It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children. Until schools are fully open and day care is available those women will probably not be going back to work. Second, all markets are cultivated things. Employers in the most troubled sectors have recently spent roughly a year and a half telling desperate workers they have nothing for them. Now that there are openings it should be no surprise that workers have moved on and have little interest in transitioning back.
All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on.
Anecdotal but...can we mention burn-out? as a "blue collar" worker i dont think anyone mentions it enough.
I have a coworker who left a 9-5 body shop making decent money as a painter for a medical billing job that was closer to her father in 2020. she came back to that body shop just two weeks ago because she was pulling non-stop mandatory overtime in a salary position that treated her like trash. she never even gave notice she was quitting, just stopped showing up.
I have a friend who quit his bartending job to work at a grocery store and had the same experience. mandatory overtime, limited breaks, and the angriest customers. He quit about seven months into the pandemic and picked up a CDL position as a regional truck driver.
these "hero" fields that exist as a sort of meat grinder during covid have chewed through all the social credit most people are willing to give them.
> these "hero" fields that exist as a sort of meat grinder during covid have chewed through all the social credit most people are willing to give them.
I really think people are underestimating this.
In the middle of this fiasco, who were going to be the people coming out and interacting with the service economy most?
That's right--the shittiest, most selfish, most ignorant dipshits. I have all manner of stories from restaurants that never had issues suddenly having to call the police regularly after the full lockdowns ended.
So, your already shitty service job just got its "shitty knob" turned up way past 11 because the shitty people are going out and the nice people are staying at home.
Is it any wonder the "service economy" workers just decided to bow out?
Turns out a “services based” economy is a euphemism for austerity based economy.
Adam Smith claimed that “…landlords' role in the economic process is passive. Their ability to reap a revenue solely from ownership of land tends to make them indolent and inept, and so they tend to be unable to even look after their own economic interests".
Look at dollar rich rent seekers destabilizing their value store.
Dead guys already had human economics figured out.
Humans haven’t literally evolved that much in 200 years.
I hope you’re correct. All our domesticated animals have smaller brains than their wild cousins. If the phrenologists hadn’t been so focussed on proving their racist fantasies, would they have found our skulls a few marbles smaller than our ancient (modern human) ancestors?
Isn't it the other way? Hardware has changed as massive inventions have augmented our living standards. While at the same time, the software (IE human mentality) hasn't over 1000s of years, except for maybe hard disk usage (which is human knowledge).
The hardware they were referring to is the human body. All that’s changed is we know how to maintain it better and can fix more types of premature breakdowns. It’s essentially the same hardware, just better maintained.
And I think the person you are responding to was acknowledging that evolution didn’t just stop…as long as there are babies there are mutations, and the environment will select for some qualities over others.
If you meant super micro, then the same can be said of your immune system / gut flora, though I’m not certain of the relevance.
The point is that “evolution” doesn’t magically direct to some better outcome, or even towards a more sustainable local maxima.
1. If the appendix was both useless and deadly (before procreation), there would be a strong evolutionary pressure against it, so it likely is unobviously useful
2. Western diet possibly causes problems with the appendix - "Appendicitis is uncommon in rural Africa and Asia"
3. Anatomy involved with immune function or microbiome is hard to understand function.
From links:
The peak incidence occurs in the 15- to 24-year-old age group. However older individuals are more likely to have complications and die from the malady. Symptoms of appendicitis in older people frequently are not as clear-cut as are symptoms in younger people.
People with acute appendicitis often think they would feel better if they just could move their bowels. To encourage a bowel movement, they take a laxative. This is a serious mistake, one that may lead to rupture of the appendix.
Also interesting is the idea that the appendix is a local optimisation. If a smaller appendix was more likely to get appendicitis, it might remain a vestigial organ rather disappearing completely, even it the organ has no function, because there is an evolutionary advantage to having the current rather than the smaller size
One of my favourite pastimes with Hacker News is thinking about how commenters have been trained by playing games to follow incentives and game optimisation (gaming the system).
I took a course on Plato’s republic back in school. Our class conclusion was that nothing has changed in the last 2000 years in terms of society/issues since that book was written!
You can't say this kinda stuff on HN since too many people associate their job with creating said progress. Michel Foucault spent his whole life making this exact argument - things simply change.
For context, grandparent was in the grey at the time of my posting and I was responding with my dismay that such a perspective was striking whoever as not only controversial but also not worthy of a proper reply given that ostensible dismay.
I still believe our social evolution is possible. We have to talk about those things and take a break on economics.
We’ve seen the value of modern technology. There’s no need to continue to obsessively speculate about the advantages they provide to daily life.
Having beers with a grey haired VC yesterday, I couldn’t help but think this guy really just wants to feel relevant. These guys are the real energy vampire; IMO. Constant reverence is exhausting. It started to feel like he was one of those guys who peaked on the high school football team. “Yes, I’d like to hear about your car collection. Again.”
I think what he said still mostly applies to landlords. Maybe even more so as real estate enjoys several tax and policy advantages that other investments don't.
Yes I get that economic rent seeking is huge and things like patent trolls financial lobbyists are problems but his comment fits traditional landlords best.
> All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on.
Well said. We’ve been bombarded with news articles and thought pieces about how COVID has forever changed the workforce, how people are refusing to work jobs they don’t like, how people are quitting en masse because their employers won’t allow remote work, and how companies are abandoning office spaces in favor of full remote for months now.
Yet every time I dig for the actual numbers it turns out little has changed on the whole. It’s usually journalists taking isolated stories or small changes in certain statistics and re-casting them as society-wide social movements.
Many of these articles are simple clickbait so the reader can think “Duh, pay more!” But it doesn’t make sense that people would choose no job at all over a job that doesn’t pay the wage they want. People are obviously either getting other jobs somewhere, waiting for enhanced unemployment to end, or waiting for other life circumstances to allow them to return to work.
And like you said, many of these situations are the result of parents having to leave the workforce to care for children while their schools and daycares were closed down. People without kids may not realize how disruptive that was to families that had planned routines and jobs around kids attending schools and daycares. I suspect we’ll see sharper increases in employment when school is back in session and enhanced unemployment ends this fall.
There isn’t some large movement of low-wage people simply refusing to work because without other sources of income. The logic in that narrative just doesn’t make any sense.
This problem is temporary while the economy, market, and extended unemployment benefits transition back to normalcy. Journalists are seizing on the narrow window of change to try to insert more dramatic narratives, but those too will fade.
I can't speak to statistics at large, but anecdotally, my wife was laid off and we needed someone with our son during "home schooling" anyway, so she just continued on to get her degree since many universities have an online option at the moment (which should continue and expand). With the variant, we have this same option next year, though no unemployment and we'll just be a single income while she finishes up her last half year or so.
In our case, it wasn't the "refusing to go back to work to make a better life" narrative that's getting pushed; it's more the, she had to stay home with our son while he's in school, but what does she do while he's in school all day? You only have to be sort of involved. You might as well be productive, but you have trouble being productive enough to really work.
IDK about everywhere but I'm not seeing anyone still paying minimum wage. McDonalds is paying $12.50/hr for day, $15/hr for night work. That's $30k/year FTE for a job that you can learn in a week and that requires zero prior experience or education. And they are still begging.
there's still an issue of consistency. if you can get "regular" hours... say, 6am-11am, M-T-W-Th, for example, you can schedule your life around it.
30 years ago, I managed a Burger King, and even then, they had us send people home if it got really slow, or.. call up people and cancel their shift an hour before, because of bad weather, etc. Someone's already arranged childcare or transportation for their shift, then cancelling it same day is just not a way to work.
I would imagine that a lot of places are still like that today.
$15/hr sounds great, but if it's 20 hrs one week, then 7 the next, then 24, then 4... that's still a bit unstable for a lot of folks. For someone who has no dependents, or has a stable partner... it's probably doable.
One of my dream labor reforms would be something like classifying any shifts that aren't scheduled at least two weeks in advance as overtime. It won't guarantee a steady number of hours but it will definitely help smooth things out and allow better planning.
That is essentially the law in Norway - the work schedule need to be posted minimum two weeks in advance - and extra shifts should generally be considered overtime. Unfortunately it's probably one of the regulations that are most frequently broken.
