8 ms·

Job-hopping heats up: 65% of U.S. workers are looking for a new job

182 points by hiddencache 5y ago

mikewarot 5y ago
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.
- thebooktocome 5y ago
  For now, at least. Labor has a painfully short memory.
- ghaff 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  One can certainly hope.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > 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.
  - 8ytecoder 5y ago
    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.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
        "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.
        sam345 5y ago
- shadilay 5y ago
  Recently TV pundits have suggested to "starve workers like dogs" to force them back to work so this doesn't exactly surprise me.
- nostromo 5y ago
  Or we’re just experiencing inflation after printing trillions of dollars overnight.
  - beamatronic 5y ago
    I see it mostly going into high-end real estate. If you ever wanted that little place in Carmel, better get it now.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Mostly central bank reserve "dollars", the kind that mortal consumers can't use to buy groceries.
    - nine_zeros 5y ago
      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
    - pgwhalen 5y ago
      For this reason, arguably it is the treasury that truly creates money these days, especially with a great excess of reserves. And there has certainly been plenty of “treasury printing” in the last year.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    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.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    What is being corrected? Stocks dipped a bit in March 2020, but rebounded by Summer. New heights since then.
    - mikewarot 5y ago
      The stock market once existed to match capital with investments, now it has degenerated to a graph of rich people's feelings. Mostly, it's a legal Ponzi scheme.
- pensatoio 5y ago
  If by mishandled you mean that the lock-downs were utterly unnecessary, sure.
  - mikewarot 5y ago
    No, by mishandled, I mean forcing everyone into the unemployment system instead of paying employers to keep people in their jobs.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      > paying employers to keep people in their jobs. That's literally exactly what the government did.
      - mikewarot 5y ago
        Not here in the land of the stupid, the US of A.
        greedo 5y ago
        That's exactly what the Paycheck Protection Program did. It lent money to businesses that kept their staff employed. Eventually most of the loans were forgiven.
silisili 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Why did your rent go up. It went down in the city I live. Everyone moves further out and no one moves in
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - silisili 5y ago
        I don't live in a major city. I unfortunately live in an area people are 'fleeing' to.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic isn't messing with your perception?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
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.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  True in many areas but a few key industries have not recovered and impact everyone else.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  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.)
sriram_sun 5y ago
A 100% of employers are looking for ways to make your job redundant.
- mixedCase 5y ago
  Thankfully most employers aren't looking that hard into AGI.
lordnacho 5y ago
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.
- noleetcode 5y ago
  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.
  - agustif 5y ago
    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
  - tpxl 5y ago
    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.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    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.
BuckRogers 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I find levels.fyi to be the best place to get real compensation numbers in tech.
  - cehrlich 5y ago
    Is there anything like levels.fyi for the European market?
    - ludwigvan 5y ago
      https://techpays.eu https://techpays.eu
bjt 5y ago
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.
nine_zeros 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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.
    - LAC-Tech 5y ago
      God damn. Regret not spending the past 10 years trying to get into the States.
      - 29083011397778 5y ago
        Give it another decade, and you might value your country's medical and social safety nets more than you do now :)
        LAC-Tech 5y ago
        Trying to get $100 USD an hour for contract work in local companies is like pulling teeth. I've yet to manage it and will probably just sop bothering with any company based here. I could get a lot of teeth pulled privately for $300,000 USD a year. EDIT: Actually in NZ you have to get that done privately anyway
georgeburdell 5y ago
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.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > 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.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  > 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.
  - Cipater 5y ago
    If your aim is to assuage fears, a source for your claims would go a long way.
  - kazinator 5y ago
    You're utterly failing to consider that losing a parent is a huge risk for children.
lettergram 5y ago
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-york-city-232144565.html 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I'm seeing 20%-25% inflation here in the CPI west region.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  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.
fmakunbound 5y ago
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.
- syshum 5y ago
  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
- ghaff 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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?
  - iaw 5y ago
    Yes but it's harder, I wouldn't say "universally to all companies" (e.g. wal-mart is always going to pay wal-mart wages to devs) but many smaller tech companies recognize they have to pay top wages to attract experience hires in a lot of fields.
    - sgerenser 5y ago
sennight 5y ago
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.
jedberg 5y ago
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.
lkrubner 5y ago
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.
f32jhnjk33jj 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
    - nicbou 5y ago
      And San Francisco is on a different continent
  - IdiocyInAction 5y ago
    Berlin, along with Munich, is probably the hotspot for tech in Germany, so I think the comparison is actually quite apt.
- protastus 5y ago
  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 5y ago
phendrenad2 5y ago
Many people are working jobs they don't like, and only took because the pandemic limited their choices. It's the great re-shuffling as people get back to their ideal roles.
psyman 5y ago
What does it say to Faang recruiters if I were to quit my current job that I've been in for 8 years (different roles same large manufacturing company), take a 3-6 month break, try other things(business, entrepreneurship, reading/courses) and then leetcode/apply after other approaches have failed? Does it impact my hireability a lot at that point?
- aix1 5y ago
  I wouldn't expect the gap itself to be a major issue. That said, I do think it's generally easier to find a job when you already have one. That also puts you in a stronger negotiation position (although getting multiple competing offer could be a way to mitigate the latter). Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of hiring going on the at the moment. I sit on a hiring committee at a FAANG and things have been very busy, though this could also be due to lots of committee members being on vacation.
greengrom 5y ago
It really sucks. I bet a lot of these people would like to be elsewhere for a reason. In fact, I know that finding a job is not that difficult right now, but interviews are still quite difficult for me because I don't have much experience. In terms of vacancies, I'm sure that on job search platforms like this https://uk.jooble.org/jdp/-181550210673657612/Head-of-Engineering-+-Water-United-Kingdom https://uk.jooble.org/jdp/-181550210673657612/Head-of-Engine... , it's not a problem to find thousands of suitable offers unless you are a meteorologist or something.

