Chat, feeds and moderation run on AWS for us. Video on the other hand is bandwidth intensive. So we run the coordinator infra on AWS, but the SFU edge network on many different providers.
I think the cloud is good for some things, and not so great for others. S3 is fairly cost effective. RDS is expensive, bandwidth is crazy etc.
The same forces that enable high tech salaries, also make layoffs more likely.
- The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max they can
- The market for managers is also competitive. Creating dynamics that lead to larger teams and raises for team members
- Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done
The end result is that if companies are spending their max, if there's a shock to the market/system etc they have to cut. You'd see this less if there was more padding/ less competitive pressure/lower salaries.
I think that's fine and the system is working as intended. People should be freed up to move to other roles where they can be productive. Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired.
The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields.
A somewhat sensible take, but the issue isn’t just healthcare. A lot of your life is based off of long-term, fixed cost cash flow. E.g. you can’t pay less on your mortgage just because you got fired. Even with savings, getting laid off is highly disruptive, and, if done as part of a broader downturn in the market, you may never recover the required cash flow to enable your lifestyle.
There are also different types of creep, some that you can easily stop, and others that are more difficult. Specifically, everything that involves a medium to long-term obligation (such as a mortgage or vehicle loan) can cause problems if you cannot sustain it through cashflow interruptions or significant declines. Going out to expensive restaurants and Broadway shows definitely costs a lot of money, but you can immediately stop them if you have money trouble.
the problem with restaurants and broadway is that you've already spent the money on those things when the going is good, and can't claw it back retroactively when the going is bad.
That's why a budget is necessary, and you plan for emergency (of which a layoff is one). Saving up for an emergency fund means you don't spend on luxury until it is saved, which means no broadway or restaurants (unless you're super highly paid, in which case it'd be quite fast).
Transaction costs for selling your house are incredibly high. Also depending on your personal situation, especially if you have kids in school, it can be extremely disruptive.
Car market is crazy these past few years, but the common wisdom is "your car loses worth the moment it leaves the lot". and it is probably still an essential so you can ensure cash flow. It's more expensive making a bad bet with a beater and spending hundreds keeping it running.
And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely.
>And selling your house is a last resort. rent is still more than mortgageso you're losing both asset and liquid wealth with that move just to buy some time. You're better off taking out a second mortgage if needed than selling off entirely.
...not to mention that if you're losing your job and can't find a new one readily, chances are you're in an economic calamity and you'll be selling near the bottom.
Exactly, I feel a lot of my coworkers fell under this trap: if you need cashflow for mortgage on your 4m mansion in (affluent neighborhood), you can't really afford it.
I make a decent salary as a programmer (150k) but my house only cost 250k and my mortgage is about 1400. How I see it, if I have to flip burgers to keep my house, I can pull it off. I can't imagine have a mortgage that's 10gs a month.
Sadly it seems it's unlikely they'll hire you even though they might need the help that bad because they're afraid of paying to train you and then you leaving once something better, and in your line of work, comes along.
I mean I just meant a low paying job. During COVID which even have more oversupply, I was bored and I was drive around doing doordash and other delivery services even though I had my tech job. There is always a surefire way of making one or two thousand a month here in the states if you're properly motivated.
Not sure what you mean. Job growth is continually rising, and unemployment continues to remain at historic lows (where it has been since 2021-ish). [0]
The job market is doing just fine, unless you’re in very specific areas such as the automotive industry or certain types of manufacturing.
These charts use "employment" in a very pedantic way. They don't look much at underemployment nor the shifts in proportions of salary ranges.
I believe they also count gigs. So I could run Doordash for under minimum and be "employed" technically.
The other dangerous thing is "averages". This is one of the special cases where you need to look at the lower quartiles. The average/median can look great, but if we have an entire quartile unable to pay rent we'd be in trouble as a whole.
To be clear, I was only responding to your first statement about “how bad the job market's been.”
You can click through to the BLS survey to read more about their methodology, but the job growth number of +254k jobs in September only includes payroll employees. And reading the report would tell you that they do, in fact, track underemployment (people who worked part time but would have preferred full time employment). And neither job growth nor the unemployment rate has anything to do with “averages.”
Can you provide any data to refute the numbers I shared? Because again, the job market is looking pretty good to me.
> Can you provide any data to refute the numbers I shared? Because again, the job market is looking pretty good to me.
This is why everyone hates economists.
They have zero insight into how lives are for ordinary people.
I applied for a job at grocery stores and fast food restaurants.
I did not get ONE call back from any of these places.
Also another thing -- they keep saying rate of inflation is now under control.
Well guess what, the prices went up and have not come down. Wages did not keep pace with the high rate of inflation so unless you can have negative inflation somehow, there is still constant pain every day, every month. I mean it is so obvious and yet economists chase spherical cows...
> This is why everyone hates economists. They have zero insight into how lives are for ordinary people. I applied for a job at grocery stores and fast food restaurants. I did not get ONE call back from any of these places.
I understand your frustration with your personal situation, but at least regarding unemployment, how else would you propose we measure it? Unless there's some flaw with the methodology or the data that was collected, your situation is very clearly not the norm. Until we identify any possible problems with the measuring process, the number that's released is the best view we have of the employment situation nationwide. Are you saying that "ordinary people" are somehow excluded from the data? Or what?
> Also another thing -- they keep saying rate of inflation is now under control. Well guess what, the prices went up and have not come down. Wages did not keep pace with the high rate of inflation so unless you can have negative inflation somehow, there is still constant pain every day, every month. I mean it is so obvious and yet economists chase spherical cows...
The rate of inflation is under control, and I realize you might know better and are just speaking for "the average person," but comments like this reflect a gross misunderstanding of the concept of inflation. This is a perfect reason why education is so important to an informed and effective electorate.