So just to be clear if a company is not paying an employee the money they should be it is called wage theft.
So if Norway were having the same issues with employee shortages you could add the reason that maybe the employees are tired of having the company steal from them.
And maybe that's a factor common to other countries
Will you also commit to buying a Big Mac and Fries between 12:00 and 1:00pm on Tuesday two weeks hence?
Also, I used to manage a McDonalds. Paying a bonus to have people come in on short notice to cover no-shows, sick calls, or unexpected business volume was not uncommon.
That's a nice idea (short-notice bonus). 30 years ago, no one had cell phones, so even trying to get ahold of someone on 'short notice' wasn't really possible. But it would have been a nice gesture to balance out the times we'd send people home early.
Just this week in Pittsburgh, I saw an official corporate poster up in a McDonald's advertising a "competitive starting wage" with an 8.5″x11″ sheet taped to it reading "STARTING RATE UP TO 10$/HR." I doubt they'll have much luck at ≤$10/hour. Sure, it's more than the minimum ($7.25/hour), but the "up to" weasel words don't give me confidence.
"McDonald's" is a bit of a mixed bag, like most of the Fast Food Places. McDonald's owned stores are paying a minimum of $13 with the plan to go to $15 in the next few years, this was announced awhile back
The problem is McDonald's Corporate only owns 5% of McDonald's locations, the rest are franchise locations, thus a "McDonald's" crew member at a non-company store is not working for McDonald's but the Franchisee.. This is where you get the lower wages..
This allows McDonald's to get headlines about offering a "$15 min wage" while 95% of wearing an McDonald's uniform do not work for McDonald's thus do not get this wage
Bad bosses, unstable schedules / hours, not a career. Probably doesn't have "benefits", which everyone should have for a level playing field (so medicare for all, get value for our taxes).
That's the old minimum wage. $15 is the upcoming (catching up to inflation) minimum wage. People (especially people who have experience and education!, which is most people!) are really done working for below living wages.
All those new and used cars are now PPE bubbles and added freedom for people that previously took the bus or carpooled. If they make work at the office mandatory now we're going to see even worse than pre-pandemic commutes.
One of the stories I often hear, is that people have decided to move house to the countryside, as they are now able to work remotely.
I don't know how true this is: are these people not concerned if their employer decides to reopen offices and require employees to work in the office again when the pandemic inevitably ends?
> One of the stories I often hear, is that people have decided to move house to the countryside, as they are now able to work remotely.
This is the primary trick that journalists use in these stories: They find a couple examples of people doing something, interview them, and then pretend those people are a sample of a much larger movement. They don’t cite statistics or numbers, however easy to find, because putting a number on these movements would make the reader realize they’re nowhere near as large as the author wants you to think.
Using the “people moved to the countryside” example: Did we have a surplus of empty houses in the countryside before the pandemic? As far as I’m aware, we did not have huge numbers of empty houses just waiting for a pandemic for people to fill them up (except maybe Detroit, but I’m pretty sure people didn’t flock to Detroit).
Also, home prices and rents in cities didn’t fall dramatically during this period, which would be expected during an exodus event.
Even the stories about San Francisco population declines have been overblown, with many of the people leaving being quickly replaced by people looking for an opportunity to move in.
Journalists played up the countryside exodus stories because they’re romantic and people like to believe fantasies about people leaving the concrete jungle behind and living idyllic countryside lives, separated from their employers by miles of broadband connectivity. Yet none of the numbers support such supposed exoduses. Obviously a few people did it here and there, but pretending it was a common event and writing dramatic articles is dishonest.
A counterpoint from France: media did report that for the first time in a very long time, home prices did slightly drop in Paris proper, while suburbs and "smaller cities" have seen a bigger rise than usual.
This means there must be more than just a handful of people leaving.
However, I do agree with GP's point about companies ending the WFH arrangements, especially given France's work culture. But then again, I've always found people around here to have a tendency of thinking fairly short-term.
Before COVID there were between thirteen and seventeen million empty homes in he US, many due to foreclosure. There were (and likely still are) enough homes to house everyone, including the homeless, only the distribution is skewed so that there are few empty houses where jobs are (cities).
> Using the “people moved to the countryside” example: Did we have a surplus of empty houses in the countryside before the pandemic?
Actually yes. Before the pandemic, in the area I grew up in (Southern Appalachians) it was common for a house sale to take years, because there was indeed a surplus.
Remember ten years ago all the articles about urbanization and the young people leaving the country and suburbs to live in the city? That was real and the more remote places did in fact have a surplus of housing stock
I've personally seen one family move to the absolute boonies from a large metro and they just guessed that the breadwinner would be able to stay remote or find a new remote friendly employer if forced to move back. The latter happens
I'd probably have more anecdotes if I knew more than like five people
Maybe some people are so desperate to escape cities and endless commutes that they are willing to take the risk. My anecdata is that I spent 17 years with one megacorp because they allowed me to WFH back when there were very few places I could jump ship to and not have to move back to the Bay Area.
The small town I live in has seen a large influx of Bay Area remote workers as well. Again - all anecdata, but it is noticeable.
In my case; I found a job that was specified as "100% remote, even after COVID" - so I'm not super-concerned about that. Yes, employers lie, and in 1 year or so, they could easily come back and tell me I'm fired because I can't come on-site. (there is also a component of my job which could require me to go on customer site and work there; which I'm willing to do as long as they pay travel expenses).
I get that I'm very lucky to have landed such a gig. I hope many more do. Because when a worker has to bear the personal cost of sitting in traffic for 2+ hrs per day (burning gasoline and polluting the world while doing so), because his boss is uncomfortable with not being able to physically scrutinize his underlings - that's bullshit.
That being said, this is not necessarily easy even for large employers, because until now there wasn't a need to clarify if workers were subject to the income, payroll etc. taxes and employee protection, health insurance contracts of their working or resident state. It is totally possible to be a large Fortune 500 company in the US and not be set up to do paperwork in, I don't know, Alaska or Wyoming or Idaho.
I guess that's an issue if you move states. I'm in the UK, and I know someone who moved 8 hours away to a different part of the UK. Would never have even been considered pre-covid, but the evidence that they could work productively from home was there: they'd been doing it for a year already! They're a manager too, so regular collaboration is a given. It's just all online now.
Keep in mind that 11 US states by themselves are larger than the entirety of the UK; Oregon, for example. I don't know if tax is assessed differently for say Scottish rather than English residents, and 32 US states are larger than England.
This is going to be an issue if you move anywhere within a country with a federal system of government. For EU residents I imagine this also gets tricky for people who decide to WFH from other countries.
Yeah, that was kind of my point. There's plenty of room to move within a US state without running into these issues. FWIW I believe the income tax system is the same across the UK. There might be different local taxes in Scotland, but your employer wouldn't need to concern themselves with those.
As someone navigating this right now - it's a mess. Business is in a no-income-tax state, I moved to 4% state, and it was deemed easiest to be personally responsible for paying quarterly estimates so the business isn't on the hook for paying business taxes to a state it doesn't do any business in. Some states, however, decided now was a good time to declare a single remote worker in their state means that company has a nexus there, and thus owes all corporate taxes to that state.
Judging by my coworkers and my company's Blind: lots of people did this; they're anxious but cautiously optimistic that the company will cave. If it doesn't, they think it's likely enough that they'll find different remote jobs.
anecdotally, I think there is a fairly widespread belief that people can move to the country side for X years during covid then switch the property to AirBnB afterwords.
I'd also bet that many individuals are making long-term bets that they can continue working remote even if it means (slightly) less pay.
I walked down through the financial district of London on a Tuesday morning recently and I did not see one single office worker sat at a desk in any office I passed. Just empty buildings with lights on and bored receptionists sat at front desks.
One of the UK employers currently moaning about a lack of workers had a policy of only employing people for 16 hours a week since this was the optimum hours a person could work whilst still receiving tax credits and housing benefit.
Around 10 years ago I was in the labour market willing to do pretty much anything and these kinds of jobs accounted for most of what was available.
Since I wasn't 'on benefits' I was at the other end of the equation. What I really wanted was a chance to work my way out of financial trouble - these kind of jobs only offered the opposite of this.
In some states in the USA a lot of service jobs will cap your work at 31 hours, to get around their own corporate policies of giving benefits to anyone who worked 32 hours or more.
