Small quibble: Covid has shown people how miserable their jobs have always been.

All it's taken is a slight shift, a small perk, here and there, and people see it clear as day, and they want out. White collar workers got work from home: actually, it turns out I can give legal advice while planting basil in my backyard and no one on the conference call either notices or gives a shit. Blue collar workers got unemployment benefits that pay a living wage without needing to work 3 jobs and die of an early heart attack worrying about how they'll feed their kids.

I think lots of myth and propaganda about work got blown up in the last year, and it's cause for celebration.

Many years of corporations "boiling the frog" and slowly lowering flexibility and not improving pay have been reset. People hadn't noticed, and now they have.

It'll probably happen all over again, but at least there's hope for now.

I think it depends on where you work and how the executives care or don't care about their employees.

I was working at a large corporation during the 08' recession. They took away all of our perks (free coffee, free milk, bottled water, bonuses, christmas parties with bonuses, etc) all in one year and then never brought them back which resulted in a steady flow of people quitting.

Likewise, I was at a much smaller family run company shortly after the aforementioned big corporation (less than 300 employees) and we had amazing Cadillac health care, yearly bonuses and generous salary increases and four weeks of vacation (double the norm at any other company) to start. Most of the company employees were 'lifers' for obvious reasons.

Right now? I work at a huge health care company. Its somewhere in the middle. We get a lot of technology perks, three weeks vacation, decent salary increases and yearly bonuses that are competitive. The health care plans ironically are some of the worst I've had, but its offset by the other things I get.

Everything is relative and I think people just need to find what works best for them. Its also a great time for all the people complaining they can't seem to find work anywhere. LOTS of mid tier gigs right now for those who want to get out there and find a solid gig, instead of staying home and collecting unemployment to the tune of $1,200/month.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2006/09/the-b...

The key thing about the world is that someone made it this way. I have to believe that it can be made differently.

And start interviewing for remote jobs, if you have the luxury to do so. Especially if you are in an industry where talent has the most bargaining power (i.e. tech). Don't tolerate this nonsense: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazons-covid-...

Țhere is a short term greed pushing wages down so in that sense I agree.

That broader human "we" is the deterministic historical process that is insurmountable for any one person. It can only be contested with a countervailing historical process when people organize and cooperate, and that's a lot harder to get rolling than just calling your congressperson.

Soon those benefits will be insufficient, due to inflation, if the government continues to print money, and the real wages of the existing wage earners who actually produce value for the good of society by working are eroded and redistributed to those who don't wish to work.

If it keeps up, soon we'll all be poor, nobody will earn a living wage, but at least it will be equitable!

Don't forget that printing money for stimulus checks is borrowing at greatest expense to the lowest wage earners in order to pay those who choose not to work at all

It's not some revealed flaw in capitalism that given short term wages that are the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter.

> to those who don't wish to work

> those who choose not to work at all

> the same for working and for doing nothing, that people choose the latter

You're making my point for me with the arbeit macht frei dog-whistles here. So let me be clear: if "work" is defined as "millions of white and blue collar professional lives before Covid, lives replete with Kafka-esque meaninglessness in the former group and actual, medieval misery in the latter", then what I am saying is:

1. Yes guy, exactly: people no longer wish to "work", by that definition.

2. This is a good and deeply hopeful thing.

A society that's serious about human flourishing will grapple with these questions on a deeper level than "what's the unemployment rate?" or "should Amazon be lauded for 'creating jobs?'" Covid has forced us to grapple with them.

The usual Cato Institute talking points all involve pointing at the poor and moralizing about how they don't want to work, but comments like yours hold less and less water as time passes, largely because of shit like Covid. The notion - your notion - that there's an enormous class of people out there who are nothing but shiftless layabouts who fundamentally want to leech off of the rest of us is a strawman. While I'm sure there's a parasite or two out there, human beings of every class find deep meaning in labor. But the labor has to be meaningful!! Or, at least, not soul-crushing or immiserating. (And let's not even get into the really fun side-claim I'd make that there are proportionally way more parasites at the top of the socioeconomic pile than the bottom.)

So: to the extent that anyone doesn't want to work, they don't want to work because the labor available to them is innovatively life-ruining and in most cases vastly underpaid. To want to work in such conditions when there are suddenly alternative choices, as you imply they should, is to be deeply ill. Actually insane. And more of a reflection of where your heart is than anything else.

The idea I get from the Cato echoing types is if you have a job you should beg and scrape and genuflect for your betters to thank them for their grace in employing you.

I think this meme accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis. Companies contracted but demanded more work from their remaining employees. Feeling fortunate to be employed they increased individual output to cover for the reduced head count. Companies screwed over employees then shrugged their shoulders with the "it's the economy" refrain.

I think I first heard it from Yanis Varoufakis (https://youtu.be/YpOLHSzZ8jc). Watched as many interviews of him as I could find during those long days at the beginning and middle of the pandemic. He's an exceedingly sane person.

Things can definitely be more equitable than they are now, and should be if we truly want a meritocracy, but let's not get caught up in the delusion that society can exist without people doing shit jobs they don't like.

I believe the transition to post-scarcity will be gradual, that it will happen faster in some sectors of society than others, and that this process may take multiple generations to complete. This has been the case with every other major economic shift, why would it not be the case with post-scarcity?

If this is how the transition to post-scarcity occurs, societies will eventually hit a point at which many people still need to work to produce our economic output, but far fewer than currently do. How will our economic system handle that situation? The selling of labor is the primary mechanism by which we distribute resources, but if we get to a point where only 20% of the adult population are needed in the labor force then how do we distribute resources to the remaining 80%?

Now, where things get really interesting is that "needed in the labor force" is not a binary thing, either. What if there's a big slice of the population from whom we only need five hours of labor a week? And they coexist alongside another slice of the population from whom we need forty hours of labor a week?

Maybe we're already a few steps down this road.

Most jobs that people have now aren't strictly necessary. If everyone gave up their leisure time to do all of their own cooking and cleaning, a massive set of jobs would disappear overnight. If we all at local, another. And the list goes on. Effectively, what happens is, we invent new jobs that are based on want as opposed to need. It's easy to look at that picture and say 'there is so much unnecessary work that happens!' but really, that X% of the economy based on want is required for price discovery of the rest. That is what your last paragraph is touching on, how do we decide who does what and how much? In capitalism, the answer is price discovery, and for that to work, everyone has to participate in the market.

This is precisely what I'm getting at. We've built a system on the assumption of a forty-hour full-time work week, with a goal of minimizing unemployment and (recently) maximizing labor market participation. We did this because we need participation in the market for effective resource distribution.

What happens when our economy simply does not need that much labor to produce all the economic output we want? Do we force people to continue participating in the labor market in makework jobs just so that they can have access to resources? To what extent are we already doing this?

But logically it would seem that should be: Everyone still has to work, but a little less than hitherto.

Now the question becomes, how much less?

Overall I agree with you: I'm not naive, nor am I a utopianist. I'm fine with more equitable. But we're so entrenched in the status quo that it feels like you have to talk like a revolutionary to get even a shred of "a little more equitable".

Edit: wait though what's a "post-scarcity" economy, anyway, concretely? I've heard since I can remember that we grow enough food as a species to feed everyone (and yet we throw tons of food out) - is that not a decent marker of being post-scarcity? We seem to have enough wealth in the US to be in neverending proxy or non-proxy aggressive wars against various groups of poor and largely non-white people - that wealth, used slightly differently, has got to be some kind of dent in all sorts of scarcity, no? I'm not writing this to attack you whatsoever; I'm genuinely curious. Post-scarcity is a phrase I've heard smarter people than me utter every now and then, and it only just occurred to me that I've never actually figured out what it meant. (I'll Google it now of course but I'd love to hear your perspective all the same. Cheers.)

