If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue). My company had multiple layoffs and then new waves of headcount. Most of the layoffs happened in the US. 100% of the new headcount is in cheaper countries.
Remote work seems glorious if you look at 2020-21. But beware the second order effects!
This was always the case for companies that wanted to offshore. Remote work hasn't changed that.
[remote work] hasn't really been a reality the way it is today. During covid, we were forced to implement norms and tools for remote working (like Zoom). Also, we learned about replacing an expensive worker for a cheaper one one at a time. Earlier, there used to be entire teams in some remote location, so it was similar to having 2 islands (one large, one small) with a bridge which was crossed may be once or twice a year during annual trips to HQ. Now with one-new-person-at-a-time, teams don't lose productivity but over time, American workers are replaced with cheaper ones.
Source: seeing it myself in my current company. Also remembers: shareholder class is ruthless. If I can see this, they are seeing and acting on it as well.
Edit: cannot reply to the unity1001's reply so editing here - sorry to break it to you but earlier, there were only tools. Covid forced us to implement cultural norms and processes to actually work with those tools effectively. That was missing before.
Sorry to break it to you, but those tools were around and the companies that were outsourcing were already using them heavily way before. So that's not a factor for anything being different either.
Companies have been working with offshore talent for decades.
And extremely disastrous in the short run. If societies lose good paying jobs, that is asking for a populist uprising which typically goes pretty bad pretty soon.
That was already happening. Remote work doesnt change anything with that.
Moreover, dont think that the senior dev in those other places will work for American companies for dimes like that. They will want the equivalent of top dollar in their country and that ends up being closer to the cost of the remote American dev when the obscene real estate/housing costs and general cost of living in places like SF or NY are removed from the equation. If you dont give that remote overseas dev the competitive rate in his/her country, he will either go with someone who does or he will just follow the traditional, more respectable career track in his country - like moving to manager positions in a respectable local corporation or launching his own business.
And if the American company goes for junior devs who are actually willing to be working for dimes when they start, they will get sloppy jobs like how they get with such cheap outsourcing now. And at the moment those juniors gain some experience, they will either ask for competitive pay or they will leave and take the traditional career route.
Every time companies either bring the jobs back, bring the people back or spend more on hiring good firms in their offshore country of choice.
Working in academic R&D, I've usually found myself in "virtual" teams spread over many time zones or even continents, so the people I work most closely with are not the ones I would see in the office building and accompany to lunch. We were effectively embodying more of a glorified coworking space before any of us had heard of this as a named concept.
My boss always professed a preference for onsite collaboration but then was, ironically, the one most often away on travel or offsite at other satellite locations in our city. I could be in the office daily but not see him for weeks, going even longer between substantive face to face conversations. Most coordination was already digital before the pandemic.
At the same time, our division with a dozen or so employees is supposedly tight-knit and managed as a matrix org to share responsibilities. But in reality, logical silos are formed. Only a couple people pay attention to any one project and usually do so for an entire, multi-year project lifecycle. When we were onsite, we would spend most days in our private offices and not have a work-driven reason to visit one another.
Our group went from all onsite to hybrid with several remote-only. The rest agreed to return to the office one day per week on a day they chose by consensus. After a year of this, I can see that the locals often struggle to get quorum for the scheduled onsite day. We've also struggled to get our nominal quarterly all-hands get togethers to actually recur.
Fast approaching my 50s, I think more about lifestyle effects on my future health, or about retirement savings and the economy as a whole. I don't see that outsourcing of our individual "remote" jobs is a risk worth pondering. Rather, it would be whole companies or sectors as part of bigger trade wars or economic crashes. That is another kind of conceit to worry that our knowledge work could be out-competed by foreign workers while the parent organization and managerial layers are not also subject to competition from foreign companies.
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
For some, +$20,000 to their current salary is an offer they can't refuse, for others, they would need to double their existing six figure salary to even consider moving to another hub.