The only shitty thing here is, that many companies will fail and close down in the meantime, meaning less jobs openings for people who just lost unemployment benefits.
I believe it was a joke that, as emergency covid policies are extended a couple months as each new variant arises, and since there will be no end of variants for an endemic virus, that means the policies are actually permanent.
It might be important to distiguish doing "nothing" from not being on the job market.
It's possible to contribute to society by making art, writing, cooking, spending time with family, caring for others, etc. as well as self-actualizing via exercise, reading, meditation, and so on.
Because you have self-respect and shouldn't be taking handouts if you're capable of working?
No one capable of working should be taking unemployment, ever.
This is how social safety nets get demonized by politicians, and it works. A factory worker and mother of three who was making car parts from the start of COVID-19 until now and was never laid off and who never had the option of quitting work, fucking hates someone who sits on their ass collecting unemployment playing Xbox games all day. That's the relatively young Hispanic woman who lives down the road from me. I was fortunate; I already work remote so the only thing COVID did for me was restrict my dining choices temporarily here in Texas.
The answer to every problem we seem to face in America always ends up being, "Just throw some fucking money at it!"
I'm sick of it. Many of our problems couldn't be solved if we had literally quadrillions of dollars of cash. Sometimes - many times - it takes a lot of good old fashioned hard work, in the arenas of careful thinking, and then careful doing. Neither of which it seems either political party is particularly interested.
However, it may not (always) be that simple. The media here in France reports that some industries, in particular restaurants, are having a hard time finding employees, with not enough people applying and even employees who were there before Covid hit leaving.
I don't know how actually true this is, but when they (the media) ask people why they won't go back, the main reason doesn't seem to be a preference for sitting on ass, but rather a realization that given the wages, those jobs were a terrible proposition. They claim instead to be looking at how they can improve their situation, like looking for work in other industries, going back to school, etc. Which I think is a good thing. How many random empty bars does a country really need?
Now maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I hope that that's true and that this will at least increase wages for those jobs.
But I can't help but think that all this soul-searching is helped by government aid and that, sooner or later, when that runs out, the people will have to get back to those jobs and then, whatever rise there might have been, will be swept away.
Here in California every restaurant/fast food place is hiring. They all list the things they offer (PTO, 401k-no matching what you put in, and that's it). What they don't put on the signs is what they pay (minimum wage every single time), or the hours (always part time, always weekends, mostly if not always nights.
But obviously it's just that no one wants to work, it couldn't possibly be because no one wants part-time (especially because they change your days/hours and wait till the last minute to give you the next week's schedule so you can't plan around it and get another job). It couldn't possibly be because part-time minimum wage day-shifting jobs are literally worthless as these places are finding out.
I keep hearing owners whine and bemoan their lack of workers. What I have never heard of, not once, is an owner making less profit to pay their workers better to get the loyalty and hard work they want but refuse to pay for.
> I keep hearing owners whine and bemoan their lack of workers. What I have never heard of, not once, is an owner making less profit to pay their workers better to get the loyalty and hard work they want but refuse to pay for.
I agree with you, but do those places actually make a lot of profit? Over here they seem to be pretty fragile operations, so I don't think there's that much they can shave off their profit and give to the workers.
I'm wondering whether, maybe, there are simply too many of those restaurants?
The reasoning goes "yeah, but if I raise my prices, people will go next door". Which is probably true for your random restaurant. But then maybe the issue is there's too many of them?
But of course, up until now, this was workable because many people were willing to put up with the bad conditions you've described for a low wage.
It tells me we need a higher minimum wage. No individual can raise prices without losing competitiveness, but clearly higher prices would fix some of these serious issues. A higher minimum wage would prevent the “they’ll just go next door” issue.
But then, the question becomes: what will become of these employees? Less eating out means less restaurant staff. But said staff are people who need to eat. Will they all go on social security?
Maybe, maybe not. But it's a question we should ask, as a society.
> No individual can raise prices without losing competitiveness, but clearly higher prices would fix some of these serious issues. A higher minimum wage would prevent the “they’ll just go next door” issue.
That seems right on the face of it. But then there's another issue: are you sure that the same number of people would continue eating out? Personally, I wouldn't bet on it.
I don't often eat out, mostly because it's not something I particularly enjoy, but also because I find it expensive for what it is. If the prices were to rise, I would eat out even less. I doubt I'm the only one thinking like this.
It's not clear to me that raising the minimum wage, and therefore the price of a restaurant meal, would not have less people go out. And by less people I mean a drop high enough such that the sum of money spent eating out would drop. Which would mean there would be less restaurants which could afford to stay in business.
> It's not clear to me that raising the minimum wage, and therefore the price of a restaurant meal
This study[1] specifically looks at the effect of raising the minimum wage on restaurant prices.
What they found is that increases of 10% to the minimum wage are correlated with only a 0.36% increase of prices, and minimum wage increases may cause some prices to decrease, too:
> Many business leaders fear that any increase in the minimum wage will be passed on to consumers through price increases thereby slowing spending and economic growth, but that may not be the case. New research shows that the pass-through effect on prices is fleeting and much smaller than previously thought.
> By looking at changes in restaurant food pricing during the period of 1978–2015, MacDonald and Nilsson find that prices rose by just 0.36 percent for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is only about half the size reported in previous studies. They also observe that small minimum wage increases do not lead to higher prices and may actually reduce prices. Furthermore, it is also possible that small minimum wage increases could lead to increased employment in low-wage labor market.
That seems pretty hard to believe to me. I suspect they didn’t take into account all the efficiency gains technology has enabled in that time period. Otherwise let’s just increase minimum wage by 100% if it will only raise prices by 3.6%.
4 years ago I ate lunch out 5 days a week, and Dinner 2 pre Covid that dropped to 3 Lunches and 1 Dinner due to increasing prices...
Post Covid I am down to 2 Lunches and Dinner ever other week...
I am considering dropping to 1 lunch as lunches with tip are now climbing to $15-20 where 4 years ago I could easily get out of the door at most places for under $12 with tip for a lunch.
you do understand how inflation works right? If all prices raise then the purchasing power of the person on Min Wage stays the same thus their situation did not actually improve any.
Further Inflation has the common effect of hurting the lower and middle classes the worst and increasing wealth disparity. There is multiple ways this occurs but one thing that is trending of late is that as the wage floor is raising you are not seeing the same levels of raise in other area's of income until you get into the top 10% or higher of wage earners. Today we are seeing inflation outstrip wages in many skilled labor categories.
I agree with you, but do those places actually make a lot of profit?
In a lot of cases, they don't make as much as people think they do. Take supermarkets for instance. Many of them are hiring cashiers and shelf stockers right now, and they can't hire anybody because they can't pay enough to make the job attractive. Supermarkets and grocery stories have some of the thinnest profit margins in any business.
Without trying to counteract your points about the pay/work/parttime/etc.... It's worth noting that a large number of restaurant owners make very little money. The margins/profits in that industry are razor thin. So the owner making less wouldn't be helpful, or even an option for many of them.
Then shouldn't they be working more personally? Or shouldn't they no longer be in business? (And yeah, I'm well aware how much many small restaurant owners work. See door number two.)
People around here talk a lot about unsustainable business models. I don't think it's really any better if it's offloading its unsustainability onto its workforce, which is what's being described here.
From where I stand, as somebody whose career can be described (cynically but not incorrectly) as largely rendering people unemployed, there's a tension here that's only going to be resolved through the acknowledgement that there isn't actually a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go", and unsustainably poor work with poverty as the retribution for refusing to participate (as well as the reward for participating) is not a politically stable position.
>>>that there isn't actually a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go"
So what is the proposal? Pay people to stay home forever? Who determines who gets a free ride paid for by productive people, and who has to be the ones that provide that free ride to others.
be sure to sign me up for the free ride, but I sure as hell do not want to work 50+ hours a week so other people can play Call of Duty all day.... I would rather let other people work and I play Call of Duty
And their lies the rub / problem with socialism... If everyone can have a free ride no one works
Shorter work week, more vacations. Spread the work across more people. Instead of 1 person working 50 hours, have 2 people work 25 hours. Instead of 2 weeks off a year, have 2 months. Oh, and untie healthcare from employment.