The reason it gets brought up is because the moment one person's needs or wants infringe on another's, there needs to be a way to decide who gets what. Generally, this is what people are talking about when they talk about various economic systems. You come up with different mechanics that use the distribution of goods to incentivize the production of more goods.

The only way we escape the economic games that need to be played, to keep people working and producing things society needs, is if we no longer need them to produce anything. Then you no longer need the incentives and feedback loops that tie consumption to production, and people are generally free to do whatever the hell they want.

The idea of post-scarcity brushes over that dark part of human nature, and assumes we can figure out how to cooperate, even absent antisocial misanthropes. In Star Trek, they have "figured it out", but the transition to post-scarcity is understandably only vaguely described.

Work, in general, is stupid. The entire concept of it is inane. My fantasy version of utopia is a peaceful, post-scarcity society where no one ever needs to work, and automatically gets a life of luxury simply because it's available and costs nothing. Many people will choose to fill their time with things that look a bit like what we now call work (if you tilt your head and squint just the right way). Many will devote their lives to the pursuit of furthering humankind's knowledge. Many will choose creative endeavors that in today's economy would be judged worthless. Many will focus on their families and enjoy their time with them. And yes, some will choose to sit around and do nothing all day but eat junk food and watch the utopian equivalent of TV all day.

And all that is not only ok, it's awesome! Obviously this is a fantasy world, and we can't live in it. But we should think more about that as a goal, and shape things as best we can. Let's stop creating bullshit jobs just for the sake of full employment, and figure out what really needs to be done, and what doesn't. There's so much wealth in the world that we could certainly find an alternative that could keep people housed, clothed, fed, and then some, if there isn't a job available for them.

Our current system is just based on personal greed and cynicism. If we don't evolve beyond it, I fear we won't last as a civilization (or possibly even as a species) for many more centuries.

Contrast with... "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -- George Orwell.

Sadly, I think we're still closer to Mr Orwell's vision at this point in time, in spite of have more material comforts and resources available than at any point in history.

To get to your utopian vision, we'll need to permanently break free of our primate instincts. That's not going to be easy.

This reminded me of an old political cartoon I saw at the Abraham Lincoln museum: https://www.loc.gov/resource/pga.04994/

It shows Lincoln with his (supposed) supporters and their requests, one of whom is depicted as saying, "I want a hotel established by government, where people that ain't inclined to work can board free of expense, and be found in rum and tobacco."

Companies aren’t really complaining about a labour shortage. They’re complaining that no one wants to work for their ridiculously low pay while the board and CEOs sail around in their yachts.

"No one wants to work for poverty wages in my shitty restaurant!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Raise your wages.

"If I raise my wages I can't stay in business!" Sucks bro, that's the market. Make your restaurant less shitty and get more business. Innovate. This is just competition - we like a little competition in America. You're not against America, are you?

They're just as reactive / emotional as the liberals they decry for being emotional. I know that schadenfreude isn't a workable foundation for a political outlook, but watching these people become ever so slightly uncomfortable about their position in the world before we inevitably return to pre-Covid status quo ante is worth a good chuckle.

Sure it is, but who pays the price at the end?

an example is the inner city food deserts

It sounds like maybelsyrup has it right, and it's these business owners who are in for the rude awakening. There's a rootbeer stand near me that has a message on their menu saying, "if minimum wage is raised to $15, our prices will go up 10%." They charge $3.60 for a pretty good cheese burger. When I read that message, I sit there thinking that the owner is an idiot. At $4.00, the burger is still a better deal than McDonalds and $15/hr is a solid wage in this area.

Yes! I keep seeing stuff like this, and I think "wait a minute, you're telling me that you want to slightly raise the price of this great product or service, and in exchange, your employees will be paid a living wage, or get decent health insurance, or another half day off, or a vacation? Please take my fucking money."

I recall being in an all hands bi-weekly meeting on one Saturday, one of the sons stood up and addressed the entire small company:

"I called around and you know what, we pay about average for the industry. Maybe a little bit on the upper side of average. You know, I could raise my prices and maybe pay you all more, but then I would have less customers. and If I have less customers then I can't afford to pay as many of you."

He looked around with an expression that I felt like was almost contempt, but really wasn't The industry is pretty low margin and they got theirs to be very good with volume sales and very good efficiency in processes. He felt the pressure to execute their plans to expand into another, second facility while remaining profitable enough at the original to fund their plans for world domination.

Every day they had customers waiting in line for literally hours for their turn in a crappy, kind of gross facility that had been cobbled together by these DIYers over a number of years. Every day they turned away customers in droves.

I thought to myself: Old man, if you don't raise your prices, you are a priceless fool. If you can't hire enough people to handle your amazing, envy inducing volume, _and_ you have the gall to exclaim proudly that you pay a little bit better than average, then you are surely and rightfully doomed to this mediocrity until you hopefully die.

What he said next only confirmed my young ideations: "We only want the people who _want_ to work here, to work here. If you don't like working here, well you should go somewhere else."

Nowadays they are still in business. They had indeed increased their pay by over 40% in the next couple of years. They opened their second facility years later after more years of project extensions and overruns, just in time for a global pandemic to shutter their entire operation for months. I'm happy they saw the light and realized what you have to do to attract and keep quality skilled employees, but I am for more pleased to be their competitor.

Sure, but this has been happening for all of history, and the end result has been higher wages and lifting people out of poverty. We still have a long way to go, though, both locally and globally.

I just started watching Warrior, which is a TV series set in San Francisco in the 1870s. The Irish-Americans are pissed off that the fat-cat business owners have been importing much cheaper labor from China. Of course they forget that during the early periods of Irish immigration to the US, they were the ones undercutting the wages of the Anglo-Saxon incumbents. This has been the case for pretty much every wave of immigration that included a large component of low-skill workers.

This is in play all the way to modern times, without the need for immigration's effects, with the outsourcing and offshoring movements starting in the end of the last century, moving manufacturing to parts of the world with cheaper labor, and now just this year companies realizing they can employ remote knowledge workers (in the same country, even) for less than their current workforce.

This is just normal (for better or worse), and yet you act like it's an aberration that will cause the sky to fall.

We shouldn't subsidize unlivable business models with human misery.

If that (the closures) also result in misery (of the unemployment kind) that will also be a good thing. It will signal stongly that we depend on broken business models and need to update them.

What you want is a compromise that perpetuates substinence-level wages and working class people needing 2 jobs, for the benefit of keeping alive zombie businesses.

Like some other commenters, and many thousands more in the broader discourse, you're speaking from a position of "this is the way things are and they can't be changed, so there".

My main point isn't to argue for this or that particular policy. My main point is that the world can be different. People motivated to change it will find a way to do so. In matters like these, arguments for economic determinism are borderline defeatist.

Outsourcing has costs on it's own but it makes sense for America to artificially inflate those costs to maintain its consumer market. America eats the world and through doing so provides a lot of liquidity to the international market. Whether that is just or whether it should specifically be America is up for debate - but it does have the power for force others to play by its rules within certain limits.

Bare naked capitalism isn't so far off from an anarchic free-for-all with spiked clubs.

Not only that, but the social and political ramifications of having not only blue collar workers out of a job, but also the PMC class as well. You want a revolution? Cause that is how you get one.

The problem with the fed stimulus was the benefits too large corps.

You may be right about this. In fact I'd wager that you are. But the problem isn't that part of what you said; it's this:

> That's not how business or the economy works.

You're probably right about this too! The problem is that, in these conversations, we usually just stop here. Whereas more and more, I'm finding myself asking "can we citizens find ways for business or the economy to work in some other way, even just a little bit? Are we willing to just creatively try and answer some of this stuff?"

I think, if you just stop at "that's not how ___ works" without pushing things further, well, it feels like rolling over. The way "business and the economy worked" in the American South as recently as the 60's was that, if you had a certain skin color, you were relegated to a shitty part of, say, the restaurant, or you were prohibited from participating in the economy in any meaningful sense at all. But then some people asked "is there a way for things to work differently?" It's far from sunshine and gumdrops 55 years later but you can't be chucked out of a lunch counter for being black anymore.