Once the basics and some future security are there, more money just means a bigger resource footprint. That's still nice to have, people certainly continue preferring wealth over poverty, but it would be crazy if trade-off thresholds between modesty and ambition didn't shift a little due to awareness of environmental impact.
But for realistic wages in my field, I doubt there is anywhere that would pay me enough to move. Short of moving into management (which I have little experience with) the most I could expect for making a move would be about an extra $40-60k/year moving to the Bay area which would basically cover the difference in cost of living and maybe a little extra pocket change.
That's not really worth it for me.
But, of course, I didn't literally mean that. Offer me a few million a year guaranteed and I could put up with a lot for life-changing money. But realistically not going to happen.
Not 1.2 or 1.4 birds in the bush
But for a lot of people the answer is "I want to live somewhere else." I relocated away from a really nice job with challenging work and interesting co-workers simply because I didn't like where I was living. I suspect that I'm not the only one.
Mobile work is still way more popular than it was, many cities were burned down in 2020 and people remember the insecurity. I moved more rural and couldn’t be happier, I’ll take a salary reduction to keep my quality of life.
I won’t even interview in person.
Everyone in my area (hour outside a major city) is basically the same.
Which ones were those?
Many places have gotten rougher, there is the visible disorder in San Francisco but even the small city of Ithaca, NY has seen a large increase in aggressive panhandling. You can plot opioid overdoses on the map and it looks like a pattern of bullets aimed at the needle exchange. People used to think the old African-American neighborhood downtown was “dangerous” (it wasn’t) but rents have gone up, the area has gentrified, and many of the former residents have relocated to smaller towns in the area. Today people are terrified of the large homeless colony by the inlet and the accompanying shopping cart graveyard.
The pedestrian mall downtown for years was decimated by a construction project that went overtime like the construction of a nuclear reactor, then the pandemic hit. It has been bouncing back and is even starting to get more diverse businesses (it just got a clothing store after years without one, a restaurant moved into the site McDonalds vacated 25 years ago, …) but boy there are a lot of head shops that look more lurid then head shops every looked. (You are dealing with bro overdose when you have a strain of weed called “AK-47”.). I never thought I’d see the day when the mayor, the governor, and the head of the business improvement district would hail the opening of a cannabis dispensary as a strategy for economic development.
My guess is that most cities have people telling a similar story today.
“KGB” [0] “Glock 19” [1] “.38 Special” [2] “Area 41” [3] “Crossbow” [4] “Grandpa’s Gun Chest” [5] “Brown Bomber” (Grandma’s Boy)
[0] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-kgb-by-ki...
[1] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-glock-19-...
[2] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-38-specia...
[3] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-area-41-b...
[4] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/cultivar-review-crossbo...
[5] https://thehighestcritic.com/reviews/strain-review-grandpas-...
/s
Won’t really entertain your views on weed, since that’s just practically doesn’t pan out. We’ve had it federally legal here for years now, society hasn’t changed at all because of it.
A lot of them. leaders using race baiting tactics to cause as much trouble as possible. Somehow rioters been exempt from needing social distancing.
It's readily apparent areas in multiple cities that were thriving pre-COVID and now you wouldn't consider being alone in at night.
Really? Burned down implies thousands of buildings in a single city. The displacement of hundreds of thousands. Please, name one city where that happened.
700 buildings damaged, burnt, or destroyed in Minneapolis. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/minneapolis-issue...
The scale of destructive rioting was massive and underreported at the time it was happening.
There are many course of Metro cities where businesses are still damaged and boarded up 3 years later.
I'm not saying that there was no property damage or unrest. There most certainly was. but it was far more limited in area, and far less intense, than many were describing.
"Cities are burning" is one of those absurd things. Nothing even close to that happened.
My father believes that the entire country is embroiled in an unmitigated crime wave because he gets his news from Fox and Youtube. Every time I talk to him he whines about how "the country isn't the same as how I grew up anymore."
