won't be shouted at, when
| you open your digital newspaper to read stuff, that YOU
| SHOULD TOTALLY GET MORE DOGECOIN!!!
| yunohn wrote:
| Ironically, that's mainly because all ad exchanges ban
| crypto ads. Google has actually reversed course on this
| [1] and soon you'll start seeing crypto ads too. Sadly, I
| already see tons of crypto related ads on Instagram
| already. Also, I'm not sure which digital newspaper you
| refer to, but I see articles about crypto pretty much on
| a daily basis on most websites.
|
| [1] https://news.bitcoin.com/google-new-policy-
| cryptocurrency-ad...
| Ekaros wrote:
| I'm happy with crypto investors being bled out of their
| money... Not so happy with adds and tracking me for useless
| things as this affects also those companies who buys
| adds...
| dimgl wrote:
| And much less useful.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Brave is a really good example of where the two can even
| meet. It would not have been possible without crypto, and
| I'd suggest it's much more useful than the entire
| traditional ad industry.
| elevenoh wrote:
| Is open finance less useful than ads?
|
| I don't think so.
| jonfw wrote:
| Open finance sounds cool until you realize it means
| crypto, which is not very useful
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| Open finance already exists. My neighbors and I trade
| tomatoes for lemons occasionally. Bartering is open
| finance. Shackling yourself to some meme token does not
| seem very open to me, compared to exchange of goods which
| has certainly stood the test of time and the rise and
| fall of countless societies. Can't really say the same
| for crypto.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > At least crypto is a slightly-less-obnoxious industry
| than ads and tracking
|
| And way more environmentally destructive than countless
| other things.
| notdarkyet wrote:
| Maybe we quantity the privacy and emotional
| manipulation/destruction of the ad industry?
|
| If we want to talk energy, maybe we look at what mindless
| streaming services consume?
| slumdev wrote:
| Could be worse. At least they're not working for hedge funds,
| defense contractors, or management consultancies.
| cube00 wrote:
| What's the business model to work within open source crypto as
| a full time job?
| iceIX wrote:
| Many DAOs have massive (>$1B) treasuries that are used to
| fund development and marketing. Developers propose OSS
| projects and these orgs give out grants based on community
| votes. See https://gitcoin.co or the Uniswap Grants program
| for examples.
| arbol wrote:
| You create a decentralised service that crypto companies
| need, and then add a native token for governance. Governance
| token ends up having value (more than it should in a lot of
| cases) and the developers profit.
|
| For example, people initially just had crypto tokens. Then
| came uniswap liquidity pools for exchanges. People could
| suddenly earn interest on their crypto. Uniswap creators
| profit.
| elevenoh wrote:
| Crypto organizations hire, give grants & ofc anyone can buy a
| token [if there's one present] & start writing code / content
| etc. to make that token more valuable.
|
| For many, their wealth is derived more from crypto / token
| capital gain than traditional income. Its increased risk no
| doubt. More upside & downside.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| So where is everyone searching for these remote only positions --
| any special sites to recommend?
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Nobody is mentioning people leaving jobs because they DONT want
| remote. I do know of people frustrated that their company is
| closing its swanky office they enjoyed working at to be 100%
| remote.
| cjpearson wrote:
| I'm curious how those numbers compare. There seems to be a
| significant majority in favor of remote work in online forums,
| but that's not a perfect sample.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Anti-office people are very vocal on here. I don't think it's
| representative; most of the people I know in real life want
| their office back. I didn't know how much I wanted to be
| around people all day until it was taken away.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Agreed. Ideally I'd want flexibility to decide when to WFH and
| then still have a nice office to come into when I feel social,
| or need to collaborate.
| asdff wrote:
| If your office is basically a clubhouse, I can see how you
| could be miffed about getting the same salary at home but none
| of the benefits you used to have, and now have to make more
| space in your home for working environment, buying more food
| out of your pay for lunch or snacks or coffee, faster internet,
| printer ink, etc.