Sure you could look at capital investment as a form of payroll, but it's going to heavily skew the numbers and now GDP is not a great way to estimate if we can afford to pay a livable wage simply by looking at GDP.

Your right, numbers don't show everything and yah just can't redistribute gdp in a communist sort of manner. But I do think one of the parents thinking exercises does indicate that wealth distribution is more of a problem in America than certain European nations.

Capitalism for all it's flaws is a great system to motivate work, wealth creation, and capital investment(as u mentioned).

In an alternative reality fairer system that can muster up a similar work ethic the average person would be better off and you'd have similar innovation potential but with different work ethic driving motivational mechanisms. But that's a improvable hypothetical to be fair. That's your point of contention right?

Congratulations, guys, you're well on your way to reinventing Marxian economics.

I am saying there are a dozen countries, including several that are extremely similar to the US, that not only have higher wages, and higher minimum wages, but also extensive paid family and vacation leave, universal healthcare and a wide range of quality of life metrics around or above what we see in the US.

Australia has both, and a smaller gdp/capita than the US. Happy to dive as deep as you like.

On both front, Australia still has effective unions with political representation, and thus corporate interests don’t always win. That’s the main difference with the US.

"The 5 largest companies in the US are all computer software/hardware.

Australia's largest company is in mining, and 4 of the next 5 are banks.

Australia really needs to join the modern world..." [1]

--

On top of this you haven't compared -

1. The quality of life difference between minimum wage workers in those countries 2. The quality of health care between these countries 3. Median house hold income (not everyone is on minimum wage) 4. Differences in taxes and "net" pay 5. The differences in the makeup of the economies and conditions of jobs

Honestly the factors are endless and I am not going to spend more time enumerating them all.

[1] https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1403627678528200704

You want to talk about quality of life difference between $7/hour and $23/hour ??? Sure where do you want to start?

Want to talk about quality of healthcare… the US will lose badly here (except in certain types of cancer). And skewed statistics because the US just refuses treatment to a bunch of folks which hides treatment/mortality rates.

You want to talk about median income 33k (us) vs 43k (au)?

Or back to the more pressing point: when you only have corporate lobbyists and no lobbyists for workers (unions) workers get skrewed across the board.

All I was saying is you can't use GDP as a gauge for how much money is available for payroll (as suggested by the grandparent). That is very dependent on the economy producing it.

And yes, Australia beats out the US on pretty much any metric you like (unless you are looking for corporate benefit, then the US will win out, it’s much better to be a capitalist in the US)

Because if they are in positive GDP then they are in an economic surplus… that’s what gdp is right? Else they are in a recession.

Neither of which matter to my point, because the pie is ALREADY big enough for a living wage for everyone.

China has the fastest growing and largest middle class (or middle income earners) in the world. They prove exactly the point I’m making. There will come a point in time where there are less people (%) living in poverty in China than in the US if you follow the current trend lines.

Also you are only kind of right with “you pay for healthcare”. It’s heavily subsidised… compared with the US.

No. Just... No, absolutely not. That's among the most factually incorrect statements I've seen anywhere online, let alone on HN. Why would you even write something like that; are you really so utterly ill-informed, or just plain lying?

As in: The US spend more on healthcare as a percentage of gdp.

But it pretends that capital efficiency between government spending is equal. As Australia shows: free hospitals for less per/capita(or gdp) spending than the US…

In the US I’ve used the hospital system once (minor treatment, no over night stay) my insurance paid $4000+ usd. In China I’ve used the hospital system for a fairly serious physical injury and was treated very quickly, couple hours and I paid ~$600 rmb.

What does "~$600 rmb" mean? That '$' character is usually called a dollar sign. Do you mean "about US$ 600, but in Renminbi"; or are you just using the dollar sign as a general currency sign, to say "about 600 Renminbi"?

Emphasising my point what does $150USD get you on an American hospital - maybe a Tylenol?

A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.

Also, the world is well beyond being a zero sum game economically, most of the biggest economic drivers these days are "silly and irrelevant" things like Facebook, Banking and the service industry. All the world can be well off.

That myth has been disproven long ago. Achieving a high standard of living and level of education does not magically cause people to pour into the streets and protest against their authoritarian governments.

>A world where China elevates itself to the US's level is one we should celebrate in the west as it means we need to suffer less ourselves.

A world where Xi Jinping is in charge of the global economy is a world where fundamental dignity is stripped from anyone who isn't Han, white-collar, hyper-nationalistic and living on the East Coast of Mainland China.

Many nations in Asia are gearing up economically and militarily to make sure this cannot happen.

While a flip doesn't instantly switch it does cause an erosion of the stability of the government. An enlightened populace is less accepting of authoritarianism than an unenlightened one and the excess luxury time that wealth creates leads more of the populace to enlighten themselves.

Please read some Chinese history. You'll see the exact same level of brutality, imperialism and aggression shown by the European empires, from Rome to Britain.

Much of central and Western China was only conquered during the last 500 years (basically the same period as European colonialism). They too, experienced forced cultural assimilation and ill treatment. They didn't conquer the globe in the way the Europeans did, but equally they didn't have the naval technology to do so.

Now since Yuan, you’ve had Ming and Qing… neither of which were particularly aggressive outside of their borders… and Qing was of course the start of the Opium wars, where the colonial powers essentially raped china for all its resources.

With regard to your strange Naval quip. You should look up the Chinese treasure ship. (Ming dynasty)… predates the colonials naval power.

So which Chinese in particular would you like me to read about? Everything you said is factually incorrect. To a laughable degree. I recommend you watch Marco Polo on Netflix, it’d teach you something.

I’ve got a major in Chinese History. Maybe get one of those too and come back and we can chat?

Sorry, must have missed the meaning of the "even", so the more charitable reading didn't occur to me.

Nationalism is not the same as subjecting your surrounding neighbours, which is the implication that the OP was making.

I bet I can guess which group you think you belong to.

The US Government printing money is why used cars, washing machines, and hotels are getting more expensive, while other categories stay generally below historical levels?

The last year has been so strong for online tech that there is a heavy vacuum effect on the available talent. FAANG are struggling to fill demand in hiring and are offering increasingly high salaries. This cascades to other industries. Top engineering talent at logistics companies are leaving to go work for big tech, same with banks. Recruiters are charging 22-25% for placements, and having difficulties filling them.

Not just tech, other industries as well. There was this initial moment of employment "musical chairs" when the pandemic set in and everybody who had a job was clinging to it, but we're now in a solid counter-reaction where even traditional industries are having their workforce disrupted by new opportunities. We're not even seeing the full brunt of it, with many industries running at reduced capacity (travel, hospitality, entertainment).

Generally speaking, if people are leaving jobs for new ones (or none...) it's because they calculated that it was for the better, thus, I think people will generally be happier about their state of employment in 2022 as the article states. I'll add that many people working minimum wage jobs took this opportunity to become entrepreneurs which is a really healthy step up from that situation.

Every time I hang out my with most ambitious friends, I am reminded of how MSFT is 'low balling' company. That I could be making 2x if only I kept up with interviewing. On one hand, I can't avoid the objective truth of the statement. But, on the other hand, the hedonic treadmill is infinite.

I'm glad I am not in the bay area. I would've been paralyzed by the persistent reminders around me of my monetarily sub-optimal life choices. Get out out of my head: 'over-achieving friendo', I am already well into the 99th percentile of wage earners of my age in the world's richest country.

Over the last 5 years, I've seen a (COL non-adjusted) 100x (20x if I use a more practically true number) increase in salary. So far, My happiest moments have rarely required much money, let alone 100x as much as I had then.

So if you like what you are doing and can live comfortably you are at the top of your game. The rest is merely froth.

Some programming, some hardware, some chemistry, always lots of fun.