That was the idea behind the 35 hour work week in France. Didn't work out as expected: unemployment didn't go down.
More recently, they had removed some tax breaks on overtime, but it turned out that that only hurt the people needing to work overtime; still no effect on unemployment. At least some of the breaks are now back.
I think the broader issue is that most people having to work crazy hours with multiple jobs don't do it because they're workaholics, but because they have to, as in they can't get a single "normal" job that pays well enough for whatever reason. I'm not sure that putting random limits on the number of hours worked will increase the hourly wages.
I think the underlying issue even above that is we've automated away the need for workers, yet people still exist. So let's say our economy only really needs 100 million people to do stuff and there are 150 million people, that's an obvious disparity. What really sucks is automation is cranking up but the next generation will be even bigger than the Millennials, which were much larger than GenX. So in the next few decades we'll have 160 million people and only need 95 million people, etc. This will keep happening until something breaks.
At some point crimes of desperation will become rampant.
People need work to keep them occupied. It's built in to our psychology by evolution. We know that idle people cause most of the problems in society. So I do think there is a need for everyone to work to make the whole thing "go", if by "go" you mean have a peaceful, civilized way of living.
This sounds teleological. I can find plenty of things to do, many probably more personally fulfilling as well as societally beneficial, than flipping burgers would be.
I think there’s some merit in what you say, I’m just not sure we would agree on how to define “…large number of restaurant owners…”
This is completely anecdotal, but I know three different restaurant owners and all three of them live very very comfortably. Again, that’s just anecdotal so probably not worth much.
While I don’t think anyone would suggest that a restaurant owner should live in poverty, at the same time I don’t think we would suggest a restaurant worker should be poverty levels of poor to ensure the owner lives the high life.
If a business cant supply both its owner and workers a livable wage, then we should expect the business to go under rather than expect (or demand) the workers descend into poverty.
Who said these people aren’t working? I see a lot of people retraining, pivoting, and taking care of others. That’s work. Just because it doesn’t pay doesn’t mean it isn’t work or valuable. Being a stay at home parent doesn’t pay, but it’s clearly valuable.
Employment is a means to an end: basic survival. We do it because we’re forced to by forced scarcity. There may be virtue in work, but there’s no inherent virtue in employment.
Imagine, as a kind of empathetic thought exercise, that instead of someone taking handouts and playing Xbox all day, they were taking handouts and then doing online coursework to try and learn a new skill to make themselves more employable in the future. Does that still imply a lack of self-respect?
We're all effectively taking handouts to some degree or another just by participating in collective society. It's just a question of how much we're contributing back, and how. I try not to judge people too aggressively in terms of how they are contributing back; they may be doing so in ways that I cannot see.
Most likely that senator is from a net-taker state like kentucky or arkansas, one that would be bankrupt without california and new york overpaying the fed to subsidize poor republican states.
There is also more affluence in California and the Northeast vs Middle America. Regardless of politics Middle America is not going to be granted the same economic opportunities as coastal regions.
Because we live in a Union? The idea is that your state will be helped if the table is ever turned. Not everyone in Kentucky hates California and the people who live there. What you're essentially promoting is reducing the role of federal government, which is the same thing current Kentucky senators want. I'm sorry to be so blunt but to be honest your comment sounds hateful and ignorant.
Why stop at taxes? Let’s talk about water, why should all these states be subsidizing California’s water use? Why aren’t they bootstrapping desalination plants? Quit mooching.
Taking the handouts is the most rational thing to do. Why would you expect people to do otherwise? Relying on unspoken normative rules is maybe possible in a society with well defined and perpetuated values, but in our current society, utility far outweighs values in decision making.
Lacking self-respect for refusing to slave away in bullshit jobs that destroy our environment directly or indirectly, make some rich guy even richer or take place in a toxic work environment you mean?
Unemployment is one of the few ways government has ever done anything for me personally as opposed to general social goods. As a net payer into the system for the overwhelming majority of my working life I have absolutely no objection to getting a little of that money back when I hit a rough patch.
>Because you have self-respect and shouldn't be taking handouts if you're capable of working?
FWIW, I agree with you. But this is a moral take, not an economist’s. I think most economists would say people act to maximize utility. In the real world I think it’s both but it’s very hard to regulate/incentivize morals
> doesn’t make sense that people would choose no job at all over a job that doesn’t pay the wage they want.
I don't agree. The pandemic is still very much happening and low-paid workers are expected to be on the front lines. If this had all happened when I was working retail, I probably would have made the decision to not go to work and catch covid while making 8/hr.
I wonder how significant the booming stock market is? Maybe people are neglecting to work because their Tesla stock is up some absurd amount over 5 years or whatever. Same for crypto. But when these people start treating such capital gains as disposeable income then it will cause inflation.
It’s funny, I hear a ton about worker productivity and similar worker centric views of production, labor, and wages. But, as any Walmart, warehouse, or even pizza shop worker will tell you - their ability to negotiate wages, change production practices, or make any difference in the workplace amounts to a suggestion box and a 25 cent raise.
> It is strange that the top known factors for this are not even mentioned in this or other similar news stories. First, closing of schools caused large numbers of women to leave the workforce in order to care for children.
I'm a bit skeptical of that explanation in the US because schools close for 3 months every summer, without an accompanying large number of women quitting their jobs.
In many families, summers are typically full of "summer camps" that are actually "themed daycare for older kids". Those were mostly closed as well during the pandemic lockdown phase, and some still haven't come back (in the US, anyway).
Definitely not just a rich kid thing. The camps are usually run by small-ish organizations like the local church. And considering the point is to bring in children, there are often options for those who need financial assistance.
Besides, rich kids go on overseas vacations during the summer.
Well in most cases losing one of two incomes in the household costs a lot more. In the US, anyway, it is a lot more common to have a stay-at-home mom in the upper incomes; the working class is mostly every-adult-must-get-a-job (or two or three). Occasionally there are grandparents available, but in some cases they're in another town, and in some cases they are deceased. Summer "camps" are definitely not a rich thing (in the US, anyway).
Those months can be planned for well ahead of time, and there's generally plenty of child caring activities (camps, schools offering day sessions, etc). This was... very different, and a lot more difficult for most people.
Between summer camps and the weather being nice enough to just go outside and entertain oneself, the 3-month summer vacation is a notably different effect on the economy than the year-long covid isolation with indeterminate future horizon.
What you find when you look at the numbers is an awful lot of White collar firms simply get less done during the summer months. "We expect to move forward on that project, but we're blocked on the report from the ads team, and 2/3 of the ads team just took a week-long vacation with their families" is a common pattern in summer.
To echo this, a previous employer has scheduled downtime that coincides with spring break because they recognized so many parents take time off because of having school-aged children.
As many others have said, there are programs in the summer and folks can plan - and these programs have been in place for years. Unfortunately, these programs mostly stopped and on top of school closing, there wasn't enough day care space. And for the school age children, not all of them could do online schooling themselves, needing someone to help them with the computer.
Schooling at home is a lot of work for someone, and it is work daycares aren't prepared nor staffed for.
I think I stopped having a daycare by the age of 10 or 11... I grew up as a Latch key kid...
I would see my parents at Dinner Time, then Dusk where my 2 curfews. other than that I was outside 90% of the time. of course this was before Internet, Cell Phones, etc... I did not get dial up internet until I was like 16-17 (which by then i was driving so....) , and broadband when I was 18 or 19... Today i talk to parents where they have 24/7 electronic tracking of their children every movements, kids well in to their teens still having babysitters or not being left lone...
Society has grown extremely risk adverse, likely if parents tried Latch key kid at the age I was Child Protective services would be called... In General the reaction to COVID has highlight just how risk adverse society is over all, there are other warning signs, but it has really been a eye opener for me...
> people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on
I disagree... COVID-19 made a lot of people reconsider their priorities. If you only had limited time left with a family member, would you really want to spend your time working a crappy job while struggling to pay rent?
Pretty soon I imagine the government will start doing something like what they did to people who went on strike.. they'll find ways to start punishing people that don't want to work certain jobs anymore and changing careers will rarely be an option.
I agree but I think a lot of the problem also is that there were/are many businesses that are not finacially viable and cheap labour has carried them along thus far. Now the tide has gone out they are facing reality.