BTW, you can, in fact, have negative inflation, and it is widely considered to be bad, for a multitude of reasons. [0]
Sorry, yes, I meant somehow have negative inflation without the terrible consequences (iirc Japan had it at slightly above zero for a decade and that was bad enough, can't imagine actually negative numbers enough to reverse the inflation since 2020).
> The rate of inflation is under control
Stop saying that because that message is clearly not resonating with people. They don't understand and they don't want to understand. Don't shoot the messenger here but this is a spherical cow. It doesn't matter that a car that has you pinned against a wall is no longer accelerating but it is merely attempting to crush you at a steady, cruising speed.
Yes, this was a big achievement and clearly we failed to communicate this message because the next question is ok great but how do I stretch my paycheck to meet my expenses.
And that goes back to the original problem -- there are fewer jobs than there were before. I have ZERO data to back this up but just my own personal anecdotes but it feels like at least for web developers that companies are laying off people AND hiring people back at lower wages. If they are not actively laying off, they are taking any excuse they can get to end a contract or "return to office" to force people to quit and come back at a lower salary.
> Stop saying that because that message is clearly not resonating with people
I’m not a politician running for office, so fortunately I don’t have to make it resonate with people. I will continue to say it because it’s true.
> And that goes back to the original problem -- there are fewer jobs than there were before. I have ZERO data to back this up but just my own personal anecdotes but it feels like at least for web developers that companies are laying off people AND hiring people back at lower wages.
I prefer to believe things that are based on data and evidence rather than feelings, even if it goes against whatever preconceived notions I may have.
Here’s an anecdote for you: I’m a developer and found a new job about 2 years ago, after the big tech layoffs started happening, and went from starting my search to offer signed in about 5 weeks, give or take. I still work for this same company and since the whole company is fully remote, there are going to be no RTO mandates, ever. I make more money than I have at any previous job in my prior 20 years in the profession. I have several close friends in similar positions as me. The job market is doing great!
I find it hard to believe you can flip enough burgers to pay that mortgage and still survive. Not many fast food places will pay over 30 hours a week to burger flippers. Managers yes. You would barely survive.
That is nonsense. That's more than enough to afford a studio in New York City.
You can easily afford a luxury studio with a doorman and a pool making half of that!
Is a "luxury studio" a real thing in NYC real estate or was this a joke?
The term itself sounds absurd and oxymoronic to me, but also I know NYC housing is absurd and I can imagine that there are places that do nice interior finishes on studio apartments and call them luxury so maybe it's real?
really depends on CoL and remote work and a half dozen other factors. My house is around the same mortgage but also twice as expensive in a suburb that is arguably the boonies. Even with the $20/hr miniumum wage for flipping burgers It'd be a tight fit after utilities and other payments.
Every house requires cash flow, regardless of mortgage amount. There's something to be said for overspending on a house for sure - but let's not forget mortgage(if any), maintenance, property tax, utilities, insurance, etc. Last year I spent more on maintenance than my mortgage cost.
You get a mortgage because most people cannot just outright buy a hosue with cash. We can discuss the balance of how big a mortgae to your salary, but most people through American history could "not really afford it" by that definition.
But most of history relied on a labor market focusing on retention and training. We're far past that. We're a gig econnomy in all but name with these kinds of evonomic swings.
The only mortgages that don't require cashflow are the paid off mortgages. Even if someone has a year of savings, or two years, or three, after that amount is drained, they need cash flow again. So how does one buy a house without being dependent on cash flow?
Well, you need cashflow on a house in general. Even with a paid-off mortgage, I'm easily $10K/year and probably closer to $20K if I'm not pushing various stuff off.
2025 standard deduction is $30k for MFJ. Ain’t many people passing that mark these days in itemized deductions so the mortgage interest deduction is moot.
Well the most obvious approach would be to pay cash.
The more fiscally conservative option is to only borrow money if you have capital which is earning income at a higher rate than the mortgage. This probably necessitates having more capital than the house costs.
The problem with that is that unless you have an extremely well paying job or rich parents, you have to outsave inflation and rising house prices. You may never own. Getting a loan just locks you into an inflation proof price as a "forced" savings. I don't think it's realistic at all for 85% of Americans to save for a new house.
If you save $2.5k/mo for 15 years, after 14 years (mid-30s), you’d have $800k at 8% interest.
Even in Seattle, $800k would get you a decent starter home.
(I chose $2.5k, bc 15 years ago out of college, that’s how much I saved living in GA on a $70k salary). I saved even more when I move to California in my mid 20s.
That' assuming houses don't go up in price though right?
Also I think it's pretty rare for people to have the mental fortitude to save 2.5k a month for a house on top of living expenses, rent, and trying to build your retirement / savings / emergency fund.
It's definitely possible but I think it's out of reach for the average person.
> That' assuming houses don't go up in price though right?
No, it isn’t. You can invest your savings. If you had put $2,500.00 a month into SPY500 since October 2009 (15 years ago) you’d have $1,388,302.13 today.
> Also I think it's pretty rare for people to have the mental fortitude to save 2.5k a month for a house on top of living expenses, rent, and trying to build your retirement / savings / emergency fund.
How is saving for a house “on top of” literally “saving”? If you can save for retirement, savings, and emergencies then you have the mental fortitude to save for a house. People are bad with money, we know that. One of the best examples is buying a house they can’t afford.
> It's definitely possible but I think it's out of reach for the average person.
Yeah, I just think examples like this need to work for the masses in order to be useful otherwise they're just pie in the sky advice like abstinence to prevent childbirth. It does work and it's 100% effective but humans are horny. Same with saving this amount of money, there's a select few that can pull it off but most are incapable. Those are the people advice is for
>Live within your means and save as much as you can
It's expensive being poor and the job market isn't getting better to compensate this economy. If you rent forever you spend more than someone paying off a mortgage (only amortized by needing to upkeep the house youself). If you're wokrking your back out everyday you're more likely to pay more insurance and medical bills than the cushy white collar job with proggresion options.