Right now I’m working on data control and privacy.

It doesn't take much to interview and double your comp. You don't have to interview at Google or Facebook to double your comp - many pre-IPO startups are paying up and their interview processes are often less rigorous.

If you're happy with your situation then more power to you. But something tells me deep down inside, you're not OK with it. I'm here to tell you that a couple weeks of prep and looking around can go a long way.

It actually diminishes very quickly for most people, which I suspect is why they aren’t that motivated.

Still true that being content with what you have can be a wise choice.

I think if anything, the decreased concerns about hiring remote AND the increase in overall demand has lead to very favorable conditions for engineers even abroad.

The second this changes, the bottom drops out of software.

I don't know if it will ever happen that big companies begin openly accepting overseas applicants but if/when it does, you can expect that it wont be for 100k. Suddenly when you consider the entire planet, there's no longer a shortage of developers, and the employer has all the power.

Because it's been tried before and for the most part it was an abysmal failure. I was just starting out doing some basic web freelancing as a teenager in the 2000s and even I got roped in to clean up an outsourced project after being outbid a year earlier by an overseas firm during the first outsourcing wave. Lots of people on HN have horror stories of cleaning up from that era.

We've been here several times before - like literally just this past year of everyone saying "oh but now you have to compete with remote workers everywhere!" Salaries keep rising because software is an arms race. The companies making the most profit will continue to invest in getting the best people and outside of the odd global crisis, the industry will continue to grow as everyone else tries to keep up both in technology and in hiring. All those firms I cleaned up after as a kid are still around today and bigger than ever, yet on this side of the ocean we keep making more and more money.

I think we've got at least a century before software hits the diminishing returns that the industrial revolution did. My local lumberyard is still using DOS machines probably made before I was born.

I would argue that outsourcing failed primarily due to companies trying to farm out the coding to uninterested entities whose incentives did not align well. Not necessarily because the foreign workers doing the coding were bad.

Back to the guy in Argentina -- I imagine that he/she is actually in a reasonably good position as the amount of remote work increases. Indians not so much, because they are 12.5 hours ahead (of Pacific time). Argentina is only 4 hours ahead, which makes for a lot more overlap.

So I think the field has leveled a little bit in that sense, because if you have a remote developer in another state, they are not very different than one in another country who happens to be in a similar time zone. The other big barrier IMO is communication, so someone in Argentina who is not merely fluent in English but speaks it very clearly could be in a really strong position.

It failed because the intent was to cut costs and they got what they paid for. The successful ones were genuinely trying to expand their engineering talent pool and quickly figured out that the cost savings were a marginal benefit that made up for some of the extra overhead of international accounting and management. Quality engineers are one visa lottery away from Western salaries so the local median salary is often completely disconnected from what a FAANG might pay for a decent engineer, which is a rude awakening for anyone trying to cut costs without destroying the quality of their output. On top of that, the people most likely to make it a smooth transition are also the people most in demand (arms race!) and competition for them helps evaporate any savings for the business.

The guy in Argentina is in a great position to get hired to work remotely for an American company, but I don't seem him as competition regardless of how good he is. It's an arms race so my employer's competitor can't replace their team with Argentinians because that down time will give my employer time to crush them (which we learned in the 2000s). They can hire an extra team of Argentinians on top of their existing head count but if they do that my employer will be pressured to hire a team of Brazilians. Before you know it, both companies are hiring even more local teams to help manage the flow of work between their existing local teams and the outsourced ones.

There's more work and money to pay for it than there are people to do it. Until that changes, we're not the ones competing, the employers are.

This has worked far better than the 'Tata' chapter which exported to very cheap Asia where staff tech skills and the support model were too often haphazard and frequently underperformed. Hiring remote staff in new-growth US cities with lower CoL (e.g. Charlotte NC or Austin TX) has delivered capable staff and nearly synchronous operating hours to the main office. However in the past 2-3 years, IT labor costs have risen greatly in 'secondary' US cities, reducing those savings substantially.

In my experience, remote staff in eastern Europe have skills equal to US folks, but the 5 hour mismatch in daytime hours and their inability to visit US sites where non-IT R&D work is done and data is acquired does hamstring this model.

I wouldn't be surprised if a 4th era of outsourcing arises soon: remote work in small towns across the US and in western Europe. European IT wages often seem to be 50% or more below US large cities. That differential is likely to diminish as remote work increasingly is established as a new norm.

You can do bigger differences and many of us do on occasion. But on a multiple times a week basis, both 5am calls and 11pm calls get old.

My intuition is that a max of 3 or 4 time zones is the sweet spot, but it's cool to hear that you've had success up to 6.

I'm sorta wondering what country would be next. It has to have a large enough labor pool to fill the positions, and still be cheap enough to at least look good on paper..

- junior: 45K - 55K - medior: 60K - 75K - senior: 75K - 90K

Although getting more than 85K as an individual contributor is not easy.

I'd say there is not a general unwillingness to hire overseas developers, on the contrary, if more people could speak english in south america US companies would be more than happy to hire even more here.

There is a shortage in english speaking developers globally, but not a shortage on companies' interest in hiring anywhere

In addition, high quality audio makes you sound smarter :) https://tips.ariyh.com/p/good-sound-quality-smarter

There are still other substantial collaboration challenges, but if more places move to be truly remote-first, those places will necessarily have solutions for that anyway.

If I start another company I’d really like to hire a competent offshore team in south or Central America but I have a lot of trouble getting there from here. If I wanted to hire a team in Israel, Pakistan or India, I could do it immediately, because I have trusted friends who can hook me up with people that they themselves trust plus or minus some skeeviness that I know how to manage. For south-of-us I have no connections and basically no way to start.

You could dine out at nice restaurants every weekend and travel around by plane every time there is a holiday and stay at 5 star hotels

Taking into account the minimum salary here is 300 USD / month and with 50k per year you are already top 1%, 100k gives you an unimaginable level of wealth. You'd earn about the same salary as the president of the country and more than most CEOs from local companies

But that would be if you spend all your salary every month which is not so smart, what most of us (bilingual developers) do is continue living a standard middle class life and just invest heavily, I invest more than 50% of my salary, mostly in real state and US stocks

As an American who moved to Colombia, I can highly recommend it. That said, there’s a lot of downsides not mentioned here. First off, your foreign earned income and your US credit score mean nothing here. You will not be able to get a loan and if you want to buy property, you’ll be paying cash. I had to pay 8 months of rent into a bank deposited escrow just to rent a fairly cheap house for one year. That also involved (literally) about 6 trips each to a physical notary office and banks). Things that would be unheard of in the US are common place, like constant physical signatures and finger prints to authenticate documents and asking for your national id number in order to do anything and everything.

A small empty lot in the nicer parts outside Medellín will be at least $225,000. Not bad and beautiful land but again you’ll have to pay cash for everything. Taxes are very high and you can expect to pay 30% - 80% more for many foreign products (“nicer” cars in particular seem to be ridiculously high priced). Tech product selection is terrible, everything lags way behind or simply isn’t available. Amazon does ship a selection of lighter weight items here but you’ll pay a VAT tax of 20% plus an import tax of 10% on the total including shipping. It usually works out to be a 40% premium. Electric vehicles essentially do not exist unless you want a Twizy. I just had my radiator fan go out on my car and was quoted $900 for the part alone which is available in the States for $200. With shipping and taxes I can order from the US for about $550 but it will take about 2 weeks to get here.

There’s a lot of unnecessary friction in daily life, just trying to do “simple” things like an online purchase.

Still an amazing place, lots of great things but as someone trying to actually make a long term life here it can definitely be frustrating.

Markets clear. If outsourcing were so great, it would have completely taken over by now. It has been tested for decades now and it hasn't.

