“Great resignation” wave coming for companies
axios.com
axios.com
This number is meaningless without previous year trends. In my circles, everyone from 25-35 is simultaneously preparing to FIRE and no-one that's 35+ has actually changed jobs despite being 'financially independent'. Expressing intent to resign, and actually resigning are completely different things. (edit: to clarify, I mean changing jobs specifically in the context of making inroads toward the retire early portion of their goal. Changing jobs to increase compensation is as strong as ever)
Real Translation: Covid has made people miserable in their jobs. The only way people can keep going is idle fantasies about a nondescript future date where this suffering ends.
> Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths
IMO, over the last year, people have only dived deeper into their delusions and relative sense of privilege. Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
> "Hopefully we’ll see a lot more people in 2022 employed and stable because they're in jobs they actually like," she says.
Press 'X' to Doubt
The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.
Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment).
Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.
Lifestyle creep only moves in one direction and is usually permanent.
This has been the case, according to my colleagues who are older, since at least 2003 ;-)
This has been the same as well, to my knowledge, since 2010
If they were hurting that much for devs, you'd think they might lower the bar a little by not requiring a years study of leetcode.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...
I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar article about leet code...
The second problem is that the onus is on you on making sure those bad interviews decrease the odds if hiring bad people, instead of increasing them or being irrelevant. Without that evidence, this is a non-argument.
You don't have to agree with the bar the companies are using, but that is the bar they have converged on, and one that plenty of people are capable of passing.
Would much rather compete for those people.
Nobody is talking about lowering the bar, but of putting the bar in the right zipcode.
An extremely high bar of leetcode testing is irrelevant to the actual job, so that's an irrelevant bar.
In practical terms the FAANG companies internal processes are horrible and they can’t seem to innovate at all, but as long as they continue to print money there is zero reason to risk change.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...
That's about the microsoft-era actual riddles, like "if you were reduced to the size of an ant and put in a blender, how would you get out?"
Maybe using methods that have nothing to do with the job, just don't lead to good results ?
What I said was basically "google admitted their old method didn't work, here's a link if your interested. I wouldn't be surprised if the new method doesn't work either, and we see articles about that in a few years"
The I "wouldn't be surprised" part comes from both methods actually having very little to do with the job at hand, and therefore I think they would BOTH be bad predictors of performance at that job..
No. Your previous post said they admitted their "leet code" interviews didn't work. leetcode means something specific.
Also I'd draw the opposite conclusion. Sounds like Google is "on it" in terms of evaluating what works and what doesn't. They threw out brainteasers because they didn't work. That suggests whatever they kept does work.
Can't say I agree with your 'on it' conclusion, but I guess time will tell. It took them about 15 years to get rid of the brain teasers (1998 to 2013ish from what I can tell), so if they're consistent we should hear one way or the other in 2028ish :-)
During which time the company grew from what to what?
(Actually, when I interviewed in ~2003, I didn't get any brain teasers. All of the questions where either fundamental computer science knowledge or related to the (SRE) position---although they would all be considered "leetcode" by someone without the background. I was pretty impressed.)
what does that have to do with trying to guess when the next paper might come out? I was just guessing what the publishing timeline might be :-P
But if you're running a startup (target audience of ycombinator), you'd do well to play a smarter game since you can't outspend or out-fame the FAANGs. A big part of that is to have better interviewing practices than they do.
You have - companies that settled on this process, who have been able to attract top tallent that has cleared this bar.
You have - employees of these companies that were able to clear the interview bar.
And then you have - people who don't work for these companies, proclaim to have no interest/ability to clear the bar, but claim to have a valid view into where the bar should be.
In the absence of other data it doesn't seem like the last group is likely to be objectively right
These questions have fuck-all to do with the actual work the happens there. Sure, you can usually find someone to tell you how much rainwater accumulates into a random bar chart, but I see as much brain-dead code at the top as anywhere else. As much great code, too, FWIW. Everywhere, the key skills that make for a successful IC are the same, and they definitely don't require implementing splay trees or skip lists from scratch and without references. 99% of the time it's shuffling bits around and using hash maps.
Honestly the people I work with who advocate the hardest for leetcode are the ones who had to grind hard and, evidently, want others to suffer too. As if a sane process would mean their own suffering was in vain.
The bar may simply be "sober enough to understand what it takes to succeed at this task", "committed enough to prepare" and "smart enough to solve them"
These attributes correlate strongly with success, I'd imagine.
Having sat on hiring committees, that's a fair summary. Most people are not very good at interviewing, because it's a weird skill, and nobody actually teaches you how to do it well. There's interview training, but it's incredibly short, and seems like half of it is about legal policy. There's ostensibly shadow interviews, but that tends to be luck of the draw on who your shadower is; most won't put in the requisite time to help coach you in conducting better interviews.
I think big companies like to pretend that leetcode interviewing scales well, without actually doing the time necessary to make it scale well.
> Right now my interview has a wash out coding exercise that is beginner oriented to get the resume liars but other than that it's all systems.
This is 100% what I've gravitated to. The longer I've interviewed people, the easier and easier the actual coding parts of my questions have become.
It's not like there aren't benefits to this process. Once you've buffed up, you're prepared for most major tech interviews. Common formats have their advantages.
That said, this format is just too expensive, and has poor predictive power.
and
// Once you've buffed up, you're prepared for most major tech interviews.
and
// has poor predictive power.
If "acquiring skill X" is broadly valuable (as you're saying in this case) then your ability to work on acquiring it is predictive of your success.
It's not predictive of the traits that mark a successful IC in my experience. I'm talking about areas like project planning, professionalism, large-scale system design, personal ownership, meticulousness, etc. Curiosity. Some of those might tangentially be covered by leetcode but I guarantee you important stuff isn't.
Everyone I've seen to fail, either via PIP or otherwise, has cracked these interviews. I've seen many fail over the years. Even worse, I've seen many whom I know would be strong performers, wash out because they got the wrong DP problem that day. Where's the benefit in a regime like this? The company loses and good candidates lose, too.
Or: "World's best banks and world's best traders have invested in subprime mortgages, they couldn't all be wrong?"
Using skin color for hiring is illegal and immoral and the government does not allow it.
Issuing sub primes is bad for business and blew up pretty quickly.
If asking programmers programming questions is "no different" from the above, which is it: illegal or bad for business?
If they were bad for business, why was it a common practice for so long? Does a business have no clue what's bad for business? Or is it just self destructive?
If "it's an established practice" argument also enconoasses things that are bad for business, and things that are immoral and illegal, maybe it's not a strong argument?
I would bet money that the latter is far more predictive of quality candidates than any leetcode problem you randomly pluck from the ether and expect them to solve under pressure.
But again, I expect nothing less from an industry that isn't exactly known for being good at human interaction.
I've previously hired contractors with minimal interviewing because they came from a trusted partner to my organization, so I asked the partner about their productivity and skills and they were given good reviews relative to what we were trying to accomplish.
Each of them were a net negative with respect to the project. The time it took me to review their pull requests and help them write code which was passable was longer than it would have taken me to write the code myself. Additionally, the code that was passable has been a constant source of bugs.
A more thorough technical interview may have avoided hiring them. In retrospect, the correct course of action would have been to not hire anyone until someone qualified was available. This anecdote does support the grand-parent posters theory that operating with fewer incompetent people is better.
Additionally, their proposal is generally workable (which again, yours is not).
Competence is a spectrum and so at some level of competence there will be people who are competent but unable to pass overly complex interview questions. The fact that this overlap exists seems to be what you are complaining about. Even still, not hiring people in this overlap is probably safer than hiring people which make the system worse in my experience.
You're right in that HR of their previous (likely current) employes won't say or allow saying anything.
But of course they're likely not giving as references their current boss, for obvious reasons.
Their previous bosses though, who have also left that company, will speak to you freely.
What could be niche about this? It's the most overwhelmingly common case.
Most people change jobs every couple years and your interviewees ex-bosses are also in the industry doing the same job hopping. It is a near certainty that nearly all (if not all) their ex-bosses have moved to different companies already.
This is the most common case, by far.
Are you suggesting going further back, to the candidate's previous previous employer, and hoping that their direct manager from years ago is able to provide reliable and accurate testimony on the current state of the candidate ?
I'm surprised this is not a universal experience based on these responses. Every candidate I've interviewed has given at least one ex-boss as a reference. Every reference I've ever given has been ex-bosses.
Competence is most absolutely not one spectrum. Competence is measured in dozens (hundreds, really) different axis. Everyone will have different scores (if we could realiably narrow it to a score, which we can't) on different axis of skills. Which of the skill axis are most relevant for any given role will vary, obviously. A generalist will have decent scores in many, a specialist may have mediocre scores in many but 99+percentile in their chosen areas.
Leetcode interviewing measures along one single uninteresting axis, the one corresponding to memorization of algorithm puzzles. That axis happens to be entirely irrelevant to any job I've ever hired for. So I don't test for that because I care as much for your skill doing leetcode as I care for your skill juggling frogs. Neither is relevant to the job.
Have you considered that with a strong understanding of elementary algorithms and data structures it is possible "solve" rather than "memorize" these algorithm puzzles?
If that were even remotely possible, why isn't that person cranking out multiple novel algorithm research papers per day? They should be outpublishing Knuth, for sure.
So, no. The only road is to memorize extensively and practice acting skills on the delivery.
EDIT: Obviously even some of the most elementary Algo 101 problems were research questions at some point, and led to published papers, but that's the reason people write textbooks and use them in college, so newcomers don't have to redo the foundational work.
Sometimes you'd get interviewers who were at least smart enough to realize that maybe the most you'd get out of it is "can this person break down a seemingly impossible problem into manageable pieces?" That's fine, but then state that or at least give them something real they'll actually run into if hired instead of trying to estimate how many gas stations there are in LA county in their head.
And while those suck[ed], companies having been doing similarly ridiculous things for a very long time to try and save themselves from hiring the wrong people. IBM's infamous "lunch interview" (false on Snopes, but the concept is true and I've seen played out) or asking candidates to take a personality type test to determine if they'd be a good fit before hiring (yes, I did this once early in my career and would just walk out if asked to do one today).
The most difficult I've found is getting fellow programmers to realize that they _don't_ want to hire another "you." Yes, you're an expert in networking and security. Don't interview for that so you can show off your own skills or "teach" in an interview. Interview _for the position_.
You want a diverse set of knowledge, skills, experiences, communication styles, etc. at your company. And - while it can be scary - you always want to hire people who are better than you (esp. if you're a manager!). But that is so hard to get people to do.
Just to be clear, you made an assumption in your first sentence and then ran with it for 3 paragraphs.
// I would bet money
If I had to bet who can better assess what proper recruiting for a company looks like, I'd bet MY money on the company, not on random complaints on the internet that basically amount to "it must be the interview structure that prevents me from working at a FAANG"
Not asking those types of questions, and instead asking a more straightforward programming question with relatively simple data structures, and some tradeoffs to be made, plus maybe some follow up optimization questions (but like in general systems terms, not code), tend to work better. But it's still whiteboard coding for the most part.
While I do detest leetcode interviews, I've yet to see another interview system that works for extremely large companies, that covers all the bases:
* won't result in you hiring someone who can't write a for-loop in their language of choice (I know fizz-buzz is a meme at this point, but I have interviewed people who failed a question easier than fizz-buzz before - not even on a whiteboard. People who genuinely cannot program at all will apply for programming jobs, and some of them will get past the recruiters.)
* is reasonably based on skills
* is not hyper selecting for "people extremely similar to people who already work here" (not "what school did you go to?" or "who do you know who already works here?" type stuff)
* can be made mostly uniform across the company (though, even leetcode-like interviews are hard to make uniform, it's easier than a lot of other methods)
* isn't trivially cheated (100% remote tests, where someone else just does it for you)
* won't be outright rejected by people who already have jobs (internships, though this does work well for new grads)
* won't be outright rejected by people who have less free time outside of the job (e.g. people with families, small kids won't go for "work for a week" type take-home assignments which say "couple hours" but you're competing against people who will dump 40+ hours into it in a single week)
A lot of other systems work really well if you're willing to slash your candidate pool to a smaller percentage, but break down once you start trying to fairly get at more candidates. Something that works well for a 1000 person company won't work if you have >50,000 developers. Something that works well for a company explicitly willing to exclude parents won't work well for a super large company.
Also, a lot of companies do change up the application process for people who are just out of school, in that they allow internships/etc, with a different route through than just interviews. (Though you usually have to go through an interview to get the internship, they tend to be way easier - having sat on such an intern hiring committee before, you get very few interviewers asking riddle/trick questions)
Time-wise, I can generally coach someone to pass a big tech interview loop in 1-3 months, not a year.
There's definitely a difference between hiring Sr. vs. Jr. programmers. When it comes to Sr, the best place I ever worked had a pretty great process:
1. Phone interview that was 100% identical for all candidates. It was basically a "take me through your work history, answering these 5 questions for each job." It worked wonderfully and gave a really good indication of what the person learned at each position and how they were able to apply that knowledge at the next job. And, if there was some obvious red flag at each step (e.g. "all my bosses have been jerks"). It also had the benefit of being more fair. I don't know how many places I've worked where if person A conducted the phone interview it was a shoe-in, and if person B did it was impossible to get through.
2. While doing #1, make a mental note of a couple things along they way they worked on (esp. if they seemed proud of them) and then - in a follow-up interview with a couple programmers on the call - really dig in deep on the technical details. Ask questions. You'll learn rapidly if they actually did the work and understand the problem or simply worked on it w/o understanding. What were the major challenges? What would they change now if they could go back? And here it's awesome if you get someone who can give answers that aren't always technical things (e.g. "I wish I knew early on how best to deal with X").
3. At this point, you're ready for an on-site and have already proven to yourself and the team "this person can code and solve problems." What's left is any final details you want to be sure of. Any odd personality quirks that won't work for the culture the company is going for? Let non-technical people they'd have to interface with interview them.
The best we ever came up w/ for Jr people was a test with some basic college class stuff like big-O and for problems 1-3 would you prefer linked list, hash table, or tree and why? And then try and do #1 and #2 above, but using their college classes/team projects as work experience. But that didn't always work out all that well.
What are the issues with IQ tests?
They can have cultural or social biases unless very carefully calibrated. Ideally you should be able to take anyone who speaks a reasonable level of English, give them test and have them get a score that matches their intelligence percentile.
In practice, the tests are built for a particular socioeconomic class and type of person. As a trivial example, imagine the test uses the word "yacht" and you give the test to someone who has never culturally been exposed to that word - that person will, on average, score a bit lower than someone who recognizes the word immediately.
Or imagine you give a test using Imperial units to a European who exclusively grew up using Metric (or vice versa). Knowing that three feet are in a yard isn't an intelligence test, it's a test of cultural familiarity.
The second this changes, the bottom drops out of software.
I don't know if it will ever happen that big companies begin openly accepting overseas applicants but if/when it does, you can expect that it wont be for 100k. Suddenly when you consider the entire planet, there's no longer a shortage of developers, and the employer has all the power.
I'd say there is not a general unwillingness to hire overseas developers, on the contrary, if more people could speak english in south america US companies would be more than happy to hire even more here.
There is a shortage in english speaking developers globally, but not a shortage on companies' interest in hiring anywhere
There are still other substantial collaboration challenges, but if more places move to be truly remote-first, those places will necessarily have solutions for that anyway.
If I start another company I’d really like to hire a competent offshore team in south or Central America but I have a lot of trouble getting there from here. If I wanted to hire a team in Israel, Pakistan or India, I could do it immediately, because I have trusted friends who can hook me up with people that they themselves trust plus or minus some skeeviness that I know how to manage. For south-of-us I have no connections and basically no way to start.
You could dine out at nice restaurants every weekend and travel around by plane every time there is a holiday and stay at 5 star hotels
Taking into account the minimum salary here is 300 USD / month and with 50k per year you are already top 1%, 100k gives you an unimaginable level of wealth. You'd earn about the same salary as the president of the country and more than most CEOs from local companies
But that would be if you spend all your salary every month which is not so smart, what most of us (bilingual developers) do is continue living a standard middle class life and just invest heavily, I invest more than 50% of my salary, mostly in real state and US stocks
As an American who moved to Colombia, I can highly recommend it. That said, there’s a lot of downsides not mentioned here. First off, your foreign earned income and your US credit score mean nothing here. You will not be able to get a loan and if you want to buy property, you’ll be paying cash. I had to pay 8 months of rent into a bank deposited escrow just to rent a fairly cheap house for one year. That also involved (literally) about 6 trips each to a physical notary office and banks). Things that would be unheard of in the US are common place, like constant physical signatures and finger prints to authenticate documents and asking for your national id number in order to do anything and everything.
A small empty lot in the nicer parts outside Medellín will be at least $225,000. Not bad and beautiful land but again you’ll have to pay cash for everything. Taxes are very high and you can expect to pay 30% - 80% more for many foreign products (“nicer” cars in particular seem to be ridiculously high priced). Tech product selection is terrible, everything lags way behind or simply isn’t available. Amazon does ship a selection of lighter weight items here but you’ll pay a VAT tax of 20% plus an import tax of 10% on the total including shipping. It usually works out to be a 40% premium. Electric vehicles essentially do not exist unless you want a Twizy. I just had my radiator fan go out on my car and was quoted $900 for the part alone which is available in the States for $200. With shipping and taxes I can order from the US for about $550 but it will take about 2 weeks to get here.
There’s a lot of unnecessary friction in daily life, just trying to do “simple” things like an online purchase.
Still an amazing place, lots of great things but as someone trying to actually make a long term life here it can definitely be frustrating.
In addition, high quality audio makes you sound smarter :) https://tips.ariyh.com/p/good-sound-quality-smarter
https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/living/take-care-of-official-m...
Because it's been tried before and for the most part it was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project after being outbid a year earlier by an overseas firm during the first outsourcing wave. Lots of people on HN have horror stories of cleaning up from that era.
We've been here several times before - like literally just this past year of everyone saying "oh but now you have to compete with remote workers everywhere!" Salaries keep rising because software is an arms race. The companies making the most profit will continue to invest in getting the best people and outside of the odd global crisis, the industry will continue to grow as everyone else tries to keep up both in technology and in hiring. All those firms I cleaned up after as a kid are still around today and bigger than ever, yet on this side of the ocean we keep making more and more money.
I think we've got at least a century before software hits the diminishing returns that the industrial revolution did. My local lumberyard is still using DOS machines probably made before I was born.
I'm sorta wondering what country would be next. It has to have a large enough labor pool to fill the positions, and still be cheap enough to at least look good on paper..
- junior: 45K - 55K - medior: 60K - 75K - senior: 75K - 90K
Although getting more than 85K as an individual contributor is not easy.
I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested entities whose incentives did not align well. Not necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding were bad.
Back to the guy in Argentina -- I imagine that he/she is actually in a reasonably good position as the amount of remote work increases. Indians not so much, because they are 12.5 hours ahead (of Pacific time). Argentina is only 4 hours ahead, which makes for a lot more overlap.
So I think the field has leveled a little bit in that sense, because if you have a remote developer in another state, they are not very different than one in another country who happens to be in a similar time zone. The other big barrier IMO is communication, so someone in Argentina who is not merely fluent in English but speaks it very clearly could be in a really strong position.
You can do bigger differences and many of us do on occasion. But on a multiple times a week basis, both 5am calls and 11pm calls get old.
My intuition is that a max of 3 or 4 time zones is the sweet spot, but it's cool to hear that you've had success up to 6.