In the context of this article, the main reason is Brexit. In fact UK, government was helping a lot with Covid situation including paying to furloughed employees.
UK no longer can attract workers from EU. Eastern Europeans are moving back because after the Brexit vote they no longer feel welcomed and theirs home countries improved a lot in last 10 years. UK created perfect storm in last 10 years:
1. Add tuition fees for higher education.
2. Build negative perception on immigration.
3. Reduce council housing, keep house prices artificially high.
4. Vote Brexit and fail in process, destroying currency value.
5. Fail to provide opportunities for upward mobility for most immigrants.
Another aspect is that most of the people in working low wage jobs who may have been living on their own or with roommates eventually had to abandon them and move back in with their parents, or find more roommates.
The people who worked these jobs may simply be gone. And with COVID lingering, there's no reason to leave current stable living situations even if they're still relatively broke.
But all those workers that have moved on - where have they gone? I can understand restaurant workers moving on for example, but that should mean they have filled positions elsewhere. It just doesn’t seem like the numbers add up. But your comment about women staying home to care for children might be it.
Another element is that the government now pays people to stay at home and not work. That is the number one factor. If people did not have money, they would work.
Plus mortgage forbearance and eviction moratoriums... So you have more money in monthly unemployment and a pause on peoples' #1 expenses. Until these programs end, I wouldn't even speculate about the future state of labor markets.
Eviction moratoriums ended yesterday (7/31/2021). Not the smartest thing to just cut off all at once. An obvious tell as to who the government (both parties) considers their constituents.
Also not the smartest thing to do during a pretty large resurgence of COVID. Expect another year of this at least. People without a place to live are a great way to spread a communicable disease. I mean we're talking millions all at once. Expect an uptick in crimes of desperation. We might even read a few articles about dead bodies on the streets in the coming months. It could get that bad.
I'm not advocating for the cessation of mortgage forbearance nor eviction moratoriums. All I'm saying is that they distort the labor markets and will continue to do so until we reach a new post-COVID steady state.
The value exchanged by employment is more than just a paycheck, it's a regular paycheck. It's like an implicit insurance of future pay. Once the government and businesses labeled and straight dumped 'non-essential' workers, they send a message that the 'ensured future pay'-value of employment is empty and meaningless. (Don't @ me with an argument about how it's always been this way without acknowledging that recent developments represent a step change in the employment relationship.)
"Just pay more" is not caused by greedy workers demanding more money, it's caused by employers reneging on the important but implicit consideration that is the stability of keeping a job. If you demonstrate your unwillingness (or inability, no difference) to fulfill your contractual considerations (even the implicit ones), don't be surprised if the other party wants to adjust the contract to compensate.
The position low wage workers are in extends beyond what they make, too. Most part-time hourly jobs, especially those that pay less than $15, have extremely unpredictable schedules and have to deal with aggressive and rude customers day in and day out, while being treated as “less than” by management.
Fortunately, when I worked for near-minimum wage, I was a lifeguard so I had the authority to tell off and kick out bad patrons. I still got treated like shit, with 10-12 hour workdays in 100+deg weather, inconsistent scheduling, and once even being told I had to stay after my shift when I had plans or lose my job (I called their bluff and decided to quit anyways).
I have a software job now and it’s better than food service, retail, and lifeguarding by a WIDE margin. I think a lot of people here take for granted the stability and consistency offered by their (typically) office jobs, as well as the significantly better physical and mental conditions.
I think that people started to realize, that they can live much better with lower amount of money.
What corona crisis did to me was suddenly figuring out that just, from the pure fact of not leaving home much (or I would rather say, not going into the consumers world any more - I rather went to a forest, hills, rivers, lakes,...), there was an overhead of 500 euros left on my bank account each month. Same life but the unneeded expenses were cut off and interestingly - I didn't miss them at all.
This would (in case I wouldn't love software development) mean that I could go for 500 euros lower wage with a fairly decent life and with far more time for myself.
As time is the only commodity that you cant buy, this seems like a very reasonable way to change my life for the better.
But I am not the one who doesn't like my job. There is probably more than a half of people that don't want to do what they are doing for the wage they get. And with corona, they got out of the system that calls for more money.
Surely they would return back but not under the same conditions. Pay them relevantly more and there will no longer be employee shortages but you will earn less. And it is debatable if this is not what needed to happen.
> I think that people started to realize, that they can live much better with lower amount of money.
I might be able to buy this argument if the person in question is making 6 figures, but what about the median person making $36k/year? If you can barely make rent, reducing your working hours because "can live much better with lower amount of money" isn't really an option.
I quit my software engineering job to drive from Alaska to Argentina for 2 years and then to drive around Africa for three years. I have not worked at a desk for 6 years now, and I live on about $20k - $25k.
I've never been happier. I have so much free time to spend how I please, and I just don't buy crap I don't need. Yes, I've got house mates and I can't afford to live in some expensive city and eat out every night, but those things have never made me happy anyway.
I ride my bike, I throw the Frisbee and I snowboarded 97 days this past winter (a luxury, for sure) My dollars per day spent is extremely low.
Is it worth considering whether increased/extended unemployment benefits are a factor in the employee shortage?
The article mentions employees on "furlough" who are "biding their time". I'm not from the UK, but this appears to mean the government is paying much of their wage while they are not working.
Anecdotally (in the U.S.) I know several people who have remained on unemployment as long as they possibly can, despite the fact that their job would've hired them back by now. Technically this is breaking the rules of unemployment benefits, but there are several easy ways around it.
Not that the increased/extended unemployment benefits have been a bad thing. They were quite necessary, especially early on in the pandemic when there was so much uncertainty. Perhaps they're still necessary. But it seems to me that if you allow people not to work and still have money, many people simply won't work. Mystery solved.
If labor is a market, laborers are at a fundamental disadvantage compared to employers when it comes to clearance: the employer has an asymmetric advantage in its ability to wait to hire someone; laborers are a lot less capable.
I don’t know that unemployment is a good solution, but I think it speaks volumes that people might be using it to balance the standard inequity.
This is a common refrain, but I doubt many who say have actually actual experience as an employer. In many businesses the inability to staff leads to existential threat to the entire business.
If you're a restaurant and can't seat customers or a SaaS startup and can't keep your service uptime, you'll go out of business very quickly. That represents millions in enterprise value. In contrast an employer who gets fired, but is otherwise competent, might be looking at a few weeks of unemployment and a couple thousand in lost income.
I have seen many employers who look for unicorns rather than using optimal stopping (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping) for positions that are more flywheel multiplier positions rather than existential positions.
In the long term, it rarely leads to the death of their business, but it substantially lowers the quality of life of most/all of those working in the business.
If the business is run sensibly and isn't hemorrhaging a large percentage of its workers, not hiring just means delayed growth, not an existential threat.
Governmental meddling since last March has caused a lot of businesses to hemorrhage a large percentage of their workers even though they were run sensibly.
Employers need employees, and employees need employers. If you have orders to fill, and noone to do the work, you're just as fscked, as if you have bills to pay, and no money to do it. Employers get an added benefit of being able to wait it out a bit, since they generally have more money than workers, and workers have unemployment benefits, which means that they can wait it out (until the benefits stop).
The problems will be more apparent when the benefits stop, poorer employers will close down in the meantime, and when people have to go back to work, there will be fewer workplaces for them available, bringing the wages down.
> Employers need employees, and employees need employers. If you have orders to fill, and noone to do the work, you're just as fscked, as if you have bills to pay, and no money to do it.
Na, not really. An employer can just raise their prices until incoming orders and delivery capacity align. That’s a sustainable situation for the employer. There may be some opportunity cost, but they’re doing okay.
An employee on the dole on the other hand is not in a sustainable situation. They have to find a job before they run out of benefits and savings, or the consequences will be dire…
Only in monopolistic situations or situations causing everyone to raise prices at the same time would the possibility of "just raise their prices" be workable.
If the price gets too high people will seek alternate suppliers or do without.
Example: We pay a private company to haul trash to the dump. There's many such companies, so if my company raises it's prices, I'll switch to another. We had one company raise its prices recently and everyone switched to another. I'm not sure this company is still around.
Example: Comcast kept raising my cable TV bill. I eventually just ditched it and went Internet only. $200/month for TV isn't worth it.