Outsourcing fits really well for organizations that have a lot of explicit, documented, well-understood domain knowledge, for which the org is the key inventor. But that's not most organizations. Most organizations are operating by the seat of their pants, competing in markets where a large number of other orgs know their business. That they turn a profit at all is more a testament to the perseverance of a few, key employees than it is the exceptionalism of the organization itself.

Every axis of communication is a potential friction point, be it collocation, industry, experience levels, language, time zone, culture, personality types, etc. The more you can remove those friction points, the more successful your project can be. But outsourcing throws several of those out the window, never to be touched again. So you're left optimizing on the few that are left, where most companies only ever optimized on those axes that have already been removed.

https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/living/take-care-of-official-m...

Ultimately outsourcing has issues with accountability.

you are a team of people located all over the world. To Your being off-shored to India as soon as can figure out how.

Worked both, and the culture difference and happiness difference is drastic.

Even a hint of offshoring will induced panic for many employees/ candidates. Definitely makes hiring and retention hard.

Yes that's right; business hates saving money and loves hiring super expensive US talent.

If you are looking to fill a position coming with a decent pay, I'm all ears :)

This has been the case, according to my colleagues who are older, since at least 2003 ;-)

If they were hurting that much for devs, you'd think they might lower the bar a little by not requiring a years study of leetcode.

What are the issues with IQ tests?

They can have cultural or social biases unless very carefully calibrated. Ideally you should be able to take anyone who speaks a reasonable level of English, give them test and have them get a score that matches their intelligence percentile.

In practice, the tests are built for a particular socioeconomic class and type of person. As a trivial example, imagine the test uses the word "yacht" and you give the test to someone who has never culturally been exposed to that word - that person will, on average, score a bit lower than someone who recognizes the word immediately.

Or imagine you give a test using Imperial units to a European who exclusively grew up using Metric (or vice versa). Knowing that three feet are in a yard isn't an intelligence test, it's a test of cultural familiarity.

You don't have to agree with the bar the companies are using, but that is the bar they have converged on, and one that plenty of people are capable of passing.

Would much rather compete for those people.

Nobody is talking about lowering the bar, but of putting the bar in the right zipcode.

An extremely high bar of leetcode testing is irrelevant to the actual job, so that's an irrelevant bar.

You have - companies that settled on this process, who have been able to attract top tallent that has cleared this bar.

You have - employees of these companies that were able to clear the interview bar.

And then you have - people who don't work for these companies, proclaim to have no interest/ability to clear the bar, but claim to have a valid view into where the bar should be.

In the absence of other data it doesn't seem like the last group is likely to be objectively right

These questions have fuck-all to do with the actual work the happens there. Sure, you can usually find someone to tell you how much rainwater accumulates into a random bar chart, but I see as much brain-dead code at the top as anywhere else. As much great code, too, FWIW. Everywhere, the key skills that make for a successful IC are the same, and they definitely don't require implementing splay trees or skip lists from scratch and without references. 99% of the time it's shuffling bits around and using hash maps.

Honestly the people I work with who advocate the hardest for leetcode are the ones who had to grind hard and, evidently, want others to suffer too. As if a sane process would mean their own suffering was in vain.

The bar may simply be "sober enough to understand what it takes to succeed at this task", "committed enough to prepare" and "smart enough to solve them"

These attributes correlate strongly with success, I'd imagine.

Having sat on hiring committees, that's a fair summary. Most people are not very good at interviewing, because it's a weird skill, and nobody actually teaches you how to do it well. There's interview training, but it's incredibly short, and seems like half of it is about legal policy. There's ostensibly shadow interviews, but that tends to be luck of the draw on who your shadower is; most won't put in the requisite time to help coach you in conducting better interviews.

I think big companies like to pretend that leetcode interviewing scales well, without actually doing the time necessary to make it scale well.

> Right now my interview has a wash out coding exercise that is beginner oriented to get the resume liars but other than that it's all systems.

This is 100% what I've gravitated to. The longer I've interviewed people, the easier and easier the actual coding parts of my questions have become.

It's not like there aren't benefits to this process. Once you've buffed up, you're prepared for most major tech interviews. Common formats have their advantages.

That said, this format is just too expensive, and has poor predictive power.

and

// Once you've buffed up, you're prepared for most major tech interviews.

and

// has poor predictive power.

If "acquiring skill X" is broadly valuable (as you're saying in this case) then your ability to work on acquiring it is predictive of your success.

It's not predictive of the traits that mark a successful IC in my experience. I'm talking about areas like project planning, professionalism, large-scale system design, personal ownership, meticulousness, etc. Curiosity. Some of those might tangentially be covered by leetcode but I guarantee you important stuff isn't.

Everyone I've seen to fail, either via PIP or otherwise, has cracked these interviews. I've seen many fail over the years. Even worse, I've seen many whom I know would be strong performers, wash out because they got the wrong DP problem that day. Where's the benefit in a regime like this? The company loses and good candidates lose, too.

Or: "World's best banks and world's best traders have invested in subprime mortgages, they couldn't all be wrong?"

Using skin color for hiring is illegal and immoral and the government does not allow it.

Issuing sub primes is bad for business and blew up pretty quickly.

If asking programmers programming questions is "no different" from the above, which is it: illegal or bad for business?

If they were bad for business, why was it a common practice for so long? Does a business have no clue what's bad for business? Or is it just self destructive?

If "it's an established practice" argument also enconoasses things that are bad for business, and things that are immoral and illegal, maybe it's not a strong argument?

But if you're running a startup (target audience of ycombinator), you'd do well to play a smarter game since you can't outspend or out-fame the FAANGs. A big part of that is to have better interviewing practices than they do.

In practical terms the FAANG companies internal processes are horrible and they can’t seem to innovate at all, but as long as they continue to print money there is zero reason to risk change.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...

That's about the microsoft-era actual riddles, like "if you were reduced to the size of an ant and put in a blender, how would you get out?"

Maybe using methods that have nothing to do with the job, just don't lead to good results ?

What I said was basically "google admitted their old method didn't work, here's a link if your interested. I wouldn't be surprised if the new method doesn't work either, and we see articles about that in a few years"

The I "wouldn't be surprised" part comes from both methods actually having very little to do with the job at hand, and therefore I think they would BOTH be bad predictors of performance at that job..

No. Your previous post said they admitted their "leet code" interviews didn't work. leetcode means something specific.

Also I'd draw the opposite conclusion. Sounds like Google is "on it" in terms of evaluating what works and what doesn't. They threw out brainteasers because they didn't work. That suggests whatever they kept does work.

Can't say I agree with your 'on it' conclusion, but I guess time will tell. It took them about 15 years to get rid of the brain teasers (1998 to 2013ish from what I can tell), so if they're consistent we should hear one way or the other in 2028ish :-)

During which time the company grew from what to what?

(Actually, when I interviewed in ~2003, I didn't get any brain teasers. All of the questions where either fundamental computer science knowledge or related to the (SRE) position---although they would all be considered "leetcode" by someone without the background. I was pretty impressed.)

what does that have to do with trying to guess when the next paper might come out? I was just guessing what the publishing timeline might be :-P

I would bet money that the latter is far more predictive of quality candidates than any leetcode problem you randomly pluck from the ether and expect them to solve under pressure.

But again, I expect nothing less from an industry that isn't exactly known for being good at human interaction.

I've previously hired contractors with minimal interviewing because they came from a trusted partner to my organization, so I asked the partner about their productivity and skills and they were given good reviews relative to what we were trying to accomplish.

Each of them were a net negative with respect to the project. The time it took me to review their pull requests and help them write code which was passable was longer than it would have taken me to write the code myself. Additionally, the code that was passable has been a constant source of bugs.

A more thorough technical interview may have avoided hiring them. In retrospect, the correct course of action would have been to not hire anyone until someone qualified was available. This anecdote does support the grand-parent posters theory that operating with fewer incompetent people is better.

Additionally, their proposal is generally workable (which again, yours is not).

