[HN Gopher] Job-hopping heats up: 65% of U.S. workers are lookin...
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Job-hopping heats up: 65% of U.S. workers are looking for a new job
Author : hiddencache
Score : 140 points
Date : 2021-08-21 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I'm seeing 20%-25% inflation here in the CPI west region.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, I do not bother eating out much since the pandemic,
| because while I can still afford it, it just feels like too
| much compared to the inconvenience of cooking at home.
|
| Plus I can guarantee the home cooked meal is going to be
| awesome, whereas the eating out is a gamble, I have no idea
| what financial constraints the restaurant is under and what
| corners they are cutting.
| lettergram wrote:
| I personally know 20-30 people looking for new jobs due to the
| vaccine and masking mandates. At least 3-4 families I spoke with
| around my home in Illinois are leaving Illinois out of concern
| (in various levels of moving). It's why I bought land and started
| a farm earlier this year.
|
| I don't think people realize how much fear and anger there is
| under the surface. People don't move their families for fun, they
| do so for opportunity.
|
| The New York City vaccine mandate alone is massive. There's no
| medical exemption and impacts employees and consumers alike.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/restaurants-gyms-suing-y...
|
| I won't comment on effectiveness or anything else, but a lot of
| people aren't vaccinated. It's not worth it and many people will
| leave.
| pensatoio wrote:
| I'm moving out of IL for this reason. I'll be working fully
| remote from a farm for the rest of my life. Not interested in
| participating in this totalitarian, political virtue-signaling.
| version_five wrote:
| Overall, I believe the average workplace (in tech) is much
| more into only tolerating the "correct" viewpoint than
| previously. There are lots of examples beyond vaccines, even
| if having health choices and subsequent proof of them forced
| on you seems like the most extreme.
|
| Even before the vaccine stuff, one of the big factors in my
| change of job was all the protesting and politics and
| extremism. It's pretty easy to just keep your head down and
| go through the motions, and I expect that's what most do. But
| given the choice, I'd rather "bring my whole self to work"
| which includes holding and discussing opinions in a non-
| fanatical manner and not being forced to, as you say, signal
| my alignment with non-work related groupthink.
|
| For example, I don't use drugs but I would not work somewhere
| that subjected me to a drug test. It's no different than
| being vaccinated but not agreeing to share that information
| with my work or anyone else that asks. The first opinion
| seems acceptable for now, the second gets me called an anti-
| vaxxer
| fmakunbound wrote:
| I've been job hopping my entire career. It is by far the most
| effective way to getting a giant bump in salary and benefits.
|
| If you're sitting out there at around 1 or 2 years at the same
| place, definitely consider it. There is the risk you end up
| somewhere worse, but just hop again after a few months.
| Invariably you'll be asked about it in your next interview, but
| be honest and describe the last position as misrepresented to you
| and a waste of your skills and you'll be fine.
| ghaff wrote:
| Just to provide a counterpoint, my career in what would
| reasonably be considered "tech" (I worked elsewhere in an
| engineering job for a few years) has mostly been three stints
| of about 10 years each. Not a developer but in adjacent areas.
| And have done fine. Maybe haven't optimized but that's OK.
| dom96 wrote:
| I hear this from time to time. But does it apply universally to
| all companies, including FAANG's? If you are at a FAANG and
| can't move to another FAANG then is there any chance of getting
| even a bump in salary?
| syshum wrote:
| I agree to a point but 1 - 2 years seems a bit fast depending
| on the job...
|
| Some jobs need about 1 year to learn the environment or job
| enough to even be effective.
|
| You should absolutely be changing roles every 2-4 years though
| either via internal promotion at a larger org, or changing to
| other organizations
| jedberg wrote:
| Looking is very different than actually changing jobs. That
| number is probably low. I'd guess 90%+ are _looking_. That doesn
| 't mean they are doing anything about it.
|
| My entire career I've been "looking" for a new job. I only
| _change_ jobs once every 4+ years, but I 'm always looking in
| case a better opportunity comes up and to help me level set and
| make sure my current job is a good one. Almost all of the time
| when I see an interesting job I do nothing, sometimes I ask some
| questions. Once a year or so it turns into an informal "info
| call" and maybe once every two years or so an actual interview
| might happen.