| ur-whale wrote:
| The article sounds quite negative.
|
| Sounds like people are discovering it's actually not that hard
| getting off the teat of a boring 9 to 5 job ... I'm not sure why
| that would be a bad thing.
| callen43 wrote:
| I guess I'm part of this wave. Just these days I struggle with
| the decision if I should rather (a) quit my job without having
| found a new position yet or (b) keep working while applying for
| new jobs. (I'm located in Germany)
|
| Pros of early quitting: (1) I'm not learning anything anymore in
| my current job. The earlier the better... (2) My current job is
| subject to 3 months' notice, so I'm definitely free from October
| onwards (3) I hope this gives me some extra motivation to work on
| data science projects in my spare time
|
| Cons of early quitting: (1) Obviously no income anymore from
| October onwards unless I have found a new job. (2) From October
| onwards, it might be hard to find a new flat as the landlords
| request to get evidence of a regular income
| ho_schi wrote:
| "human resources"
|
| Well. As long as you treat people like that it is now wonder that
| the leave you as quick as possible.
| deagle50 wrote:
| If you can stomach it, consider the sales side. You'll be allowed
| to WFH at pretty much any company and can't be replaced by
| someone in another city.
| SebastianKumor wrote:
| I was on my severance package from mid January until end of may
| 2021 and I was just working on my apps and doing my hobbies and
| it was one of the best times I had. Now that I got another job
| that pays pretty well compared to what I had before or even
| similar jobs to where I live I feel like meh and I am trying to
| figure out how to go to the work on my own stuff/hobbies asap.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| Listen, I am completely on board with giving employees the right
| to choose the remote situation - but don't be surprised when
| you're competing against people from all over the globe, who will
| probably take a lower salary than you, who probably aren't
| entitled as you, and will bite at the opportunity.
|
| Furthermore, what are employers meant to do with their workplaces
| when employees are half-in, half-out with the office thing. Many
| folks (myself included) want to have 1-2 days at the office a
| week, but have the flexibility to decide that. That's not going
| to help my employer decide how much space is needed or whether to
| renew their lease.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Our company is forcing almost everyone to become remote and has
| closed down probably half of its office space. Now when you
| come in you don't have an assigned desk and they will just
| expect everyone to find a desk.
|
| I am also of the opinion that the writing is on the wall. I
| live in a HCOL area and have no doubt that remote workers in
| other places will eventually replace me.
| thrower123 wrote:
| People keep saying this, and companies keep trying it, and it
| keeps not working very well. You try to cheap out with remote
| developers, and you get what you pay for. Sometimes it works,
| because the guy who sowed has already done the up and out to
| another company by the time it's time to reap.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| That's because most managers don't do due diligence and
| proper checks on the remote teams. I've worked with teams
| from Poland & Romania that have been far more productive &
| professional than _some_ of my colleagues here in Finland.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I've worked with Romanians, and have been quite impressed.
|
| I've heard good things about Polish teams.
|
| I've seen some truly God-awful, unmaintainable code,
| though, and have heard many outsourcing horror stories.
|
| In my experience, good engineers can command good salaries;
| wherever they are. I think that we will actually see
| engineers in India and Vietnam getting a lot more money for
| their work, because they are just plain good engineers, and
| they will be able to stand out a great deal more. This
| remote economy will give them some real opportunities.
|
| It's pretty hard to keep a good [wo]man down; no matter
| where they are.
| slumdev wrote:
| > don't be surprised when you're competing against people from
| all over the globe, who will probably take a lower salary than
| you, who probably aren't entitled as you, and will bite at the
| opportunity.
|
| This competition mostly doesn't exist.
|
| The language barrier is too great, and working across time
| zones is something that most companies are horrible at, to say
| nothing of the legal/regulatory/jurisdictional challenges.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| I don't agree. And you're looking at this from a very anglo-
| centric point of view. This will open doors for french-
| speaking Africans to work for French companies. For
| Brazilians working for Portugal etc.