> If the price gets too high people will seek alternate suppliers or do without.
That’s exactly the desired effect. I didn’t say raise prices to make more money. I said raise prices until incoming orders and delivery capacity align. The purpose is to get less orders.
yes but depending on the state / size of your company, you can reallocate people in emergency mode, work more yourself (if you're the boss), ask for loans at the bank, you can absorb a lot more than a single individual can
Can you explain this further? It sounds like you may be assuming employers are able to simply not hire and bear the opportunity cost. How are you weighing that up against employee urgency?
I was sceptical of that they did in Aus but it sort of worked.
Instead of just giving everyone unemployment they,
Doubled unemployment for those that needed it
Created a new system that injected money into businesses, but only if they kept you employed, i.e. subsidized wages.
This let things snap back really quickly. Though there is still a lot of damage and the new lock down in Sydney is hurting without the same measures again.
The thing were finding is those that left jobs are just hard to get back into jobs, it takes time to hire negotiate and train people
There is no "employee shortage". I don't know the reason why the main stream press started to roll with that narrative but this is a blatant lie. However unlike before the pandemic, some candidates might refuse a job that only offers a pittance, especially given the high inflation in most of the west.
> unlike before the pandemic, some candidates might refuse a job
I don't understand this one, wouldn't a pandemic (entire industries had to cut back on costs) cause more people to be looking for work and thus tip the supply and demand balance towards people being less picky?
The US instituted an unemployment benefit actually large enough to pay the expenses of the unemployed. This cut poverty by half, with a corresponding decrease in demand for minimum wage jobs.
The idea is that the disruption has shown workers they have a wider range of options than they considered before. Maybe they have changed to a different field, maybe they have started their own business, maybe they have moved. In any case, they aren't looking to get rehired at their old position and compensation.
"Essential workers" weren't treated well during the pandemic, even now with arguments about masks it's pretty much awful. Consider also how many were laid off initially (showing how their job sees them as disposable on top of that) and combine that with how they were barely scraping by before but now inflation of essentials like food have gone up to the point that it wouldn't scrape by as easily anymore and most aren't willing to put up with it for a pittance anymore.
I actually think the bigger picture is that with schools/daycare/camps closed there is no affordable way for kids to be watched while at work which has caused multi income families to go back to single income families and in many cases this causes them to have more money than they would have with daycare, especially if they are utilizing unemployment benefits in place of one of those multi incomes. I'm not sure how this is working with single parents but my guess would be that a lot of them moved back with parents when they got laid off at first, thus also causing an imbalance.
It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people died from covid and if you look at it outside of political leanings a lot of those who didn't get vaccinated are the less educated and less wealthy, so I'm sure that's at least a part of what's going on.
I am an unemployed programmer. I am 50 years old. I have 15 years of C#, 15 years of sql server, two years of golang, two years of node.js, vue.js, svelte, css, html, postgress, rabbitmq,
etc etc etc.... My skills list is about 10 times this short list I just threw up.
They tell me there is a skills and labor shortage in tech.
That's complete bullshit
I am UNEMPLOYED for a year. I don't believe one dam word the government or the media says anymore. Not one word.
Not about the cough. Not about the labor shortage.
They will tell you the economy is booming meanwhile they are boarding up New York City and there is homeless everywhere. It's the same thing right across america. We are being lied to at an awesome level.
Might also be an attitude problem on your side. If you're serious about getting a job, consider coaching.
This "nobody is hiring, everything sucks, and I'm the victim here" narrative isn't really helping you.
Also, bringing up stuff like "lies about the cough" (which I assume is OP talking about COVID) absolutely undermines your credibility as an individual capable of critical thinking, which is necessary for software engineering.
I don't know about the OP, but I think sometimes people forget that getting hired is only part skill list match. The other part is likability. I've worked with enough smart assholes to never want to do that again if I can avoid it. I also frequently reflect to make sure I'm not being an asshole.
You've got cause and effect flipped here. It's not the bitterness that causes one to be not hired, its not being hired that causes bitterness. I experienced the same when trying to get in the field. The narrative at the time was that there was a labor shortage, and they were trying to push for more H1B visa holders. Yet there were very very few entry level positions, nobody was training, and the company that hired me paid horribly($12/hr) and didn't teach me anything. Keep in mind, I had recently graduated from university in the field.
For decades, employers had far more leverage than employees. Now that that's eroded a bit, everyone is panicking. But this is exactly what is needed to employers to actually train and care about their workers.
> The narrative at the time was that there was a labor shortage
Not unique to the particular time or place : Dutch employers are complaining about a lack of technical workers for decades, think welders / metal workers / machine operators etc.
Except they pay sh*t. Somehow the statement about the lack of workers gets printed in the media everytime.
Now we have the 'free transfer of people' in the EU. The EU is not there for you, but for the employers ( just like HR ).
I think this is something that every university graduate needs to understand so as to not be bitter.
Your first years of your career will be shit, there is just no beating around the bush around this fact. You will be treated like a kid, you will be paid like shit (borderline minimum wage a lot of the times), and you will have to work ridiculous amounts to be seen on the same level as other people in the field.
Once you break the 1-2 year experience mark then you can begin to expect entry level benefits for entry level positions. After you break the 5 year experience mark, then really the world is your oyster. 10 years or more and you can demand blank checks.
> It's not the bitterness that causes one to be not hired, its not being hired that causes bitterness.
That's a pretty absolutist statement. Is it not possible that both are sometimes present, and lead to a downward spiral of poor attitude and unemployablility?
I don't know. I am fifty one years old, last year I was sent packing. I found that it is increasingly more difficult for me to find a new job as a programmer, as the years go by. I am very grateful that I found a job, eventually.
Dear Calltrack, don't get too upset by the reactions in this thread, some people here are, well, not very compassionate, to say the least.
Sure tech companies generally are generally on your political side and not on his but he's most likely not getting hired because of ageism and because people don't really need people with tons of experience.
A kid with some basic knowledge who will comply to whatever bs is being told is good enough. Plus they can easily convince him to care about the company, do overtime, etc. Good luck trying that crap with a 50yo.
Would you rather , on this site, people post what they honestly think, or what they would say in a job interview situation? Because if the latter, you might be better off not assuming that the OP is dumb enough to let out their unvarnished thoughts in an interview.
This sounds like a complete misunderstanding of the situation. In a thread about employers having trouble with hiring someone posted their honest frustrations as a potential employee looking for work. It is extremely unlikely that any cover letter, resume, or job interview is in any way similar because that context is completely different.
Just to pick one common idea among recruiters, it often takes about a month of job seeking per year of experience to get a position that is a solid match. That means that the people posting here with decades of experience can expect years of leetcode interviews before getting hired. Recruiters seem like a better source of information than currently employed and in demand coders.
These aren’t honest frustrations, lol, this person basically called covid a hoax and said all the official labor numbers are made up.
And idk what recruiters say this about experience but that’s not even a claim that could be substantiated. What even is a “solid match”? Sure, if you have crazy specific requirements to be willing to take a job it will take you longer to search. That applies regardless of age. Maybe on average older candidates tend to me more rigid in their expectations and are less open to working with new industries or programming languages or something, but that’s their choice.
The guy is frustrated and people say things like that when they're frustrated, it's understandable, though he certainly isn't helping himself by expressing such thoughts.
The "lies" he's talking about, I think, are a side-effect of the dichotomy of having an investor class that is doing better than ever and a working class that's in a downward spiral. Sadly, economic performance is measured strictly for the benefit of the investor class. So yeah, when someone who's involuntarily unemployed sees booming market numbers and talking heads on TV are calling out an economy that's "bounced back", it looks like a lie (and honestly I believe it is a kind of lie too).
The media downplayed covid until some places started closing. Then they kicked it into full on "zombie virus everyone is gonna die" mode real quick. On top of that, they (meaning social media as well) tried to circumvent the CDC numerous times by flagging things they've said because the media doesn't want COVID to die now that Trump is out of office. Trump was a damn goldmine and they're trying to force COVID to be another one.
OP's statement leads straight to "they're out to get me," which is absolutely not helpful, and it's absolutely an indicator of a difficult hire.
If I'm interviewing someone and the person is demonstrating a victim narrative, that is a huge red flag.