Most people don't even have the $1000 rainy day fund. They are 3 steps removed from the thought of a "diversified portfolio".
They can’t afford a rainy day fund so they should buy a house?
I have a “cushy white collar job” and I can’t afford a house. Prices are absurd. I can make mortgage payments but it would destroy any other savings. Buying a house when poor isn’t a smart financial move.
I wish everyone could afford a house but that’s not the world we live in. Nothing will change until people wake up and stop killing themselves to inflate home prices.
Just because you buy something doesn’t mean you can afford it.
If you can’t retire or pay medical expenses or maintain your physical and emotional wellbeing because you spent money on a house then you couldn’t afford it. Owning a house doesn’t mean you can pay the property taxes or maintenance costs.
My point is that people are making financially unsound home buying purchases.
Another way to say this is that Bugatti doesn’t sell Veyrons to people with $1,000,000.00. Bugatti sells Veyrons to people with an extra $1,000,000.00.
Now I’m curious how this happened. This is the portion of homes owned by their residents, not the number of owned homes as a portion of total population. I’m also curious what the income and wealth to home ratios are. Looks like I have a weekend project.
The pre-war/post war duality is easy to understand. The US made it official policy to increase homeownership. The government subsidizes housing for all income levels and there was tons of housing built.
The post-war era has seen only minor changes in homeownership rates. And those tend to be around macro economic events like 2008 and Covid (and the Reagan era mortgage rates woof).
My bet is simple: Boomers are all at retirement age if we use the cap of 1954, they were basically given land during the post-war boom. Many had a lifetime career so there was no need to constantly hustle and move about to get a comfortable life. Home ownership is likely very top heavy for Boomers and older Gen X as a result.
If that's even in the ballpark we're going to see a lot of assets aquired by insurance and hospitals to pay off the final years and this residential ownershio will torpeo.
The census bureau has looked at this. The Reagan years hit boomers hard causing their percentage of homeownership to drop compared to a similar age cohort historically. Then 2008 wrecked the young boomers and gen x similarly.
In general terms the oldest cohort has steadily advanced in home ownership (I’d guess due to our welfare for the aged that isn’t needs based and better old age health, not land gifts but who knows). So there is definitely a trend of the oldest age cohort increasing its homeownership % while the other cohorts decrease.
But for the under 35 crowd today, they own their own home at a higher percentage than boomers or gen x did when they were in that cohort.
There is also the consideration that the US is just older than it’s ever been. I’m not a demographer do I have no idea how that plays out.
No, those are considered. That $2,500/mo is at the bottom of your career. You will be saving more as you age, even accounting for employment gaps.
If we are considering kids, presumably there is another partner (and income) to be added to the equation. While you may have half the amount saved due to the cost of raising children, your partner would have the other half.
8% was chosen to discount 3% inflation (cost of living) from SnP 500’s average 11% growth.
Ah yeah fair. The numbers I quoted are median and I don’t have the source. They are from a quick search of financial news. Your index numbers are probably a more sound comparison of overall house prices.
But even using the index numbers it isn’t hard to see that housing prices do in fact go both up and down.
They are not going down because of lack of inventory. Look at commercial, some properties had an 80% discount. But that requires that supply overwhelms demand. It’s not happening with regular housing.
That's not guaranteed, and not how you save for a fixed goal.
I don't know of any lower-risk and higher-interest alternative to the 30-years-fixed that is currently offered to US consumers, and based of the above answer, neither do you.
Yes, it’s a tragedy of the commons. That doesn’t make taking on a loan you can’t afford less of a bad idea.
House prices are unaffordable because people take on loans they can’t afford. This reinforces the unaffordable prices. If milk was $40.00 a gallon you’d just stop putting it on cereal and eventually farmers get the message. Houses are the same thing.
If you can’t comfortably afford a house then don’t buy it. You’re stuck renting or buying something more modest. This isn’t complicated.
The idea that house prices can only go up is delusional. Nothing about a house is uniquely inflation proof or even inflation resistant. This isn’t the only investment vehicle available to you.
This idea that houses are an important part of financial security is putting the cart in front of the horse. It leads to the NIMBYism that prevents additional supply from being built because prices must always go up.
We all exist in the same economy and no action happens in a vacuum. When you buy something you have reduced supply and applied upward pressure on price. Individually this effect is so small it is immeasurable. In aggregate it isn’t.
This was a failure of regulation, not just in the US but elsewhere too; banks and mortgage brokers weren't doing their due diligence and were giving out loans and mortgages that people couldn't afford based on their income and other outstanding debts, eventually leading to the 2007/8 financial crisis.
Which should have been a lesson, but five years later, housing prices recovered and ballooned. I don't know why besides increased demand and reduced availability, clearly people can still get mortgages despite the lessons learned from the crisis.
One thing I've come to realize is that the larger your social circle, the more prone you are to comparisons and hence lifestyle creep. You can see this where the careers that involve a lot of socializing (sales, entertainment, law, finance etc) are known for having flashy people. And the careers that you can do as a loner (programming, quant, researcher etc) are known for having miserly folk
I don't know why we treat large stock portfolios as if it's a convinient savings account in these talks.
My financial teachings were always emergency fund -> 3-6 months of savings immediately accessible -> consider stocks (hire a financial planner if you don't know stocks) -> consider asset management. your first foray into saving if you're barely spacing by isn't to rely on the S&P 500.
There seems to be an analogy to servers being capable enough for usual demand(income>spending), but fails due to some downtime for some servers(out of a job) or peak loads(medical emergency). This can be amortized by having data centers serving multiple apps(social security, insurance - but they dont always exist).
One main fault in the analogy is that in an economic crisis, there is a vicious cycle of income loss which leads to lower demand leading to more lost jobs. This coordination failure can be handled by fiscal/monetary policy. Whereas server failure, even when widespread due to a virus doesn't happen recursively like that.