|
| I've worked with skilled developers from all over the world,
| who speak more than good enough English.
| slumdev wrote:
| The anglo-centric view is really a USA-centric view. UK
| firms, for whatever reason, don't seem to feel obligated to
| pay more than 50-60k GBP per year, and they still manage to
| fill their cube farms.
|
| And the foreigners who speak more than good enough English
| aren't going to be sufficiently cheaper than I am, if
| they're also great software engineers.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Furthermore, what are employers meant to do with their
| workplaces when employees are half-in, half-out with the office
| thing. Many folks (myself included) want to have 1-2 days at
| the office a week, but have the flexibility to decide that.
| That's not going to help my employer decide how much space is
| needed or whether to renew their lease.
|
| The baseline (pre-pandemic) is that the employer needs to
| provide enough space for most/all of the workforce to be
| concurrently in the office.
|
| If the employer allows location flexibility, I don't see how
| that's a problem for the employer. The employer might feel
| frustrated about a _missed, uncertain opportunity_ for
| downsizing the office space. But I wouldn 't expect having
| fewer people occupy those workspaces _add_ significant cost
| compared to having everyone onsite.
|
| The only real downside I can think of is in a competitive
| market, where whichever companies _could_ safely shrink their
| office space might be able to lower the the price of their
| product / service.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I'd be quite happy with a "remote work abroad" situation. I
| live in Australia and prefer being a night owl. I'd love to do
| Sysadmin work for a US or even EU company because it matches my
| natural schedule preference
|
| It's probably impractical though with regard to payroll, taxes
| etc but the dream is nice
| busterarm wrote:
| It's not as hard as you think. Most companies doing this use
| a co-employment scheme where a local company (PEO) handles
| all of your payroll (in exchange for about 20% of salary).
|
| JustWorks is one of the big PEOs for US employees. I'm not
| sure who is most popular in your region though.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I'm just worried that my company will fire some people, including
| me :/ I don't have the luxury to enjoy a gap year.
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| I quit last June after 13 mostly consecutive years in tech. I
| haven't saved enough to be financially independent but I can
| coast for a while. Even at a company that seemed to have good
| work life balance, I couldn't take it so I have no idea how you
| FAANG folks do it. I don't know if I'm just not suited for the
| career or what, but working as a software engineer caused several
| stress related health problems that have either gone away or
| drastically improved over the past year. I can't imagine going
| back, it's not worth sacrificing my health and happiness.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Work-life balance isn't bad at FAANG (not generally speaking at
| least).
| grillvogel wrote:
| i think theres a discrepancy between junior engineers who get
| abused/overworked and don't know any better, and the seniors
| who know that they can say no to things without any
| repercussions
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Broad generalization: I've seen friends burn out due to
| overwork at Amazon and Netflix, but it seems less common at
| Facebook, Apple, and Google.
|
| Would be interesting to see actual data.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| https://www.teamblind.com/company and if you use the app
| there's a separate data based on survey questions called
| Pulse, which mostly aligns with these Reviews.
|
| WLB goes: Google >> Netflix > Apple > Facebook >> Amazon
| jokoon wrote:
| I've been unemployed for a long time, living on benefits, without
| guilt or remorse. For health and other reasons.
|
| One problem being lack of social integration and interaction.
|
| But honestly I don't think I can believe in the necessity of
| having a job, if I can't see purpose or meaning. There are few
| jobs that matter, and a lot of barriers and filtering.
|
| /r/antiwork is really a viewpoint I can understand and defend.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society?
| Someone has to work to produce food. Someone has to work to
| produce electricity. Until we can automate everything, most
| people have to work and contribute to society (unless you
| choose to be self-sufficient - grow your own food, produce your
| own electricity etc.)
| jokoon wrote:
| Not all jobs are equal in term of necessity. Food, shelter,
| electricity, water, you don't need a lot of people to work
| those jobs.