It failed because the intent was to cut costs and they got what they paid for. The successful ones were genuinely trying to expand their engineering talent pool and quickly figured out that the cost savings were a marginal benefit that made up for some of the extra overhead of international accounting and management. Quality engineers are one visa lottery away from Western salaries so the local median salary is often completely disconnected from what a FAANG might pay for a decent engineer, which is a rude awakening for anyone trying to cut costs without destroying the quality of their output. On top of that, the people most likely to make it a smooth transition are also the people most in demand (arms race!) and competition for them helps evaporate any savings for the business.
The guy in Argentina is in a great position to get hired to work remotely for an American company, but I don't seem him as competition regardless of how good he is. It's an arms race so my employer's competitor can't replace their team with Argentinians because that down time will give my employer time to crush them (which we learned in the 2000s). They can hire an extra team of Argentinians on top of their existing head count but if they do that my employer will be pressured to hire a team of Brazilians. Before you know it, both companies are hiring even more local teams to help manage the flow of work between their existing local teams and the outsourced ones.
There's more work and money to pay for it than there are people to do it. Until that changes, we're not the ones competing, the employers are.
This has worked far better than the 'Tata' chapter which exported to very cheap Asia where staff tech skills and the support model were too often haphazard and frequently underperformed. Hiring remote staff in new-growth US cities with lower CoL (e.g. Charlotte NC or Austin TX) has delivered capable staff and nearly synchronous operating hours to the main office. However in the past 2-3 years, IT labor costs have risen greatly in 'secondary' US cities, reducing those savings substantially.
In my experience, remote staff in eastern Europe have skills equal to US folks, but the 5 hour mismatch in daytime hours and their inability to visit US sites where non-IT R&D work is done and data is acquired does hamstring this model.
I wouldn't be surprised if a 4th era of outsourcing arises soon: remote work in small towns across the US and in western Europe. European IT wages often seem to be 50% or more below US large cities. That differential is likely to diminish as remote work increasingly is established as a new norm.
Markets clear. If outsourcing were so great, it would have completely taken over by now. It has been tested for decades now and it hasn't.
Outsourcing fits really well for organizations that have a lot of explicit, documented, well-understood domain knowledge, for which the org is the key inventor. But that's not most organizations. Most organizations are operating by the seat of their pants, competing in markets where a large number of other orgs know their business. That they turn a profit at all is more a testament to the perseverance of a few, key employees than it is the exceptionalism of the organization itself.
Every axis of communication is a potential friction point, be it collocation, industry, experience levels, language, time zone, culture, personality types, etc. The more you can remove those friction points, the more successful your project can be. But outsourcing throws several of those out the window, never to be touched again. So you're left optimizing on the few that are left, where most companies only ever optimized on those axes that have already been removed.
Ultimately outsourcing has issues with accountability.
you are a team of people located all over the world. To Your being off-shored to India as soon as can figure out how.
Worked both, and the culture difference and happiness difference is drastic.
Even a hint of offshoring will induced panic for many employees/ candidates. Definitely makes hiring and retention hard.
Yes that's right; business hates saving money and loves hiring super expensive US talent.
If you are looking to fill a position coming with a decent pay, I'm all ears :)
Every time I hang out my with most ambitious friends, I am reminded of how MSFT is 'low balling' company. That I could be making 2x if only I kept up with interviewing. On one hand, I can't avoid the objective truth of the statement. But, on the other hand, the hedonic treadmill is infinite.
I'm glad I am not in the bay area. I would've been paralyzed by the persistent reminders around me of my monetarily sub-optimal life choices. Get out out of my head: 'over-achieving friendo', I am already well into the 99th percentile of wage earners of my age in the world's richest country.
Over the last 5 years, I've seen a (COL non-adjusted) 100x (20x if I use a more practically true number) increase in salary. So far, My happiest moments have rarely required much money, let alone 100x as much as I had then.
So if you like what you are doing and can live comfortably you are at the top of your game. The rest is merely froth.
Some programming, some hardware, some chemistry, always lots of fun.
Right now I’m working on data control and privacy.
It doesn't take much to interview and double your comp. You don't have to interview at Google or Facebook to double your comp - many pre-IPO startups are paying up and their interview processes are often less rigorous.
If you're happy with your situation then more power to you. But something tells me deep down inside, you're not OK with it. I'm here to tell you that a couple weeks of prep and looking around can go a long way.
It actually diminishes very quickly for most people, which I suspect is why they aren’t that motivated.
Still true that being content with what you have can be a wise choice.
I think if anything, the decreased concerns about hiring remote AND the increase in overall demand has lead to very favorable conditions for engineers even abroad.
You have to ask yourself, why this is the case. And the simple answer is status quo bias. Many dream of a different life, but few will actually pull the trigger on a major change.
However if a company suddenly changes an established working relationship, then all bets are off the table. If people have gotten used to WFH, and now you make them come into the office, then you’re invalidating the status quo bias. Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status quo then going back to the office.
Corporate managers are forgetting a very maxim. Never piss off your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to. It’s the same reason that it’s virtually unheard of to cut salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary recession.
I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an office is to simply take away the snacks. Forget nap pods, or walking desks- don't touch my clif bars!!
For me this is indication of cost cutting going into effect. This means it's time to stop riding a dead horse and to start looking for a live one.
Yes, that’s why companies prefer lay offs rather than broad base salary cuts. Lay offs are a temporary hit to morale, while pay cuts are more permanent. Moreover, in lay offs, you can fire least productive workers, while after pay cut, it’s the most productive that will leave first.
A pay increase is a > 10 year commitment, in the eyes of the accounting department. Where I am, it's usually around 60% base cash bonus, %30 base RSU bonus, for "above average" performance (which isn't difficult). I, unlike most of my colleagues, budget my life around my base pay. I experienced the 2007 recession, so in my mind, this is all unsustainable and will crash someday.
From what I've experienced, there's a double whammy here. Only the talented folks remain, but they all know better than to stick around, so the company dies shortly after.
Maybe for a little while when there are lots of jobs offering WFH and competing for a small number of people switching jobs. However if you invert that by having lots of jobs simultaneously require people to come back into the office and lots of people simultaneously seeking new employment, then that job hop is likely to be quite difficult. At the very least, most people probably won't be able to line up a new WFH job before they either need to start going into the office or quit and risk extended unemployment. In the long run there will be more WFH opportunities than before the pandemic, but a lot of people are going to have to go into an office whether they want to or not.
It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm about to FIRE, no big problem".
Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio to live off of.
Be grateful for what you have achieved!
> Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.
Do you realise how the bottom ~50% of the US workforce lives [1]?! Getting paid six figures or more easily puts you in the top 10% of income earners in the US. Why are you talking as if these should be the norm? They clearly aren't by all metrics. You have such incredible benefits for the work you do, why do you believe you shouldn't feel any privilege or gratitude?
[1] https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-americ...
What's FIRE in this context?
The basic assumption generally being, anyone who can save two-thirds of each paycheque and invest in a portfolio yielding 4% per year after inflation can retire in 10 years. Saving two-thirds of each paycheque is of course difficult unless one is in a high pay grade to begin with, but there are enough people with the necessary discipline to keep the dream alive for many of us.
RE = Retire early = retire from the necessary but emotionally unfulfilling jobs. For most people RE means pursuing interests that are not financially viable if you aren't already FI. It can mean a youtube channel, studying whatever you want or working on a side project without strict deadlines or the stress that comes with an all-or-nothing endeavor.
The key fallacy in FIRE, is that it ignores creeping costs and the stubbornness of your dependants. Avoiding lifestyle creep in fundamental to the movement. This also means being unable to fund fancy private schools for your kids and your spouse being fine with the sudden loss of a huge income source. FIRE is an empty pursuit without a definite end goal. If you don't know what you want to do during RE, you might just be condemning yourself to a loss of purpose and possibly significantly higher risk of death/mental deterioration.
Ofc, you can always pursue a more relaxed form of FIRE. Make enough to move to part time / contracts, or move to another country with lower wages or fully dedicate yourself to a moonshot.
For those that have the ability and the desire to retire: congratulations! Please be careful!
But yes: risk is always a part of the game.
It's not so much that you can retire to sitting on your ass at 35, but it's that you've made your millions and can quit the grinding corporate job and do something less stressful and/or more meaningful, and quite likely less lucrative, without taking a big lifestyle hit. It's about having the ability to build the lifestyle you want. Having that big bank account gives you options and freedom.
Few people I know working toward FIRE are aspiring toward doing nothing in "retirement".
When you take a smart person, make their life boring, and throw them enough capital that they can afford to do anything they want, the end result is often innovation.
For most people FIRE simply means being in a "position of Fuck You", which is very empowering and provides you with more options to seek out income opportunities that make you truly happy with out having to worry about paying the mortgage or putting food on the table
It's easy to see "oh if a wealth tax is introduced, you'll run out of money by 50" as if it's a huge hole in the plan, but if you're 30 that gives you 20 years of draw down time. A change in the market or legislation won't sneak up on you and suddenly drain you of all your cash - if it does, it's probably something affecting the entire population. You'll likely have a year or two of drawing down more cash than you should before you pivot your plans.
The most vulnerable time during FIRE is the first few years of early retirement (where a market crash could wreck you), but is simultaneously the point where you're still at your most employable (plenty of relevant contacts, skills that aren't out of date, and a relatively small gap on your resume).
But I agree in general. If someone retires at 40 and realizes 5-10 years later this isn't working out, that's a pretty big uphill climb for conventional professional employment.
I know a guy who FIREd a while ago, long before we called it FIRE, and he's had a heck of a time landing another corporate job. He had a very successful business development firm and took a buyout from partners so he could move away from NYC and spend time with his kids. His kids are all grown up now and he's been looking for jobs and...crickets.
I think your circles are rather unusual, if this is true. A $900k net worth is in the 99th percentile for 30-34 year olds and 95th percentile for 35-40 year olds in the US (https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/)
Even among my anecdotal very-highly-compensated NYC tech-salary coworkers and friends, having money issues and easily sub $100k net worths is way more common than not.
I'm now in my mid/late-40s and show up as low/mid 80s on that calculator depending on if I include my home equity. When I punch in my net worth at 40 I was around 20%. If my current glide path holds I'd be low-90s when I turn 50. While unlikely to be feasible, it's in the realm of possibility that I could retire by mid-50s.
That's a privileged position simply not available to most human beings. Really remarkable when one thinks about it.
It was only really my current job and associated stock which took savings from just OK to pretty decent. I could retire now if I wanted to but not really in a big hurry assuming business travel comes back post-COVID.
The big thing is that around 900k is when you get diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations. Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $90k, which is a tall order. Or you could wait for a 10% market increase (it's up 14% this year). Not that the market is guaranteed to go up, or even by that much (we're in an unusually good market at the moment with inflated optimism). But at a certain point you hit a tradeoff where the market on average increases your wealth faster than savings off your salary will. At that point it makes sense to transition to a job that just covers your cost of living - one that you like more and offers more freedom.
At a former job we could not pay anywhere near top of the market and yet we attracted decent talent as the mission was something that resonated with many people. One category of people we'd attract were those who had already made enough money that they didn't have to focus on that, and now just wanted to do good in the world.
For me at least, the goal has been to bank big cash early, then let the compounding do the heavy lifting towards the end. As I mentioned above, getting a 10% increase takes a lot more savings late in the game whereas the snowballing effect of compounding interest is stronger, so I'm coming out ahead just by staying afloat without dipping into my savings. I look at the work that appeals to digital nomads (pre-covid, this was work FAANG and other high paying jobs didn't widely offer), and it seems more valuable to spend some mobile years financing a nice adventure with the stability of a job that lets me work from home. It means a gradual transition to RE and that very little in my lifestyle should change once I pull the trigger. Personally I'm looking to reach FI /then/ transition to a remote/part time job as a way to reduce risk while offering some extra flexibility - everything I earn in that time should be gravy and it should allow me the freedom to travel and enjoy the experiences.
Of course if you are retiring in your 40% you may want to be pretty conservative...
Retiring in 40s is a pretty big decision. It's not impossible to re-enter the professional workforce in your late-40s or 50s, if things don't work out, but it will almost certainly not be easy.
In the UK tax advantaged pension accounts cannot be accessed until you're 55 (and 58 for my generation)
https://www.financialplanningassociation.org/article/journal...
People in the FIRE communities are routinely discussing 3.5% and 3% SWR's, and see 4% as risky.
I would be shocked if in that specific cohort the median net worth at 30 was less than 500 k$. And if less than 1/10 were millionaires at 30.
The individuals who occupy the upper-echelons of this world in SF tend to be the unusual kinds of unusual people. They often have unique upbringings, come from distinctly not-obvious academic/work backgrounds, and keep much more dynamic forms of company than the typical "Backend Engineer 3" at Amazon or Google.
Sure, maybe SF has more unusual kinds of unusual people than the average city, but I wouldn't say that's the norm. VC folks are especially boring.
contradicts
> This number is meaningless without previous year trends.
Dissatisfaction will cause people to move around in the market. I don't know how much I buy the argument that people are looking for WFH, more than that they are looking to not work in a service industry which has low benefits low pay, and no chance of upward mobility.
The pandemic is giving people a chance to realize their career has stalled. I think everyone already knew that the US healthcare system was broken, but maybe people are realizing changing careers is the only way out of that bind.
Tech workers would be fine under any situation, so I don't think it's right to compare your FIRE friends with a cruise ship waiter.
It's important to note that tech workers make up no where close to 40% of all workers, and that most of the people discussed here are lower class seeking upward mobility. Being miserable is just the catalyst for seeking a way out of their situation.
I bet if HC were not employment centered, this would be much different. In the US, it's a badge of honor to have a "job with benefits". Switching jobs and not having HC benefits that are as good or cost more weighs heavy on the minds of most people.
It is definitely hard for food service workers, and what not, but the powers that be really don't have much say.
Although I don't believe that we're about to enter some form of work/life balance utopia, just from my own circle of friends, big changes are inbound.
Firstly, many of us, including me, have for years been told that working from home more than a day a week was an impossibility, and that we should be grateful for that 1 day at all. Although frequently WFH days came with caveats, such as no Mon/Fri WFH, and there was the ever present threat of it being taken away.
Then, along comes the pandemic, and 'lo and behold, I've been working home for over a year without any issue. So have the bulk of the people I know, especially those in the technology sector. All of a sudden the dozens of arguments I have had with clients and employers over the years have all landed firmly on what I have been saying all along; we don't need to be in work every day, hell, we don't even need to be in work every week.
The cat is out of the bag now, and there isn't going to be putting it back in. A lot of the last year has been positive for many, including me. I've seen more of my own daughter in the past year than I've seen in the previous 7 years combined, and I've come to appreciate how important that has been to both of us. I'm not about to let that go without a fight.
Don't fall for the "you can do more work because you're not commuting" line - if commuting is considered work time, then you deserve to be remunerated for that time, and they owe you back pay for each day you commuted in the past.
Just think, we could all pursue our hopes, dreams and soul satisfying pursuits, if having good health insurance wasn't directly tied to having a "good job".
It's basically "You have those basic needs filled here under those conditions. If you don't want that, there's a free market up there where you can bargain something better." Of course, how "basic" are the needs filled and what conditions vary a lot from country to country.
I’ve been trying for years.
I am far happier in my job and my career. And if my employer decides that they require people to come to the office, then I shall find a different employer who doesn't.
What I’ve noticed about the fire people is that they have very unrealistic budgets (static based on what they spend at age 30 often forgetting to include things like healthcare and other forms of insurance, as well as changes in lifestyle). Once you’re in your 40s, and you’re at the peak of your earnings, it’s actually really hard to walk away even if you’ve hit your target. I do know quite a few people first hand who have quit but only in there very late 40s or who made north of $10 million at one point or another.
You don't really know yourself until you've spent a month or two with ZERO outside obligations. Quite hard to do. I did a couple of multi-month gaps in my 30s.
COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save about $2500 in gas alone.
And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a software development veteran, professional in their day to day activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the office would require.
No, people were miserable in their jobs prior to the Covid era. The Covid era just gave them the repose they needed to reframe their job experience and their relationship to their employers. That's a positive development for Americans and their employers.
Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been.
All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call either notices or gives a shit. Blue collar workers got unemployment benefits that pay a living wage without needing to work 3 jobs and die of an early heart attack worrying about how they'll feed their kids.
I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year, and it's cause for celebration.
Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.
If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a living wage, but at least it will be equitable!
Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in order to pay those who choose not to work at all
It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short term wages that are the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter.
The problem with the fed stimulus was the benefits too large corps.
China has the fastest growing and largest middle class (or middle income earners) in the world. They prove exactly the point I’m making. There will come a point in time where there are less people (%) living in poverty in China than in the US if you follow the current trend lines.
Also you are only kind of right with “you pay for healthcare”. It’s heavily subsidised… compared with the US.
In the US I’ve used the hospital system once (minor treatment, no over night stay) my insurance paid $4000+ usd. In China I’ve used the hospital system for a fairly serious physical injury and was treated very quickly, couple hours and I paid ~$600 rmb.
What does "~$600 rmb" mean? That '$' character is usually called a dollar sign. Do you mean "about US$ 600, but in Renminbi"; or are you just using the dollar sign as a general currency sign, to say "about 600 Renminbi"?
Emphasising my point what does $150USD get you on an American hospital - maybe a Tylenol?
No. Just... No, absolutely not. That's among the most factually incorrect statements I've seen anywhere online, let alone on HN. Why would you even write something like that; are you really so utterly ill-informed, or just plain lying?
As in: The US spend more on healthcare as a percentage of gdp.
But it pretends that capital efficiency between government spending is equal. As Australia shows: free hospitals for less per/capita(or gdp) spending than the US…
A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.
Also, the world is well beyond being a zero sum game economically, most of the biggest economic drivers these days are "silly and irrelevant" things like Facebook, Banking and the service industry. All the world can be well off.
That myth has been disproven long ago. Achieving a high standard of living and level of education does not magically cause people to pour into the streets and protest against their authoritarian governments.
>A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.
A world where Xi Jinping is in charge of the global economy is a world where fundamental dignity is stripped from anyone who isn't Han, white-collar, hyper-nationalistic and living on the East Coast of Mainland China.
Many nations in Asia are gearing up economically and militarily to make sure this cannot happen.
Nationalism is not the same as subjecting your surrounding neighbours, which is the implication that the OP was making.
Please read some Chinese history. You'll see the exact same level of brutality, imperialism and aggression shown by the European empires, from Rome to Britain.
Much of central and Western China was only conquered during the last 500 years (basically the same period as European colonialism). They too, experienced forced cultural assimilation and ill treatment. They didn't conquer the globe in the way the Europeans did, but equally they didn't have the naval technology to do so.
Now since Yuan, you’ve had Ming and Qing… neither of which were particularly aggressive outside of their borders… and Qing was of course the start of the Opium wars, where the colonial powers essentially raped china for all its resources.
With regard to your strange Naval quip. You should look up the Chinese treasure ship. (Ming dynasty)… predates the colonials naval power.
So which Chinese in particular would you like me to read about? Everything you said is factually incorrect. To a laughable degree. I recommend you watch Marco Polo on Netflix, it’d teach you something.
I’ve got a major in Chinese History. Maybe get one of those too and come back and we can chat?
Sorry, must have missed the meaning of the "even", so the more charitable reading didn't occur to me.
While a flip doesn't instantly switch it does cause an erosion of the stability of the government. An enlightened populace is less accepting of authoritarianism than an unenlightened one and the excess luxury time that wealth creates leads more of the populace to enlighten themselves.
Australia has both, and a smaller gdp/capita than the US. Happy to dive as deep as you like.
On both front, Australia still has effective unions with political representation, and thus corporate interests don’t always win. That’s the main difference with the US.
"The 5 largest companies in the US are all computer software/hardware.