Competence is a spectrum and so at some level of competence there will be people who are competent but unable to pass overly complex interview questions. The fact that this overlap exists seems to be what you are complaining about. Even still, not hiring people in this overlap is probably safer than hiring people which make the system worse in my experience.

Competence is most absolutely not one spectrum. Competence is measured in dozens (hundreds, really) different axis. Everyone will have different scores (if we could realiably narrow it to a score, which we can't) on different axis of skills. Which of the skill axis are most relevant for any given role will vary, obviously. A generalist will have decent scores in many, a specialist may have mediocre scores in many but 99+percentile in their chosen areas.

Leetcode interviewing measures along one single uninteresting axis, the one corresponding to memorization of algorithm puzzles. That axis happens to be entirely irrelevant to any job I've ever hired for. So I don't test for that because I care as much for your skill doing leetcode as I care for your skill juggling frogs. Neither is relevant to the job.

Have you considered that with a strong understanding of elementary algorithms and data structures it is possible "solve" rather than "memorize" these algorithm puzzles?

If that were even remotely possible, why isn't that person cranking out multiple novel algorithm research papers per day? They should be outpublishing Knuth, for sure.

So, no. The only road is to memorize extensively and practice acting skills on the delivery.

EDIT: Obviously even some of the most elementary Algo 101 problems were research questions at some point, and led to published papers, but that's the reason people write textbooks and use them in college, so newcomers don't have to redo the foundational work.

You're right in that HR of their previous (likely current) employes won't say or allow saying anything.

But of course they're likely not giving as references their current boss, for obvious reasons.

Their previous bosses though, who have also left that company, will speak to you freely.

What could be niche about this? It's the most overwhelmingly common case.

Most people change jobs every couple years and your interviewees ex-bosses are also in the industry doing the same job hopping. It is a near certainty that nearly all (if not all) their ex-bosses have moved to different companies already.

This is the most common case, by far.

Are you suggesting going further back, to the candidate's previous previous employer, and hoping that their direct manager from years ago is able to provide reliable and accurate testimony on the current state of the candidate ?

I'm surprised this is not a universal experience based on these responses. Every candidate I've interviewed has given at least one ex-boss as a reference. Every reference I've ever given has been ex-bosses.

Sometimes you'd get interviewers who were at least smart enough to realize that maybe the most you'd get out of it is "can this person break down a seemingly impossible problem into manageable pieces?" That's fine, but then state that or at least give them something real they'll actually run into if hired instead of trying to estimate how many gas stations there are in LA county in their head.

And while those suck[ed], companies having been doing similarly ridiculous things for a very long time to try and save themselves from hiring the wrong people. IBM's infamous "lunch interview" (false on Snopes, but the concept is true and I've seen played out) or asking candidates to take a personality type test to determine if they'd be a good fit before hiring (yes, I did this once early in my career and would just walk out if asked to do one today).

The most difficult I've found is getting fellow programmers to realize that they _don't_ want to hire another "you." Yes, you're an expert in networking and security. Don't interview for that so you can show off your own skills or "teach" in an interview. Interview _for the position_.

You want a diverse set of knowledge, skills, experiences, communication styles, etc. at your company. And - while it can be scary - you always want to hire people who are better than you (esp. if you're a manager!). But that is so hard to get people to do.

Just to be clear, you made an assumption in your first sentence and then ran with it for 3 paragraphs.

// I would bet money

If I had to bet who can better assess what proper recruiting for a company looks like, I'd bet MY money on the company, not on random complaints on the internet that basically amount to "it must be the interview structure that prevents me from working at a FAANG"

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/google-...

I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar article about leet code...

The second problem is that the onus is on you on making sure those bad interviews decrease the odds if hiring bad people, instead of increasing them or being irrelevant. Without that evidence, this is a non-argument.

Not asking those types of questions, and instead asking a more straightforward programming question with relatively simple data structures, and some tradeoffs to be made, plus maybe some follow up optimization questions (but like in general systems terms, not code), tend to work better. But it's still whiteboard coding for the most part.

While I do detest leetcode interviews, I've yet to see another interview system that works for extremely large companies, that covers all the bases:

* won't result in you hiring someone who can't write a for-loop in their language of choice (I know fizz-buzz is a meme at this point, but I have interviewed people who failed a question easier than fizz-buzz before - not even on a whiteboard. People who genuinely cannot program at all will apply for programming jobs, and some of them will get past the recruiters.)

* is reasonably based on skills

* is not hyper selecting for "people extremely similar to people who already work here" (not "what school did you go to?" or "who do you know who already works here?" type stuff)

* can be made mostly uniform across the company (though, even leetcode-like interviews are hard to make uniform, it's easier than a lot of other methods)

* isn't trivially cheated (100% remote tests, where someone else just does it for you)

* won't be outright rejected by people who already have jobs (internships, though this does work well for new grads)

* won't be outright rejected by people who have less free time outside of the job (e.g. people with families, small kids won't go for "work for a week" type take-home assignments which say "couple hours" but you're competing against people who will dump 40+ hours into it in a single week)

A lot of other systems work really well if you're willing to slash your candidate pool to a smaller percentage, but break down once you start trying to fairly get at more candidates. Something that works well for a 1000 person company won't work if you have >50,000 developers. Something that works well for a company explicitly willing to exclude parents won't work well for a super large company.

Also, a lot of companies do change up the application process for people who are just out of school, in that they allow internships/etc, with a different route through than just interviews. (Though you usually have to go through an interview to get the internship, they tend to be way easier - having sat on such an intern hiring committee before, you get very few interviewers asking riddle/trick questions)

Time-wise, I can generally coach someone to pass a big tech interview loop in 1-3 months, not a year.

There's definitely a difference between hiring Sr. vs. Jr. programmers. When it comes to Sr, the best place I ever worked had a pretty great process:

1. Phone interview that was 100% identical for all candidates. It was basically a "take me through your work history, answering these 5 questions for each job." It worked wonderfully and gave a really good indication of what the person learned at each position and how they were able to apply that knowledge at the next job. And, if there was some obvious red flag at each step (e.g. "all my bosses have been jerks"). It also had the benefit of being more fair. I don't know how many places I've worked where if person A conducted the phone interview it was a shoe-in, and if person B did it was impossible to get through.

2. While doing #1, make a mental note of a couple things along they way they worked on (esp. if they seemed proud of them) and then - in a follow-up interview with a couple programmers on the call - really dig in deep on the technical details. Ask questions. You'll learn rapidly if they actually did the work and understand the problem or simply worked on it w/o understanding. What were the major challenges? What would they change now if they could go back? And here it's awesome if you get someone who can give answers that aren't always technical things (e.g. "I wish I knew early on how best to deal with X").

3. At this point, you're ready for an on-site and have already proven to yourself and the team "this person can code and solve problems." What's left is any final details you want to be sure of. Any odd personality quirks that won't work for the culture the company is going for? Let non-technical people they'd have to interface with interview them.

The best we ever came up w/ for Jr people was a test with some basic college class stuff like big-O and for problems 1-3 would you prefer linked list, hash table, or tree and why? And then try and do #1 and #2 above, but using their college classes/team projects as work experience. But that didn't always work out all that well.

This has been the same as well, to my knowledge, since 2010

Lifestyle creep only moves in one direction and is usually permanent.

Although I don't believe that we're about to enter some form of work/life balance utopia, just from my own circle of friends, big changes are inbound.

Firstly, many of us, including me, have for years been told that working from home more than a day a week was an impossibility, and that we should be grateful for that 1 day at all. Although frequently WFH days came with caveats, such as no Mon/Fri WFH, and there was the ever present threat of it being taken away.

Then, along comes the pandemic, and 'lo and behold, I've been working home for over a year without any issue. So have the bulk of the people I know, especially those in the technology sector. All of a sudden the dozens of arguments I have had with clients and employers over the years have all landed firmly on what I have been saying all along; we don't need to be in work every day, hell, we don't even need to be in work every week.