This is a man who lives closer to the country than the city. It gives him a justification for turning his brain off and voting the way that he does, because in his mind, he's protecting the nation by preventing what he believes to be the liberal dream: allowing young, black men to run around and commit crimes with reckless abandon to bring about the end of capitalism.
"cosmetic damage, minor damage, major damage, and wholly destroyed, which included 12 structures"
Map: https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/i/cbslocal/wp-content/uplo...
Classic "how to lie with numbers". 698 buildings with a broken window, one with a minor fire, and one "destroyed" (whatever that means) would satisfy this description.
Not to say that there wasn't damage done; but the stats you give are clearly designed to look bad rather than to be informative.
Further, the damage seemingly was concentrated in poor neighborhoods. Hence, citation should be provided that fear post George Floyd backlash is a major reason for tech workers to leave Chicago. From the same reference:
" They missed signals that the killing of Floyd, captured on video and played millions of times by horrified Americans, could touch off looting. And to this day, they face resentment that the city prioritized the protection of downtown at the expense of residential neighborhoods inhabited mostly by people of color."
On the other hand, the reference does say the backlash and riots caused more damage than following MLK Jr's assassination does provide reasonable context to the scale of the event. Yet, with higher numbers of businesses, it might be there is more stuff to be damaged that lead to a larger figure of monetary damage (but that is still to say that both back-lashes were seemingly at least on par)
I’d also like the point out:
> Everyone in my area (hour outside a major city) is basically the same
If you live only an hour outside a major city, you’re still living in the metropolitan region of a big city.
I don't ever recall seeing photos of numerous whole city blocks turned to ashes.
It was like twelve people laying on the road in front of the police station, as a "protest".
The first tier cities are getting more and more expensive (partially or perhaps primarily do to employment opportunities - i.e. safety) and instead of moving "away from a city", people are moving to other less expensive cities with employment opportunities which, as they grow, become more expensive and repeat the process. And also you have to compare to trends over time.
For example, high value manufacturing in the Bay Area (eg. chiplets, electronics) got priced out to San Joaquin Valley and helped lead to the growth of Sacramento; Bay Area tech new grad salaries got so inflated that internships, new grad, and H1B roles in Sales, Professional Services, and SWE started relocating to Austin and Dallas in the 2010s; and back office roles in Accounting+Finance began moving from NYC to Charlotte in the late 2010s as salaries for those roles began breaching the 100k mark in NYC.
If I'm someone specialized in Solutions Engineering or Back Office work, I'd probably find a comparable amount of job opportunities in Austin or Charlotte as I would in the Bay or NYC, with the added benefit of affordability.
As you correctly point out, there's an equilibrium between cost of living and the advantages large cities are offering. Here in Berlin we are starting to feel the pressure hard, but it is still much cheaper than the other big European cities, and thus growing by 200k a year.
Berlin's is probably the only major example I can think of a city growing due to actual growth opportunities, but then again Germany is also a much healthier economy than most of Europe.
The US on the other hand doesn't have a primary city in the same manner that most of Europe has - the US economy is pretty decentralized across multiple hub cities (Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Seattle) the same way Germany is (Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg)
This is a MASSIVE assumption to have. The language barrier you brought up has a massive impact for example, along with other smaller intricacies (eg. Taxes, Drivers License, Immigration depending on your nationality, bureaucratic experience, etc). Moving from Paris to Berlin or Oulu to Varna isn't some walk in the park.
And several states don't have primary city effect either (eg. CA, TX, OH, FL, NC), and bureaucratic norms in most cases within the 50 states are normalized for individual cases.
Also helps that Berlin has had a pretty stagnant population for ~70 years and still 20% under its peak in WWII
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_population_statistics
> Substantial population loss in some of the nation’s largest and most vibrant cities was the primary reason 2021 was the slowest year of population growth in U.S. history, new Census data shows.
> Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to boom, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses last year in counties that encompass the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.