Australia's largest company is in mining, and 4 of the next 5 are banks.
Australia really needs to join the modern world..." [1]
--
On top of this you haven't compared -
1. The quality of life difference between minimum wage workers in those countries 2. The quality of health care between these countries 3. Median house hold income (not everyone is on minimum wage) 4. Differences in taxes and "net" pay 5. The differences in the makeup of the economies and conditions of jobs
Honestly the factors are endless and I am not going to spend more time enumerating them all.
[1] https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1403627678528200704
You want to talk about quality of life difference between $7/hour and $23/hour ??? Sure where do you want to start?
Want to talk about quality of healthcare… the US will lose badly here (except in certain types of cancer). And skewed statistics because the US just refuses treatment to a bunch of folks which hides treatment/mortality rates.
You want to talk about median income 33k (us) vs 43k (au)?
Or back to the more pressing point: when you only have corporate lobbyists and no lobbyists for workers (unions) workers get skrewed across the board.
All I was saying is you can't use GDP as a gauge for how much money is available for payroll (as suggested by the grandparent). That is very dependent on the economy producing it.
And yes, Australia beats out the US on pretty much any metric you like (unless you are looking for corporate benefit, then the US will win out, it’s much better to be a capitalist in the US)
Because if they are in positive GDP then they are in an economic surplus… that’s what gdp is right? Else they are in a recession.
Neither of which matter to my point, because the pie is ALREADY big enough for a living wage for everyone.
I am saying there are a dozen countries, including several that are extremely similar to the US, that not only have higher wages, and higher minimum wages, but also extensive paid family and vacation leave, universal healthcare and a wide range of quality of life metrics around or above what we see in the US.
You may be right about this. In fact I'd wager that you are. But the problem isn't that part of what you said; it's this:
> That's not how business or the economy works.
You're probably right about this too! The problem is that, in these conversations, we usually just stop here. Whereas more and more, I'm finding myself asking "can we citizens find ways for business or the economy to work in some other way, even just a little bit? Are we willing to just creatively try and answer some of this stuff?"
I think, if you just stop at "that's not how ___ works" without pushing things further, well, it feels like rolling over. The way "business and the economy worked" in the American South as recently as the 60's was that, if you had a certain skin color, you were relegated to a shitty part of, say, the restaurant, or you were prohibited from participating in the economy in any meaningful sense at all. But then some people asked "is there a way for things to work differently?" It's far from sunshine and gumdrops 55 years later but you can't be chucked out of a lunch counter for being black anymore.
Congratulations, guys, you're well on your way to reinventing Marxian economics.
Sure you could look at capital investment as a form of payroll, but it's going to heavily skew the numbers and now GDP is not a great way to estimate if we can afford to pay a livable wage simply by looking at GDP.
Your right, numbers don't show everything and yah just can't redistribute gdp in a communist sort of manner. But I do think one of the parents thinking exercises does indicate that wealth distribution is more of a problem in America than certain European nations.
Capitalism for all it's flaws is a great system to motivate work, wealth creation, and capital investment(as u mentioned).
In an alternative reality fairer system that can muster up a similar work ethic the average person would be better off and you'd have similar innovation potential but with different work ethic driving motivational mechanisms. But that's a improvable hypothetical to be fair. That's your point of contention right?
I bet I can guess which group you think you belong to.
> to those who don't wish to work
> those who choose not to work at all
> the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter
You're making my point for me with the arbeit macht frei dog-whistles here. So let me be clear: if "work" is defined as "millions of white and blue collar professional lives before Covid, lives replete with Kafka-esque meaninglessness in the former group and actual, medieval misery in the latter", then what I am saying is:
1. Yes guy, exactly: people no longer wish to "work", by that definition.
2. This is a good and deeply hopeful thing.
A society that's serious about human flourishing will grapple with these questions on a deeper level than "what's the unemployment rate?" or "should Amazon be lauded for 'creating jobs?'" Covid has forced us to grapple with them.
The usual Cato Institute talking points all involve pointing at the poor and moralizing about how they don't want to work, but comments like yours hold less and less water as time passes, largely because of shit like Covid. The notion - your notion - that there's an enormous class of people out there who are nothing but shiftless layabouts who fundamentally want to leech off of the rest of us is a strawman. While I'm sure there's a parasite or two out there, human beings of every class find deep meaning in labor. But the labor has to be meaningful!! Or, at least, not soul-crushing or immiserating. (And let's not even get into the really fun side-claim I'd make that there are proportionally way more parasites at the top of the socioeconomic pile than the bottom.)
So: to the extent that anyone doesn't want to work, they don't want to work because the labor available to them is innovatively life-ruining and in most cases vastly underpaid. To want to work in such conditions when there are suddenly alternative choices, as you imply they should, is to be deeply ill. Actually insane. And more of a reflection of where your heart is than anything else.
This reminded me of an old political cartoon I saw at the Abraham Lincoln museum: https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.04994/
It shows Lincoln with his (supposed) supporters and their requests, one of whom is depicted as saying, "I want a hotel established by government, where people that ain't inclined to work can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."
The idea I get from the Cato echoing types is if you have a job you should beg and scrape and genuflect for your betters to thank them for their grace in employing you.
I think this meme accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Companies contracted but demanded more work from their remaining employees. Feeling fortunate to be employed they increased individual output to cover for the reduced head count. Companies screwed over employees then shrugged their shoulders with the "it's the economy" refrain.
I think I first heard it from Yanis Varoufakis (https://youtu.be/YpOLHSzZ8jc). Watched as many interviews of him as I could find during those long days at the beginning and middle of the pandemic. He's an exceedingly sane person.
Work, in general, is stupid. The entire concept of it is inane. My fantasy version of utopia is a peaceful, post-scarcity society where no one ever needs to work, and automatically gets a life of luxury simply because it's available and costs nothing. Many people will choose to fill their time with things that look a bit like what we now call work (if you tilt your head and squint just the right way). Many will devote their lives to the pursuit of furthering humankind's knowledge. Many will choose creative endeavors that in today's economy would be judged worthless. Many will focus on their families and enjoy their time with them. And yes, some will choose to sit around and do nothing all day but eat junk food and watch the utopian equivalent of TV all day.
And all that is not only ok, it's awesome! Obviously this is a fantasy world, and we can't live in it. But we should think more about that as a goal, and shape things as best we can. Let's stop creating bullshit jobs just for the sake of full employment, and figure out what really needs to be done, and what doesn't. There's so much wealth in the world that we could certainly find an alternative that could keep people housed, clothed, fed, and then some, if there isn't a job available for them.
Our current system is just based on personal greed and cynicism. If we don't evolve beyond it, I fear we won't last as a civilization (or possibly even as a species) for many more centuries.
Contrast with... "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -- George Orwell.
Sadly, I think we're still closer to Mr Orwell's vision at this point in time, in spite of have more material comforts and resources available than at any point in history.
To get to your utopian vision, we'll need to permanently break free of our primate instincts. That's not going to be easy.
Things can definitely be more equitable than they are now, and should be if we truly want a meritocracy, but let's not get caught up in the delusion that society can exist without people doing shit jobs they don't like.
Overall I agree with you: I'm not naive, nor am I a utopianist. I'm fine with more equitable. But we're so entrenched in the status quo that it feels like you have to talk like a revolutionary to get even a shred of "a little more equitable".
Edit: wait though what's a "post-scarcity" economy, anyway, concretely? I've heard since I can remember that we grow enough food as a species to feed everyone (and yet we throw tons of food out) - is that not a decent marker of being post-scarcity? We seem to have enough wealth in the US to be in neverending proxy or non-proxy aggressive wars against various groups of poor and largely non-white people - that wealth, used slightly differently, has got to be some kind of dent in all sorts of scarcity, no? I'm not writing this to attack you whatsoever; I'm genuinely curious. Post-scarcity is a phrase I've heard smarter people than me utter every now and then, and it only just occurred to me that I've never actually figured out what it meant. (I'll Google it now of course but I'd love to hear your perspective all the same. Cheers.)
The reason it gets brought up is because the moment one person's needs or wants infringe on another's, there needs to be a way to decide who gets what. Generally, this is what people are talking about when they talk about various economic systems. You come up with different mechanics that use the distribution of goods to incentivize the production of more goods.
The only way we escape the economic games that need to be played, to keep people working and producing things society needs, is if we no longer need them to produce anything. Then you no longer need the incentives and feedback loops that tie consumption to production, and people are generally free to do whatever the hell they want.
The idea of post-scarcity brushes over that dark part of human nature, and assumes we can figure out how to cooperate, even absent antisocial misanthropes. In Star Trek, they have "figured it out", but the transition to post-scarcity is understandably only vaguely described.
I believe the transition to post-scarcity will be gradual, that it will happen faster in some sectors of society than others, and that this process may take multiple generations to complete. This has been the case with every other major economic shift, why would it not be the case with post-scarcity?
If this is how the transition to post-scarcity occurs, societies will eventually hit a point at which many people still need to work to produce our economic output, but far fewer than currently do. How will our economic system handle that situation? The selling of labor is the primary mechanism by which we distribute resources, but if we get to a point where only 20% of the adult population are needed in the labor force then how do we distribute resources to the remaining 80%?
Now, where things get really interesting is that "needed in the labor force" is not a binary thing, either. What if there's a big slice of the population from whom we only need five hours of labor a week? And they coexist alongside another slice of the population from whom we need forty hours of labor a week?
Maybe we're already a few steps down this road.
Most jobs that people have now aren't strictly necessary. If everyone gave up their leisure time to do all of their own cooking and cleaning, a massive set of jobs would disappear overnight. If we all at local, another. And the list goes on. Effectively, what happens is, we invent new jobs that are based on want as opposed to need. It's easy to look at that picture and say 'there is so much unnecessary work that happens!' but really, that X% of the economy based on want is required for price discovery of the rest. That is what your last paragraph is touching on, how do we decide who does what and how much? In capitalism, the answer is price discovery, and for that to work, everyone has to participate in the market.
This is precisely what I'm getting at. We've built a system on the assumption of a forty-hour full-time work week, with a goal of minimizing unemployment and (recently) maximizing labor market participation. We did this because we need participation in the market for effective resource distribution.
What happens when our economy simply does not need that much labor to produce all the economic output we want? Do we force people to continue participating in the labor market in makework jobs just so that they can have access to resources? To what extent are we already doing this?
But logically it would seem that should be: Everyone still has to work, but a little less than hitherto.
Now the question becomes, how much less?
The US Government printing money is why used cars, washing machines, and hotels are getting more expensive, while other categories stay generally below historical levels?
Companies aren’t really complaining about a labour shortage. They’re complaining that no one wants to work for their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail around in their yachts.
"No one wants to work for poverty wages in my shitty restaurant!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Raise your wages.
"If I raise my wages I can't stay in business!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Make your restaurant less shitty and get more business. Innovate. This is just competition - we like a little competition in America. You're not against America, are you?
They're just as reactive / emotional as the liberals they decry for being emotional. I know that schadenfreude isn't a workable foundation for a political outlook, but watching these people become ever so slightly uncomfortable about their position in the world before we inevitably return to pre-Covid status quo ante is worth a good chuckle.
Not only that, but the social and political ramifications of having not only blue collar workers out of a job, but also the PMC class as well. You want a revolution? Cause that is how you get one.
Outsourcing has costs on it's own but it makes sense for America to artificially inflate those costs to maintain its consumer market. America eats the world and through doing so provides a lot of liquidity to the international market. Whether that is just or whether it should specifically be America is up for debate - but it does have the power for force others to play by its rules within certain limits.
Bare naked capitalism isn't so far off from an anarchic free-for-all with spiked clubs.
It sounds like maybelsyrup has it right, and it's these business owners who are in for the rude awakening. There's a rootbeer stand near me that has a message on their menu saying, "if minimum wage is raised to $15, our prices will go up 10%." They charge $3.60 for a pretty good cheese burger. When I read that message, I sit there thinking that the owner is an idiot. At $4.00, the burger is still a better deal than McDonalds and $15/hr is a solid wage in this area.
Yes! I keep seeing stuff like this, and I think "wait a minute, you're telling me that you want to slightly raise the price of this great product or service, and in exchange, your employees will be paid a living wage, or get decent health insurance, or another half day off, or a vacation? Please take my fucking money."
I recall being in an all hands bi-weekly meeting on one Saturday, one of the sons stood up and addressed the entire small company:
"I called around and you know what, we pay about average for the industry. Maybe a little bit on the upper side of average. You know, I could raise my prices and maybe pay you all more, but then I would have less customers. and If I have less customers then I can't afford to pay as many of you."
He looked around with an expression that I felt like was almost contempt, but really wasn't The industry is pretty low margin and they got theirs to be very good with volume sales and very good efficiency in processes. He felt the pressure to execute their plans to expand into another, second facility while remaining profitable enough at the original to fund their plans for world domination.
Every day they had customers waiting in line for literally hours for their turn in a crappy, kind of gross facility that had been cobbled together by these DIYers over a number of years. Every day they turned away customers in droves.
I thought to myself: Old man, if you don't raise your prices, you are a priceless fool. If you can't hire enough people to handle your amazing, envy inducing volume, _and_ you have the gall to exclaim proudly that you pay a little bit better than average, then you are surely and rightfully doomed to this mediocrity until you hopefully die.
What he said next only confirmed my young ideations: "We only want the people who _want_ to work here, to work here. If you don't like working here, well you should go somewhere else."
Nowadays they are still in business. They had indeed increased their pay by over 40% in the next couple of years. They opened their second facility years later after more years of project extensions and overruns, just in time for a global pandemic to shutter their entire operation for months. I'm happy they saw the light and realized what you have to do to attract and keep quality skilled employees, but I am for more pleased to be their competitor.
Like some other commenters, and many thousands more in the broader discourse, you're speaking from a position of "this is the way things are and they can't be changed, so there".
My main point isn't to argue for this or that particular policy. My main point is that the world can be different. People motivated to change it will find a way to do so. In matters like these, arguments for economic determinism are borderline defeatist.
We shouldn't subsidize unlivable business models with human misery.
If that (the closures) also result in misery (of the unemployment kind) that will also be a good thing. It will signal stongly that we depend on broken business models and need to update them.
What you want is a compromise that perpetuates substinence-level wages and working class people needing 2 jobs, for the benefit of keeping alive zombie businesses.
Sure, but this has been happening for all of history, and the end result has been higher wages and lifting people out of poverty. We still have a long way to go, though, both locally and globally.
I just started watching Warrior, which is a TV series set in San Francisco in the 1870s. The Irish-Americans are pissed off that the fat-cat business owners have been importing much cheaper labor from China. Of course they forget that during the early periods of Irish immigration to the US, they were the ones undercutting the wages of the Anglo-Saxon incumbents. This has been the case for pretty much every wave of immigration that included a large component of low-skill workers.
This is in play all the way to modern times, without the need for immigration's effects, with the outsourcing and offshoring movements starting in the end of the last century, moving manufacturing to parts of the world with cheaper labor, and now just this year companies realizing they can employ remote knowledge workers (in the same country, even) for less than their current workforce.
This is just normal (for better or worse), and yet you act like it's an aberration that will cause the sky to fall.
Sure it is, but who pays the price at the end?
an example is the inner city food deserts
Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have.
It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.
The key thing about the world is that someone made it this way. I have to believe that it can be made differently.
Țhere is a short term greed pushing wages down so in that sense I agree.
That broader human "we" is the deterministic historical process that is insurmountable for any one person. It can only be contested with a countervailing historical process when people organize and cooperate, and that's a lot harder to get rolling than just calling your congressperson.
And start interviewing for remote jobs, if you have the luxury to do so. Especially if you are in an industry where talent has the most bargaining power (i.e. tech). Don't tolerate this nonsense: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazons-covid-...
I think it depends on where you work and how the executives care or don't care about their employees.
I was working at a large corporation during the 08' recession. They took away all of our perks (free coffee, free milk, bottled water, bonuses, christmas parties with bonuses, etc) all in one year and then never brought them back which resulted in a steady flow of people quitting.
Likewise, I was at a much smaller family run company shortly after the aforementioned big corporation (less than 300 employees) and we had amazing Cadillac health care, yearly bonuses and generous salary increases and four weeks of vacation (double the norm at any other company) to start. Most of the company employees were 'lifers' for obvious reasons.
Right now? I work at a huge health care company. Its somewhere in the middle. We get a lot of technology perks, three weeks vacation, decent salary increases and yearly bonuses that are competitive. The health care plans ironically are some of the worst I've had, but its offset by the other things I get.
Everything is relative and I think people just need to find what works best for them. Its also a great time for all the people complaining they can't seem to find work anywhere. LOTS of mid tier gigs right now for those who want to get out there and find a solid gig, instead of staying home and collecting unemployment to the tune of $1,200/month.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-b...
During the pandemic, the companies that were still hiring stepped up the bar. Maybe that was the push needed to tell people what the ramifications of this is. Now I am finally hearing from a lot of engineers: "Am I going to have to do this my whole life? I don't want to do this now let alone for the rest of my life". I have dozens of friends from Microsoft to Google plotting their exists.
If all goes well, I am out in 8 years (but things rarely go well). I have a number and once I get to it, I am out. I dont want to deal with this shit anymore
Even better, the people that are the most averse to Leetcode cramming are often the ones that will see the greatest benefit, since they usually entered their current position with a single offer some years ago, and would be getting multiple offers in a very hot market today.
During the pandemic many people also made some changes to their lives (bought a house, moved out the city, moonlight second job, started consulting remotely, etc.).
Then you throw in the crazy rise in the markets (stocks, crypto, real estate) that many people have benefited from.
Coupled with the popularity of FIRE mentality, rise of remote work, etc, it doesn't surprise me there are big changes coming.
Less than 10? I would need to know more details on this before believing it at face value. Say a FANG person makes 300k/year on average over 8 years.
That's 2.4 million pre-tax, something like 1.4M post-tax, and not enough for FIRE for most people.
Maybe if someone was early in a startup that had a massive exit, sure. But that definitely doesn't describe the typical FIRE person/FAANG worker/etc.
You're also assuming they did nothing with their earnings over those 8 years - when in reality most are invested in the markets which have killed it over the last decade.
I think people in tech are making a shitload more money then most realize.
1) Sense of (in)security. There is the thought of, what if my investments lose a lot of value. What if costs suddenly go up. So the number keeps shifting up. Just another x dollars and I'll retire.
2) As I get older, the thought of retiring is also starting to lose appeal. Life's priorities change and preferences change. I wanted to be able to not work and travel the world. Now that sounds some what exhausting and unanchored. Personal situation also comes into play. Single vs those in relationships. Will the partner welcome the FIRE lifestyle etc.
3) There is a bit of how society will view a 30 something with no job and no plans to get a job.
If you stop working, you risk losing both those networks.
That's true of “work” viewed broadly, but not necessarily particularly of wage labor more than other things within the broad sense of “work”; certainly, I’ve found it to be no less true in political and charitable volunteer work than it is in wage labor.
For example, many of my aunts and uncles that retired around 55 - 60 are / were having many health issues some have experienced decline in mental sharpness. Where as my grand parents who worked on the farm until into the 70s were fairly healthy until towards the end of their lives.
I think less than 1 in 10 people who talk about FIRE have some kind of realistic expectation about FIRE (i.e. you can't stay in the USA and also live like a king)
- Mental illness.
- Uncomfortable amounts of stone. Feeling trapped by the system.
- The constant paranoid fear of other people who kind of want you dead.
- Shitting in pots.
It's pretty easy to live like a king in the US, just be homeless.
Also in many eras quack doctors.
Not just people wanting you dead, but close family members coming after you and your kids.