The cat is out of the bag now, and there isn't going to be putting it back in. A lot of the last year has been positive for many, including me. I've seen more of my own daughter in the past year than I've seen in the previous 7 years combined, and I've come to appreciate how important that has been to both of us. I'm not about to let that go without a fight.

Don't fall for the "you can do more work because you're not commuting" line - if commuting is considered work time, then you deserve to be remunerated for that time, and they owe you back pay for each day you commuted in the past.

You have to ask yourself, why this is the case. And the simple answer is status quo bias. Many dream of a different life, but few will actually pull the trigger on a major change.

However if a company suddenly changes an established working relationship, then all bets are off the table. If people have gotten used to WFH, and now you make them come into the office, then you’re invalidating the status quo bias. Switching jobs is probably less disruptive to their status quo then going back to the office.

Corporate managers are forgetting a very maxim. Never piss off your employees by taking away something they feel entitled to. It’s the same reason that it’s virtually unheard of to cut salary, even when revenue is collapsing in a deflationary recession.

I've read one of the easiest ways to break moral in an office is to simply take away the snacks. Forget nap pods, or walking desks- don't touch my clif bars!!

For me this is indication of cost cutting going into effect. This means it's time to stop riding a dead horse and to start looking for a live one.

Yes, that’s why companies prefer lay offs rather than broad base salary cuts. Lay offs are a temporary hit to morale, while pay cuts are more permanent. Moreover, in lay offs, you can fire least productive workers, while after pay cut, it’s the most productive that will leave first.

A pay increase is a > 10 year commitment, in the eyes of the accounting department. Where I am, it's usually around 60% base cash bonus, %30 base RSU bonus, for "above average" performance (which isn't difficult). I, unlike most of my colleagues, budget my life around my base pay. I experienced the 2007 recession, so in my mind, this is all unsustainable and will crash someday.

From what I've experienced, there's a double whammy here. Only the talented folks remain, but they all know better than to stick around, so the company dies shortly after.

Maybe for a little while when there are lots of jobs offering WFH and competing for a small number of people switching jobs. However if you invert that by having lots of jobs simultaneously require people to come back into the office and lots of people simultaneously seeking new employment, then that job hop is likely to be quite difficult. At the very least, most people probably won't be able to line up a new WFH job before they either need to start going into the office or quit and risk extended unemployment. In the long run there will be more WFH opportunities than before the pandemic, but a lot of people are going to have to go into an office whether they want to or not.

It's still shocking to me how "chill" this is. "Oh yeah, I'm about to FIRE, no big problem".

Achieving FIRE is such a mind blowing concept to me, Let alone at 25-35!!! Where I live we don't have fat six figure salaries flying around allowing us to accumulate a chunky ETF portfolio to live off of.

Be grateful for what you have achieved!

> Suddenly, having good health insurance, WFH 'flexibility' and a stable jobs are now being viewed as things to be grateful about rather than the norm for well educated and employable adults.

Do you realise how the bottom ~50% of the US workforce lives [1]?! Getting paid six figures or more easily puts you in the top 10% of income earners in the US. Why are you talking as if these should be the norm? They clearly aren't by all metrics. You have such incredible benefits for the work you do, why do you believe you shouldn't feel any privilege or gratitude?

[1] https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-americ...

For those that have the ability and the desire to retire: congratulations! Please be careful!

It's not so much that you can retire to sitting on your ass at 35, but it's that you've made your millions and can quit the grinding corporate job and do something less stressful and/or more meaningful, and quite likely less lucrative, without taking a big lifestyle hit. It's about having the ability to build the lifestyle you want. Having that big bank account gives you options and freedom.

Few people I know working toward FIRE are aspiring toward doing nothing in "retirement".

When you take a smart person, make their life boring, and throw them enough capital that they can afford to do anything they want, the end result is often innovation.

But yes: risk is always a part of the game.

It's easy to see "oh if a wealth tax is introduced, you'll run out of money by 50" as if it's a huge hole in the plan, but if you're 30 that gives you 20 years of draw down time. A change in the market or legislation won't sneak up on you and suddenly drain you of all your cash - if it does, it's probably something affecting the entire population. You'll likely have a year or two of drawing down more cash than you should before you pivot your plans.

The most vulnerable time during FIRE is the first few years of early retirement (where a market crash could wreck you), but is simultaneously the point where you're still at your most employable (plenty of relevant contacts, skills that aren't out of date, and a relatively small gap on your resume).

I know a guy who FIREd a while ago, long before we called it FIRE, and he's had a heck of a time landing another corporate job. He had a very successful business development firm and took a buyout from partners so he could move away from NYC and spend time with his kids. His kids are all grown up now and he's been looking for jobs and...crickets.

But I agree in general. If someone retires at 40 and realizes 5-10 years later this isn't working out, that's a pretty big uphill climb for conventional professional employment.

For most people FIRE simply means being in a "position of Fuck You", which is very empowering and provides you with more options to seek out income opportunities that make you truly happy with out having to worry about paying the mortgage or putting food on the table

What's FIRE in this context?

RE = Retire early = retire from the necessary but emotionally unfulfilling jobs. For most people RE means pursuing interests that are not financially viable if you aren't already FI. It can mean a youtube channel, studying whatever you want or working on a side project without strict deadlines or the stress that comes with an all-or-nothing endeavor.

The key fallacy in FIRE, is that it ignores creeping costs and the stubbornness of your dependants. Avoiding lifestyle creep in fundamental to the movement. This also means being unable to fund fancy private schools for your kids and your spouse being fine with the sudden loss of a huge income source. FIRE is an empty pursuit without a definite end goal. If you don't know what you want to do during RE, you might just be condemning yourself to a loss of purpose and possibly significantly higher risk of death/mental deterioration.

Ofc, you can always pursue a more relaxed form of FIRE. Make enough to move to part time / contracts, or move to another country with lower wages or fully dedicate yourself to a moonshot.

The basic assumption generally being, anyone who can save two-thirds of each paycheque and invest in a portfolio yielding 4% per year after inflation can retire in 10 years. Saving two-thirds of each paycheque is of course difficult unless one is in a high pay grade to begin with, but there are enough people with the necessary discipline to keep the dream alive for many of us.

[1]: https://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/

COVID has exposed how pathetic the commute-to-work experience is in comparison to working from home. A lot of people are just fine not keeping up a work wardrobe, or getting up every day to get dressed and groomed for work, or driving to the office every day. It personally takes me 45 minutes to get to work on a good day. If my employer tried to force me into the office while I could get a job elsewhere that would allow me to make around the same money to work from home, I'm gone. I'd save about $2500 in gas alone.

And for the record, I love my co-workers. Every single one is a software development veteran, professional in their day to day activities, and is motivated to producing quality work. But I'd still rather work with a knucklehead from time to time than give up the 2+ hours of daily time that going back to the office would require.

I think your circles are rather unusual, if this is true. A $900k net worth is in the 99th percentile for 30-34 year olds and 95th percentile for 35-40 year olds in the US (https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator-united-states/)

Even among my anecdotal very-highly-compensated NYC tech-salary coworkers and friends, having money issues and easily sub $100k net worths is way more common than not.

I would be shocked if in that specific cohort the median net worth at 30 was less than 500 k$. And if less than 1/10 were millionaires at 30.

The individuals who occupy the upper-echelons of this world in SF tend to be the unusual kinds of unusual people. They often have unique upbringings, come from distinctly not-obvious academic/work backgrounds, and keep much more dynamic forms of company than the typical "Backend Engineer 3" at Amazon or Google.

Sure, maybe SF has more unusual kinds of unusual people than the average city, but I wouldn't say that's the norm. VC folks are especially boring.