|
| But it doesn't mean anything until I actually switch jobs. In
| almost every case, even when I get to the interview stage, I
| confirm for myself that my current job is better and do nothing.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I have a hard time believing this is true, but if it is, the
| implication are profound. Apparently, the mishandling of the
| pandemic in the US has broken the system that kept the workers
| oppressed, and firmly under the thumb of the donor class.
|
| We live in interesting times.
| nostromo wrote:
| Or we're just experiencing inflation after printing trillions
| of dollars overnight.
| imtringued wrote:
| Mostly central bank reserve "dollars", the kind that mortal
| consumers can't use to buy groceries.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| The additional reserve dollars allow banks to offer more
| loans at lower interest rates and buy other assets (mbs)
| that they normally wouldn't buy.
|
| When banks purchase these assets, cash is handed to
| entities selling these assets. Since there's A LOT of money
| to be loaned, banks are bidding against each other on such
| assets and to hand out loans asap.
|
| This is causing inflation. And yes, it's only hidden
| because you are rich. Ask someone making $30k a year how
| they are feeling about the "minor" inflation
| beamatronic wrote:
| I see it mostly going into high-end real estate. If you ever
| wanted that little place in Carmel, better get it now.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Not quite: At least in the US, CPI increases are lead by
| gasoline, which drives up the cost of everything else. And
| fuels prices are up due quite a bit because demand has
| increased as society reopened while a whole bunch of oil
| producers went bankrupt when society shutdown and no one was
| going anywhere.
|
| The other leader in CPI is from cars, which also have a
| supply-side bottleneck unrelated to government bailouts.
| Supply chain issues in other areas are also contributing to
| price increases.
|
| I'm not saying that government money isn't having _any_
| impact, but if you look at where the price increases
| dominate, there are reasons that explain price increases much
| more fully.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Apparently, the mishandling of the pandemic in the US has
| broken the system that kept the workers oppressed, and firmly
| under the thumb of the donor class.
|
| That's quite a leap. These people aren't quitting their jobs
| and exiting the workforce.
|
| They're looking for other jobs that might have incrementally
| better pay. This is a combined result of inflationary
| pressures, a booming economy, and a lot of people who have been
| removed from the workforce for a variety of reasons (COVID,
| enhanced and extended unemployment, needing to stay home and
| care for kids).
|
| I don't think there's much evidence that this is some
| overarching societal shift or rising up of the working class.
| It's just standard, expected behavior in low unemployment, high
| inflation environments. The supply of jobs exceeds the supply
| of workers, for now at least. The situation will change again
| when the supply and demand shifts in the other direction.
| gruez wrote:
| >That's quite a leap. These people aren't quitting their jobs
| and exiting the workforce.
|
| labor force participation rate is still down. See:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28215646
|
| >based on data from eight countries, is that employment in
| the rich world is 3% below its pre-pandemic high
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > labor force participation rate is still down.
|
| Right, but we're talking about the people who are job
| hopping (the context of this article) for higher salaries.
|
| The people who haven't rejoined the workforce yet would be
| forced to do so if the inflationary trend continues.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| The unemployment benefits were better than what a lot of
| service workers were getting paid and so people didn't want
| to return. Meanwhile economy was reopening and employers
| needed workers- the same people who laid them off. Forced
| unemployment means the inertia is broken. That and the
| clarity to rethink a clear career path definitely affected
| more than quite a few
|
| Then there's remote/wfh workers. With more companies adopting
| wfh and some high profile companies not wanting to adopt it,
| the right incentives are created to job hop. The vacancies
| created have to be filled and the spiral starts.