And just how true that bit is about lottery tickets being “a tax on people who are bad at math.”
Having a bunch of money means not having to have a mortgage. That’s pretty powerful by itself.
Feels like most huge corporations do an executive shakeup every 5-8 years or so, and they shake some people out, but those people just get picked back up by someone else fresh off their own executive shuffle.
Stated preference is much noisier.
My observation is there are a lot of people who have learned to hate their boss while remote. My SF friends may be surprised that wages are resetting to Chicago and Texas levels for new workers. That may slow down some of the movement.
If the work-from-home thing has given you thoughts about what you like, now is the time to go. I see very few firms insisting on onsite work though, having interviewed with quite a few over the last few weeks. Even guys that I know would rather have people in the office and would pay them very well are feeling forced to let people work from home at least a couple of days.
Salary wise it seems like it's breaking upwards too, though of course all I have is my own offers and the word of some recruiters. There's also just a lot of firms out there who are happy to create roles for people they like, or discuss new ventures with new people.
Also, don't forget if you're going to look, absolutely everyone is interviewing remotely. You can sit at home at interviews all day until you find the job for you, something you might not be able to once more firms go back in the office.
Don't wait on your company to make a remote work plan once they've got you all back in the office. Start looking around now while they don't have a monopoly on your time. That doesn't necessarily mean taking interviews during work hours -- my previous job was 10-6 eastern, and east coast companies would happily interview me at 9, while west coast ones interviewed me at 7. Once your current company has you back in the office, they have a much stronger grasp on you, and they know it. That's why they want everyone back in the office before they talk about remote work.
But if you're not going to a company that is itself 100% remote, I'd still be wary about being the stranger that they only see online. I went with a job where I was only an hour away from the office but could still work remotely, and plan to be there once every couple months, so I still get some face time.
There are a lot of cities in the USA with an underpaid, but experienced workforce. While you might not find these offers to be competitive, someone from Springfield making $65k would absolutely jump at a $95k offer, even if that's still pretty well below the median national salary.
It's a lot more "we're remote right now and haven't determined our remote strategy" which like my current place generally means we'll expect you back, but might be a little more lenient on why you need to do a special WFH day.
I've done both full remote and full open office. I think being close enough to go in and get together to determine project path and then going remote to work on it seems to be the way to go. It doesn't look like my current employer believes the same way - even though they are doing very well right now and we're all remote.
This is ludicrous to people steeped in tech, but I have had former colleagues or classmates or even myself work on all of those in the past year and a bit.
https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Technical+Product+Managers+%26...
Agreed on the salary uptick now. I'm not actively looking, but I'll entertain interesting companies. I've had a lot more companies say "yeah, we can do that" when I tell them I want at least $200k base (8 YOE, full stack developer) than before.
A) Is this annual? As in their unvested RSUs are nearly 4x this amount
B) This is not accounting for stock price appreciation?
or do I have it entirely wrong. Two years ago on Blind I could tell people were discussing their compensation packages in wildly differing ways. It was impossible to tell if people were discussing if they signed an offer that computed a particular dollar value that was only relevant a single year and they just liked to brag about it, or if they were discussing their annual tax filings from employment, or even something else. I feel like this discrepancy translates onto Levels as well.
Wages have stagnated for 30 years and, to me, progress is not achieved until a house in the same area as the economic center can be owned outright in 5 years or less just like the baby boomers experienced
This seems to accomplish that, but lets throw in paying off all other encumbrances like student debt as well
It's pretty rare to see an e7 offer though.
They should be reporting offer letters that get verified by Levels admins
So its $1,000,000
So its likely heavily factoring in stock price appreciation as the RSUs vest and have a portion withheld for taxes based on current value.
First of all, find out where the jobs are. Some board for your niche or something like that. For me it's efinancialcareers. Now efinancial is still a black hole if you try to use it to apply through, but what you're really after is the recruiter details.
You then phone up the rec, or you write to him on LinkedIn. A lot of them are crap at responding, but that's how it is. Phone a few, and convince them that you are the real deal for whatever it is he recruits for.
They'll all want an updated CV. They need it to be able to proceed, nobody will place you without one. Good news is it isn't that hard, just highlight the relevant bits for reach recruiter.
The rec will then say "I've got a job at X, Y, and Z. X is a this kind of co, Y is looking for blah..."
When they have some of those details it means they actually have something. Otherwise it's just a generic company that they will find later. By find, I mean they will forget you by the time the job comes. One guy told me straight up the ad I responded to was not a specific job, it was a honeypot to lure candidates.
So now the companies get your CVs, and they decide whether to interview. If the recruiter is good, they will interview you maybe 3/4 times. Companies often screw up their own internal hiring process and ask for CVs when they aren't ready. But the other companies should be willing to interview you. This is where you find out if the rec is crap, because a fair few of them will just not tell you anything about what happened to your CV.
It's still a numbers game. I've got over 20 recruiters listed on my Trello, most of them did nothing useful for me.
It's probably worth cultivating some relationships with the recruiters. You learn a lot about what the market is doing for free from them.
Moreso, the rise of fully remote role has opened up our ideas about our current living situation. The real estate market in our city is shattered and broken. So we will also move 60 miles south to a different city... before the pandemic I was remote and missed the office. Post pandemic... fuck the office and 1+ hour commutes purely because the city, state, and country have mismanaged infrastructure for 20 years.
Some are more hands on though and prefer social learning ("show me how to do it..."). To each their own, but I personally learn faster when left alone than when someone tries to put me through their "course".
That being said, just reading the source code is under untilized these days. Engineers sometimes ask me how the system works, I send them to the repo. It's all right there, just have to learn to read the story it tells.
One risk is that often times the co-worker knows the business logic in "how it ought to be" not the reality of the underlying code. I've had engineers say "It works like X" and I have to say "well, only sometimes. The code says this..."
My commute is 5 miles. 30 minutes by bike (on a few sketchy roads) or 15 minutes by car. I need to time out which is actually faster end-to-end. I setup an office in my house pre-pandemic (It's gaming room with dual monitors on a desktop PC I built in college) 3x the space, a couch and much closer walk to the bathroom. I'm sad to give it up now.
They are, to paint with a very broad brush, folks who all worked in food service, retail, or other front-line sales industries. The forced time off last year made them realize they were killing themselves for not very much money, and they're refusing to go back to those employers.
But it's the $300 in weekly payments that is stopping people from returning to work, if you ask business owners in the area.
There is currently a wild and IMMENSE disconnect from worker attitudes to beliefs about worker attitudes, and I don't know why.
Largely because business owners are pushing the "$300/month is making everybody lazy" narrative. There doesn't appear to be much evidence it's true, at least not to the extend business owners would have us believe.
My MIL was laid off from a university job at the beginning of the pandemic and her UI ran out a looong time ago. The only reason she even collected it for as long as she did was because nobody is hiring elderly women.
If they are worth their salt they should be fighting for you.
Everytime my family or friends have trouble with federal or state government we contact our representative and let his office go fight on our behalf. It's part of what they're elected for. Hopefully your experience with your representative is a good one.
* I am currently employed with great benefits. If I am going to throw that away there needs to be something of value in exchange: leadership position, architecture, or some other increase of responsibilities. I wasn’t seeing this.
* If your primary platform or language is JavaScript everybody wants a tool jockey. They claim to want somebody full stack. But when you really press for details the really want somebody to do react on the front end and play around with their cloud provider. The services piece in the middle is where things get strained in a full stack interview. If tools are the direction of work I have already lost interest. Why would I want to give up stable employment with great benefits to wire tools together? I would rather just stare out the window.
* The idea of a senior engineer is incredibly convoluted. It sounds like people want somebody who can mentor in a vacuum. You can only mentor so much about dicking around with tools. If you try to mentor past that and the culture is just go dick around with tools you are either mentoring too much or not enough. Either way you are a horrible senior incompatible to the new organization. Worse is when they ask you to guide and train junior developers without leadership support. Really if that should work beyond vague hints you need a title. Excellent juniors have a passion for learning but many juniors aren’t excellent, just want a paycheck, and feel insecure when challenged.
From going through the exact same conversation several times in a row I get the impression many employers kind of know what they want to build, kind of guess at what they need, and completely guess at what qualifies as execution planning but cannot put any of that together into a single vision.
* Just about anything to do with the DOM. Its a standard tree model. You learn it and get comfortable with it and suddenly all that browser tooling you cannot live without becomes immediately unnecessary. Hiding from this, making a bunch of excuses, and complaining about how hard life isn't appealing.
* The file system is also a tree model. If you have an abstraction layer that normalizes file system access cross OS all you really need is a basic comfort of data structures.
* Tools that provide session management are there because planning for real time parallel distribution is challenging. This is yet another one of those that once you go through it a few times you just know how to do it.
IMHO, the "all JavaScript tech stack, connected together by a cloud provider via tooling" pattern is probably among the faster ways to get an idea from inside someone's head and in front of customers, all of the longer term problems aside.
To me personally, the "challenge" comes from being able to do all of that quickly and seamlessly, basically solid execution becomes the fun part.
Oh, also I would love to make a bunch of money relatively quickly. :)
Otherwise, I agree, it's all of: fucking boring; frustrating; and unrewarding. But, it's also most of the market for developers. :-/
If you current approach is entirely dependent upon tools it will be boxed in to a set of configurations and flexibility is lost. From what I have seen on HN the greatest challenge for most early stage startups is finding product-market fit, which means you need to pivot at a moment's notice. That ability to pivot is far more significant than whether you can have a website up in 2 days versus 2 weeks.
Honestly, as long as the tech doesn't fall over at 3am and generally lets me know when it's unhealthy, I'm just trying to grow enough to hire people who know more about making good long term tech choices than I do...
I've never had a gap year, it was all school, then immigration, work, university, more work. Any holiday time you fly back home. I kept hearing its not unusual for people in the west to take gap years, so thats what Im doing.
edit: thank you all for advice, encouragement as well as for cautious pessimism. By the amount of upvotes Im hoping Im not the only one doing this. See you out there!
Yep, that's what I'm seeing already.
Financially incentivized OSS (much of which falls under the label 'crypto') is very attractive if you're in the top percentiles of competence & drive.
Has there ever been an open, competitive, global, beurocracy-free, low barrier to entry market like this?
If you're paid by a crypto co., foundation, grants, or are financially incentivized by your crypto holdings to contribute, you're often within the bounds of both OSS & crypto.
example: devs that've contributed to Defi projects e.g. uniswap, or received ethereum or solana grants for their OSS code (i think nearly everything user-facing in these organizations is OSS).
I didn't do a gap year either. I left education at 16 and immediately went into FTE and have been there ever since (for longer than I dare count) and now that I am all wrapped up in a mortgage and kids I'm not sure I'll be taking a gap year any time soon (voluntarily, anyway!)
FWIW I have worked with several colleagues who took a gap year and never stopped. They pick up remote contract work along their travels and continue living the life of a modern day nomad. Not one of them is unhappy :)
You hear a heck of a lot more about it on HN than happens in reality.
Maybe I don't hang out with the trust fund crowd enough but I don't know ANYONE who's taken a "gap year" where they weren't doing something for ~40hr/wk in order to make a buck. I know a few people who didn't jump right into career stuff after college but even they did low pay large applicant pool type jobs at least tangentially related to their careers (e.g. working as basically unskilled labor on tourist fishing charters in Miami before getting a real entry level job on a container ship). Heck, even the people who took a year off before college were doing stuff tangentially related to their career/skillset in that time (e.g. working for geek squad prior to going to school for CE). I know a couple people who went from full time to part time or to less demanding jobs in their field prior to retirement. I know a couple people who did jobs not related to their vocational training for less than a year after they got out of the military but that was more of a stopgap to keep a roof over their head. I don't know anyone who's gone from full time to part time or less unless it's part of a career transition or approach to retirement. I'm sure there's someone somewhere who's managed to pay their rent by waiting tables and stripping for a grand total of 15hr/wk and spent the rest of the time doing art or writing a book or something. I'm sure there's someone who's banked a ton of money and taken a year off in the middle of their career. I don't know anyone who's pulled something like that off.
I've met people who do it on a 6-months basis - 6 months travelling, 6 months earning. They don't make much, their career is somewhat stalled, it would have probably ended when/if they had a kid, but they did it. They were conscious that they were sacrificing something (money, comforts) in exchange for this lifestyle.
Bit harder now post Brexit though
Almost all of the people I knew who did gap years before or after university went to either Australia or New Zealand (from the UK) following a three teaching-year degree with an extra industrial placement year - Australia in particular have (had?) a scheme where someone can live and work for a year with few restrictions provided they are under 30, and could extend that to two years if working in a rural area for some of that time.
I've moved to the US and can see how things are very different culturally with regard to travel. Others have mentioned that the US is not into backpacking. I think it's less about that, and more about travel being a prize for retirement.
I've seen this changing a bit in my time in the US, but it's still the norm for a lot of people who then end up being unable to travel. The US has many more people who are skilled and equipped for a backpacking lifestyle than I found in the UK.
I assume "backpacking" in this context tends to mean riding trains around Europe, staying in hostels/couchsurfing/etc.
The US has a fair bit of backpacking and camping in National Parks/Forests/long-distance trails although it's not necessarily a fully mainstream activity. But much less of the "European-style" backpacking.
I think it's partly a difference of scale and ability to get around without a car once you get out of a handful of (mostly expensive) cities.
My understanding is that workers get a year of maternity leave, a few weeks of paternity leave, and there is some sort of sharing arrangement whereby maternity leave can be used to extend paternity leave.
When maternity/paternity leave ends, the worker must be given their job back.
I'd expect that at many employers they can't just have the work that someone on leave would have done go undone so they are going to have to bring on someone else to do it--someone who knows that they will only be needed until the person they are filling in for comes back from leave.
Thus, I'd expect there to be a need across nearly all industries and at nearly all skill levels for people who want to fill a 6 month to a year opening.
Compare to the US (Federal 12 weeks maternity leave if your company has 50 people, no legally required maternity leave otherwise--individual states sometimes add more), where openings for people to work a temporary job for a few months tend to either be low end jobs or very specialized consulting jobs. The former don't pay enough to afford a 6 on/6 off lifestyle, and the latter are out of reach of most people. There aren't many good middle-class jobs to support 6 on/6 off.
It used to be that it was more a thing for women, but that probably changed since draft was abandoned (before that the gap year for men would usually have been military service or alternative civilian service)
Higher-middle and upper class more likely? Kids which need to earn their money usually go straight into apprenticeship or university and earn money promptly.
Basically the GP is using the former definition and the person you're replying to is using the latter definition.
Crap on the Marxists all you want but they do at least have a fairly unambiguous taxonomy for these distinctions.
This is why any of these definitions get really murky, fast.
On the other hand, someone who is worth, say, $10M or $20M is obviously still quite wealthy. But not necessarily in the doesn't need to think twice about hopping on a private plane or owning a private island category.
I think it is deeper than that, the country just has a confused relationship with the entire concept of class by both rejecting and embracing it.
I actually oriented myself more on the numbers for Germany. Which means middle class is a single household with about 2000€ net income per month. That includes a lot of trade workers. It is perfectly possible to finance a gap year without or just minor parental support.
Obviously it's easier with rich parents, but it doesn't really require as much cash as you're imagining. It's pretty common to work a little first then use all the cash to travel later for example, or to work while you travel, e.g. by teaching English (TEFL - https://www.tefl.org/blog/why-tefl-on-your-gap-year/).
The point is though - you don’t get anything at all until you actually attend classes. So taking a gap year means having to fund it yourself, or have generous parents but what this comments author describes is closer to ‘normal’ - a large number, not necessarily a majority, of 18year olds will plan out a gap year contingent on taking a part time job at some point and then using that to fund travel or something - before taking up a place on a course (and hence receiving the money)
If you have luck/motivation/connections/skillset - you might find a job related to your (future) degree too. I knew several people on my CS course who worked IT support at a local office for a few months whilst living with their parents - then set off on a backpacking trip somewhere exotic.
Everybody can have a loan for the full cost if they want one, people from poorer families get outright grants instead.
Certainly not perfect, but my impression is it hasn't significantly hindered uptake from lower income students and its not a major financial burden in practice.
In the UK "upper class" is used almost exclusively for aristocrats. No matter how rich you are, unless there is a viable way for you to hold a title (e.g. Earl), you will not be considered upper class.
Middle class is basically anyone who does knowledge work and has aspirations of home ownership.
Your description of "Kids which need to earn their money usually go straight into apprenticeship or university and earn money promptly" would be very likely to be working class kids in the UK i.e. unlikely to be middle class.
Its a bit more complex in the UK ABc1 is middle but their are social distinctions dependant on job not income.
For example A Plumber Miner or train driver might make more than an engineer but would be working class.
Basically what sort of honour would you get for doing charity work is a good marker
We all know that once old, the amount of money earned/saved will mean absolutely nothing in terms of happiness/achievement. Work achievements for office type jobs mean mean even less. The life lived well will mean everything. So some act accordingly when/if possible.
I haven't done gap year myself, but did a shorter variant - 2 times 3 months backpacking around India and Nepal. Remote Himalaya in the north, swimming in coral reefs on Amdamans, Thar desert in the west, and thousands of years of history, culture and people to meet everywhere in between. I still barely scratched the surface of what this place can offer.
Literally the best decision in my life. It changed me for the better. It motivated me to make changes in my career, go for consulting, move to Switzerland etc.
Have met tons of people from all over the world who were like this - traveling like this for 3-24 months, and then continuing work/study/beginning someplace else.
These trips I've done when having a pretty high mortgage and very little savings, and they both meant losing at least 2 salaries each time while expenses mounted. No rich family to cover for me anyhow if I would hit the financial wall. Still well worth the risk. If one doesn't have kids yet, there is practically nothing to lose with doing this, just gain.
I dont think this is true at all. Money in retirement means the difference between mostly maintaining your standard of living after work an “choosing between medicine and food each week”. I think a lot of people saving up and then spending all their savings to party every 5 years are in for a shock when they are 60 and their joints are sore and their knees don’t work and they can no longer make a salary.
I spent 3 months as a research assistant in Australia and used savings from that period to travel in South-East Asia and South America for 6 months or so. Shortly after graduating, having saved a bit as a student (again - Europe, I managed without student debt, having done web development next to my studies), I went to a conference in Taiwan with my MSc thesis and traveled back home over land. Then after working a little bit on my first job again I traveled, hitchhiking to/through the Middle East and Russia.
It's all very doable if you don't spend a lot - during many of these trips I spent $400-$1000/month.
Highly recommend it, traveling in Turkey/Iran/Oman/Georgia/Russia/Ukraine definitely shaped my perspective on the world.
Edit - Sorry, see all the peer comments made the same point.
Generally, I think family does. Some families have more money than others. It also depends how much the parents are willing and able to sacrifice, of course.
The same way you might scratch your head wondering how some fellow students pay for rentals you can't imagine affording, and alcohol binges you can't imagine affording. Students from poorer families rarely go on gap years. But even some poorer parents will sacrifice a lot, if they can find a way, to pay for their children to travel.
That said, the costs aren't outrageous. Travelling around Europe or Australia is fairly cheap for a young person (or at least used to be). There are schemes to allow travelling costs to be lower for young people, visas tend to be cheaper and easier to get, and people do local, temporary work e.g. in bars in kitchens to supplement the money they brought with them, to make it last longer.
I went to university in the UK a long time ago. And I struggled to understand how people afforded gap years (or rent) then, too. I never had a gap year, and it makes me a little sad. But as I couldn't even afford to eat regular meals, and certainly couldn't join people for socialising when they went out to places like Pizza Hut (too expensive), it was the right decision not to take a gap year :/
I had my moments, worrying about a friend's finances and professional decisions, only to learn later that, well, there was clearly nothing to worry about.
