
Tech Sector Feeling Covid-19’s Economic Pain - jakearmitage
https://www.hiringlab.org/2020/07/30/tech-sector-covid19-impact/
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djsumdog
Side-note for people switching work, move your money from your direct deposit
account before starting a new job.

I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview
with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then
discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real
company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The
company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her
bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still.

Do your due diligence. Be careful out there.

~~~
_AzMoo
How do you drain somebody's bank account with deposit information?

~~~
xur17
Deposit information in the US is account number + routing number, which is all
that is required to pull funds from an account. Amusingly, this is also the
information printed at the bottom of every check you use.

~~~
bad_good_guy
Wow. I don't intend to be inflammatory, but I am continually shocked by how
far behind Europe the US appears to be in terms of personal banking and
payments.

~~~
miracle2k
It is literally the same in Europe, via Stripe:

[https://qry5s.sse.codesandbox.io/](https://qry5s.sse.codesandbox.io/)

Any name Any email address Test account number: DE89370400440532013000

~~~
randoramax
You can only PUT money in a bank account knowing the IBAN in Europe. Automatic
payments have to be formally authorized first. Europeans give it their ibans
without second thoughts, never heard of any such problems as in US.

~~~
miracle2k
It is called SEPA Direct Debit. You give people your IBAN, and they can take
money from it. You formally have to give your permission of course (the
"mandate"), but that is really a pinky promise by businesses that they have
it. That there is not wide-spread abuse of this system seems to be because of
accountability on who is granted access to this system.

I would imagine the situation in the US to be quite similar.

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myth_drannon
Anecdotal but in Montreal,Canada it's a very different situation. Recruiter
calls, number of jobs posts are much higher in the last month or so (despite
summer vacations). Many companies from San-Francisco reaching out. Is it
because in Canada the Covid-19 spread is under control or because it's all
remote now so why not Canada?

~~~
djsumdog
This is what people are afraid of. If you live in a city where you have IT
salaries over 100k (Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using
this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't
need that type of income to pay rent.

There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come
August/September.

~~~
bluetomcat
> companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in
> markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent

That's not a bad tendency in the long run. In case remote work gains serious
traction, tech workers would be eventually dispersed around the whole country,
and that would drive down rents in previously expensive areas. With workers
living in less expensive places, they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a
good lifestyle.

~~~
Tehchops
> they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.

While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing
costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things:

* The CoL is going up _everywhere_. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper.

* Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country.

* It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.

~~~
tharne
This isn't true. The costs of some things are going up while others are going
down. Transportation is much cheaper, for example, even without taking into
account remote work. The cost of cars, gas, and auto insurance is lower than
it was 20 or 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Education and
Healthcare are getting dramatically more expensive. Clothes are much cheaper,
and the cost of consumer goods in general is decreasing a lot. Think about how
much a microwave cost in 1980's.

~~~
Tehchops
I'll concede that some durable goods are cheaper adjusted for inflation.

But at the end of the day, what has the most impact on socioeconomic mobility
and overall success? It's probably not a cheap microwave.

It's access to good schools, health care, and diet. All of the things that are
getting _more_ expensive.

Cheaper gas and clothes also have hidden(less so now) costs in pollution and
ethical sourcing concerns.

~~~
tharne
Good point. I'd strongly prefer cheaper healthcare and pricier gasoline to
cheap gas and cost-prohibitive healthcare.

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rossdavidh
Hmmm...well the facts are what they are, but based on the number of job
postings and recruiter calls I'm seeing, it sure doesn't seem much lower. I
got a new job starting in early June, and it didn't take any longer than
normal (I admit I was probably lucky).

One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own
health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent"
employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never
met in person, if it's as a contractor?

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dpeck
The recruiting dept of a lot of companies are only pretending that they’re
hiring to justify their own existence as long as possible.

Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are
pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find
budgets/priorities have “shifted”

~~~
thinkingkong
That would weed out the worst companies and VPs fairly quickly

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dpeck
I agree on the weed out, I have less confidence in the quickly. Bigger
companies move at glacial pace and most are going to do everything they can to
not let on that there are any problems at a group/division/whole enterprise
level.

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mjayhn
I'm worried this will really damage tech workers in the USA. I'm in meetings
with overseas clients most of the day and it's getting to the point that some
are back in offices and we're still locked in our kitchens. Mental health
seems to be crashing if you judge by Twitter peers. I'm in the same boat. I've
been locked in an apartment alone for 6 months outside of grocery grabs and
some outdoor hikes and it's starting to really affect me.

Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of
my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.