|
| Punishing unproductive people and encourage them to work in
| fast food or other wage-slaving do not make sense.
|
| The main argument is UBI.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| We don't need a lot of people to provide food, shelter,
| electricity and water for 7.6bn people? What about clothes,
| cars, furniture, electronics, schools, hospitals, medical
| equipment?
|
| "The main argument is UBI." - is that it? UBI will solve
| everything? Let's just print more money and give it to
| everyone. Problem solved.
|
| As I said in my other comment, I am not saying that the
| current status-quo is right. I think there is plenty of
| inequality and injustice in the world, but I just don't
| think "antiwork" is the way to solve that.
| jokoon wrote:
| > What about clothes, cars, furniture, electronics,
| schools, hospitals, medical equipment?
|
| Not all jobs are unnecessary, but there are jobs that are
| more important than others. There are a lot of jobs
| people wish they would not work or that they think
| nothing would change if they did not work those jobs.
| Just read about David Graeber and his book, Bullshit
| Jobs.
|
| Just imagine all the workers in fast food. Look around
| and you will see a lot of people working jobs when they
| could spend time at university instead. You only listed
| the best jobs. People who work in insurance, sales, fast
| food, uber drivers, food delivery, clothing shops, etc.
|
| > Let's just print more money and give it to everyone.
| Problem solved.
|
| That's already what happens when there are bailouts.
| Giving money to people instead of giving it to the banks
| makes more sense.
|
| I'm not saying that everybody should quit their jobs, I'm
| just saying that once you raise unemployment benefits,
| you will see a lot of wage slave quit their jobs and
| nothing will change.
| jonfw wrote:
| Here's the pro fast food take. There are productive people
| working jobs that have massive necessity, and they need to
| eat. The least somebody who isn't productive can do is help
| feed them.
| asdff wrote:
| I worked in fast food for several years and the job is
| terrible. The fundamental problem with this job and
| others like it are the fact that you can bust your ass
| day in and day out and see no benefit to your work. It's
| like groundhog day where every singe day you work there
| is exactly the same until you finally quit.
|
| I think what would really improve a job like fast food is
| if workers were part owners of their franchise. Most fast
| food restaurants are franchises owned by one person or a
| local corporation that owns several franchises. Putting
| ownership into the workers hands would mean profit
| sharing, it would mean when you bust ass over the hot
| grill working a double shift or cleaning shit and blood
| from the walls in the bathroom, you are actually rewarded
| for the increased demand on the restaurant. It would be
| like a built in hazard pay for when things got busy and
| stressful and awful. At least benefits would be nice, I
| know several people who burned their forearms really bad
| on the fryer.
| jokoon wrote:
| There are not many such people, and everybody knows how
| to cook. Ready to eat meals are good enough, collective
| food preparation is good too.
|
| Not to mention fast food is generally of poor quality.
| jonfw wrote:
| There are plenty of people building houses, growing food,
| and maintaining infrastructure like water treatment that
| directly contribute to sustaining life. And there are
| plenty of people in the industries that are required to
| support those people.
|
| I'm not saying they don't know how to cook- but I'm
| saying that the least the rest of society who aren't
| responsible for sustaining us can do is make life better
| for those who do
| jokoon wrote:
| Depend on those people are treated. Minimum wage and work
| conditions matter. If it's not sustainable, it's just
| not, and you cannot argue that "work is mandatory" on the
| premise that some people should prepare food for others.
| csomar wrote:
| > Someone has to work to produce food.
|
| Only 1% of the workforce in the US produce food. That feeds
| America and some other countries.
|
| > Someone has to work to produce electricity.
|
| Again, you need really very few people to make electricity.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| These are few examples and I am expecting the reader would
| use their imagination a bit.
|
| Food production - planting seeds, collecting crops,
| watering the farms, creating anti-pesticides, creating all
| the farming equipment, packaging food, distributing food,
| storing food (for storing food just think about all the
| work that goes into creating a fridge - from mining metals
| from the ground, to designing the fridge and building a
| factory that create thousands of fridges quickly)
| culopatin wrote:
| They are just two examples of things we need. Did you
| expect an extensive list of all the things someone needs to
| do? What is the point of your comment?
