Hacker News Reader

"haven't thought about this at all."

If you look at most discussions about how employers weed out prospective employees, and about how employees weed out prospective employers, there isn't much careful thinking involved at all. Even though it is an important decision for both parties, and time deliberately thinking about it is time well-spent, stupid heuristics are usually used.

> People who screen resumes tend to assume that you are unemployed because of one or more other undesirable traits you have, like a tendency to be irresponsible or violent and antisocial. This assumption is a mix of broken societal wisdom and an association fallacy. FWIW, there's another fallacy committed when they themselves become unemployed; everyone else unemployed is a antisocial lunatic, but they are a good person who has simply fallen on rough times -- total cognitive dissonance, but they don't notice, even when it is pointed out to them.

For anyone interested, it's called the actor-observer bias: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-observer_bias

This assumption is a mix of broken societal wisdom and an association fallacy. FWIW, there's another fallacy committed when they themselves become unemployed; everyone else unemployed is a antisocial lunatic, but they are a good person who has simply fallen on rough times -- total cognitive dissonance, but they don't notice, even when it is pointed out to them.

There's something generational in it, as well. Going on rough estimates and statistics I've heard-- although there's no hard basis for these numbers because no one can predict what the employment climate will look like in 2050-- a 22-year-old can expect, over the next 40 years:

* To be fired (not laid off, but personally fired) once.

* To be laid off, or to lose a job because his employer goes out of business, 3 times.

* To quit 3 jobs because of a negative job situation or otherwise pre-emptively (boredom, passed over for a promotion, risk of being laid off).

* To quit 3 jobs because a substantially better offer comes along.

* To quit twice because he needs a break (and won't be allowed to take ~3 months unpaid leave) or is considering career change.

* To leave 1 job to go into school.

* To have at least one spell of unemployment exceed 4 months.

That's 4 involuntary job losses, and 4-7 (the firing, and the there pre-emptive quits are the four; the layoffs are the "maybe" +3) that could be taken to reflect negatively on him and his career. This is what I suspect to be the average case over a 40-year career, with most of the disruptive breaks early on in it.

I don't think this is a bad thing. I think job volatility is, if it's limited and no one gets blackballed or rendered unable to make a living, a good thing. Just as no one is expected to marry their high school sweetheart, people are increasingly "dating" jobs and careers. And although breakups hurt like hell, the fact that they can happen when necessary (as opposed to a world where people marry in their late teens and stay together even if miserable) means people find better matches in the long run.

The result is that we're looking at a generation where everyone will have the experience of being unemployed at some point. But many people in their 40s and 50s got started in a different career environment and have never experienced it.