~~~
ghaff
From what I see--and admittedly a fair number of the people I know and work
with were largely remote before this--many offices at least in the US are
never going back to "normal." Most of the people I know are planning to be
primarily remote indefinitely. Which means that even those who do go back into
an office will have to deal with a largely distributed workplace.

~~~
sokoloff
And, importantly, competing on the global stage for talent, rather than only
against people who are commuting distance to a glass and concrete temple.

~~~
tharne
I think we'll see the beginnings of a regulatory moat in the not too distant
future.

Tech workers have the benefit of hindsight, having seen U.S. manufacturing
jobs get decimated in the last few decades.

A lot of fields already have built in protection from foreign competition. For
instance, most if all states require that anyone conducting telemedicine work
needs to be both licensed in the state were the service is being performed.

Given the leftward drift of the Democratic party and Republican's newfound
disdain for the big tech companies and things like HB1 visas, I would be
shocked if we don't see some significant restrictions on how foreign workers
are used in the tech sector.

~~~
ghaff
A lot of US tech people wouldn't be happy if the government started requiring,
say, Professional Engineer licenses (which in turn require 4 year degrees) for
a lot of positions.

~~~
tharne
Fair enough, but the trend in everything does seem to be in favor of increased
"credentialization". Heck, you need a license just to paint someone's toenails
for a few bucks. And in most cases the primarily benefit of credentials is to
limit and control the number of individuals in a given occupation. An added
benefit goes to rent seekers like governments and credentialing services make
a pretty penny too.

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1nverseMtx
Odd message given the timing, one day after tech giants announce strong
quarterly results.

~~~
adventured
Most of the US tech space is still booming right now, from big tech to the
dozens of large cloud companies that have been reporting between good and
stellar quarterly results.

We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the
year, for now it's weak.

~~~
fred_is_fred
"booming" does not mean hiring. With the next few months being very uncertain,
prudent companies have paused hiring to help control costs.

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kache_
Is this due to the economic conditions? I feel as though companies might be
holding off on hiring because the logistics of hiring & onboarding someone
remotely is extremely difficult, doubly more so in tech.

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yalogin
I don’t know how much closer to reality this is. I can see tech hiring
probably slowed down but my guess is it’s opportunistic. The companies that
are doing poorly before the pandemic simply cut jobs. I don’t see a real
impact on the market. Of course I do realize I am arguing against data here
and saying stuff without evidence but the sample size is small for the data
and it’s a gut feeling that it will not hold long term.

~~~
tharne
I don't know if you're necessarily arguing against data. Data is a funny thing
and it can lie very easily. For example, the following statement is data-
driven and technically true, but a complete lie at the same time:

"Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle"

I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've
observed.

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LadyCailin
Certainly it’s slightly less than one.

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Hydraulix989
Is this actually so pronounced? If you look at the "Mixed bag for tech
positions in tech hubs" table, the change in tech postings trend looks more or
less the same as the change in all postings trend (I bet it's not even stat
sig). Reading the article, the claims being made are not even strong ones.

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Tehchops
I don't want to dismiss this post out of hand, but the last few instances I've
spent any time browsing Indeed, it did _not_ strike me as representative of
the tech hiring market.

Where's the LinkedIn data?

~~~
pandaman
I have the same sentiment, Indeed does not seem to be a representative source
for the tech jobs market. I have an impression that most postings there are
for staffing firms and the number of their posts do not correspond to the
actual vacancies (they might be all posting the same job or post fake jobs to
collect resumes).

The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their
activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that
bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or
something), in the recent months.

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cs702
We are all hoping the following plan will work:

1\. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are
developed.

2\. ???

3\. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels.

There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it
will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a]

So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it."

The tech sector is no exemption.

\--

[a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths
of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings,
malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines,
conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a
mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for
everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so
they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I think there's reason to be confident it'll work. In many areas people rushed
back to those things even before the pandemic was over. I'm not saying this
was an unreasonable concern to have, but it seems to have been disconfirmed.

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iwfheveryday123
Stocks would say otherwise