This why we need the tiny home movement combined with progressive property taxes - 0 prop tax bracket for lowest 20% property values If you have mortgage then you don’t really own your house.
Tiny homes like the coffin homes of overpopulated cities, you mean?
Or tiny homes like the luxury single occupant container buildings on a bit of land?
Tiny homes are not the solution, they are hipster semi-cottage-core fashion homes. You're probably thinking of regular apartments, but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed. Build ten million apartments (for starters) and the cost of living will go down. Satisfy / saturate the market first, then think of gentrifying with fashion homes.
>but for some reason they aren't built at the rate needed.
crabs in a bucket. Those who got in and got theirs don't want their property value falling. Americans treating housing as a stock instead of a necessary resource for living really ruined a lot of the dynamic of city planning.
Seems like this would hurt those laid off here. They are probably in the top 20% of property values.
That said, I think it is a pretty bad idea. Use of public funds dont increase with property value, it just means you have deeper pockets. I would be more in favor of flat taxes on homes independent of value, so people pay their fair share for community resources consumed.
honestly this is one of the reasons I prefer pre-IPO companies, my salary is lower until they do a buyback or an exit, but it ends up basically in the same place over the long term. This is how I was able to put a downpayment on a house without consciously "saving up" for it. Obviously there's some risk but I've had two buybacks, one IPO, and two acquisitions since 2012
Yeah, the stakes for the two sides of that transaction are completely different, so equivocating rational responses on either side makes no sense. OP lost me there.
Eventually we all get fired. It shouldn't come as a shock. This is why people working in volatile industries subject to boom/bust cycles should live below their means and keep at least several months of living expenses (including health insurance premiums) in low-risk, liquid investments.
I do understand that it can be challenging to save for young people with student debt starting out in a HCOL area. But I see older tech workers who ought to know better buying luxury cars and fancy gaming PCs and taking exotic vacations. Good luck to them when the next recession hits.
Yes, but the problems start in severe economic crises. Specifically, when those several months turn into years.
Many filters during the hiring process, prior to interview will discard those candidates who have gaps since last employment regardless of circumstance. They may use AI as a third-party company to review and obscure the fact that they aren't hiring anyone over 40, female, or otherwise protected classes but that is what is happening regularly, along with other elements such as degrees being weighted higher than experience algorithmically.
> I do understand ...
I can tell you from personal experience, this opinion of yours isn't reflective of the whole. I've been in Tech for a decade, I was unlucky and was laid off before the major lay offs (2022) as I was involved in workforce reduction for a buyout merger. I've been looking ever since, and I've had to find work elsewhere in the interim once my reserves were expended.
I was extremely frugal, cooking everything myself, nothing luxurious. Inflation destroyed my reserves, the lack of jobs forced me to look wider than my given profession since there are no jobs, and I had more saved than most (>50k in liquid reserves at the start).
This isn't some recession like before. This is a great depression, potentially a big debt crises like Germany pre-WW2.
70% of my professional network in IT/Tech right now, across the board, is out of work. I'll let that sink in. 70%.
We are at peak hiring for seasonal hiring and unemployment is 7.0% in August? Hiring freezes guarantee this will be double digits by the annual count. National unemployment is 1.5%. That's a 4.6x national distortion between the national average unemployment and one sector that impacts everything else as a labor multiplier, and that measurement only counts those currently getting unemployment, any long-term displacement outside 18 weeks isn't counted.
Its looking more like we're in the middle of an economic collapse, which makes sense if you know about ponzi's, economics of boom-bust cycles, and how we are entering a bust cycle related to the petrodollar agreement abandonment (by the Saudi's); all those dollars printed for abroad use are now flowing back to compete with the same goods despite high interest rates.
BRICS largely isn't about attacking the US economically, its about sheltering from the global economic fallout of fiat money printing, for more than half a century. The bankers are and have been doing this to us since before we were born, and this happens every time large fractions of global assets get concentrated into few hands. Its cyclical. Large market-share companies are funded by preferential loans made by those same bankers. This is how you sieve wealth and marketshare, then drive prices up, and eventually end in deflation or hyper-inflationary collapse, because unlike normal systems economics is both sticky psychologically, and mathematically chaotic (3-body-problem).
There is no beautiful deleveraging, the bill always comes due. If this worsens, and I don't see how it cannot, this will be known by the survivors as the folly of one big generation.
I'm sorry for your troubles but that unhinged rant is completely disconnected from objective reality.
BRICs isn't even a real thing, it's a total joke. They've been talking about an alternative reserve currency for years but have made zero real progress.
Unemployment calculations from data recorded during that time have since changed. The same unemployment numbers are not the same mathematical objects being compared.
At this point, we can never know the true scope of unemployment to make any comparison definitively, because the measurements no longer accurately collect the necessary information for such a comparison.
You don't see engineers turn sampling data into an average rate of change, and then use it for safety-critical applications that require instantaneous rates of change.
In my previous response, I said unemployment today isn't counted after 18 weeks, so you should be aware that these objects are not the same.
Just because you have no visibility on a problem doesn't mean there isn't a problem especially when objective measures indicate there is a problem.
No definitive comparison can be made objectively, claiming its not even close would involve delusion when no external objective comparison can be made, definitionally.
> Unemployment calculations from data recorded during that time have since changed. The same unemployment numbers are not the same mathematical objects being compared
We can look at the number of people on payrolls and the number of people claiming unemployment.
You are in a deep tech bubble if you think we're in a recession let alone depression. (What we are in is a cost of living crisis.)
Recessions typically are pullbacks of the market sector for 1-2 years, but not necessarily slowdowns in growth, though there is no globally accepted definition for a recession.