|
| In both these instances, breaking the inertia is enough to
| disrupt this fragile balance that companies were exploiting
| to keep wages and salaries down. When the line breaks (a few
| companies caving), the entire defence that "this is what
| market pays" comes crumbling down.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm setting up to hire right now but a few weeks ago the HR
| "compensation analyst" would only approve a lower salary
| range. Skip to a few days ago when I got final approval for
| the position and HR calls me up to say they think the
| salary range is too low because they have had problems
| filling jobs, "would you consider raising the salary
| range." So I did-- back to what I originally requested.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > In both these instances, breaking the inertia is enough
| to disrupt this fragile balance that companies were
| exploiting to keep wages and salaries down. When the line
| breaks (a few companies caving), the entire defence that
| "this is what market pays" comes crumbling down.
|
| You've got it backwards. The concept of "market rate" is at
| the core of why this is happening in the first place.
| Market rate is going up, which is driving these changes.
|
| Market rate isn't a myth that business owners use to
| suppress wages. It's literally just the rate that the
| market will bear for a given type of labor. Supply and
| demand of labor and jobs shifts this point around like any
| other supply/demand curve.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| "Market rate" can and will be low because it's not in the
| interest of any _one_ company to increase the wages -
| even if that means the wages are exploitative. Same goes
| for child labor, off-shoring jobs, environmental damage,
| ...etc. It 's this external factor - pandemic driven
| layoffs and benefits - that's driving the change.
| shadilay wrote:
| Recently TV pundits have suggested to "starve workers like
| dogs" to force them back to work so this doesn't exactly
| surprise me.
| pensatoio wrote:
| If by mishandled you mean that the lock-downs were utterly
| unnecessary, sure.
| mikewarot wrote:
| No, by mishandled, I mean forcing everyone into the
| unemployment system instead of paying employers to keep
| people in their jobs.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > paying employers to keep people in their jobs.
|
| That's literally exactly what the government did.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Not here in the land of the stupid, the US of A.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| For now, at least. Labor has a painfully short memory.
| ghaff wrote:
| The survey source seems pretty credible and I've certainly seen
| a lob of job changing among people I know.
|
| I don't know about broken systems and all that though. I think
| a lot of people are just rethinking things, they feel in a rut
| with the pandemic, they can interview without traveling, etc.
|
| ADDED: There are also people that don't like what their
| employer's return to office (or not) plans look like.
| sciprojguy wrote:
| One can certainly hope.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Prior to the pandemic the economy had spent an unusually large
| amount of time between recessions. There is every reason to
| expect that the beginning of the pandemic was the start of a
| very large correction which is still in progress.
| ant6n wrote:
| What is being corrected? Stocks dipped a bit in March 2020,
| but rebounded by Summer. New heights since then.
| bjt wrote:
| My hypothesis is that this is mostly about so many people going
| remote.
|
| With location no longer constraining either recruiters or job
| seekers, everybody's got more options now, and the increased
| competition is working to the employee's favor.
| silisili wrote:
| I'd imagine it mostly has to do with the giant COL increase over
| the last 12 to 18 months. Employers typically don't just hand out
| 20% raises, so everyone is out looking for more money.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Inflation, or even fear of inflation, is going to be a big
| factor.
|
| I see many people trying to spin this as a unilateral win for
| workers, but the subtext is that many of them are afraid that
| they have no choice but to seek higher wages just to keep up
| with their expenses.
| silisili wrote:
| Agreed. One friend of mine, who makes plenty, decided to go
| job searching because raises this year for that company maxed
| out at 10%. It might sound petty in normal times, but costs
| for a lot of people have gone up by a lot more than 10% in
| the last year.
|
| My rent alone went up something like 20%. Look at gas. Or
| wood. Or food. It's like watching money slowly disappear.
| Here's hoping it really is transitory.
| nsonha wrote:
| Why did your rent go up. It went down in the city I live.
| Everyone moves further out and no one moves in
| [deleted]
| silisili wrote:
| I don't live in a major city. I unfortunately live in an
| area people are 'fleeing' to.
| gruez wrote:
| >My rent alone went up something like 20%.
|
| Your example is certainly atypical. BLS says rent is up
| 1.9% YOY.
|
| > Look at gas
|
| Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.
|
| > Or wood
|
| Can't find the BLS stats for this, probably because the
| amount of lumber the median household buys is approximately
| zero.
|
| > Or food
|
| BLS says it's up 2.6% YOY. Are you sure something like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic isn't
| messing with your perception?