Similarly, the inability to see shades of gray (e.g. "using MySQL is always utterly stupid, you should never use it in favor of Postgres") which OP demonstrates with their COVID statements, makes a person virtually non-employable in my book.
> OP's statement leads straight to "they're out to get me," which is absolutely not helpful, and it's absolutely an indicator of a difficult hire.
Not at all. If you've been out of work for a year and seeing your savings (if you have any) dwindle and vent on what is an internet comment sections, doesn't indicate how you are in person at all.
> If I'm interviewing someone and the person is demonstrating a victim narrative, that is a huge red flag.
You are ignoring the present situation entirely. Governments have put everyone's life on hold for well over a year now (we are in month 17). Statements from authorities have been contradictory, non-sensical, they have lied in some cases and some have broken their own lockdown rules (e.g. in the UK Matt Hancock which was in charge of public health IIRC was exposed as having an affair during COVID, which BTW was illegal under the lockdown rules).
So many people can see it for what it is. One rule for them and one rule for the plebs.
> Similarly, the inability to see shades of gray (e.g. "using MySQL is always utterly stupid, you should never use it in favor of Postgres") which OP demonstrates with their COVID statements, makes a person virtually non-employable in my book
You are reading far too much into comments around COVID due to your personal bias (which btw is obvious here). Because you disagree on a particular issue doesn't not indicate someone's thinking in a different field of expertise. e.g. there are many great scientists that believe very deeply in Religion. Which as a non-believer I would think would be at odds with one another.
I have personally found it very difficult to find a job during COVID as well. I am almost 40 now and it worries me that I might experience the same in the future.
In addition to Matt Hancock, there was also the case of exemptions from quarantine for UEFA football VIPs. [1]
I think it's right the UK is returning to personal responsibility, especially as many of the rules haven't seemed to be science-based e.g. you must wear a mask entering a pub, but you are allowed to remove the mask while eating seated.
It's health-theatre, rather than virus prevention.
There were many notable people who were exposed as to exposing that we all should be lockdown while breaking the rules themselves. It is quite frustrating when I live in an area where almost everyone followed the rules.
Yes there is a quite an element to theatre to the whole thing, which makes sensible discussion about the issue impossible. Which I believe is somewhat by design.
The basic takeaway is that you make it impossible for the average person to keep up the thread of events and they become apathetic to it. I've also watched Adam Curtis's "Hypernormalisation". It is well worth a watch.
The fact was that I wasn't right. They were doing decent work and their beliefs didn't affect their work.
A lot of non-believers (in the past I would have include myself in that list) seem to believe because they don't believe in a higher being that they are somehow more "rational". Nothing could be further from the truth. It took me a long time to realise that I wasn't being more rational than the faithful and I dogmatic about things that were simply quasi-religious. It took a lot of introspection and several times I had moments where my ideology hit reality hard and I spent several days dealing with cognitive dissonance and having to accept I was just wrong.
Indeed, but I think that was the point. It's entirely possible to hold irrational beliefs in one area without them affecting your work in another area.
Whether you think it's at odds or not, in practice many great scientists have been devoutly religious. For example Newton.
After some searching I found both old recommendations, and new ones about this explicitly [0].
The problem here is that nobody knows for sure, and someone must decide based on precautions and ongoing research. It is expected that new knowledge will make old information obsolete. An ongoing situation will also change during its course. Media just reflects this and there's no expectations of perfection.
It's on what basis opinions are formed that truly matter. Anyone can make thousands of bets and congratulate themselves on 50% of them.
People started noticing during covid but it's been going on for a very long time. I think it's awesome to see so many people realize this now though. We need that to happen.
We reject more senior candidates for soft skill issues than we do for technical issues. Most common one is them aggressively saying "why did you do it this way, you should have done it this way" during interviews without knowing any context.
>boarding up New York City
Not really, we're doing rather well over here.
>there is homeless everywhere
There have been homeless everywhere for decades, if you think this is new then you haven't been paying attention.
edit: Also believing covid isn't real indicates that you have overall issues with rational understanding of complex topics or processing third party information. That underlying mental model tends to leak in interviews and is definitely a massive red flag.
> I don't believe one dam word the government or the media says anymore. Not one word. Not about the cough.
If you really mean this, if you really think the pandemic is all a big conspiracy created by your government... makes me genuinely curious how you come across in interviews.
I don't think you're wrong about the labor shortage thing. Similar story here: quite a bit of trouble finding a job as a 25 year old tech person while you hear left and right that nobody can seem to find any employees anymore. But that one statistic is skewed, or perhaps that companies and employees aren't properly being matched, doesn't mean "the cough" (and what many people that contracted the virus describe as the worst week in their life) is all a big hoax.
I am curious as to how did you jump from not believing the government to pandemic being a conspiracy? Pandemic is real and governments have lied to their people, more so in last one and a half year - both of these statements can be true.
Also you should not question someone's capability to come across in the interviews based on their venting on online anonymous platform. Humans can have vastly different emotions depending on the situation.
Over the past 18 months or so, since the COVID-19 pandemic has been foremost in our minds, a group of people have espoused certain opinions or viewpoints. Namely:
The pandemic is a hoax
It doesn't kill people
Those that did die, died from other causes
That they won't wear a mask
That they won't get a vaccine
That the vaccine modifies DNA
The person who referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as "the cough" may or may not hold any or all of those views. But 18 months of hearing that group of people espouse those views leads many of us to learn that if they support one of the views above, they support them all.
Again, that may or may not be correct or ethical. It's just our experience.
It stretches credulity that you have that many skills and still unemployed. Employers are hiring just about anyone in tech these days. Where are you located?
You can kvetch about the media all you want, but the job market is the best it has ever been, and unlikely to get any better. Sorry to be harsh here, but if you can't find a job in this market, you ought to reconsider your professional choices.
My father-in-law is in a similar position, just ten years older than parent. He always gets rejections based on "lack of cultural fit". Ageism is real in tech.
> but if you can't find a job in this market, you ought to reconsider your professional choices.
There is enough literature out there about the racist, sexist or ageist hiring practices in the tech sector that you might as well rethink your comment here. How old are you?
I know you’re not trying to interview right here and now, but listing tools doesn’t move the needle. That’s not what employability in tech is measured by.
I’m trying to hire for a number of software positions and that’s a common issue I see in resumes.
I don’t want to hear that you’re a wizard with a hammer. I want to know about the times you lead a team in building a house from start to finish.
> I want to know about the times you lead a team in building a house from start to finish.
What if that's not something I can do? If I'm really good at tech, am really good in terms of writing code fast, correct, and readable, but management just isn't for me? Would you not hire me for a software position, also not at a lower salary or with a junior label or something?
We're not interested in hiring "perpetual juniors". The increased oversight of junior employees is an investment in them becoming senior in a 2-3 year timeframe. The skills listed above are for independent action, follow-through, communication, and teamwork, in a tech lead position, which are more important than writing code. If you haven't acquired those skills by now, it's unlikely any amount of mentorship will teach them to you, so it's going to be a pass.
> The increased oversight of junior employees is an investment in them becoming senior in a 2-3 year timeframe.
So in your mind, they go straight from junior to senior? I've been developing software for 8 years now, and still call myself intermediate. Senior is for people with incredibly deep knowledge of multiple technologies and how they work together, in my mind.
We don't have an intermediate role, the step after Software Development Expert II is Senior Software Development Expert. This is pretty consistent among peer companies. Your description of senior isn't inaccurate, but, after many years of schooling, personal development experience, and on-the-job training, it's expected that people will gain that level of expertise in at least one domain -- maybe not to the same degree you're expecting, but career progression does not necessarily stop at SSDE.
Even individual engineers will get tasked with solving problems, start to finish. And even if not, you were part of a team that did it. Talk about the process of how you contributed to some meaningful unit of work.
I don’t care about what tools you know. I can teach everyone how to program. Everyone. Programming is really not hard.
I can’t teach everyone how to be an adept problem solver or how to work in a team (in any role) to actually ship things reasonably bug free and on time. I can’t teach everyone how to work in harmony with others. I can’t teach everyone how to gracefully handle all the business realities that throw wrenches into software purity.