Depressions typically have stagnant growth, starting in one sector, and expanding; with no prospects and a duration that can last years (plural). You can have a depression where everyone says they are hiring, but no hiring actually occurs.
Cost of living crises naturally occur during the latter crises given the chaotic nature of deflationary and inflationary forces (money-printing). They are not mutually exclusive.
Payroll data collection has problems with accuracy, people claiming unemployment also have data collection problems. Its not uncommon for the government to withhold unemployment benefit approval until some arbitrary bureacratic requirement is met with no means to contact someone to resolve it timely. I know several people who received their 18 month unemployment effectively as a lump sum and they spent days of labor trying to overcome those hurdles.
This causes a delay of action, and bursts in time (temporally) which cannot be compared except as an average. Revisions are subject to problems too.
> Recessions typically are pullbacks of the market sector for 1-2 years, but not necessarily slowdowns in growth, though there is no globally accepted definition for a recession
There absolutely is. A slowdown in growth is not a recession.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem. I am saying that you can't extrapolate from 70% of IT people in your circles being unemployed to the entire economy imploding Great Depression style.
Even in IT circles, it's still better out there than it was during the GFC (2009, 10% US unemployment), and way better than it was after the dot-com bust (2000, <6% overall unemployment, but much, much higher in IT).
Something uncommmon for Gen X and unthinkable for Boomers. But think about how modern America structured all these payment plans...
>This is why people working in volatile industries subject to boom/bust cycles
you just said everyone get fired. I think today it's harder to find a job that isn't on bust/boom. Especially a public company that will slash employees simply to make number go up, no even because they are struggling per se.
>several months of living expenses (including health insurance premiums) in low-risk, liquid investments.
Low risk invesements are talking 2% on a great day and 4% on an excellent day. There were people above talking about 8% interest rates from S&P to outrun inflation long term.
>But I see older tech workers who ought to know better buying luxury cars and fancy gaming PCs and taking exotic vacations.
odd we compare a 6 figure luxury car to what's at best some $5k gaming setup that can in fact be used for more work in this tech sector. my 2.5K laptop was probably a better investment pre-bust than my new bed (I guess we'll see in 20 years with my back, but the bed isn't making me money).
You've got to be kidding. Boomers were fired or laid off all the time. Unemployment rates have been much higher during some years when Boomers were a major part of the labor force, hitting over 10% in 1982.
There's a difference between "it happens regularly" and "no one is safe". We're arguably structured like a gig economy so unemployment rates won't represent the differece on a chart
You should bring a chart on the average tenure at a single company.
The idea that someone's response to being fired should be the same as a manager's response to one of their reports quitting is hilariously out of touch.
It kind of ignores the core asymmetry of capitalism, that those with the capital are the ones with the power. Nobody can do a background check on a company to see who they laid off or fired before they work there.
You can do a background check. That’s not where the asymmetry is, though. The pandemic checks have showed that the asymmetry can be flipped but then almost everyone working low-tier (flipping burgers) will quit his work. The Fed has then decided to re-enslave these people. Someone gotta take the garbage.
>The Fed has then decided to re-enslave these people. Someone gotta take the garbage.
What are you talking about? real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages have gone up more for the lowest quartile of americans[1]. Is paying people more to get them to work "re-enslavement" now?
> “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” - Anatole France
Too many focus on equal outcome instead of equal opportuniy.
That quote is one that calls attention to the limits of things that seem like they would lead to "equal opportunity." Maybe it's illegal for a rich person to sleep under a bridge, but then again, why would they want or need to?
A rule applying across the board to everyone doesn't really imply that it provides equal opportunity.
What do you mean? Information about previous layoffs is all over the news, social media, and dedicated sites like Glassdoor. Only a fool or someone really desperate would take a job without doing a thorough background check on the company first. And while I sympathize with workers who have to take whatever job they can get, that doesn't apply to most HN users.
Glassdoor itself encourages users not to post anything factual, only opinion-based, because of the legal consequences [1]. Glassdoor is more like a Google business review than a background check anyway.
Also your estimation of HN users is probably out of date with the current state of the employment market.
I worked at startups for 7 years. Interestingly, WARN acts are mostly irrelevant for startups because they are only triggered when a certain number of people are about to be laid off (100 or more, I believe). When an employer accesses your employment record, they can see very detailed information. A WARN act filing is neither comprehensive nor detailed.
Well yes. If you're at a startup you should assume you're always a few months from being laid off. Everyone should assume that. You're fighing to survive; the default is dead.
Dropbox, on the other hand, is not a start-up. It's had to file WARN notices [1]. "Nobody can do a background check on a company to see who they laid off or fired before they work there" is false.
Once again, an employment check is not like a WARN act filing. I want to know for a given startup exactly who was fired and why, when, etc.
It’s one thing to be laid off from a startup in general. Another entirely to be laid off right now.
The number of recent layoffs is everyone’s concern right now because of how hard it will be for you to find a job afterward. Layoffs always were going on, and always will for startups, but the days of turning down job offers due to small uncertainties are mostly paused or gone at this point. The demand crunch is very real.
> at least contain exactly who you worked for and the time period as well as possibly your title. None of that is provided in the WARN act
We're talking about the information asymmetry in hiring and firing. Why does knowing the titles and time periods of those laid off in the past help you estimate your lay-off odds in the future?
I thought the one and only thing HR would confirm when background check is employment dates. it's shakey on if they will delineate between termination, layoffs/RiF, or simply leaving, though.
>Why does knowing the titles and time periods of those laid off in the past help you estimate your lay-off odds in the future?
I don't know. Why does knowing my titles and time period help businesses judge how useful I'll be for this new position? It's the same issue but that's where the asymmetry is. People seem fine with big business being able to do that but not prospective employees who may care about retention rates.
But to answer your question: retentions rates let me know how hard the company will try to keep me during bad/down times. Someone who can't even retain for 2 years probably has smoke.
> bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired
That doesn't seem the least bit weird to me. If I choose to leave a job (or relationship), I could quite sensibly feel differently if that same job (or relationship) chooses to leave me.
Are they really high? They are not that different from UPS driver salaries.
Just the other day I clicked on the website of some random law firm's career page. I wasn't happy with what I saw (in the context of my own career). Some researchers with 1 year of experience with starting salary of 450k+... tech salaries look high as long as you don't check other professions.
This doesn't really make sense. What is a "researcher" at a law firm? Lawyers at top firms are on fixed pay schedules, starting at 180k as a 1st year going up to something like 450k after 8yrs (?).
Tech is high earning. It gets beat out by high finance and partner-level roles in e.g. law though. If someone is earning 450k in their first year it's probably similar to a quant finance role.
I don't work at a law firm, have no idea what they really do. Based on the description, I decyphered some advanced googling, mostly background checks and precendence finding. It was like 2 or 3 weeks ago, I didn't know that it should have saved it for reference lol.
But pick your favorite firm, and check the salaries. Junior roles are starting at $200k+, frequently at $300k+. And senior roles get senior salaries.
This is just one random firm that I picked from google:
[0] - $235k - $365 - with 1 full year of experience, lol
[1] - $310k - $390 - real estate contracts
[2] - $260k - $390 - real estate contracts, with 2 years of experience
Can you get $350k+ in tech? Well, yes, but with including a lot of luck and ifs. Can you get $350k+ in tech with 1 year of experience? Realistically, only if your dad is called Nadella or Musk.
There are definitely jobs that pay much worse than tech, no question about it. And if you are happy with your salary, than good for you. But nowadays people are mostly made to believe that tech salaries are still extraordinary.
Looking at the best paying professions[3], tech makes only the very end of the list (and only manager level, not code-droid level).
You do not understand what you're reading. I told you, lawyers are on fixed pay schedules. The numbers are different from what I thought, but that doesn't really affect anything I said.
The first role is a 2nd-5th year associate. $235k is for a 2nd year associate, $365k is for a 5th year associate. Each year they get a predefined pay bump. Third role is the same kind of thing (3rd-6th year associate), second role it says mid-level so not 1 YOE.
This firm is also a Big Law firm, the equivalent of FAANG, if not harder to get into. Notice how law is not on your list of top paying professions. Most lawyers are not super well paid.
Also, being an associate is not like being fresh into tech. I don't think it's like a tech new grad role. Average TC for an entry level SWE at Google is ~$200k, and you can be making that as a new grad. Average senior comp is ~$400k, and it's possible to reach that level in 5-7yrs.
Another thing to consider is hours. You will work so many more hours as a lawyer in Big Law than a SWE at FAANG.
Tech workers have it very good. Relatively high pay with relatively low hours. Higher comp professions have much higher barriers to entry and work much longer hours.
Revisited this, and while it was tongue-in-cheek, it feels a bit ungrateful.
A lot of tech roles are intellectually stimulating and have a wage in the upper distribution of salaries. I think we have a very nice situation going for us.
They are not high. But most companies have business leadership who sees software developers as annoying and weird nerds. Explains why they are spending all their money on compute so that they can replace them with machines once and for all.
FYI, Dropbox does not merely allow remote work, it's a fully remote-first company. There's a couple of offices for get-togethers and a few people physically staffing data centers, but everybody else works wherever they want to.
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired.
That's because people have a single employer, while companies have several employees.
That's also why employees are protected, while companies are mostly not. And yeah, the US doubles down on the problem by linking health insurance with the job.
> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired.
Really? You think its weird that someone leaving impacts that person more than their manager, team, or company?
A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. When someone is layed off or fired they have to go find a new job, their income streams dry up, and are forced to rely on savings. People often have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing.
Are you fucking kidding me? "Which is a bit weird" I'll tell you what's weird: management who doesn't understand that their employees rely on them more than they rely on the employee.
Of course its fine when someone chooses to leave their job, they've made contingencies and planned around it. Whether it's through savings, another job, or the lottery, people have at least some idea of their plan when they leave a job.
> People often have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing.
I'm sure people making >200k/year and getting a 4 month severance package will be cutting back on how much they eat.
What you say is true about low or even medium income jobs. But most of the cuts are to tech workers and their managers, ie. people best equipped to manage in this kind of event.
You'd be surprised what lifestyle creep does to people. Often people don't pay off their debts and instead scale their debts to their new income - it's stupid I know.
I agree they should be in a better position because of their income, and I'd say more than an average amount are. But there are still a lot of people in that bracket who absolutely would have the floor pulled out from under them.
People are often caught with their pants down assuming the good times will keep rolling. And even when they see the market downturn or have a generous severance, it still can be very difficult to scrape together the 6+ months emergency fund required on short notice.
Depending on the resale value of what the debt is for (homes mainly) maintaining your leverage ratio can work out great for you. Mortgages are the only way most people are able to invest with leverage and the source of a lot of generational wealth.
That's true, but if you over-leverage yourself and the market goes through a downturn it can spell financial ruin. It's not something to lightly do without the cashflow/assets to back up your financial knowledge - which most people don't have.
You should only leverage what you are OK with losing entirely. Most people should not be leveraging their only home as investments. We are heading into some rough times and people will find out about that.
You would think so but it's often the opposite. The poorer you are the more conscious you have to be about money management so getting laid off may just be yet another obstacle life has thrown at you, business as usual.
Meanwhile if you've lived an easy life you may not have learned how to cope when the hard times come.
A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while.
Yeah, I'm curious how someone can have an opinions on workplaces and workers and not seem to have personal experience with the subject, especially in a community like this.
Do they just come from a wealthy family so the stance is "Getting fired isn't a big deal, just ask your dad to cover expenses until your next job."?
It seems the original commenter has never really been a "line-worker". But I could be very wrong too, but then I'd be curious how those opinions were formed.