Yeah, for Americans it means buying health insurance which is quite a lot more expensive than what you get from your employer.
That said, I've only purchased travel insurance maybe a half-dozen times out of probably hundreds of trips.
And trust me, you want a private hospital in some of those countries. Even the locals wouldn’t go to a public hospital if they had a choice.
> As of 2013, Medicaid is a program intended for those with low income, but a low income is not the only requirement to enroll in the program. Eligibility is categorical—that is, to enroll one must be a member of a category defined by statute; some of these categories are: low-income children below a certain wage, pregnant women, parents of Medicaid-eligible children who meet certain income requirements, low-income disabled people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or Social Security Disability (SSD), and low-income seniors 65 and older.
This makes it seem like it's not just "low income", but also membership in one of those other categories.
I also didn't see anything on the page that indicated what share of expenses were covered by medicaid, but perhaps I missed it.
And the whole meme that a 65% tax rate +25% vat on most products on top of it (I am in Sweden) is somehow worth it financially because "fReE HeAlThCaRe" is laughable.
Maybe it's more lax in the more worker friendly socialist regions like France or Scandinavia but in Austria you only get healthcare coverage if you work or are unemployed and registered as a job seeker which means staying in the country and proving to your local job center on a regular basis that you are looking for work.
Traveling abroad for leisure while unemployed automatically disqualifies you from receiving any healthcare coverage and unemployment benefits until you return.
Doesn't mean there aren't people cheating the system and taking vacations abroad while receiving unemployment but the rules are strict and being caught cheating is really bad for you.
Also doing courses on your own dime during unemployment, that are not on the job center's curriculum, like a boot camp in data science, automatically disqualifies you from unemployment benefits during that period. I tried explaining to my case worker at the job center that a data science certification gives me the opportunity for a better paid job afterwards and I need the unemployment benefits for that period and her response was "sorry sir, that's the law".
Yeah, the system is extremely stupid and archaic in some cases here and if you're an ambitious high achiever it can screw you over sometimes more than it helps you.
It's automatic in those situations you've described, but you can buy into the system otherwise.
At today's exchange rate if you'd like to benefit from the healthcare system, for a year, you'd have to make a 271 EUR contribution, with no other criteria required.
As a Romanian I can say you'd be surprised how many things the Romanian system gets right in favor of the workers in comparison to some western countries. At least on paper.
With some historical context it can be made to make some sense, but when dealing with it the first time it is prima facie absurd.
I'm not sure it is! It's not in the UK, certainly.
With regards to insurance:
- in some countries (UK, Sweden) - the insurance is contingent on having a social security number, so the coverage is pretty much universal for residents, but people coming from other EU countries will still need to work or register as unemployed to get it.
- in other countries, you generally need to be working or looking for work (i.e. answer phones / invitations from job centre and attend any interviews/courses they send you to) to be covered.
Some countries (Poland for example, I'm Polish) allow you to buy insurance if you are neither working nor looking for work. But as of December 2020, about 1.5 mln Poles are not insured at all. [1]
[1] https://tvn24.pl/polska/szczepionka-na-koronawirusa-czy-osob...
I agree, although I think the ignorance extends to Europeans as well. Europeans are often surprised to hear that American software professional salaries are ~60% higher than European salaries even after adjusting for taxes, healthcare, vacation, etc. Some will argue that the US cost of living is more expensive, but they're almost always comparing some major US metropolis with some European village or perhaps an Eastern European city. I've seen other arguments that the cost of housing in the US is comparable or more expensive, but they're typically comparing some relatively tiny European apartment with a much larger American home. Europeans seem to fixate on medical bankruptcies, as though these are commonplace for upper-middleclass Americans.
This was all a surprise to me, an American, who has tried earnestly to live in Western Europe for a few years, but found that I can either live in Europe or I can travel in Europe but trying to do both would likely be economically infeasible (even if I can find gainful work as a software professional, it would specifically be difficult for my wife who isn't in a hot field). Fortunately, now that remote work is catching on, it seems likely that my wife and I will be able to do more frequent 1-3 month stints in Europe while remaining employed by our American companies.
To be clear, I think the United States healthcare system should be reformed, because it doesn't serve the poorest Americans very well. However, the US healthcare system works pretty well for the upper middle class (if not the whole of the middle class) and above, contrary to perceptions I frequently hear from some Americans and Europeans.
This depends on the state; Medicaid expansion is doing good things for the poorest people in states where it exists.
The US benefit system is tilted towards the poor, old, and people with children (distant 3rd.) It has some bad welfare cliffs for disabled people, and is the worst for middle class self-employed who aren't on their parents' insurance.
Unfortunately this last group includes all online writers and popular social media users, which is why they pretend it doesn't exist for anyone.
Why do you believe those salaries are the result of the American healthcare system? Per-capita, Americans pay more than anyone for healthcare, just in a very unbalanced way that dramatically favors those with a job over those without.
Regarding comparing tax rates, those six figure job numbers don't include the substantial amount the employer is paying to the healthcare company.
Bitterness about the salary gap is understandable, but it's misguided to say that the fucked-up parts of the US system are what has produced the high-revenue/high-profit companies that are driving the compensation levels.
> Regarding comparing tax rates, those six figure job numbers don't include the substantial amount the employer is paying to the healthcare company.
To be fair, in many European countries - and certainly for Sweden - there's substantial payroll taxes paid by employers as well. Though to end up at 65% in Sweden even with employers payroll taxes tacked on, you're already earning a multiple of an average salary.
It doesn't really matter whether or not the salary difference is caused by healthcare or indeed that Americans pay more for healthcare. The only thing that matters is the post-healthcare take-home pay; if that figure is larger in American than Sweden for a given individual, then that individual is economically better off in America pretty much tautologically.
As long as that seems to be true, you'll see people complaining about it, and they'll have a valid reason for their complaints.
Personally, I think we should have a single payer system if only for the fact that it likely better serves poorer Americans.
The easiest way to afford it is to have a job. However, if you are willing to pay more (still much less than equivalent US health insurance, e.g. in Germany around 180€/mo) you can buy it directly. Or, you can participate in that country's social safety net which, yes, usually requires you to actively seek a job (often for some loose definition of "actively.")
The only way you could end up paying more is if you previously made an average amount of money, have a lot of savings, but now make nothing. Normally this is called "retirement" and if you didn't save enough for it, you don't do it.
Still, yeah, very different than how US health insurance works, agreed.
You're not guaranteed to be covered for 6 months. If you leave permanently and settle within Canada, BC will cover you for the remainder of the month plus two months (enough time to establish residency in the destination and get coverage). If you leave the country, you are covered for the remainder of the month.
If it's a temporary leave, however, several of the provinces do cover you outside of the province, and many will extend your coverage for quite a long time depending on the circumstances. BC allows you to retain coverage for a 2 year trip during every 5 year period. They also (like many provinces) will extend your coverage as long as you're in school full time in another location.
BC does not cover care outside of Canada (assuming that’s what you meant by “2 year trip”) with the exception of emergency care at a max of $75 per day.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/health-drug-covera...
Not the case in France (at least for the past 20 years), and I doubt it's the case in most other European countries.
Nope, your parent is right, in Austria you also don't get healthcare if you don't work or are looking for work via your local job center.
Maybe France is an exception due to having stronger social system that heavily favors the workers (insert memes about strikes) while in Austria the system is very rigid, designed to favor businesses and the government rather than the workers and to discourage abuse.
I know to a European this might sound like the only two options, but pre-Obamacare, and very possibly again if the US can't get its shit together, it was impossible to buy health insurance no matter how much money you had for a large number of unemployed or self-employed people.
If there are different pricing tiers based on employment status, then the healthcare system is contingent on employment by definition. It's commendable that the American and European healthcare systems aren't contingent on pre-existing conditions, but that's a distinct issue.
Now, yes insurance is expensive, but anyone can get it for about 2x what most people who get healthcare as a benefit are paying into an employer's health care plan.
Or your partner has health insurance. Or you are studying (even if you take gap year at university). Or you happen to have farming land. Etc, etc - lots of exceptions.
Or you pay for it yourself from your savings (under 100 USD a month last I've checked).
Someone who is single with no child earning 167% of an average wage pays ~35% income tax and social security contributions [1].
The effective VAT also for most ends up far lower as a proportion of income, as most people don't spend anywhere near their whole income on VAT-rated products. For starters, you can't spend what you've already paid in tax. As such the VAT rate has a relatively low impact on total tax paid - the difference between the UK vat rate when I moved here (at the time 17.5%) and the Norwegian VAT rate of 25% added up to only about 1 percentage point difference in total taxation for me.
[1] Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2021
First of all, the OP is including the social security tax in the 65% figure. But more importantly, arguing that "the average Swede doesn't pay that much in tax" isn't very consoling for the American who would have to (1) take a salary hit to live in Sweden and (2) have to pay that higher tax rate. Universal healthcare doesn't remotely make up the difference in take-home pay.
As a reference point, taxes, retirement/pension/social-security, and healthcare account for ~30% of my gross salary in the U.S. If I moved to just about any Western European country (not sure about Sweden in particular), my take-home pay would likely fall by 40% (conservatively) while taxes and cost of living would likely rise.
Of course, the tradeoff for the Swedish system is that you have a stronger social safety net, which is certainly worth something. But the issue at hand is the notion that the European systems are better than the American system for professional employees.
And yes, there are people who will end up paying more, and it sucks for them.
The point is there's always this scaremongering about tax rates when it comes to Europe, and most of the time the tax rates that comes up are marginal rates that are not at all representative.
(My point was not to dismiss that you might well pay a very high tax rate, by the way, because the rate you gave is certainly possible, but to point out that paying a rate that high is highly unusually high, even in Sweden)
As an American, I find the tax rates much less scary than the raw differences in salary. If I could keep my US salary, healthcare, tax rates, etc and move to Europe for a few years, I would do so in a heartbeat.
Tax rates also depends greatly on which locations you're comparing. Between e.g. California and the UK the difference was small enough when I looked into it that it'd be easily eaten up by healthcare.
For my part, I spend about $5k/month total on living costs including sending a kid to private school and mortgage on a 3 bedroom house in London, and ordering food in most days, and I'm being hugely wasteful and could make do with far less of I had to.
The rest goes into investments.
How does that work? Presumably if the median salary for a given field is 40% lower, then the jobs which pay at my well-above-the-median salary are going to be much fewer and farther between with more competition. Add to that laws that (understandably) favor EU citizens and it seems like it would be quite difficult to get one's hands on those positions?
> Tax rates also depends greatly on which locations you're comparing. Between e.g. California and the UK the difference was small enough when I looked into it that it'd be easily eaten up by healthcare.
Yeah, like I said, I'm less concerned about tax rates. No surprise that California tax rates are comparable to London tax rates though; California is notoriously expensive and many Californians seem eager to move to other parts of the country.
The point is that it's meaningless to make blanket statements about whole continents when the differences are so substantial within them, and mobility within them is much less than you might expect. E.g. consider the number of Eastern European developers who could significantly increase their salaries by moving to higher paid locations in Europe, but you instead stay and e.g. work for local agencies. As such, you're not competing against all of Europe if you go to the highest paid locations in Europe any more than you're competing against all of the US in Silicon Valley.
Apologies if I'm dense, but I still don't understand. You can have a lot of variance in Europe and the US, but if the median is 40% lower in the Europe than in the US, doesn't it still suggest that any given American moving to Europe would have a dramatically harder time keeping his American salary?
> E.g. consider the number of Eastern European developers who could significantly increase their salaries by moving to higher paid locations in Europe, but you instead stay and e.g. work for local agencies
Fair enough--I wouldn't be competing against all of Europe, but there are far fewer jobs that pay $200K in Paris than, say, Chicago and the number of developers competing for those jobs is probably pretty comparable. I suspect it would be a lot harder for me to make $200K in Paris, but I would love to be wrong.
I don't know. That would also depend on what the distribution around the median are in the respective locations. And again, a blanket comparison isn't really useful because you're unlikely to be looking to move to the lower paid places. If the distribution was the same, and you had to move, you'd have a point. But you don't have to move, and so you'll inherently discard a whole lot of places that doesn't fit what you want.
For my skillset and levels, all I know is the number of places in the US where I can earn more than I do in London is fairly small. They exist, and Silicon Valley is one of them, but it's not like there are a lot. So I'd likewise instantly disregard most of the US.
But last time I considered it (I worked for a Palo Alto based startup, and flew over every 6-8 weeks for a couple of years, and I do love the Bay Area - to visit anyway), the costs of living just didn't add up for me. If I'd wanted to, I could have made it work, certainly, but it was not like the financials looked attractive enough to sway me much (either direction).
Things like food were cheaper, but even compared to my house in London, housing in the Bay Area is insane. E.g. I just checked on Zillow again now, and to put it this way: I'd need a fairly massive raise to afford a house similar in size and standards within a similar distance to downtown SF as I am to the centre of London today just to break even on a move. It's likely doable, but it's not all that obvious I'd come out ahead.
[this is while disregarding the complicating factor that I've never had a need to take a drivers license, because I've always lived places where public transport is good enough]
But your mileage may vary - it'll depend greatly on what specifically you value, what niche skills you have, and what type of areas you'd like to live in - all of it greatly affect the financials.
In some countries, individuals often don't qualify for bankruptcy. In others you might be able to restructure your debts, but they might not be discharged. In some, you may need to give up significant possessions to pay for your debts.
The US, for all of its healthcare issues, actually has a relatively progressive and accessible bankruptcy system. The majority of people in the US who file Chapter 7 have all of their assets exempted from liquidation by law. For these people, bankruptcy is literally as simple as a matter of trading all of their debt for 10 years of a bad mark on their credit report.
My family of 4 pays about 1800 SEK/month for private insurance to actually have a chance to see a competent doctor.
It is hard to overstate how bad US healthcare is for the typical American. If you are wealthy, you have access to some of the best doctors in the world, but for the rest of us we are entirely dependent on our employer for access to reasonable health care.
This has the second-order effect that _I_ won’t have to worry about _someone dear to me_ will be personally bankrupted by a medical condition. It saves me having to decide whether or not I should indebt myself to pay for their treatment.
Not having to raise fundraisers for my family members cancer treatment is worth a whole lot of disposable income for me.
(Recommendations (in German): https://www.finanztip.de/krankenversicherung/auslandsreisekr... )
In eastern Europe it's normal for your degree to take anywhere from 1-3 year longer than it should have for various reasons including "taking a year off to chill", but actual, planned gap years where you're not in education are basically unheard of. Let alone gap years where you travel around and spend money.
I know a few people who signed up for master degrees in say Germany and found that almost everyone in the program is a few years older then them.
Is that because of gap years, or an interest in actually getting industry experience before continuing academic education? I think I was about 6 years into my career before I thought I could really squeeze a lot of value out of a graduate program. (I didn't ever go back for one, though.)
I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of people taking a gap year, especially people in tech. The industry pays well relatively early and there is a surplus of jobs. If you keep your expenses low relative to your salary, don't let your lifestyle inflate beyond your means, and are fortunate enough not to be burdened with debt, health problems, or other large expenses, a gap year seems completely doable.
I think failure to save money is by far the most likely reason sabbaticals are uncommon, though I've been told by hiring managers they're more common in tech than you'd think. There's also probably some stigma against being unemployed, especially in professional circles, as well as fear of the dreaded "resume gap." As far as I can tell, that concern is fairly overblown for those in tech as well.
I think option for this is required by law in some countries, though I've never taken it so I'm not exactly sure.
My former company allowed this after two years of continuous employment to let employees try their wings with building their own product. I thought this was pretty cool, and definitely a recruitment carrot. On the downside (for the company) lots of those colleagues ended up leaving after their sabbatical was up, but I figure that those people would have left soonish anyway. It's not like they would've had a problem getting a new job.
It's sad really. As a young person this is the time to be able to do it. Often as you get older life gets in the way. I've been wanting to do it ever since I found out about it but every time something else has gotten in the way. If you're young and reading this, and everything has aligned for you, take a gap year or two.
Anyway, I took a gap time at age 36 for a 3 months trip in South America. And this allowed me to take an turn in my career when I came back.
You're on a discussion board filled with software developers and tech employees generally. The vast majority of such workers make a lot of money. If you're working in tech and you can't bank enough to take 6m-1yr off, you're doing your finances wrong. It doesn't require a trust fund to avoid the hedonic treadmill and save up.
I did take a year off 2 years later.
So I take a year of now and then, if I feel like it.
I am not the same person you asked the question to, but I guess if you work on a couple of hobby projects and actually release those in your break year, you won't have holes in your CV.
But if you leave enough coworkers who want to work with you again at each job, you can always find jobs through them.
Having a family is partially a financial decision. People should make the decision with eyes wide open, having planned for it. Achieving a financial position above sustenance before having the expensive family is generally a good idea. Same as buying the house and cars.
You can have a family, a house be sustainable but not earning enough to be able to pay for a year off of work. Which is the lot of 99.99% of people on this planet.
I think we have different definitions of "sustainable", then.
What you're describing sounds one step up from living paycheck to paycheck. And the fact that "most people are in that position!" doesn't make it a good position to be in, or a necessary one.
But, you can go on road trips, go camping, you can take a cruise, or find an all inclusive resorts. You won't have as much time for yourself like you did in your youth, but you can still travel and you'll make memories with your family, and show them new things about the world.
Why would you assume to know what other people's financial situations are, let alone their wage scale in an industry where not everyone is a US-based SWE?
EDIT: Obviously (from the voting) I hit a raw nerve with that original comment. Who knew “save for retirement” was such controversial advice. I personally plan to ensure I do not have to eat dog food when I’m 80 because I partied in my 20s but I guess to each their own. Given the average American’s retirement savings rate, my plan is clearly unpopular!
That means you're either not living on a budget at all, or you're doing something ridiculous like paying out of pocket for prescription medication without using the ACA.
I took off 3 years in my 20’s. 34 now, and back on track to retire in my early 40’s. Saving for retirement and enjoying life today are not mutually exclusive.
Do you really think all these folks want to do is fill their Instagram with pictures of windsurfing in Ibiza?
That misses the entire point of travel. It isn't to show off on instagram (although that can be a fun component, it isn't the driver for 99% of people); it isn't to tell other people you did it.
It is to have this amazing experience with a foreign culture and place. And that is very hard to value.
Yes, planning for retirement is important. But you may also be dead before you get there. It takes balance.
There's a balance to find between saving for retirement and not spending your entire adulthood just working towards it.
You may not be able to windsurf anywhere in your 50s...
I was really burnt out. But I'm not sure that taking the time did anything for me. I was a little stressed about the "unknown" the whole time and I mostly wish I had left that money in my savings.
Your mileage may vary.
While I did figure out I didn't love single handing a sailboat long term I don't regret any part of that year. I came back significantly happier than I was.
Most the advice is quite the opposite (and I would agree with them). To me, this really shows just how toxic the control is across the labor force. Job mobility is about the only vote or voice you have if you're in the labor force and if empty positions can be readily filled, you have no voice. The only reason things are interesting now is because the mass layoffs and turnover haven't been well stagged due to the pandemic so labor has more leverage. When true unemployment returns to norms, positions are largely re-filled, and attrition begins to follow traditional rates, the voice of the labor market voting will their feet will again fall on deaf ears and your voice will again disappear in the noise. It would take another global catastrophe to change this balance and give labor a voice again.
What you can't do is continue to have an expensive quality of life if you're no longer producing income.