To add a bit: what I’m trying frantically to figure out in the hiring process is if you’re an asshole or not. I can’t fix that. If you don’t know some language or tool, that doesn’t even register as a problem to me. But if you seem stubborn and too opinionated, especially on trivial things, I don’t care if you’re a programming wizard.
It isn’t unreasonable to want to hire people that will be able to grow into senior positions. If you are demonstrating that you’ll never do that, this is a red flag for hiring.
No one gets a job because of how long they’ve been alive or how frustrated they are. I suggest changing your attitude and I’d also suggest avoiding rants about the government and media, as well as spreading misinformation about “the cough” and NYC during your job search.
I was unemployed for 9 months in the UK. I was a contractor/consultant and had to take a full time position.
When Lockdowns started I was literally finishing a contract and was happy to have some time off. After month 7 of not having any work and eating into savings and constantly lockdowns meant I had to go full time.
Interview process was frustrating to say the least. Lots of pre-screen "tests" which some were two to 3 hours of asking computer science style questions that are irrelevant for web development.
It was a frustrating process that was exasperated by COVID.
Have you tried remote-only positions? I’d assume they tend to care less about age, if that’s the problem.
I employ freelancers and pay competitive fees by European standards. I would hire someone with your experience without thinking too much about it (provided you had a modicum of people skills) since I only care about people being courteous and getting the job done, and not about “culture”…
As noted elsewhere, it seems Europe may be a better place for older folks. I know that some nations have some fairly strict laws about discrimination.
In the US, we have the same laws. It's flat-out illegal to discriminate by age, as it is by race, religion, gender, pregnancy, marital status, etc.
Out of that list, if a company tries anything other than age discrimination, they are pilloried and investigated.
However, in the IT industry, age discrimination is actively encouraged. Companies write job ads that basically say "Bros only."
The story I hear, is that older folks are "just waiting for retirement, and won't be loyal." That's rich, in an industry that has been completely formed around the idea that engineers will stay at a company for no more than two years.
In my case, I had my retirement set, years ago, and would have been willing to work for half of what a lot of younger folks would demand, if the work was motivating, and the work environment was good.
I have an enormous portfolio of exemplary work. My skills are "five minutes old." I'm not some old duffer, sitting on COBOL skills (which, I understand, would actually have made me more attractive).
It's been my experience that no one ever bothers to look at the portfolio. They've already made up their mind, and the only reason they are talking to me, is to tick off an EEOC checkbox.
> In the US, we have the same laws. It's flat-out illegal to discriminate by age, as it is by race, religion, gender, pregnancy, marital status, etc.
This is true, sort of. Age discrimination is different where it matters - the threshold to prove age discrimination is so high that the law could just as well not exist.
I don't see any evidence Europe being better for older folks. On top of that salaries are really really low in Europe.
Unless you are in the US and are going to graduate university at 22-23 best to forget about a career in STEM. Not worth the effort and time. Milk has a longer expiry date than a STEM worker who's perceived over the hill late-twenties or early thirties.
Many things in those sentences are plainly not true. In Europe, you can get very rich (by say western european standards) if you do 1-man consulting well. I mean in top 0.01% salary bracket for some countries while having fairly standard current skillset (soft and hard skills). Switzerland and Luxembourg have very high permanent salaries - not SV levels, but definitely fine ones and affording a great lifestyle.
Quality of life, say in Switzerland, (and I know this can be a hot topic that depends on personal preferences) is way better than basically anything US can offer for similar wealth bracket. That's my personal view, based on my personal opinions, evaluations and wish to give my kids the best and healthiest environment to grow up in so obviously not universally true.
Older dudes are definitely very supported here, but this is specific per sector/company. Average age of my coworkers (banking en Suisse) is around 45-50, all devs, admins, devops. We wanted to hire one 55 year old guy for dev position last week, we made him (a generous) offer already but he chose a different position. He didn't have the skillset list much bigger than what is flying around by OP (maybe some crypto stuff but we don't do it yet).
What you describe are mostly startups full of folks who want to get rich quickly, mostly fail, have attention span shorter than tick of second hand on my watch. You can find those everywhere. But that's a relatively small part of the market and at least here definitely not the best paying one.
Luxemburg junior salary average is 36K, take home around 2300. 1300 for rent and food you are left with 1000 euros.
Germany is where startups valued at $25bn and $45bn (Zalando and Klarna) are paying less than $100k for 10 YoE with >40% income tax.
Please let's not discuss already obvious things though I agree that Switzerland is better in terms of salary and taxes.
As per your own company you are using anecdotal evidence. Ageism in tech is very well-known and pretending it does not exist is not going to fix antyhing.
Since you mention banking (and I don't want to be ageist here, greyhair here as well) is the prototype of an old, crusty and backwards environment where nothing changes and nothing gets done at a reasonable pace. Unless you think of crazy deadlines being given as reasonable pace. Speaking from experience. I never want to work in a bank ever again.
...by American standards. Ask anyone in Northern Europe if they are happy with their salary and they will almost say yes. It's America that is distorting everything with their ridiculous salaries.
> They will tell you the economy is booming meanwhile they are boarding up New York City
> and there is homeless everywhere
Both of these can be true. The economy is great for all the people at the top rungs of society while the rest may not be seeing any of those prosperities.
I was puzzled by this as well. There was of course instances of this during the George Floyd protests (over a year ago), and a bit right around the election, but that was just companies protecting their property from some of the rowdier protesters.
My wife and I have both been hearing this narrative from coworkers outside of where we live (in NYC), asking if we're living in a ghost town or warzone. It feels strange.
By the way I think the term "flyover state" is probably a bit offensive to folks that happen to live outside of coastal cities.
It's bizarre but if you see the content they are watching and are fed it begins to make sense. They're never exposed to these places so they never have an opportunity to think for themselves.
Often times when I've gone to more rural/southern areas it's amazing how kind the people are - I think on both sides people just forget that there are just regular folk everywhere. The politics attempts to dehumanize.
That's nuts but I can believe it. My own experience is that if I am being interviewed by a 20 something, I am not getting the job no matter what. Not a single exception in a decade now lol. It's real
As a programmer if you’re not working for a year it’s safe to say you’re not actively looking and thus by definition excluded from unemployment statistics.
As a (potential) employer, I wouldn't really care about age. It's all about how much you make money for me. What your performance to cost ratio? People can be cats or dogs for all I care.
Young have the advantage that they usually drastically undervalue themselves and thus provide an unbeatable proposition. They're usually more energetic, positive and optimistic, which is more pleasant to be around and thus makes the work environment more productive.
In an ideal system: if employers fail to hire workforce that benefits their company more, they will fall behind the competition. There most definitely are preconceived notions about people on how they look, but that should be a competitive advantage to a company that can leverage it.
> Young have the advantage that they usually drastically undervalue themselves and thus provide an unbeatable proposition. They're usually more energetic, positive and optimistic, which is more pleasant to be around and thus makes the work environment more productive.
This feels myopic. It cuts both ways. Young employees are often much more susceptible to conflating their personal identity with their work identity, which can lead to serious emotional and psychological issues down the road. Even if we're looking at it purely from an extract-value-from-employee angle, I don't want a team that's running purely on misplaced idealism and ramen cups, because that's not sustainable.
So the counterpoint to your comment would be: older employees have the advantage of serving as an example to younger ones for how to better manage work/life balance, which yields a healthier team in aggregate.
I\m going to go ahead and guess that this is an attitude problem, not a skill problem.
Further - do you _really_ have 15 years of experience of C# and SQL Server, or (as is very common in that space) do you actually have one year of experience 15 times?
Just a side note. I’m actually working on building a remote team and when I went to your profile, the link in there was dead. How do people casually browsing your profile discover what you’ve worked on and learn more about you?
You armchair psychiatrists work fast! Why would he need a therapist when he's got you telling him he's a lunatic based upon his venting on the internet?
There must be something more to your story. Some slight mental issues, way too high expectation from work/salary/special requirements etc. A lot of folks think of themselves as perfectly fine, but on interviews they come as hard-to-work-with introverted weirdos. Applying for a very senior lead/managerial position. And so on.
A year must mean tons of applications and at least some interviews. Do you have any idea/feedback from failed interviews on why they failed?
All of this stuff about workers disappearing and people reconsidering their lives is pretty much a sideshow of projected narrative that is detached from what is really going on.