Nope, you're correct: he runs a startup and apparently has been running startups since his early 20s.
> Please tell us briefly about your background.
> I grew up in the Netherlands, and I was interested in technology from a young age. I started a gaming website when I was 13. Later, I attended Erasmus University Rotterdam before founding Fashiolista, my first startup and an early social network similar to Pinterest. It grew to millions of users...
Don't people have savings? Don't people see what's happening in the industry and make sure to have 6+ months of savings? Don't people think that putting away a small portion of their immense tech salary would be a healthy thing to do?
If you grew up with even the slightest feeling of financial insecurity, dipping in to savings can already feel like the end of the world.
I can't imagine living with only 6 months of savings. There's no guarantee that I could find another job in 6 months, and unexpected expenses (medical, car trouble, housing repairs) can easily wipe out a month of savings anyway. In fact, given that a layoff means likely also an economic downturn, finding a job at the same salary within 6 months seems highly unlikely.
I have probably 3 years of no-risk savings at this point, have managed to reduce my living expenses to the point where I could work a 40-hour minimum wage job and still pay for my expenses, and have multiple back-up careers, and I'm only now starting to feel that taking money out of savings is an acceptable risk. That took years of frugal living on a high tech salary. People in their first few years at a tech job or with families will probably never achieve that.
It's so frustrating reading the comments around here. It's like the conversation is driven by people whose circumstances fall on the upper tail end. No concept of financial insecurity. No long-term financial commitments to worry about. Infinite flexibility. Like jeez, congrats. Now try imagining somebody else that's not you.
It comes down to the concentration of wealth. Companies wouldn't have the capital to bid up salaries if they faced stiffer competition or couldn't access investment from a limited pool of investors (who all think the same), as is the case now. I know that "diversity" is a dirty word these days, but it's key. A large middle class, where each family has a small amount of money to put towards their diverse desires, is going to lead to a more stable economy than all of the money pooled in the hands of a small group with a much smaller set of needs. Dropbox should never have been able to hire so many people; that capital should have been in the hands of the larger public, who could have spent it supporting a more diverse set of hundreds or thousands of jobs (who wouldn't all be competing with each other for a limited number of seats in the "not laid off" lifeboat).
Put simply, these kinds of things are going to keep happening until our wealthiest (individuals/families/companies) are a lot less rich.
> Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done
Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of “productivity metrics” but I have never actually seen one.
E: I realize this is a poor choice of words after saying productivity metrics don’t exist. What I mean is my tasks are easier to complete in a WFH environment than they are in an office.
I have been far more productive from home. The constraints around communication necessitate effective documentation which enables asynchronous communication which alleviates scheduling challenges which improves delivery.
Maybe managers need to go in to the office to rub elbows but ICs definitely don’t.
Same. It's been a boon for me, and I genuinely enjoy my work, so it's win win. But anecdotally, I know people who abuse it.
On net, remote work is a plus: less commute, less pollution etc etc. And even the abusers, it's not like those people were highly productive in the office, I'm sure.
>The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense.
No the issue is that I get fired after the prior townhall saying "we are not doing layoffs". Companies will outright lie to get little ounces of productivity and treat you like a criminal the moment they break the news, as if we're all school shooters waiting to happen in anger and rage over betrayal.
The circus of the 2023/2024 job market doesn't help either. Even pre-pandemic the process was padded, but now I'm not even convinced 80% of companies have a human reading my resume.
>There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields.
I'd rather not "hit hard times" while shareholders are making a killing and make a conclustion that my entire career needs to shuffle so they can save pennies.
> remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done
If you can't tell remote employees are slacking then you also can't tell if they are slacking in the office, you are just getting fooled by thinking presence implies work.
There's also COBRA, and the exchanges in the US. Frankly, even if you're eligible for Medicare it really isn't any cheaper if you're a current or recent high earner. But, in any case, it's about $7K/year for an individual who doesn't otherwise have coverage for a spouse etc.
A couple months ago interviewing.io posted something bragging about how "we do anonymous mock interviews. If people perform well in those interviews, they get introduced directly to a decision-maker at top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper." ( https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-meritocracy-but-all-the-... )
This annoyed me enough that I sent in an email complaining that their introduction process specifically notes that I am not eligible for anything, despite performance measured by the site as "highest ever achieved: 94th percentile" (so, knock that down a bit for being a high water mark), because of an insufficient number of years of experience.
They responded:
> It really sucks, especially in this market, but this policy is a function of us having tried for years to get companies to take junior intros, and it didn't work. We offered to do it completely for free, too, fwiw, and no dice.
How competitive is the market for talent? Let's stipulate that, because of a lack of prior employment, I'm not qualified to have a job. How exactly would that situation change?
Clarification: Just because companies don't want a 3rd party like us providing them with junior candidates, it doesn't mean they don't want them. Even back in 2017-2019, when the market was booming, we couldn't get employers to take our juniors... because they generally have their own robust pipeline.
So the solution is to go to companies directly, rather than relying on a 3rd party service like ours, which companies tend to use specifically for roles they can't fill on their own.
I'm not really sure what you're saying here. My point was that the market for talent is not particularly competitive, with the opinion of interviewing.io given as an illustration of that.
You seem to be confirming that the market for talent isn't competitive - in your view, companies have more applications than they want.
Or maybe you're going for a different point? For the suggestion, my experience is that companies won't consider direct applications either, and in the general case do not ever even list junior positions. (An observation which is not unique to me; see e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/07/fr... )
If you're worried that I'm implicitly slamming interviewing.io for claiming to do something very different than what they actually do, I don't think you've rebutted that - "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies as long as we think their resume looks good" isn't particularly similar to "if people perform well in our interviews, we will introduce them to top-tier companies, regardless of how they look on paper".
Yes, companies do indeed have more applications than they want (I'd argue that means the market IS competitive).