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| > Mostly correct, up 42% YOY.
|
| How is that only "mostly" correct?
| silisili wrote:
| Housing in my area of the US is booming. Understandably,
| that means in others, it's doing the opposite, so it
| probably washes out.
|
| As for wood, I agree not everyone is out buying lumber.
| But that affects lots of things. Have you priced out a
| shed, fixing a deck, or new run of fence? It also
| apparently affects furniture and such to some degree. New
| home builders near me were putting huge 'lumber'
| addendums on their previous pricing.
|
| Food is a little trickier. Grocery just 'feels' more
| expensive, but admittedly, I don't have any data to back
| that up. I can certainly cede that point.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Lumber was up a lot last year, but now here (PNW) it's
| cheaper than pre-pandemic prices. 2x4x8 were $3.70 at
| Home Depot last week, which is rather cheap.
| f3d46600-b66e wrote:
| It was $2.5 for 2x4 pre-pandemic, so still has a room to
| go down :-)
| pfdietz wrote:
| Lumber as a commodity is almost back to pre-pandemic
| levels.
|
| https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/lbs
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, my rent went up 0% this year for the first time
| ever.
| 100-xyz wrote:
| We are planning on moving and have done decent bit of
| research. In Fremont, rents have fallen, while smaller
| areas the rents are going up. In our apartment complex
| there are numerous empty apartments and a 2BR is 2100$.
| That's from 2400$ approx one year ago. We are looking at
| Reno and folks there say a similar 2BR house has gone up
| from 1200 to 1500. Now we are wondering if the savings is
| worth the lack of opportunity!!!
|
| So rents in large metros are going down and rents in
| small areas are going up.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Bls rent probably is buffered out by areas of low
| economic growth and mobility so you don't see big city
| rents represented well
| gruez wrote:
| Let's try the top 3 metropolitan areas in the US then.
|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City: _down_ 0.2% YOY
|
| Los Angeles area: up 0.8% YOY
|
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin: up 2.9% YOY
|
| all figures from
| https://www.bls.gov/regions/subjects/consumer-price-
| indexes....
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's more like rents for wealthy people went up,
| because wealthy people took no income hit during covid.
| So not only did rents continue to rise as usual for them,
| but they lost competition at the low end from the less
| wealthy spending beyond their means. I'd expect to see
| rents bifurcate. Without the huge stimulus, I'd have
| expected asset prices to have raced up, too, as the stock
| market failed.
|
| By wealthy, I mean top 10-15% of salaries, not any of the
| definitions that people in the top 10-15% of salaries
| cook up to make themselves seem working class.
| syshum wrote:
| >> for that company maxed out at 10%
|
| That is high, many companies were still 3-5% in 2021, hard
| to predict what 2022 will look like but I am not expecting
| much in as many companies seem to not understand that is
| happening in the market...
| dbish wrote:
| Related, pay has gone up for many roles as companies get
| desperate to hire and many companies have a logical flaw in how
| they value current employees. They won't raise current
| employees wages to meet the new price they would pay for
| someone new so they lose them and pay that price anyway to the
| next person (then complain about attrition).
| syshum wrote:
| Yep...
|
| Any CEO that complains about losing talent, but then locks
| the total salaries budget at no more than 3-5% year over year
| growth is not serious about talent retention...
| nsonha wrote:
| What COL increase? My spending went down because of remote
| working.
|
| And you speak as if everyone lives paycheck to paycheck. Tech
| workers definitely don't
| listenallyall wrote:
| > you speak as if
|
| You speak like your personal experience is everybody's. Comes
| off as pretty arrogant.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's worth noting that job-hopping was temporarily reduced during
| early parts of the pandemic. No one really knew where this was
| going, so companies were hesitant to hire and employees were
| hesitant to leave a job they trusted to be around (if they
| could). There's a natural rebound happening as companies feel
| safe to hire and employees feel safe to try new jobs. This is
| exacerbated by the way it's all happening at once. Going to be
| interesting to see how and when it settles out.