There are other cultures like this. I’ve seen kids from Europe doing a gap year staying in hostels for very little (they sometimes do some light work for the hostel to get a free place to stay)
In my industry, and the one my wife works in, if you have a gap year it's a red flag that makes potential employers wonder if you got fired from your last job and just aren't listing it, or did time in prison, or are simply unreliable.
It's great that in the tech bubble people don't think much about gap years. But in the real world, they can doom your chances of getting a new job.
Especially since these days you don't get to explain the gap since your application is vetted, filtered, and ranked by a computer and not a person.
When I finished university, I had a few weeks between graduation and my start date at a well known Midwestern embedded electronics company. I had a $7k signing bonus and I found a $500 round trip ticket to Rome, so I went to Rome. While I was there, I learned about the world of backpacking and hostels. I ended up spending 6 weeks in Europe before returning home. During that time I decided that travel was something I wanted to pursue in my life.
The salary at my entry level SWE job was $58k, which was pretty modest. I didn’t buy a new car. I didn’t buy a new house. I cooked most meals at home and I brought lunch to work. I tracked my expenses and budget using Mint, and set a goal to save $30k so I could leave and travel in SE Asia where I calculated the daily burn rate should be around $30/day. After three years I hit my savings goal and bought a one way ticket to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to Thailand. I ended up spending over a year outside of the country and returned home with a $10k cushion to get back on my feet.
The biggest leg up I had was graduating with $2000 in student loan debt, but that was made possible mostly through merit based scholarships. No trust fund.
I inspired a friend to do the same thing, except with a destination of Australia on a working holiday visa. Also no trust fund, just living below his means and saving over time.
My advice to you is to find a way to do the things you want to do instead of limiting yourself with beliefs that only the ultra-rich can take time off from work to pursue personal passions.
Bonus points, if you have all your stuff packed somewhere and not have to pay any rent. But it depends what you want, if you like your home, keep it. Have projects in your home ...
There are lots of things to be done. Doing nothing is also fine for a while, but gets booring very soon and puts you in lethargic state ... wasting your time.
Doing nothing doesn’t get boring for everyone. And it’s my time not yours so who’s to say what a waste is?
My biggest advice is to do what you want and don’t feel like you have to live up to some HN-gap-year fantasy. You might regret sitting in your apartment surfing the internet (I didnt) but you might also regret traveling. It’s your time. Do what you want.
I wasn’t wealthy in the HN sense though. This was 2010-2013 and my rent for a tiny studio apartment was $550 a month. Other major expenses were just internet (50 a month), groceries (few hundred a month), gym (35 a month) and electricity (20 a month). No cell phone. No car.
For the 5 years leading up to that I was working full time during the day and doing freelance SEO writing side. Was able to save quite a bit. But I was really fortunate to be in the right time/place. Rent in my city had basically doubled (and then some) since then, for example.
You didn't do nothing for 3 years. You enjoyed your time, and you did things, so no, you did not waste it.
Otherwise I very strongly agree with, that you just should do, what you really want and not what others want.
After I decided to leave university, I planned a bike trip from germany to portugal. I wanted to do this. And I did it. But then, along the way, on the border to spain, at a nice place I stayed for a while ... I decided I had enough. Or I realized, that I had wanted this for a while already.
It was fun, but "accomplishing" my trip would have only meaning for my travel blog and the expectations of other people - but not for me.
I enjoyed the trip very much, but did not felt like moving further and spend the whole winter in the south. So screw other peoples expecations, I am doing what I want, so I flew back home.
Unless you have some serious FU money saved up, I'd strongly reconsider. A "gap year" as an adult can make you radioactive to potential employers. And that cash goes quick when there's none coming in. Trust me I know. It's alluring to just walk away. But trying to get a job when you're unemployed is literally 10x harder than while employed, regardless of the actual circumstances of your departure.
Just try taking a few weeks off first. And if that's not enough, ask for a sabbatical. At the very least have something lined up for a few months after you leave. Don't fall for the "I can have another job in two weeks" meme. It's rarely true in reality for all but the very top of the market.
You're right, it doesn't. But it brings up all sorts of questions in the mind of your interviewer as to the true nature of your departure, and it immediately puts you at a huge disadvantage.
Being open-minded, seeing something different, meeting other people, working hard to be able to follow your objectives and take calculated risks. That can be a valuable experience and an advantage over ten similar candidates.
Great - it can add to the list of disadvantages I have with companies I would never want to work for.
"Yeah, I was the CTO of a startup. I learned a lot. Call this guy who was the CEO, he'll tell you about it."
Ah yes, an intricate lie. The very foundation of a solid working relationship.
Not a joke -- what do you think resumes are?
Both interviewer and interviewee have to be diligent during interview process to dig out the truth about important aspects of what they expect, and not just take it at face-value (asking pointed questions usually reveals the truth, for either party)
you won't be marked as radioactive, but you will have to reassure people that you're not planning to do it again with little to no notice. apart from that, I would plan to get back a month earlier than planned so you have a money buffer to get a job you want, rather than _need_
That said, I forsee a lot of gap years in 2021-2023. The key is to have something to show for it. Did you spend a year in another country and learn the language? Do you have a series of open source pull requests? Do you have a game? A novel, even if unpublished? We live in a capitalist society and people expect that you are always working on something.
Plus if you actually use the time to work on OSS instead of traveling or whatever I have no idea how an employer (that you'd want to work at) could fault you for that. Seems like a huge asset.
You may enjoy this article by our friend NNT: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...
People aren't stupid. They'll have questions. And lies are extremely hard to keep straight in the long term. The sad fact of the matter is that you are not a person to them in the initial hiring process. You are a piece of paper. And unless you are some rock star 10x top level candidate with impressive credentials, they'll have a dozen other pieces of paper that look just as appealing and don't have those questions attached.
Id just been diagnosed which a chronic illness and though it would have been fair on the rest of the crew.
Ultimately I’m looking to hire the most effective person for that job.
I’ve got my own views on how terrible some HR depts. can be for an initial CV elimination round, esp. when hiring for technical positions.
i interview and i've never looked at the dates of employment on someone's resume. i don't care one whit when you did what in the past, just what you're capable of right now.
Maybe even more than distasteful, perhaps soul nullifying? (Pardon the awkward phrase, it's what I get when looking for an antonym for affirming.)
For myself, when I leave the engineering field it will not be to return to engineering again unless it's strictly on my own terms. More than likely teaching or similar would follow a "gap year".
When I'm interviewing candidates, a gap year is a data point - no more, no less. It may lead to more substantial data points, or it may be a non-issue. If you do as many here suggest and lie through your teeth about it ("I was a CTO! I was working on startup! Independent consulting"), you may get away with it, but likely not (even if you think you did); and if caught in prevaricating or lying about your experience and work activities, that is a far far bigger and more immediate red flag than the gap year itself.
Also - sure, knowledge doesn't expire, but oh boy skills do get rusty! A year into my new management-y role, I felt how rusty my sysadmin skills were getting. Two years in and you shouldn't give me root access again without some catchup :-).
As well, all of it is easily discussable during interview, and my team and myself will not see any of these in a negative light.
2. >> "It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting."
Of course not. At the time of my post however, a lot of advice in comments was explicitly to lie and "Say you were in a startup / independent consulting / working on OSS / CTO even if you weren't, rather than admitting to gap / traveling year", and my reaction to them is: That lie will harm you much more than any honest discussion of the gap year.
So again, I feel we are talking past each other here a bit. I've been a contractor, I've been a consultant, and I'm a full-time employee now; I've taken a time to write a book/techmanual, I've run a photography business for a bit,and I've taken extended paternity leave; so I don't think my mind is trapped into thinking of employment as binary. But I do think honesty during interview is paramount - on my team, I don't care how good your technical or functional skillset is, if we cannot trust your integrity. I understand that this is a tricky position for the candidate as market at times rewards dishonesty; but I try to be convincingly upfront in what we're looking for.
Lol, what? I did exactly that after getting pissed off with $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER. Worked for 3-4 companies for 6-8 week periods over that time on a short term basis, and made more than $LARGE_CRAPPY_EMPLOYER by a factor n > 2, and did some work on a startup. But then $LARGE_EMPLOYER came along with an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Don’t project what “independent consulting” might mean for you onto everyone. It would be interview-ending if I caught a hiring manager suggested this was a euphemism, and I’d subsequently recommend every person that asked me about said company steered clear.
It's also the most densely packed section of my resume because it was by far the most interesting and diverse range of work in that time.
You're talking to the HN crowd. I get the impression that a lot of the people here think of $200k/yr as poverty level. "FU money" to them is probably on the order of $100M.
Nope. Not true in tech at all.
I'm not sure where you got this idea in your head but it is demonstrably false in tech right now.
I took a gap year after getting fired from an extremely toxic company. I didn't want to rush into a new role right away after such an awful experience.
Once I was ready to go back it took ~1 month to go from starting my search to signing an offer letter. I interviewed at a large range of companies and was pretty picky after my previous experience.
My apply -> interview rate was consistent with what it had been in the past, and nobody cared about either my being fired or taking time off.
> trying to get a job when you're unemployed is literally 10x harder than while employed
The only thing that changed for me interview wise was that I was much pickier after not having to work for an organization for such a long time.
The rest of the interview is much easier since you have much more time to do things like practice for coding interviews, doing take home work etc.
On top of all that, because I was so grossed out from looking at linkedin during that time, I've never bothered update my profile, and I still get the same constant stream of recruiters reaching out even though it looks like I'm still unemployed.
In retrospect I wish I had had the sense to just quit earlier. Very often interviewing when you're employed at a place you are not happy with makes you too eager to find someplace else, making you more likely to ignore warning signs during the interview.
I wonder, realistically, how many people out there actually get to be "pretty picky after my previous experience"?
At the same time, squandering that privilege out of some misplaced guilt only helps employers exert control of employees.
In tech? Virtually everyone has that level of privilege so long as they have some experience. I'm fairly certain I couldn't get hired by a FAANG company (I don't have too much interest in it, but I won't deny the possibility of sour grapes), so I'm not in some super-elite category of tech worker.
In addition, not everything lasts forever. I used to work for minimum wage in customer support jobs and I wouldn't be surprised if in 10-20 years (or sooner) I'm back in a much less desirable role.
It took me a long time to recognize that my market value had increase over time, and one of my biggest career mistakes was underestimating that and not acting on it sooner. As the saying goes, from a time when most people had to work on farms, "make hay while the sun shines".
It well be more experienced people though and you will need enough $ to do this.
Your attitude reinforces the corresponding attitude by many employers. If 50% of us signed a pledge not to have children, never to take any health risks, never to join a union, not sue our employers, etc, many employers would be delighted and would hire them preferentially, making things harder for the other 50%.
I do not consider this time to be "gap year", but rather an investment in, and a reward for, myself. Why do I need such luxuries? Because time is short and nothing is destined. None of us are guaranteed to make it to retirement age. My Dad died when he was 54; my brother when he was 53. My sister survived her heart attack when she was 60 - luckily it happened when she was at work; she was a cleaner at a hospital.
Keep a roof over your head, make sure you have enough food to live on. Don't leave it until the last minute to start looking for paid work. Most importantly, enjoy your time away from the capitalist treadmill - with good fortune this can become an investment in yourself that you'll never regret!
Financial Independence Retire Early
Among the actually old (my parents' generation - in their 60s and 70s) retirees I know, around half of those retiring from decent 'knowledge worker' jobs have kept on working part-time to some extent. They are consultants, advisers, board members, independent researchers, and so on. They seem to be very happy - they are working at something they are good and believe in, while not having any economic constraint forcing them to work more than they want to, or for anyone they don't get along with.
I can't imagine having 'Financial Independence', but not wanting to do something like this. I enjoy my work in general, and I would enjoy it much more if I had almost complete freedom to plan my day and to walk away from toxic situations. But all the FIRE people that I see online seem to be basing their lives on the other type of retiree - the ones who take leisure activities and sports such as bowling and tennis far too seriously, read and watch constantly but quite aimlessly, and go on endless trips to 'tick off' different world destinations.
The 'RE' sort of implies not working, but I've seen plenty of accounts of people who ended up with varying degrees of work and income after they quit their regular jobs. For the folks who seem to seek retirement above all else, I wouldn't be surprised if burnout is both a big part of the motivation and the reason for why that is their main focus.
Traveling the world is fun but it's not incompatible with work. You just need to ask for long chunks of vacation, say two to four weeks in a row. If all you do is work a 40 hour work week then given the right schedule you still have half a day plus weekends left for leisure.
What people truly want is FU money. They want negotiation power.
I wouldn't get hung up on the name. The main part is the FI, so you can pick and choose what you want to work on or if you want to work on anything. Arguing over whether it's a real retirement or not is missing the point.
He didn't notice any long term career effects although he had to re-establish himself somewhat with new people and projects that had appeared in his absence.
I have not met a single woman who would compare maternity leave to a travel leave and a “great” time.
Infants are a ton of work, and between recovering from the birthing process (a vaginal tear with a few stitches is considered one of the best outcomes), learning how to breastfeed, only sleeping 2 hours at a time due to breastfeeding, diastesis recti ruining your abs and making your core weak, pain from clogged milk ducts, pumping breast milk for storage since the US does not provide adequate leave so the kid has to go in daycare, hemorrhoids for a good portion of women, etc.
I have no doubt anyone who has been through this would rather work an office job for 6 months.
Maybe not this directly, but I expect more people quitting "megacorp" jobs, will lead to another big wave of "innovation" in tech in the next few years as people spin up small companies to 'scratch that itch' they've had for a while.
Was one of the best, most happy periods in my life.
It made me more focused on trying to reach early “retirement” so I can work fulltime on my hobbies. Hopefully I can achieve this goal before I’m 45 years old.
I am going to start off my gap year with full time skiing and working on side projects on off/rest days and evenings.
The one major issue of taking some time off right now to travel is that it is incredibly difficult to do so. Many countries are still closed, or if open, have some sort of curfew. In the US, national parks are overwhelmed with tourists. If traveling solo, social distancing (either laws or new culture) makes it difficult to connect with strangers.
For me, I went with "Take one great photo a day."
I took a 1 year break and have had to answer a simple recruiter/interview inquiry regarding it for the next 5 years. I don't think it ever eliminated me from consideration but it was more like a necessary precaution. Not so great answers would include:
* Anything beginning with "uh uh uh". Answer confidently.
* "I was searching for work the whole time and just couldn't pass interviews"
* criminal activity
* anything indicating a bad work ethic or difficult employee
* apathy, indifference, numb, lazy. Even if you felt that way the whole time, LIE. You took a year off, you want to look like you had an undying passion for something every day even a hobby.
Easy peasy. It really depends on what you did. If you are an engineer and were keeping your skills sharp by doing a side project, then you shouldn't have any problem saying: I was working on my project/trying to do a startup.
99% of people will understand. Failed startups are neither a plus but not a negative thing either.
If long-distance hiking appeals, I'd be happy to discuss it.
Long-distance hiking isn't for everyone but
Good luck on the AT!
Good luck out there.
I'm not sure if it was a result of his experience in Korea, but I get the impression he really wanted some extended alone time. I never asked because I didn't want to risk dragging him into some terrible memories.
The back country is an environment where one is able to apply physical skills and tools, earned over years of experience, and to which most civilians attribute no value. The solitude is nice, however I think most veterans actually prefer company on activities like this, there just aren't many people who can cope with the mileage or the off-the-grid aspects.
I've never been in the military myself, but I'm a reasonably experienced backpacker. Discussions on the subject have made friends out of many coworkers, who had been deployed in the field while serving in the military.
You should ask your cousin about it, maybe even ask if you can join him sometime; he'd probably actually really enjoy you expressing an interest and wanting to tag along.
My brother hiked the length of the AT a few years back and spent about $300/month for the 5 months it took him end to end He had a great time. Even when new his gear was less than $1000 all in, though it was all 5+ years old and very well used when he started.
It's possible but I really enjoy getting into town and having a real meal. Everyone hikes their own hike.
I have seen others recommend a budget of $500/month as a reasonable amount.
Trying to figure out how much training / prep one needs to do. I want to do long distance cycling, I am not concerned about the stamina. I am concerned about camping in the wild, packing and repairing the bicycle when it breaks.
A week or so out there was invaluable to me, YMMV
Forests are wonderful. I grew up around forests, playing in them as a child. A few years ago while day hiking in a forest I came to a Sun-warmed opening in pine barrens from amidst taller pines. That specific scent of the ground and the pines etc., the heat and the wind -- all these, but mostly the strong scent, took me vividly back to my childhood. I remembered so many things as if I were there again, I saw these memories just flowing at me. For a moment, I was transported back to my grandparents place at a summer when I was 6-8 years old. I felt how much they loved me and what a good and carefree place I had been in.
For some time, I stood there in awe with my mouth open, trying to process what just happened. It was such a powerful influx of memories.
I don't know if you've experienced something like this, but I hope you will! Maybe some years from now your hike will come back to you.
I’m about 15 months into my “gap year,” similar story (except no immigration). I traveled on the cheap, switched careers, found a new city I love (and is way cheaper), and settled down with my gf.
Word of warning: depending on what kind of friends and family you have, you might lose some people along the way. Taking a leap like that brought out a new side of people I thought I knew. Most were supportive, but some not at all. Focus on the “keepers” instead of the “haters,” stay positive, and enjoy it!
Quit my SE role to drive across the country with my cousin. Definitely recommend taking time off to pursue anything you want to do for yourself.
During the early Covid lock down was the best time. Had a really good sleep. Learned cooking. Biked with my son everyday. Walked in the evening everyday.
Right before the covid-19, I visited my parents for a month in India and didn't do anything. Screen time reduced to 1-2 hrs a day - hardly any emails, no business calls, no Reddit, no HN or no news. That was the best time. Slept from 10pm - 6am everyday.
I can tell you as a non-elite, middle-class American that I've almost never heard of someone taking a gap year after beginning professional work. The one case that comes to mind was an ex's father who was burnt out on his accountant career. He took a year to follow his dreams on music-related stuff, which didn't pan out in terms of turning a passion into a career, and he went back to being an accountant (also, after causing his wife and kids some stress related to running low on money).
I did however take a 6 week gap between jobs a few years back. I think things like that are common enough. I flew to Costa Rica, intending to spend a month backpacking around the country ... and honestly I got kind of bored after 2 weeks so I flew home early. Then I hopped in the car and drove cross-country at my own pace, seeing sights that I wanted to see, etc. Absolutely one of my favorite memories and I'd love to do something similar again.
The important thing to remember is that this is for your growth, happiness, and well-being. You set the rules for your time off. If you travel the whole time or stay at home, or a mix, that's your call. If you do something to try to set yourself up for your next opportunity professionally or you completely stay away anything related to your profession, that's up to you. Don't follow a path just because you think it'll look good on Instagram or because you think it'll sound cool when you talk about it at parties in the future. (Or do, if those are high enough priorities for you). Good luck!
I've never had enough time off between (my few) jobs since grad school. The circumstances have never been quite right. I did get a 3-4 week vacation the last time and that was mostly because I had done everything except pull the trigger while waiting to see if an offer came through--then pushed things out as far as I could.
I actually had a month off the prior time as well but that was because of a post-9/11 layoff. As it turned out a conversation I had with someone I knew pretty much the following day panned out. But I didn't know that of course and it wasn't the time to just head off and vacation.
Personally, six weeks sounds more like an extra-long vacation. I always took four to six months off before looking for a new job, or when on-job an unpaid month or two every other year. But that's definitively nowhere near the norm, many people don't understand it. I usually end up coding 20h per week on geek projects or random open source stuff. After six months I predictably get bored with it.
I rarely end up doing the project I planned to do. So if you want any advice from me: Don't force yourself to do what you thought you wanted to do, before you had time. Look around and don't feel guilty for following that new interest you just discovered.