| csomar wrote:
| Sure, you can employ everyone and they'll still be
| useful. Trash on the streets? That's a job. Pothole in
| the road, that's another job.
|
| I just commented that the basic necessities of life
| (food, water, electricity, etc...) can be covered with
| very few people.
| culopatin wrote:
| Who supplies the wires? The copper to the wire maker? The
| plastic for insulation? Transporting it? Building the
| road/tracks? Etc etc.
|
| Of course there are bullshit jobs out there, but I think
| we are under estimating
| slumdev wrote:
| We need work for plenty of reasons, but most jobs don't
| really contribute to our civilization's continued success.
| Many are even opposed to it.
|
| I don't agree with Graeber's conclusions, but his
| observations are solid:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
| mahogany wrote:
| > How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society?
|
| Does everything have to be scalable to society at large?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > How is this a scalable approach to everyone in the society?
|
| It is not, but let's not pretend most of us work to increase
| societal good. It just happens to be that our rent-seeking
| behavior is aligned with society's interests.
| FinanceAnon wrote:
| I was only giving an argument against the "antiwork
| mentality". This doesn't mean that I want to preserve the
| status-quo or I that I think the existing system is
| perfect. I agree that there are many issues in our society
| and the existing system, but I don't think "antiwork" is
| really the right way to go about it.
| [deleted]
| nenaan wrote:
| Thanks for your service. I aspire to attain your lifestyle one
| day.
| tasuki wrote:
| Generally, good for you, and mostly agreed, but that
| /r/antiwork is awfully toxic.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| This is about far more than WFH vs Return To Office. Many of us,
| after a year of lockdowns, losing family members, suffering
| mental and physical health issues, spending more time with our
| families, etc. are re-evaluating our priorities in life and
| deciding that our jobs are no longer the most important things in
| life and probably never should have been.
| Loughla wrote:
| Higher education is my main job - we're not seeing an influx
| like we expected of people returning to college, but we are
| seeing an increase in non-traditional (24y.o.+) students.
|
| They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all
| worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales
| industries. The forced time off last year made them realize
| they were killing themselves for not very much money, and
| they're refusing to go back to those employers.
|
| But it's the $300 in weekly payments that is stopping people
| from returning to work, if you ask business owners in the area.
|
| There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker
| attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know
| why.
| [deleted]
| pwned1 wrote:
| I've considered going back and getting a new degree but the
| cost is so insane that it's just not worth it.
| zero_deg_kevin wrote:
| A lot of people were told their jobs are nonessential and the
| public debate was about whether or not they deserve
| assistance with basic survival needs. If it were me, I'd be
| doing everything in my power to never be in that position
| again. I suspect that's part of what's happening.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker
| attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don 't
| know why._
|
| Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month
| is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to
| be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend
| business owners would have us believe.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I wonder if there will be a sharp downward trend in per-
| worker productivity in those "$300/mo makes you lazy" jobs
| once everyone goes back to work. Boss makes a dollar, you
| make a dime and all that.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Because they've never been on unemployment and small
| business owners largely have a poor opinion of UI in
| general.
|
| My MIL was laid off from a university job at the beginning
| of the pandemic and her UI ran out a looong time ago. The
| only reason she even collected it for as long as she did
| was because nobody is hiring elderly women.
| asdff wrote:
| It also doesn't help that it takes forever to get it, at
| least in CA. There is no one you can call at the EDD, it
| is so ironic that the _unemployment office_ needs to hire
| more in the richest state in the richest nation on earth.
| It took someone I knew two months to get their EDD debit
| card. Bills don 't stop just because you lose your job.
| [deleted]
| intothev01d wrote:
| Exactly. Everyone having their own Office Space moments right
| now.
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