|
| The media tried to portray a lot of pandemic trends as one-way
| changes to our society and economies, but so far I've been
| surprised at how quickly everything has been snapping back to
| pre-pandemic normalcy after the temporary disruptions work their
| way through the systems. This goes for everything from lumber
| prices to work from home policies. Everything feels slightly
| altered, but trending back to pre-pandemic norms.
|
| I expect to pay slightly more for lumber and have slightly more
| work from home options, but it hasn't been the sea change of
| forever elevated prices and everyone working from home forever
| like it was portrayed months ago. I suspect this job-hopping
| trend will likewise calm down once things re-establish
| equilibrium.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think a lot of the pandemic changes were brought about
| because of uncertainty, and if every actor took the careful
| route at the same time, it prevented losses e.g. if everybody
| stopped producing lumber, the margin on lumber would rise; when
| the risk was over the margin would gradually drop as more
| producers came back online. The rise in non-wage labor costs
| certainly helped - shifting the same lumber production from
| covid to after covid was going to be cheaper.
|
| The quit rate is up because it's as if workers had all agreed
| not to quit when the covid situation was more unknown (like
| what we're walking into.) If you had a nice, safe work-from-
| home gig that you hated, during a time of disease, risking the
| job was not smart until you started to see how covid was going
| to work itself out. Once you've gotten a good idea of that, 1)
| you've been working for a job you would have long quit if covid
| hadn't happened, and/or 2) you're working at a job that you
| kept because it kept you safely at home, but is now demanding
| that you come back into the office. The benefit of working from
| home (against the risk of working outside the home) has a
| compensation value.
|
| We're reentering covid uncertainty, and I imagine that we'll
| react in the same way, only less so (because we're a little
| smarter.)
| ipaddr wrote:
| 65% is a huge number. Changing 65% of employees is going to
| lead to a lot of lessons learned lost.
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't see a "normal" rate in the survey but I'd note
| that looking, whether casually or otherwise, is a lot
| different from actually moving to a new company.
|
| That said, my totally anecdotal impression is that there's
| more than average moving around.
| rdtwo wrote:
| True in many areas but a few key industries have not recovered
| and impact everyone else.
| sennight wrote:
| That number is so absolutely ridiculous that it deserves explicit
| sourcing. The article sources promotional material from a
| consulting firm that networks C-level execs, but this time they
| deigned to address others: "We also polled 1,007 full-time and
| part-time US-based employees between August 2 and August 3, 2021.
| We included the perspective of these employees in this report."
|
| So that is where you are getting that number, which isn't
| reflected in any actual data from the BLS.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Use this time to switch folks. Get that $300k job NOW.
|
| You can ask for benefits such as permanent wfh, vacation before
| starting, extra stock, signing bonuses.
|
| You could even tell them upfront that you will not do a take
| home, if you don't want to. Or if they have to have a take home,
| ask for compensation or to reduce one coding round.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| 300K? For what kind of work? At what kind of company?
|
| I know programmers in the US and 300k remote jobs aren't
| falling from the sky.
| overrun11 wrote:
| > _300k remote jobs aren 't falling from the sky._
|
| They sort of are. I guess you're right you might not stumble
| upon it accidentally but a fairly average programmer can get
| 300k remote if they have 3-4 years of experience and seek it
| out. FB, Twitter, Dropbox, Stripe and Instacart (plus
| probably a number of others) will all pay this much or more
| for remote.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I've held basically the same job since graduating almost a decade
| ago, but the pandemic has done it for me. I'm paid well, treated
| well, and work on interesting things, but it's fundamentally an
| on-site job where I interact with a lot of people, most of whom
| are blue collar and from high risk Covid communities. I have 2
| children under 5 and so even with a vaccine I'm putting them at
| risk every day I go into work.
|
| I currently am burning all ~12 weeks of my accumulated vacation
| days as a "leave of absence" as I look for another job as a pure
| software engineer. I do software in my day job but we don't keep
| up with the software industry trends like Docker etc. so I'm
| having to learn that on top of grinding Leetcode.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > I have 2 children under 5 and so even with a vaccine I'm
| putting them at risk every day I go into work.