182 points by hiddencache 5y ago

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.

thebooktocome 5y ago
For now, at least. Labor has a painfully short memory.
ghaff 5y ago
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 5y ago
One can certainly hope.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> 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.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  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.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      "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.
      - sam345 5y ago
shadilay 5y ago
Recently TV pundits have suggested to "starve workers like dogs" to force them back to work so this doesn't exactly surprise me.
nostromo 5y ago
Or we’re just experiencing inflation after printing trillions of dollars overnight.
- beamatronic 5y ago
  I see it mostly going into high-end real estate. If you ever wanted that little place in Carmel, better get it now.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Mostly central bank reserve "dollars", the kind that mortal consumers can't use to buy groceries.
  - nine_zeros 5y ago
    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
  - pgwhalen 5y ago
    For this reason, arguably it is the treasury that truly creates money these days, especially with a great excess of reserves. And there has certainly been plenty of “treasury printing” in the last year.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  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.
m0llusk 5y ago
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 5y ago
  What is being corrected? Stocks dipped a bit in March 2020, but rebounded by Summer. New heights since then.
  - mikewarot 5y ago
    The stock market once existed to match capital with investments, now it has degenerated to a graph of rich people's feelings. Mostly, it's a legal Ponzi scheme.
pensatoio 5y ago
If by mishandled you mean that the lock-downs were utterly unnecessary, sure.
- mikewarot 5y ago
  No, by mishandled, I mean forcing everyone into the unemployment system instead of paying employers to keep people in their jobs.
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    > paying employers to keep people in their jobs. That's literally exactly what the government did.
    - mikewarot 5y ago
      Not here in the land of the stupid, the US of A.
      - greedo 5y ago
        That's exactly what the Paycheck Protection Program did. It lent money to businesses that kept their staff employed. Eventually most of the loans were forgiven.

silisili 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Why did your rent go up. It went down in the city I live. Everyone moves further out and no one moves in
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - silisili 5y ago
      I don't live in a major city. I unfortunately live in an area people are 'fleeing' to.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic isn't messing with your perception?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

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.

rdtwo 5y ago
True in many areas but a few key industries have not recovered and impact everyone else.
pessimizer 5y ago
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.)

sriram_sun 5y ago

A 100% of employers are looking for ways to make your job redundant.

mixedCase 5y ago
Thankfully most employers aren't looking that hard into AGI.

lordnacho 5y ago

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.

noleetcode 5y ago
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.
- agustif 5y ago
  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
- tpxl 5y ago
  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.
- jrockway 5y ago
  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.