IMO what you find out is a year is a long time without work from a time perspective. Hope you enjoy your year off!
My "independent consulting" time was a mask for burnout. I certainly did consult independently, right down to paying too much for health insurance. My time off was extremely valuable and made me realize I needed to rest and reinvent myself. Plus, as I get older I realize I can use the b-word at certain stages of interviewing as a way to filter out toxic people and institutions.
But yeah, it's all a big game. Nobody is owed a tidy explanation of this.
In tech, we luckily have the luxury to take time off and recover when we need to.
I worked on some closed source personal projects and worked on getting into shape. When I was ready to return, the employer didn't really care that I had taken time off.
As a Westerner, I have never taken a gap year but I never met anyone who took one and wish they didn't. If you can make it work, take it, especially after the Pandemic because it's going to be an awesome time to travel.
I honestly try to maximize humanity, unhappy people can't do good work.
1. Cycle Eurovelo 6
2. Drive through the Pan American Highway
3. Learn different things at different places, Muay Thai in Thailand, surfing in Bali, Kali in the Philipines
4. Just travel doing nothing for a few months and then try 12 month 12 startups or something.
(Turns out the grass is pretty much the same in most places.)
Being from England, I hadn't even considered that healthcare is something that has to be factored into whether someone could take time off
Does it cover all procedures? Is there an excess? Value of coverage?
https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra...
Basically, the metal levels are as follows: bronze, silver, gold, platinum are priced so that you the insurance company pays 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% of the healthcare costs.
Of course, this is an actuarial calculation, so it’s only true over a large population over a long timeline. But healthcare is a pretty certain need for everyone, so the cost for healthcare for everyone from age 0 to 65 (when government starts offering it called Medicare) is amortized into health insurance premiums for all of the 0 to 65 years.
The ACA law of 2010 requires a few things which cause the premiums to be adjusted such that younger people subsidize older people. The age rating factor table at the bottom of the linked pdf shows that the riskiest person (64 year old) must cost at most 3x what a 21 to 24 year old costs.
Also, healthy people subsidize unhealthy people because your health condition cannot be taken into account when determining premiums, and men subsidize women since gender cannot be taken into account (due to birthing).
As far as I know, smoking is the only activity that causes one’s premium to be higher.
Let’s take a silver HSA plan for example:
https://www.horizonblue.com/qhp/files/2021/2021_IHC_OMNIA_HS...
The out of pocket maximum for in network providers is $6,550. The premium is $350 per month. So $4,200 premium plus $6,550 out of pocket means a 21 to 24 year old pays at most $11k per year for healthcare if they get into trouble (most will only pay the $4.2k premiums since they are 21 to 24 and probably will not need healthcare).
A complication to these calculations is when employees pay, they can pay with pretax money, and HSA plans allow you to invest your HSA contributions tax free (max of a few thousand dollars per person per year).
So when you hear about those people who get lumped with $100k medical bills they still have to pay like $20k of that on top of your insurance?
What happens if you can't afford the remaining percentage?
>So when you hear about those people who get lumped with $100k medical bills they still have to pay like $20k of that on top of your insurance?
It depends if the person was insured or not, and if the care was provided by healthcare providers who have contracts with the insurance company or not (referred to as being in network).
In the US, when you go to a healthcare provider, the first thing they will ask you to sign is a form acknowledging you know you are responsible for anything your insurance company does not pay for (unless you go to a vertically integrated healthcare / health insurance company like Kaiser Permanente). In fact, health insurance companies are better referred to as managed care organizations (MCOs) in the US.
What happens is people are not capable of knowing what healthcare services they need or do not need. They have no way to determine if they are being ripped of or not. So the MCOs employ legions of doctors and pharmacists and whatnot to double check the doctors performing the services. They also have enough knowledge about pricing healthcare procedures that they are more able to determine a "good" price to pay.
Anyway, after the ACA law, there is an out of pocket maximum for in network providers, so you would not get a $100k bill. the out of pocket maximum for individual / family is $8,550 / $17.1k in 2021:
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
So you would only be liable up to that amount at most in a calendar year for all healthcare you receive from an in network provider. Everything else is paid for by insurance.
>What happens if you can't afford the remaining percentage?
The healthcare provider can choose to go after you for it, since you signed the form that says you will pay them if insurance does not. If you feel your insurance denied the doctor inappropriately, you can appeal to a third party to determine if insurance is obliged to pay it (if it is evidence based medicine, then they most likely have to pay it).
https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...
And they have to cover all non elective procedures.
My wife got a medical bill for $100k after being hospitalized with a life threatening illness years ago called and told them she’d send them $6,000. They said fine and considered it paid in full. The whole system is really bizarre.
My uncle has cancer and no insurance and is on Medicare so all his costs are covered.
My daughter is disabled and is also on Medicare, which is a weird mix of private and public where Medicare pays her primary insurance deductible so if she gets a surgery any surgery or doctors visits we might need after that in the year are going to be free.
I was unemployed when my disabled daughter was born so it didn’t cost us a dime, if I’d been employed it would have cost at least several thousand dollars. I started a job a week later but that didn’t retroactively change the cost owed.
When my disabled daughter was in the NICU for six months while a recruiting firm was technically my employer, she ruined their health insurance plan by racking up a million dollars in fees because they only had 60 or so employees, so the cost was extreme and their health insurance renewal rates were more expensive for a worse plan. I left the plan and used a Health Insurance marketplace plan instead which was cheaper and better than what their organization was offering for the following year.
That is really bad. The gov or insurance providers (whoever is responsible) are essentially discouraging employing people with sick family members.
Many leaders at that time did want to dump everyone into one insurance market so all healthy people subsidized all sick people, but there was tons of politics blowback from people who already had access to good healthcare who would see their costs rise because until then, they only had to share costs between healthy, employed workers.
Even today, you will read people lamenting how the ACA increased their health insurance premiums. Nevermind that it enabled millions more to actually get healthcare, so obviously the money was going to have to come from somewhere.
It only covers "medically necessary" procedures as deemed by the insurance company (there are some laws requiring certain procedures to be covered). You have to use specific doctors and facilities.
Typically you have a deductible as well. I have to pay $4,000 out of my own pocket before insurance kicks in. Preventative care (check-ups) are usually covered by a co-pay, mine is $30.
There's usually an out-of-pocket maximum you can pay every year (mine is $9,000). That's the real value of the insurance... if you're in a catastrophic event hopefully it caps your costs (but it doesn't always depending on facility, procedures, etc).
Not sure what you mean by excess or value of coverage, but the answer is probably no.
This does not include dental or vision services.
I think excess is what you call a deductible, as in if I have an accident in my car, I pay for the first £250 and that's the excess.
The value of the coverage is the maximum amount they'll pay out. I don't know if I have that on my car, but my house contents insurance is insured up to a certain value
This should be fairly standard around the EU. In Germany this is capped at around 1 million, I think.
Which sounds a lot, but bigger accidents can ramp up a lot of costs...
I pay £300/year to insure my car.
And yeah, excess in US can be crazy I think. We have private health insurance from work and when I had to use it there was a £100 deductible for the year - I thought that was quite steep.
~$1800/m for bad family (married couple + kids) health insurance on the HCA Marketplace. There are no providers beyond the two on there still selling individual insurance to anyone in this state. Other providers are only interested in selling group insurance. Check with insurance providers directly, check with insurance brokers, that's what you hear. No, no-one sells individual insurance in this state except those two providers you've never heard of. Other providers will only deal with businesses or other organizations.
How is the insurance bad? Well, for one thing, it still leaves you with ~$25,000 of risk exposure per year. That is, if things go very poorly (two family members get very sick, basically—nb, because US healthcare is actually, no-joke, insane, "gets very sick" includes "gets pregnant"), you could potentially have to pay $25,000, total, in a given year, on top of the monthly premiums. For another, US insurance plans have a concept of a "network", that is, particular places (hospitals, clinics, testing centers) where the insurance applies. For most insurance, you'll pay most or all costs if you go "out of network". These two providers each have very different networks, such that, for our location, one must choose between having the only children's hospital in the area "in network" (and of course said hospital is itself a "network" of locations and they've bought up everydamnthing related to children's healthcare in our city, because healthcare in the US is batshit insane) or having either of the two nearest normal hospitals to us be in-network.
Oh, and get this: US healthcare plans like to restrict coverage geographically. I think they all have to cover emergency room visits anywhere, but I wouldn't want to see what happens if you get in a bad car wreck, or have a heart attack, or whatever, in another state and can't be moved and are transferred out of the ER to any other part of the hospital. My guess is you get hit with five to six figures of bills that insurance won't touch. That's right: it's probably advisable to get travel healthcare insurance to travel in your own goddamn country. Further, lots of people live within tens of miles of a state border and might routinely travel—even just to commute to work—outside the area their insurance covers. Hope they never need anything but ER care while doing that!
US healthcare: fucked top-to-bottom, and we pay a huge premium for the "privilege" of "enjoying" it, because freedom or something.
It also works against small businesses that cannot afford to offer health insurance, because the small businesses’ employees cannot purchase health insurance with pre tax money, while the big businesses can compensate people with pretax health insurance that they subsidize.
Also I’m skeptical that they don’t actually want it, per the sibling commenter’s remarks. I think bigger businesses are all too happy to have another lever of informational asymmetry to pull to manage their actual biggest cost: salary.
Everyone doesn't have it because it's means-tested - if you make more than very roughly $1,200 a month you don't qualify. You still qualify for income-based subsidies at that point (under a totally different government program), but at higher income levels the expectation is that either you pay for your own health insurance premiums out of pocket, or your employer pays them for you. It's all very complicated, but that complexity is the price we pay so that we higher-income Americans can say that our employer is paying a "premium" and not a "tax." Evidently some of us care an awful lot about that sort of thing.
The prediction isn’t a massive wave of unemployment. It’s people switching jobs. They will still be earning money, just perhaps elsewhere.
The thing the that the article misses is that the vast majority of CEOs want all employees back in the office.
Imagine if I told you that the number of people "thinking of buying a Tesla" had gone up dramatically. Now, most people can't afford a Tesla, so no, not everyone is going to buy a Tesla. But if overall the proportion of people thinking about it went up, you wouldn't be surprised if the number of Tesla sales went up soon, and would probably be surprised if it fell.
What I'm saying here is that it would be weird if those two variables are completely independent.
That’s largely because of status quo bias. People don’t like to make any major changes to their life situation unless prompted. But if a company exists on ending the WFH arrangements that people have become accustomed to over the past year, all bets are out the window.
I found a new position that's 100% remote, I put in my notice at my current job the week before last, and my last day is coming up this week.
It's kind of bittersweet: I'm leaving just before my fifth anniversary here, and this is the only company where I've even made it to three years, much less five, but it is what it is. I like what I do, and I like my coworkers, but I just can't go back to working in an office after spending the last year working from home, so it's time for me to move on.
Maybe part of the problem is sitting right there in plain sight. Looking back, virtually every work frustration that led me to start looking elsewhere was nothing that HR could (or should) fix. In my experience, the degree of HR's influence over company culture, hiring, and firing directly correlates to the degree that the work environment is impersonal, homogenized, and rote.
In one company for which I've worked, the HR department had a surprising amount of power regarding software developers' salaries and (for hiring) qualifications. It was almost impossible for hiring managers to override those policies.
Perhaps HR was merely implementing the policies chosen by executive leadership; i.e. perhaps they were just the messenger. But either way, HR was an additional level of bureaucracy that collectively hamstrung the company's ability to hire and retain top talent. IIUC this is really coming back to hurt them now.
Well, they could always offer more money.
Sometimes I crack myself up.
More space, more open-minded culture, fresh food for lunch (not even free but let's split cost)...
Things like these would probably benefit me (and my colleagues) more than paying us another X hundred Euro.
Could you expand on this a bit?
I've only worked in the U.S., so most of what I "know" about working in Germany is based on stereotypes. I'd love to hear your first-hand perspective.
- Totally not my problem, see how you figure it out for yourself
- We've never done it that way
- We've always done it this way
- Don't look left and right while doing your work
- I don't want to improve but I don't like where you are
- If you're not physically at work you can't be working at all
I think Germans sometimes have a specific sense of order and structure for work. Also succesful people, like in hard-working and making something out of themselves, are often belittled and in general nothing to look up to.
These cultural "problems" creep into workplaces, too. To paraphrase a bit more:
Work is a place you go to and leave after 8 hours. 8.5 hours precisely, because of 0.5 hours of lunch break. Don't stay longer, but NEVER leave 15 minutes earlier. You also don't hang out with colleagues for a beer or food, except for the colleagues from your pack. But you only meet those in your free time to talk about the other colleagures.
Also the other packs/departments are probably all idiots. "Online people" don't work at all, because I never see them on the phone, they just chill and surf the web probably. And they even work less now that they stayed at home because of Covid.
I've experienced all of this not only in my current but in other companies and I start to think it's a workplace-culture thing, where Germans don't realise that we're all in the same team but some people work just differently than others. This leads to a lot of envy, bad mood and stress, because I've always got the feeling that I need to fight. Fight for how I work, what I work on, how I communicate that to clients and so on.
So, I'd like my leaders up in the C-level to work on "relaxing the people", connecting the departments, thinking more about purpose and mission and vision and less about whether we can make 5% more profit this year.
I'd love if we would get something like a Skillshare/Udemy/LinkedIn learning membership for all of us and you get two hours a week to learn whatever you want, so everybody can become better.
I'd love if the company would support renting a bike, but "it's too complicated/too much work". I'd also love if I could get rid of most of the wall units here in our space and instead get a couch and some plants. Best we will get (learned that today) is that we can paint one wall in a color we'd like. We might even be allowed to paint that in our working time, but we'll see.
I don't expect middle to larger companies to be like a startup and everything is possible all the time and so on, but I think in Germany we need to see work more as a place where you are also allowed to have fun and enjoy the environment and learn and develop yourself and look next to the road and so on...
Isn't that a deliberate choice as a way to put an end to the scourge of unpaid overtime?
More than once I had a call later in the afternoon and people (explicitly one of the C-levels) were really surprised that I answered the Teams call right away, was well dressed and sitting at my desk.
Don't know what they were expecting. Motivated, happy people will work a lot from home, too, the lazy ones are lazy whether they are sitting in the office or at home...
But there's lots of "old school" leadership people in Germany, and they are really looking forward on ending WFH. For us it will happen in July, team leads can define "exceptions" where their members can stay at home but only "once a week" and not regularly.
Old habits die slow, I guess, but I think Germany needs a new leadership culture to keep up with the US et al.
It's easier to quit. The raise is nice, but the normal workload is much nicer.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/expected-covid-ba...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-birt...
I wish I could say it was a success story but I really haven't enjoyed it. I love the dog but as he got older he got really anti-social with people (the pandemic definitely made it harder to help solve that, sadly). A lot of "dog fun" like having your dog meet your friends, take your dog to a picnic, have your dog running around at your BBQ, just isn't in the cards for us. Taking him on walks is a challenge because he lunges and barks at people walking by. With consistent training we've gotten it under control and generally he's a happy pup but man, it was a huge commitment and a gigantic stressor.
It seems these articles all talk about workers realizing they are underpaid, overworked, and after a year don't want to go back to the same exploitive job. While I completely agree with all this, it doesn't address the question of how these newly unemployed workers will pay their bills and way through life
Are people just counting on their savings? If so, how many people can realistically live out of their savings (esp with rising costs of goods)? Do people think the extended unemployment benefits are going to continue for longer (this seems wildly unrealistic)?
I'm genuinely curious if there are answers to these questions? From my point of view, it seems these articles never mention the fact that people have jobs they don't like, because they have to in order to earn money (in normal non-pandemic times)
If you're making tech salaries and not spending all of it, you can easily save enough to not work for a decade in just a few years of work. Anecdotally I worked for three years at a big company and then didn't work for three years until those savings ran out, and that wasn't really even trying.
Of course the calculus changes if you're married or have kids. But living in America in a cheap town is not expensive compared to income in this field. You can live comfortably on 40k a year (lots of Americans do!). And a 200k+ income like you see in major tech hubs can easily translate to 100k+ of savings a year.
I guess I'm trying to figure out if all these "great resignation" articles are referring to high paid skilled jobs (eg tech workers), which in my opinion wouldn't effect the economy as a whole very much since they are a relatively small portion of it, or if these articles are referring to the broad economy including lower paid jobs.
Now, there's an abundance of positions available remotely all over the country and you can shop around for a good fit.
There obviously isn't that yet, so is the assumption that this will follow after many employees resign and force companies to redo their hiring policies?
This will get interesting for both salaries and global movement.
Being a digital nomad certainly won't be as "hip" when everyone else can do the same thing. And now people are going to be competing with a lot of low-cost employees with equal skills.
This has already been the issue with offshoring, but now you can hire someone in Fargo, SD instead of San Fran, CA and pay them going market rate. For the same skills.
In the long-term, this might get people out of packed cities and horrific commutes and help become a rebirth of small-town America (or small-town Chile and everywhere else).
Perhaps. I think the shift will be to more healthy-livable cities, whether thats big or small.
Vast majority of humans seem love the benefits of high population density more than they dislike the costs, remote work or not.
Over these 8 years I've lived everywhere from NYC to small town America and other countries in AirBnbs.
They each have their benefits, they are just different.
If you have a family, small towns can be amazing. Good school districts, tight-nit communities, great charitable events to participate in. Of course you can find that in NYC but it's a completely different scenario and vibe.
It comes down to what works for the individual, which is perfect and exactly where we need to be moving to.
I'm now in Vancouver BC, quite a high population density, yet I find it's super easy to remain healthy & happy (air quality, access to nature, safety etc.).
Your definition of "small town" must be different than mine, or small towns in your area are a hell of a lot nicer than ours. Or maybe you mean suburban/exurban towns? Those are the only "small towns" with good public schools, around here. Cities (as in, actually in the city proper)? Bad schools. Rural small towns? Bad schools. Smallish cities? Bad schools. There's a belt of good schools in (some of!) the suburban and exurban towns around the major cities, and that's it. Few or none of those towns have the other characteristics you mention, because they're basically bedroom communities for the city they're attached to, with some lame chain retail and fast-food and you go to the city for anything that's actually worth doing.
I'm currently managing a team of offshore developers +11 from me on top of being the lead developer.
It's chaotic but members of the team adjust their schedule to partially overlap so it works, for the most part.
But I agree. We are a US company and we originally looked at South American companies to try to keep people around the same timezone. I was not involved in the final decision, which apparently came down strictly to financials.
For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely responsible for anything above that.
[1] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-en...
This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engineer at a sleepy regional bank is nowhere near talented enough to make it at a fast-paced, hyper-growth venture backed startup.
If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "lower than average skill".
Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers from a wide variety of regions.
When you hire as much of the industry as those companies do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it would be near impossible not to have a big distribution of talent within them.
But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend towards being good at the job. And I’ll stand by my anecdotal opinion.
I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.
And if certain geographical locations are known for being places where the chances of making a lot more money are significantly higher, then I would say the skill level of people there is probably higher on average. The proof would be the numerous leading companies and products coming out of these places.
Of course, those locations can change, and maybe widespread access to broadband will cause that to change that or reduce benefits of agglomeration. But it remains to be seen.
I for one have made more money in finance than valley style tech. That may change one day but there _also_ was no correlation in the finance firms for quality.
And while I personally do not know people’s financial histories, I can say that the part of my college class that went to tech seem to work far less than the part that went to finance. Even if gross income is similar, I doubt that $/hour worked, or the risk was better in finance than in tech over the past 15 to 20 years.
