Hacker News Reader

Comment by applfanboysbgon | Hacker News Reader

> A competitive labor market doesn't automatically mean you switch jobs constantly though.

Maybe "a competitive labor market" doesn't, but "job hopping" does. That is, in fact, the definitional meaning of job hopping. They specifically made the claim about "job hopping" as pertains to a mechanism for achieving wages. This is incompatible with finding an optimal fit -- even if you found your optimal fit, you would essentially be taking a massive wage cut to stay at your optimal fit job for more than a couple of years, if job hopping is the chosen mechanism for society-wide wage growth. I was responding to the claim that was made about job hopping, not some other claim about competitive labor markets.

View on HN

The optimal fit doesn't remain static.

The reason for all of [job hopping, fluid labor markets, bankruptcy, startup formation, inflation] is because the world doesn't stay the same. Desires change. New technologies are invented. Resources get depleted, and substitutes need to be found. Bottlenecks emerge. Old people die, and young people are born.

Changing wages and periodic layoffs are ways of adapting the jobs that people do to the new realities of which jobs need to be done.

Yeah, that's a romantic idea, but none of those grand societal trends really has anything to do with the reality of job hopping. The reality of job hopping is that the market is irrational and will pay 20% more to a new college grad they have to train to replace somebody with 15 years of experience they just laid off because they refused to give them a raise even though the person with 15 years of experience brings the company 10x more profit than they are paid in salary.

You're right, and I should've addressed you more directly.

Job hopping is the result of competition in the labor market, and while some may find it unfulfilling, that is usually the exception, and macroeconomically speaking, more job hopping can be really good for the overall market. That's all I was saying, though I forgot to mention how competition in the labor market relates.

My definition of job hopping is to switch jobs continually until you find the right fit, the right fit including wages as a factor among many others. I suspect that your definition means jumping jobs arbitrarily for the highest wage. In that case you are right that job hopping is bad, and it's my fault for confusing job hopping as wage increasing mechanism vs job hopping in general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com