BuckRogers 5y ago

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 5y ago
I find levels.fyi to be the best place to get real compensation numbers in tech.
- cehrlich 5y ago
  Is there anything like levels.fyi for the European market?
  - ludwigvan 5y ago
    https://techpays.eu https://techpays.eu

bjt 5y ago

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.

nine_zeros 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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.
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    God damn. Regret not spending the past 10 years trying to get into the States.
    - 29083011397778 5y ago
      Give it another decade, and you might value your country's medical and social safety nets more than you do now :)
      - LAC-Tech 5y ago
        Trying to get $100 USD an hour for contract work in local companies is like pulling teeth. I've yet to manage it and will probably just sop bothering with any company based here. I could get a lot of teeth pulled privately for $300,000 USD a year. EDIT: Actually in NZ you have to get that done privately anyway

georgeburdell 5y ago

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.

the_only_law 5y ago
> 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.
xyzzyz 5y ago
> 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.
- Cipater 5y ago
  If your aim is to assuage fears, a source for your claims would go a long way.
- kazinator 5y ago
  You're utterly failing to consider that losing a parent is a huge risk for children.

lettergram 5y ago

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-york-city-232144565.html 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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I'm seeing 20%-25% inflation here in the CPI west region.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
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.

fmakunbound 5y ago

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.

syshum 5y ago
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
ghaff 5y ago
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 5y ago
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?
- iaw 5y ago
  Yes but it's harder, I wouldn't say "universally to all companies" (e.g. wal-mart is always going to pay wal-mart wages to devs) but many smaller tech companies recognize they have to pay top wages to attract experience hires in a lot of fields.
  - sgerenser 5y ago

sennight 5y ago

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.

jedberg 5y ago

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.

lkrubner 5y ago

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.

f32jhnjk33jj 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    And San Francisco is on a different continent
- IdiocyInAction 5y ago
  Berlin, along with Munich, is probably the hotspot for tech in Germany, so I think the comparison is actually quite apt.
protastus 5y ago
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 5y ago

phendrenad2 5y ago

Many people are working jobs they don't like, and only took because the pandemic limited their choices. It's the great re-shuffling as people get back to their ideal roles.

psyman 5y ago

What does it say to Faang recruiters if I were to quit my current job that I've been in for 8 years (different roles same large manufacturing company), take a 3-6 month break, try other things(business, entrepreneurship, reading/courses) and then leetcode/apply after other approaches have failed? Does it impact my hireability a lot at that point?

aix1 5y ago
I wouldn't expect the gap itself to be a major issue. That said, I do think it's generally easier to find a job when you already have one. That also puts you in a stronger negotiation position (although getting multiple competing offer could be a way to mitigate the latter). Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of hiring going on the at the moment. I sit on a hiring committee at a FAANG and things have been very busy, though this could also be due to lots of committee members being on vacation.

greengrom 5y ago

It really sucks. I bet a lot of these people would like to be elsewhere for a reason. In fact, I know that finding a job is not that difficult right now, but interviews are still quite difficult for me because I don't have much experience. In terms of vacancies, I'm sure that on job search platforms like this https://uk.jooble.org/jdp/-181550210673657612/Head-of-Engineering-+-Water-United-Kingdom https://uk.jooble.org/jdp/-181550210673657612/Head-of-Engine... , it's not a problem to find thousands of suitable offers unless you are a meteorologist or something.