The point I was making is that even though companies don't want to hire juniors through us, they still DO WANT to hire juniors in the absolute. So junior hiring isn't dead.
>> The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max they can - The market for managers is also competitive. Creating dynamics that lead to larger teams and raises for team members - Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk
Here, saying "the market for talent is competitive" clearly means that hirers are competing with each other over potential employees. Deciding that you already have too many potential employees is the opposite of that. It would mean that the market to sell talent is competitive, which isn't what was claimed.
I disagree with your conclusion, you have several flawed premises.
The market has been slowly shrinking into fewer and fewer hands over time, which is why it has become more competitive over time. This has also led to cooperative behavior among the large marketshare companies in the sectors to disadvantage competitors, and employees.
Companies do not bid up to the max they can, because the executives take their cut first. The companies bids can only ever be the max of what is left after that, and varies by the greed of those people.
Interest rates would be the shock you described, but Tech unemployment as far as I can tell has until now been bulletproof, and uncorrelated with interest rate rises or falls. Its not rational to assume this market shock is a result of interest rates, AI is the only competitive alternative.
The issue is not that you're getting fired. Its that you can no longer get base goods needed for survival arbitrarily and without notice, and without capital reserves which are finite you are living on the street.
When the entire market as an entirety is contracting, there are no new jobs to move to in other fields.
Worse, the concentrated market is naturally incentivized to impose high costs on any job seekers to interfere in labor relations to create barriers to entry for competitors while suppressing wages for prospective workers.
This natural progression occurs when anti-trust fails, and money printing makes it worse potentially leading to either deflation (a collapse to non-market socialism) or hyper-inflation (a collapse to non-market socialism). Debt issued as preferential loans from a money-printer makes a company state-dependent/controlled apparatus even if its claim is that it is held privately.
The economy today is worse than 2008, much worse then the dotcom bust, and if you plot the trend with good data going back and starting around the 1970s, the trend shows progressive ruin as time passes, with seiving and consolidation occurring regularly. That is the force driving this problem, and it doesn't enable tech salaries.
> There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn.
There is a limit to what government can provide, it takes awhile to get to those limits (we're in a super-cycle going back to the 1920s) but we'll be there in the next 5-10 years thanks in large part to deficit spending and the FED picking winners and losers.
The main issues with academia also applies to government. They are structurally the same. Education today is not about learning skills, that is always secondary to instilling the qualities a loyal unthinking worker. That is what the entire prussian-model of schooling is about (which is what we have in this country).
These structures for training follow the same structure as guild socialism, and the same intractable failures (ref Mises for related details).
It inevitably ends up being a cult of qualification, where you are automatically considered unqualified without a piece of paper even if you have the actual skills to do the job. Once a target market size is identified and reached, new candidates are put on an endless escalator of suffering with arbitrary filters/requirements where the claimed outcome is nothing but an unobtainable pipe dream.
Either wrong or a lie. You are not expected to "fully drain all your assets." Your primary residency is completely excluded from means testing unless you don't intend to return to it or it's above an very high threshold - most of the country it's about 2.5-3x the median home price and it is higher in HCOL states.
I'd give you that, but in exchange, you'll have to agree that, if I'm renting, I shouldn't have to sell any financial assets less than, say, the median value of a house where I am.
I feel like "Medicaid could be better" is a statement everyone can agree on, but my point stands that the meme that US healthcare is some Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where you're completely on your own and left to die in the street is categorically false.
Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay.
> Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay.
This is not true. Emergency rooms are required to take you in and stabilize your situation even if you can't pay. Everything else is not available if you can't pay.
Think of something like cancer, which an emergency room can't treat since it develops over time. You will indeed be left to die on the streets if you don't have the money or coverage from somewhere.
> Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on inability to pay.
Yes, because that's the law. Then they hand you an exorbitant bill on the way out, which you can't pay. Then you get hounded by collections. Then your credit score tanks. etc. etc. etc.
Not everything is a direct line, the end result is the same.
I did, and found that it's supposed to apply to early stage startups. Dropbox isn't an early stage startup anymore. At what point will investors have to be content with lower returns that are still in double digits and better than the vast majority of companies?
Part of this is also just the bubble from the last few years. Everything that startups spend money on has become more expensive. Right now there is less funding available, but prices haven't adjusted.
Perhaps, but that doesn’t sound like you should lower productivity for everyone else hoping that it’ll reduce the need for managers to do their jobs. I’ve seen too many people spend 8 in the office working mostly on fantasy football or Facebook to think that changing locations is an effective solution.
Not OP, but I think most manages genuinely struggle with this because it is hard. Im not sure what the solution is. Perhaps they need to double the pay for management to hire folks who can tell the difference?
I don't like this us vs them mentality. Nothing stops you from starting your own business and being on the "manager" side of things.
Cost of capital is up, productivity is down. So all companies have to work through options to increase productivity, and/or reduce costs. Companies will take different approaches to this
Money/capital stops the worker in general or do you expect the average worker to be able to buy the firm they are working for now because wages are that good?
An easy way for "them" to stop that mentality would be to take a pay cut and show solidarity in cutting costs, and yet I don't really see that happening.
No, lots of things stop you. You can't just say "nothing stops you" and pretend it's true and work from there. Obviously, lots of things stop you otherwise everyone would do it.
Price transparency being a necessary condition of efficient markets is taught in microecon 101. The only reason prices are not transparent is because someone wants to (or thinks they are) profiting from the inefficiency in the market.
I think it's related to the job market atm. Everyone is hired in a stretch position at very high comp. This is true for VPs, directors, ICs etc. Because of this it's less viable than it was as a manager to be fully hands off.
I think the cloud is good for some things, and not so great for others. S3 is fairly cost effective. RDS is expensive, bandwidth is crazy etc.
(5M a year spend on AWS atm.)
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