The big thing is that around 900k is when you get diminishing returns on savings vs market fluctuations. Bumping that amount by 10% would require saving $90k, which is a tall order. Or you could wait for a 10% market increase (it's up 14% this year). Not that the market is guaranteed to go up, or even by that much (we're in an unusually good market at the moment with inflated optimism). But at a certain point you hit a tradeoff where the market on average increases your wealth faster than savings off your salary will. At that point it makes sense to transition to a job that just covers your cost of living - one that you like more and offers more freedom.

At a former job we could not pay anywhere near top of the market and yet we attracted decent talent as the mission was something that resonated with many people. One category of people we'd attract were those who had already made enough money that they didn't have to focus on that, and now just wanted to do good in the world.

For me at least, the goal has been to bank big cash early, then let the compounding do the heavy lifting towards the end. As I mentioned above, getting a 10% increase takes a lot more savings late in the game whereas the snowballing effect of compounding interest is stronger, so I'm coming out ahead just by staying afloat without dipping into my savings. I look at the work that appeals to digital nomads (pre-covid, this was work FAANG and other high paying jobs didn't widely offer), and it seems more valuable to spend some mobile years financing a nice adventure with the stability of a job that lets me work from home. It means a gradual transition to RE and that very little in my lifestyle should change once I pull the trigger. Personally I'm looking to reach FI /then/ transition to a remote/part time job as a way to reduce risk while offering some extra flexibility - everything I earn in that time should be gravy and it should allow me the freedom to travel and enjoy the experiences.

Of course if you are retiring in your 40% you may want to be pretty conservative...

https://www.financialplanningassociation.org/article/journal...

People in the FIRE communities are routinely discussing 3.5% and 3% SWR's, and see 4% as risky.

Retiring in 40s is a pretty big decision. It's not impossible to re-enter the professional workforce in your late-40s or 50s, if things don't work out, but it will almost certainly not be easy.

In the UK tax advantaged pension accounts cannot be accessed until you're 55 (and 58 for my generation)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sepp.asp

I'm now in my mid/late-40s and show up as low/mid 80s on that calculator depending on if I include my home equity. When I punch in my net worth at 40 I was around 20%. If my current glide path holds I'd be low-90s when I turn 50. While unlikely to be feasible, it's in the realm of possibility that I could retire by mid-50s.

That's a privileged position simply not available to most human beings. Really remarkable when one thinks about it.

It was only really my current job and associated stock which took savings from just OK to pretty decent. I could retire now if I wanted to but not really in a big hurry assuming business travel comes back post-COVID.

Just think, we could all pursue our hopes, dreams and soul satisfying pursuits, if having good health insurance wasn't directly tied to having a "good job".

It's basically "You have those basic needs filled here under those conditions. If you don't want that, there's a free market up there where you can bargain something better." Of course, how "basic" are the needs filled and what conditions vary a lot from country to country.

Dissatisfaction will cause people to move around in the market. I don't know how much I buy the argument that people are looking for WFH, more than that they are looking to not work in a service industry which has low benefits low pay, and no chance of upward mobility.

The pandemic is giving people a chance to realize their career has stalled. I think everyone already knew that the US healthcare system was broken, but maybe people are realizing changing careers is the only way out of that bind.

Tech workers would be fine under any situation, so I don't think it's right to compare your FIRE friends with a cruise ship waiter.

It's important to note that tech workers make up no where close to 40% of all workers, and that most of the people discussed here are lower class seeking upward mobility. Being miserable is just the catalyst for seeking a way out of their situation.

1) Sense of (in)security. There is the thought of, what if my investments lose a lot of value. What if costs suddenly go up. So the number keeps shifting up. Just another x dollars and I'll retire.

2) As I get older, the thought of retiring is also starting to lose appeal. Life's priorities change and preferences change. I wanted to be able to not work and travel the world. Now that sounds some what exhausting and unanchored. Personal situation also comes into play. Single vs those in relationships. Will the partner welcome the FIRE lifestyle etc.

3) There is a bit of how society will view a 30 something with no job and no plans to get a job.

If you stop working, you risk losing both those networks.

For example, many of my aunts and uncles that retired around 55 - 60 are / were having many health issues some have experienced decline in mental sharpness. Where as my grand parents who worked on the farm until into the 70s were fairly healthy until towards the end of their lives.

That's true of “work” viewed broadly, but not necessarily particularly of wage labor more than other things within the broad sense of “work”; certainly, I’ve found it to be no less true in political and charitable volunteer work than it is in wage labor.

I am far happier in my job and my career. And if my employer decides that they require people to come to the office, then I shall find a different employer who doesn't.

What I’ve noticed about the fire people is that they have very unrealistic budgets (static based on what they spend at age 30 often forgetting to include things like healthcare and other forms of insurance, as well as changes in lifestyle). Once you’re in your 40s, and you’re at the peak of your earnings, it’s actually really hard to walk away even if you’ve hit your target. I do know quite a few people first hand who have quit but only in there very late 40s or who made north of $10 million at one point or another.

Stated preference is much noisier.

My observation is there are a lot of people who have learned to hate their boss while remote. My SF friends may be surprised that wages are resetting to Chicago and Texas levels for new workers. That may slow down some of the movement.

During the pandemic, the companies that were still hiring stepped up the bar. Maybe that was the push needed to tell people what the ramifications of this is. Now I am finally hearing from a lot of engineers: "Am I going to have to do this my whole life? I don't want to do this now let alone for the rest of my life". I have dozens of friends from Microsoft to Google plotting their exists.

If all goes well, I am out in 8 years (but things rarely go well). I have a number and once I get to it, I am out. I dont want to deal with this shit anymore

Even better, the people that are the most averse to Leetcode cramming are often the ones that will see the greatest benefit, since they usually entered their current position with a single offer some years ago, and would be getting multiple offers in a very hot market today.

I bet if HC were not employment centered, this would be much different. In the US, it's a badge of honor to have a "job with benefits". Switching jobs and not having HC benefits that are as good or cost more weighs heavy on the minds of most people.

No, people were miserable in their jobs prior to the Covid era. The Covid era just gave them the repose they needed to reframe their job experience and their relationship to their employers. That's a positive development for Americans and their employers.

I think less than 1 in 10 people who talk about FIRE have some kind of realistic expectation about FIRE (i.e. you can't stay in the USA and also live like a king)

- Mental illness.

- Uncomfortable amounts of stone. Feeling trapped by the system.

- The constant paranoid fear of other people who kind of want you dead.

- Shitting in pots.

It's pretty easy to live like a king in the US, just be homeless.

Also in many eras quack doctors.

Not just people wanting you dead, but close family members coming after you and your kids.

And just how true that bit is about lottery tickets being “a tax on people who are bad at math.”

Having a bunch of money means not having to have a mortgage. That’s pretty powerful by itself.

I’ve been trying for years.

You don't really know yourself until you've spent a month or two with ZERO outside obligations. Quite hard to do. I did a couple of multi-month gaps in my 30s.

Feels like most huge corporations do an executive shakeup every 5-8 years or so, and they shake some people out, but those people just get picked back up by someone else fresh off their own executive shuffle.

contradicts

> This number is meaningless without previous year trends.

It is definitely hard for food service workers, and what not, but the powers that be really don't have much say.

During the pandemic many people also made some changes to their lives (bought a house, moved out the city, moonlight second job, started consulting remotely, etc.).

Then you throw in the crazy rise in the markets (stocks, crypto, real estate) that many people have benefited from.

Coupled with the popularity of FIRE mentality, rise of remote work, etc, it doesn't surprise me there are big changes coming.

Less than 10? I would need to know more details on this before believing it at face value. Say a FANG person makes 300k/year on average over 8 years.

That's 2.4 million pre-tax, something like 1.4M post-tax, and not enough for FIRE for most people.

Maybe if someone was early in a startup that had a massive exit, sure. But that definitely doesn't describe the typical FIRE person/FAANG worker/etc.

You're also assuming they did nothing with their earnings over those 8 years - when in reality most are invested in the markets which have killed it over the last decade.

I think people in tech are making a shitload more money then most realize.