|
| If that makes you feel any better, they are at less risk now
| than before pandemics. For children under 5, COVID is less
| dangerous than flu, and thanks to COVID changes in travel and
| behavior patterns, flu is pretty much nonexistent. If you
| weren't worrying about your children getting flu, you shouldn't
| worry much about them getting COVID. Hope that makes you feel
| better.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > with the software industry trends like Docker etc. so I'm
| having to learn that on top of grinding Leetcode.
|
| Yeah this is the thing that kills me. I have limited energy. Do
| I waste it all leetcoding or trying to learn the tools that
| jobs are asking for.
| sriram_sun wrote:
| A 100% of employers are looking for ways to make your job
| redundant.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Does anyone know what we should be asking for? Say as a C#
| developer in Chicago? Mostly MVC focused but expert at nothing.
| Never really having the opportunity to do the same exact thing
| over and over. And one that isn't very great at complex stored
| procs. You know, the hard stuff.
|
| Just curious. Everyone talks about wages going up, but no one
| says what those wages are supposed to be.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| I find levels.fyi to be the best place to get real compensation
| numbers in tech.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Is there anything like levels.fyi for the European market?
| ludwigvan wrote:
| https://techpays.eu
| f32jhnjk33jj wrote:
| Americans got it right. Germans are, on the other hand, happy to
| work for a penny as you can see from the numbers below:
|
| Average salary in San-Francisco for developers: $175.036
|
| Average salary in Germany for developers: 61.176 Euro
|
| That's 2.5 times more than in Germany. Please also note that many
| products like gas, electricity, laptops, smartphones are cheaper
| in the US, despite much higher salaries.
| krapht wrote:
| Comparing just to SF is a bit misguided. By the same reasoning,
| what is your reaction if I told you the average software
| developer makes $120 in Zurich?
| f32jhnjk33jj wrote:
| Zurich is not Germany. It's Switzerland, a different country.
| And many Germans move to Switzerland, because salaries there
| are higher and taxes are ~2 times lower.
| protastus wrote:
| Americans work much longer hours than Germans.
|
| The business culture of the SF tech scene demands long hours
| and intensity that most Europeans cannot imagine, having not
| lived in the environment.
|
| American wages come with sacrifice.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Hah, that sounds like a lie you tell yourself. As if Germans
| are unable to work long hours and with intensity. But doing
| so will not increase the salary you get anyways. It _is_
| dictated by the local market.
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| Working hard like that isn't really rewarded working for
| software in Germany, which is why people don't do it as much.
| If you work hard as a lawyer in Germany, you might make
| partner or something, which is why lawyers are prepared to do
| a lot of hours. If you work hard in software, you just get
| more work.
|
| And there are actually plenty of crappy jobs with overtime in
| Germany too. Lower pay does not always mean less
| expectations.
| IdiocyInAction wrote:
| The average German developer works for some non-software low-
| margin company where he only has limited impact on the business
| and is treated like a cost center, while the average SF
| developer works on tech projects where he can have a huge
| impact on the product and is a valued employee.
|
| Because the overall market skews towards lower salaries, even
| multinationals and the few local tech companies that exist
| there can pay less in Berlin.
|
| Pay is also generally higher in the US, though usually not to
| this extent.
| lkrubner wrote:
| There is clearly some bounce back happening, but is it permanent?
| If we sense there has been some permanent change, we should try
| to be precise about exactly what that change is. I'm going to
| suggest that those who say the culture has changed the economy
| might be reversing cause and effect.
|
| In a comment above, PragmaticPulp wrote "I've been surprised at
| how quickly everything has been snapping back to pre-pandemic
| normalcy after the temporary disruptions".
|
| That's what I see too. But it's also clear that the government
| pushed trillions of dollars of stimulus into the economy, some of
| which went straight to the workers, and this leaves many workers,
| especially the poorest workers, with more leverage than they've
| had in decades.