That isn’t to knock finance, it’s just my interpretation of the reality of how much access to broadband and advancements in certain technologies have underlined much of our economic growth.
How do you know? I've worked with extremely talented engineers from all over the globe at this point, 20+ years in. Do you think all the engineers in San Francisco were born there?
You would never guess where I'm living, and it's not San Francisco. I'd love to, but I'm waiting for tech to recede a bit and a sense of normalcy to return.
Back then, the market was flooded with young folks out of bootcamps. So much so, in fact, that several companies had absolutely no problem treating me in quite shabby fashion, as I have committed the crime of Eld, along with a rather disturbing level of Provable Competence. These seem to be characteristics that immediately mark people for ridicule, humiliation, and indignity.
Fortunately, I had been quite frugal, and have enough to retire anytime I wanted. I won't be zipping around in any learjets, but I'll be OK.
I have never worked harder in my life; but I'm not making a dime. I'm working on the kind of software I find interesting, and that will actually have some real social impact, with people that treat me with basic human dignity and simple respect. It's cool. I'm also trying out and refining all kinds of ideas for high-quality, flexible software development, that no one was ever interested in exploring. They are working out fairly well. My GH Activity Graph has been solid green, for a couple of years. I like writing software (and delivering it).
I'm in no hurry to put myself in a position again, where my work can be destroyed by others; even if I do make decent money at it. I have found that the pain of having my work ruined is far greater than I had thought. It took several years of being able to do things the way that I want, to realize that[0].
This is actually what I have wanted all my life. I just didn't know it, as I had never taken the risk to give it a go.
This would not have happened, if the door had not been slammed in my face, forcing me to adapt.
I'm really quite happy to see that people younger than I am, are getting a chance to make this realization, and I wish them all the luck in the world, in following their muse. The tech industry should be engaging, fun, and a source of wonder. We have amazing tools, technology, and a maturity of community that was unavailable, when I started.
It would be great to see the tech field return to a greenfield, and a garden of pride in craftsmanship, real creativity, and joy in exploration, as opposed to the rather sordid, low-quality, mercenary mess, that it is now.
I also underestimated the impact of having my work burned in front of me after 2 years of overtime and sacrifice. The money afforded me some level of financial Independence which at least gives me the optionality to choose whether I want to suffer this again.
I'm thinking of following in your footsteps. Wish me luck!
It's as though pandemic solitude gave many the mind-time to ponder their authentic values hierarchy.
I'm glad more bright minds will be spending less time working directly or indirectly on ads. It's hard to watch.
From how I perceive the definition of the 'crypto' domain, it's a lot wider in range than currencies/tokens. These are just one integral primitive of a p2p economy.
I don't think so.
And way more environmentally destructive than countless other things.
If we want to talk energy, maybe we look at what mindless streaming services consume?
I almost never see people obnoxiously talking about how ads are great. In fact, it's the opposite - constant ad bashing.
Whereas with crypto, while you have the skeptics and the haters, there are way more obnoxious fanatics.
Whereas with crypto, you can just ignore the subject entirely if you so wish. You won't be shouted at, when you open your digital newspaper to read stuff, that YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GET MORE DOGECOIN!!!
[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/google-new-policy-cryptocurrency-ad...
For many, their wealth is derived more from crypto / token capital gain than traditional income. Its increased risk no doubt. More upside & downside.
For example, people initially just had crypto tokens. Then came uniswap liquidity pools for exchanges. People could suddenly earn interest on their crypto. Uniswap creators profit.
Remote work has definitely been a factor. A half-decent experienced developer can easily land jobs that outbid the local market, and I'm not even talking major West Coast places with interview processes resembling torture. A lot of local devs have been slow to realize just how much money they're leaving on the table without even needing to move or practice leetcode for six months and submit to multiple day-long grueling interviews, but I have to assume that's changing fast with the pandemic pushing remote work into the zeitgeist. I'd imagine local firms are seeing some serious remote competition for their best developers, and losing a lot of them. That's going to mean rising salaries, or that their dev teams get somewhat worse.
Basically I think the only thing keeping salaries as low as they were was that a high percentage of local developers weren't looking for new opportunities often enough, local or remote. Now that everyone's been prompted to pop their heads up and take a look around, it'd be very surprising to me if salaries didn't shoot way up. There's been a plain market mis-match locally, to begin with, suppressed only by not enough developers realizing how much more they could make by switching jobs, and add remote work competition to that, and there's going to be a lot of upward pressure on salaries.
Unfortunately the trend right now seems to be companies bulking up on expensive, lower quality talent hoping it has more upside potential.
I think if you can't offer at least $90k with a significantly great benefits package you are really going to struggle.
You're talking about a group of people that can just sit at home for two months grinding Cracking The Code Interview as an alternative to your job offer and land FAANG employment at a 3x-4x multiple of what you're balking at paying.
Oh yes, a lot of the folks doing the interviewing at my org are seeing this (myself included).
I never saw a six-figure salary—not even close—until I got the offer for the job I'll be starting next week. It's a remote position working for an east coast company. Even if my soon-to-be-ex-employer allowed me to continue working from home forever, I'd be an idiot to leave this salary on the table. I should've done this sooner.
I'm not actively looking for a job, so I just tell them to have a look at my LinkedIn profile. But I wonder if that's keeping me from some worthwhile opportunities.
But Glassdoor is pretty ok and some other platforms(I can pm if you like) have proven good, they seem to have some kind of alert system whenever a keyword of a recruiter portfolio is triggered and on cv updates. I do think limiting oneself to LinkedIn will definitely make you miss on some opportunities. I spend no more than an hour a month to update etc. Most have auto apply button etc. It is easy to send 50-100 applications within an hour. Of course some of the contacts will be rubbish, just delegate to spam I it keeps happening, eventually unsubscribe. I got some interviews to places where I thought they would never, ever touch me. However, sometimes such companies are desperate to hire. I went pretty far with bitfinex, just for fun and because it's remote, despite knowing sweet little about what is needed to know . Many stories like that.
I guess people are living off of their savings, but that seems like a temporary solution. At the least I'd expect to see a similar wave of people re-entering the job market in 6-12 months. I'm still not sure what to make of this general trend, though
For some people, they have though. Quite a few people moved out of the bay area/NYC, some have partners that lost jobs and have chosen to focus on child care instead, some have sold 1 of 2 cars because remote work no longer requires a commute.
I feel a temptation to use that money. I also have a nagging feeling that it’s somewhat artificial (the govt pumped a ton of money during the pandemic) so I should cash out before it falls.
In the U.S., capital gains on your primary residence can be kept tax free up to $250,000 ($500k if you’re married).
[1] https://www.axios.com/post-pandemic-job-turnover-04cdedcb-dd...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/four-in-ten-cant-cover-an-...
Who else would be at the office then to socialize with you? Paid actors?
* People who have moved, and now want a job closer to home if they want/need to go into the office.
* Companies who have hoarded cash during the recession and can now offer big salaries.
* Looser bonds with colleagues they only see remotely
I've no idea whether and to what extent any of these things are true, but it's definitely easy to imagine a big move around. That said... I'm not seeing much change in volume on the typical job boards so perhaps it's all hypothetical.
Of course anyone is replaceable but some knowledge will be lost. Also your model does not account for businesses which are aggressively expanding and doing a better job than the average employer retaining their employees by either being a genuinely great place to work or LTIPs
1. The pandemic was weird, and likely a time when people didn't want to change jobs due to a need for stability. It seems like it would be normal to see a wave of job changes that have been basically on hold until people felt safe.
2. I'm assuming some people have had more of a chance than normal to think more about what they want out of their life and jobs over the last 18 months. For some people, this means they might make a job change that they didn't anticipate making in January 2020.
3. It's one thing to threaten to leave, and a whole other thing to actually do it. I've had co-workers who were "ready to quit" for my whole career, some of whom are still at the jobs they were ready to quit a decade+ later.
Would be interesting to see actual data.
WLB goes: Google >> Netflix > Apple > Facebook >> Amazon
I also think that because a lot of people lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, some industries moreso than others, the market may also be temporarily saturated (at least more so than usual) with candidates at the moment, which will dampen the number of resignations.
Having said that, I personally am receiving just as much recruiter spam as I was before.
At the time it was hard work and a bit of serendipity. At this point I already found a great remote job I have no desire to leave. It's wild that currently there is a deluge of recruiters from very large west coast companies trying to get me to join without any relocation. That's been a big shift in the past year. Good time to live somewhere cheap with decent internet.
I wonder what the baseline is for this. I reckon loads of people are thinking about it all the same.
The company I work for is starting to bring people back to the office department by department. People are resisting, and the company is telling them not to let the door hit them in their asses on the way out. Officially, it's because there is no "policy" for long-term work-from-home. But it's just stubbornness that comes from its habit of moving at the speed of a glacier.
I've heard that some departments have lost 20% of their people so far. I know for a fact that one department I work closely with has lost 40%. My observation is that the better the employee, the more likely he is to refuse to come back to the office.
Furthermore, what are employers meant to do with their workplaces when employees are half-in, half-out with the office thing. Many folks (myself included) want to have 1-2 days at the office a week, but have the flexibility to decide that. That's not going to help my employer decide how much space is needed or whether to renew their lease.
I am also of the opinion that the writing is on the wall. I live in a HCOL area and have no doubt that remote workers in other places will eventually replace me.
This competition mostly doesn't exist.
The language barrier is too great, and working across time zones is something that most companies are horrible at, to say nothing of the legal/regulatory/jurisdictional challenges.
I've worked with skilled developers from all over the world, who speak more than good enough English.
And the foreigners who speak more than good enough English aren't going to be sufficiently cheaper than I am, if they're also great software engineers.
It's probably impractical though with regard to payroll, taxes etc but the dream is nice
JustWorks is one of the big PEOs for US employees. I'm not sure who is most popular in your region though.
I've heard good things about Polish teams.
I've seen some truly God-awful, unmaintainable code, though, and have heard many outsourcing horror stories.
In my experience, good engineers can command good salaries; wherever they are. I think that we will actually see engineers in India and Vietnam getting a lot more money for their work, because they are just plain good engineers, and they will be able to stand out a great deal more. This remote economy will give them some real opportunities.
It's pretty hard to keep a good [wo]man down; no matter where they are.
The baseline (pre-pandemic) is that the employer needs to provide enough space for most/all of the workforce to be concurrently in the office.
If the employer allows location flexibility, I don't see how that's a problem for the employer. The employer might feel frustrated about a missed, uncertain opportunity for downsizing the office space. But I wouldn't expect having fewer people occupy those workspaces add significant cost compared to having everyone onsite.
The only real downside I can think of is in a competitive market, where whichever companies could safely shrink their office space might be able to lower the the price of their product / service.
Sounds like people are discovering it's actually not that hard getting off the teat of a boring 9 to 5 job ... I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing.
I guess the "focus on the mission" companies are trying to foster among their ranks is also useful to distract oneself from what your own mission actually is.
This hiatus on company focus might have been the best thing that happened to a lot of engineers I know.
Including, alas, myself.
At my company we are trying to use this sentiment to shift to a mix of the old work from the office full time (with flexible policies about WFH as needed) to a more hybrid approach where we will still provide for a solid collaborative in-person environment while baking in even more flexibility for managing your WFH needs (maybe in office 3 days a week with WFH available 2 days a week... still trying to figure out the right balance).
I'm sure we will still have at least a little attrition but suspect this will leave us with a stronger than ever core (while allowing those that leave to try to find something more suitable to their needs... but again, I worry about this ending up the case for them).
One problem being lack of social integration and interaction.
But honestly I don't think I can believe in the necessity of having a job, if I can't see purpose or meaning. There are few jobs that matter, and a lot of barriers and filtering.
/r/antiwork is really a viewpoint I can understand and defend.
Punishing unproductive people and encourage them to work in fast food or other wage-slaving do not make sense.
The main argument is UBI.
Not to mention fast food is generally of poor quality.
I'm not saying they don't know how to cook- but I'm saying that the least the rest of society who aren't responsible for sustaining us can do is make life better for those who do
I think what would really improve a job like fast food is if workers were part owners of their franchise. Most fast food restaurants are franchises owned by one person or a local corporation that owns several franchises. Putting ownership into the workers hands would mean profit sharing, it would mean when you bust ass over the hot grill working a double shift or cleaning shit and blood from the walls in the bathroom, you are actually rewarded for the increased demand on the restaurant. It would be like a built in hazard pay for when things got busy and stressful and awful. At least benefits would be nice, I know several people who burned their forearms really bad on the fryer.
"The main argument is UBI." - is that it? UBI will solve everything? Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved.
As I said in my other comment, I am not saying that the current status-quo is right. I think there is plenty of inequality and injustice in the world, but I just don't think "antiwork" is the way to solve that.
Not all jobs are unnecessary, but there are jobs that are more important than others. There are a lot of jobs people wish they would not work or that they think nothing would change if they did not work those jobs. Just read about David Graeber and his book, Bullshit Jobs.
Just imagine all the workers in fast food. Look around and you will see a lot of people working jobs when they could spend time at university instead. You only listed the best jobs. People who work in insurance, sales, fast food, uber drivers, food delivery, clothing shops, etc.
> Let's just print more money and give it to everyone. Problem solved.
That's already what happens when there are bailouts. Giving money to people instead of giving it to the banks makes more sense.
I'm not saying that everybody should quit their jobs, I'm just saying that once you raise unemployment benefits, you will see a lot of wage slave quit their jobs and nothing will change.
Only 1% of the workforce in the US produce food. That feeds America and some other countries.
> Someone has to work to produce electricity.
Again, you need really very few people to make electricity.
I just commented that the basic necessities of life (food, water, electricity, etc…) can be covered with very few people.
Of course there are bullshit jobs out there, but I think we are under estimating
When you hit scale like that with specialization, it's conceivable a relatively small amount of jobs can provide a society with the base necessities.
Food production - planting seeds, collecting crops, watering the farms, creating anti-pesticides, creating all the farming equipment, packaging food, distributing food, storing food (for storing food just think about all the work that goes into creating a fridge - from mining metals from the ground, to designing the fridge and building a factory that create thousands of fridges quickly)
I don't agree with Graeber's conclusions, but his observations are solid:
It is not, but let's not pretend most of us work to increase societal good. It just happens to be that our rent-seeking behavior is aligned with society's interests.
Does everything have to be scalable to society at large?
For one life is too short to work like a dog, and for anyone who stays they'll be able to demand higher salaries.
Right now I have enough money saved up where I don't really need to work for the rest of the year. If it wasn't for the pandemic restricting international travel, I would simply up and move to a low cost of living country and try and take a full year off.
Pretty sure most states won't accept you if you voluntarily leave.
I think remote work, generally works, but there is an incredible long term drain on energy from not connecting with co-workers in person. It may work for some and there will certainly be a long term shift more towards remote work, but I predict it won’t be as pronounced as maybe some suspect because it’s much harder to sustain. The flexibility is indeed great and a net win especially for parents or those with long commutes, but I think it’s harder to actually work.
Pros of early quitting: (1) I'm not learning anything anymore in my current job. The earlier the better... (2) My current job is subject to 3 months' notice, so I'm definitely free from October onwards (3) I hope this gives me some extra motivation to work on data science projects in my spare time
Cons of early quitting: (1) Obviously no income anymore from October onwards unless I have found a new job. (2) From October onwards, it might be hard to find a new flat as the landlords request to get evidence of a regular income
The best advice I can give is, treat other people as you yourself would want to be treated, or how you think they wish to be treated. Be kind and seek the best in others.
Now, from memory I seem to recall that depending on which staffing survey, and how you phrase it, 10-35% of all employees say they intend to quit.
I'm not saying that we will won't see and increase turn over. However I suspect that given the level of disruption we've already had, I would be skeptical that its going to get worse.
The counter argument to that is of course that the people who were forced to change jobs from ones they liked (ones that were heavily hit by covid) to ones that existed, will migrate back to their old profession.
It's not just flexibility or WFH. For many people it's about pay, policies, management, and a host of other issues, many of them well known but never addressed. Good luck to those firms who think the old HR playbook - making sympathetic noises while doing nothing about these other issues - will suffice.
The conversations I'm having in my social sphere tend to be something to the effect of how the past year has really made it clear how dysfunctional their company's team social dynamics are. And it's often not something you can expect anyone to ever fix, because that sort of thing is largely driven by senior management.
Unfortunately my company already did our yearly compensation adjustment. 2%, of course.
I'd be open to the idea if I could find a company that did a better job of it than my employer has. I suspect many others are in the same mindset, and that greatly weakens the negotiating position of employers in our industry -- even for recruiting people who don't necessarily want to be remote.
I got super burnt out over the last year and there was not really another option imo. I had been working on my own company on the side and I feel immensely more recharged working on it. For people that have been sitting at home and not spending their salaries for the past year, that might be an appealing option.
I got so tired of the micromanagement and constant pressure from Management to meet production standards, that I couldn't take it anymore.
People don't like change and there's tons of it happening right now as we transition out of our COVID lifestyles. People are upset, but, I think it's much more likely that people will just moan about it for a while before eventually accepting it rather than actually taking action.
The work from home job got over 60 applications while the work in the office got a single application.
... the "Great Resignations" wave is definitely coming.
The pandemic has been hard because I never enjoyed the work I was doing, but I grinded through it considering it was hard to find a job.
Those in the DevOps space would love to resign and find something-that-isn't-that, but there doesn't seem to be much relief outside of very large environments with follow the suns.
100% were in full remote worldwide since August and offices are just starting to reopen.
To me at least, the vagueness of this phrase has made it untrustworthy. It can mean way too many different things.
> with only your manager's approval
I'd hope we're beyond tying your (and your family's) physical location to your boss's whim.
Perhaps that was the GP's choice of wording, to keep the comment brief?
I'm not talking about the work, it's everything else. The culture.
Forget going back to the office – people are just quitting instead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27493945 - June 2021 (386 comments)
I'll hit them up again in a year :)
Basically a year's worth of departures in a very compressed timeframe. Not a good situation for the acquiring business, especially since they prided themselves on a longer hiring process than comparable companies.
Well. As long as you treat people like that it is now wonder that the leave you as quick as possible.
Seems like these people will just switch companies.
I left. found a remote job with 25% raise. in 3 months pandemic hit and everybody started working remotely.
Because, at least in the US, and at least in IT, it is a buyer's market.
How does this compare to the figure over a longer period of time?
But if you looked at the previous year's numbers, it was something like 18% or 15%. And the previous year's actual attrition was closer to 5-8%. So perhaps you could extrapolate if you had the attrition rates combined with survey data, but surveys are a much weaker signal.
There was a similarly hyperbolic headline yesterday about a spike in resignations. Buried in the article it said that monthly employee turnover had moved from typical mid 1% to a higher mid 2% rate.
There might be a slight increase in turnover due to the hot job market and booming economy, but journalists like this one are working hard to make the situation sound like a dramatic change that’s going to change everything.
That said, I don't agree with this framing of your question with regard to "individual" journalists. It's unlikely that any "individual" journalist has economic, political, and social power. Journalists' power results from their collective efforts as a group. I would be hard-pressed to name more than five individual NYT reporters but collectively, the NYT has unquestionable social and political power, if not economic. The NYT's angles on stories, its decisions to pursue certain trends and not others, its portrayals as somethings as good and others as not good, etc. - these efforts have tremendous power and shape society.
Why do you think someone like Bezos was so interested in buying WaPo? To anyone who fails to appreciate the power of journalism, start with Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion.
* ALL Non-Farm: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSQUR
* Professional and Business Services (which I believe captures software) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTS540099QUL
List of all the options https://fred.stlouisfed.org/categories/32247