|
| The era 1932-1968 is sometimes broadly referred to as the New
| Deal era, a period of progressive reform. We don't have a name
| for the era 1968-2008, but it was an era when there was an
| emphasis on limiting government, cutting taxes, opening borders,
| catering to corporate needs -- a bundle of policies that some
| people call "neoliberal". For the sake of argument, let's call
| that the neoliberal era.
|
| Since 2008 the old neoliberal consensus has been falling apart.
| Trump ran as a populist, Biden was elected promising progressive
| policies, Trump and Biden collectively pushed through several
| trillion dollars of stimulus. Biden has put in place a
| $300-a-month cash payment for each child a family has.
|
| So I'd argue, if there has been a change that feels permanent, it
| is a political change. If we're moving into an era where the
| government pushes money directly to individual workers, then
| we're moving into an era when workers are going to have more
| leverage than they've had since the end of the post war boom,
| back in 1973.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I might as well repeat it. Now is a great time to be looking for
| a new job.
|
| I'm a quant trader, so I've got a foot in tech and a foot in
| finance. Both are heaving at the moment, recruiters calling all
| the time, salaries much higher than just a few months ago.
|
| I'm not sure what it looks like at the entry level end, but for
| experienced hires it's busy. I speak to a lot of recruiters, and
| they're having vintage years most of them, eg hitting billing
| targets in Q2 for the whole year.
|
| One job I passed on took a friend on my recommendation. Another
| few are in the pipeline at other firms. I can't remember a time
| when so many people I know were moving jobs.
| user5994461 wrote:
| >>> I'm not sure what it looks like at the entry level end, but
| for experienced hires it's busy.
|
| Busy doesn't mean hiring, it just means they are sending
| candidates continuously (to fail).
|
| The reality is that high finance is extremely competitive. The
| positions are few. The candidates are many.
|
| My experience is that trading firms can easily sift through ten
| qualified candidates to make one hire. They complain about how
| difficult it is to hire, but they fail to acknowledge the
| endless stream of qualified candidates they rejected.
|
| P.S. Entry level is a slaughterhouse. Could be hundreds of
| candidates, who all come from top schools and pass dynamic
| programming exercises.
| worker767424 wrote:
| I keep debating quant trading, but there are limited options in
| the Bay Area (I only know of Voleon), and my FAANG RSUs have
| done _really_ well in the past few years. A quant firm could
| probably match my take-home pay, but there 's risk with
| changing jobs.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I could get a $25k-$75k bump if I were to hop
| jobs right now, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Partly
| because I've only been at my current place for about a year,
| and the place for that only 6 months. It's just so exhausting
| going through that whole process, and then taking months to get
| familiar with the team and codebase.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat. For me though, it's not so much that I
| want to avoid the effort involved in the switch as that you
| need to spend time in a role in order to have significant
| impact, and that my longer-term success is likely going to be
| more dependent on whether I'm able to point to a record of
| consistently making significant contributions than it is in
| my maximizing my salary for the next year.
| noleetcode wrote:
| I'd love nothing more than to go out and get a new job, but I
| swore years ago to never again participate in leetcode hazing
| interviews, and every recruiter I've spoken to (15+ in the past
| few months) has described exactly that as the interview
| process.
|
| I expect I'll die at my current job.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Take-homes there were a few of, nothing leetcode in the
| places I looked. Still gotta know your DS&A though, people
| will ask.
|
| Remote also allows you to interview a lot, so if there's some
| hiring process that's not for you, no big deal.
| noleetcode wrote:
| I suppose I probably should at least just start some
| interviews and then decline at the point that they start
| leetcoding-proper (even if that's during the actual
| interview itself).
|
| DS& (common) A isn't a problem at its core (as least as far
| as I am concerned - I'm comfortable that I am able to pick
| the right one given the scenario, describe why, etc.), but
| where it becomes a problem for me is when I'm inevitably
| asked to reproduce some esoteric (for example) binary tree
| or graph algorithm on the spot, in 30 minutes, with no
| errors.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| I was once asked to write a (bayesian) spam filter, when
| neither my cv nor the job posting had any mention of spam
| or anything adjacent. Then the "bar raiser" mocked me.
| agustif wrote:
| Are you OK with code challenges? Workatastartup (from YC) is
| a nice option if you haven't tried, also who's hiring/wants
| to be hired monthly threads here are pure gold on ROI/leads
| ratio. Post there
| the_only_law wrote:
| I knew leetcode style interviews were popular, but I had no
| idea quite how prevalent they were. Almost any job I wanted
| to apply to seemed to use them in some capacity.
|
| I tried to search the sites that aggregate roles that
| specifically do not use them, but your options become really
| thin when you filter for remote. I've already been ATS
| screened out of some of the better looking companies in that
| category.
| jrockway wrote:
| There seems to be plenty of VC money around if you want to
| start your own company. Might be better than dying at your
| current job.
| noleetcode wrote:
| It's funny, where everyone else seems to have the problem
| of "ideas are a dime a dozen, but time to execute is
| scarce", I just have zero ideas. My only true passion in
| the world of software development is gaming (the one area
| where I, like everyone else, have lots of ideas), and,
| well, being an independent game developer is an even worse
| crap-shoot than lining up for leetcode interviews! (I won't
| argue that it's not a self-defeating attitude to have in
| regards to considering indie game development, but the
| numbers certainly don't lie here)
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'm in the same place as you, and I've been trying to
| figure out if there's some intersection between games and
| my current web dev specific skills that's both a safer
| route than traditional indie dev, and somewhat less
| tapped out. I have a couple ideas, not really sure if
| they're good though.
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah same, I won't say I have no ideas, but I have none
| that are commercializable.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Heh, I have some that I think are commercializable, then
| I go online and look for companies that are doing similar
| things, and lo and behold, there are already several
| competitors who are doing a pretty good job.
|
| At least a good enough job that there's no way I can
| easily cut into their market share or take some of their
| clients without significant outside funding.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| There's nothing new under the sun. Almost all ideas will
| have already been done by somebody else. And if nobody
| has even tried it, then it's possible it's not a good
| idea.
| [deleted]
| q845712 wrote:
| I did a job search this year and I think while everyone made
| me do some amount of coding challenge, some were much more
| "leetcode-y" than others.
|
| In my limited sampling, Stripe and VMWare stand out as big
| companies you've probably heard of where the coding challenge
| felt closer to "help us verify you've been writing software
| professionally for a while" and further from "prove you could
| still pass an advanced undergraduate exam on data structures
| and algorithms". I'm sure both those co.s are large enough
| that your experience may vary, but it made me hopeful that
| our long dark winter of perpetually drilling intermediate to
| advanced algorithms coursework is ending.
| tpxl wrote:
| 2/2 places I interviewed at in the past month asked me for a
| take home assignment, one of which would skip it if I had any
| open source code to show them. I have 3 more in the pipeline
| and I doubt more than one will require leetcoding.
|
| As the sibling said, you can post in the HN who's hiring and
| who's looking to get hired threads.
| rybosworld wrote:
| I'd be curious to know how you got into quant finance if you'd
| be willing to share.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Funnily enough a few people have written to me about that.
|
| I was a bit fortunate, I actually applied to be a derivatives
| trader out of uni. Which I did, but I ended up in a hedge
| fund, which was a type of firm I'd never heard of until the
| day I started working in one. I started reading a LOT of
| stuff about it.
|
| The mid-2000s were a bit of a golden age for hedge funds, and
| investors were just throwing money at them. I went to a lot
| of investment meetings where I wondered what on earth we'd
| said that was so attractive.
|
| At one point my boss in a derivs fund told me there was too
| much money, and that we needed to find something to do with
| it. By this time I'd read a bit about automated trading, and
| I figured some sort of strategy utilizing computers to trade
| would be the thing to do. So the boss decided to have me hire
| quants and devs to do this, and I've been in that area since.
| Pretty unique position to be honest, most people don't do it
| this way, and they don't get to just hire a team while in
| their mid 20s. Good learnings though.
| [deleted]
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