> The pandemic played a role, as the number of people dying rose substantially and many Americans left cities for smaller places. But experts say that skyrocketing housing costs were also to blame, and that some of the changes are a continuation of fundamental shifts in American demographics that began before the pandemic, such as the steadily falling birthrate and steep drop in immigration.
I'd rather work for less money in a cheaper neighbourhood.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
The problem is that if you lose your job this plan will crumble on first contact with the enemy. I'm job hunting right now, and between 'ghost jobs', bad recruiters, low ballers, take-homes with unstated requirements, leetcode grinding, system design studying, optimization for "best talent, lowest salary", and the fact that workers have absolutely no power means you don't have a choice how you work at some point.
Once savings start to dry up, you'll work in person. You'll move if they ask, you'll take a lower salary and a worse position... after all, do you want to eat?
It makes more sense to focus on the capital-intensive and oligopolistic parts, e.g. cloud computing, social media and advertising. Tech, broadly, maintains a threat of new entrants.
In the technology sector, our income and share of remote work is actually pretty good. For example, most of us (in the U.S., in technology) are in or close to the top 10% of individual incomes in the United States.
Problem is waking up everyday at 6:30 am so I can be in office by 9 is a huge mental and physical stress. Moving closer isn't an option because I own my house. Right now my thinking is do I want to spend an extra 4-5 hours per day on my career just to work in a shitty cubicle for only 30k more? I'm honestly leaning towards putting up with less money and waiting for another opportunity to cross my path.
If shit really hits the fan I can sell my California house and buy a whole house outright in another part of the country and sustain myself easily. I'm just choosing to stay here but I really don't have to.
What we save on living in a HCOL locale, we can spend on traveling several months out of the year while I work remote.
Over the years I occasionally toyed with buying a small city place but, in addition to the increasing real estate prices, I always came back to the fact that I can always get a hotel or whatever in that or any other city if I want to spend some time in an urban location.
The mass exodus already happened.
Everybody who wanted to leave what they thought was overpriced pretty much already did.
We might see some continuation - but given that companies are trying to claw back as much remote work as possible - I'm skeptical.
South Carolina is too choice of a place to live.
I read that Jamie Dimon's office is a fully decked out apartment on Park Ave (NYC) so for all his griping about remote work, he essentially works from home full time.
Fully remote work doesn't eliminate the risk of layoffs throwing a wrench into your life. It's only viable for senior/staff level devs who have much higher job mobility compared to everyone else in the tech sector.
I can reliably find decent work here, without paying too much to get by. We're slowly approaching the limit, though
Mostly paranoia at this stage. Last time I moved away I got laid off... meaning I moved back
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
Paradoxically if you build more housing, population increases, opportunities increase, and housing prices increase.
What I see A LOT is when people have kids, if they originally came from somewhere else is that the city's shine really dulls. They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there. At one place I worked we snatched several senior engineers leaving LA and SF for a more family oriented life.
They move back home, new young people take their place and cycle continues.
> Half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
it would seem that the vast majority of the USA lives "in or near a greater metro".
To the extent that you consider the cities of Monroe (Louisiana), Ketchikan (Alaska), Elmira (New York), and La Crosse (Wisconsin) to be the centers of "greater metro" areas.
They're not greater metro areas in the same sense that NYC, LA, SF, or Boston are greater metro areas.
I live in a small rural college town in upstate NY that has its own municipal airport; there are more than 3000 people here (especially during the school year!) for whom this is the closest airport, and it's...well, it's tiny, with (AFAIK) zero regular flights to or from anywhere else.
The closest cities are Utica and Syracuse, each about 30 miles away. Only Syracuse has an airport that's worth driving to if you don't own your own plane (SYR is on the list as being closest for 1.2 million people—probably including me? The maps aren't loading, so I can't tell), and I've never heard anyone describe Syracuse, NY as being a "greater metro area".
Just eyeballing the list, what I'd consider a "significant" airport probably has a cutoff closer to a million passengers per year.
I think you'd be surprised how many there are, especially within a few hundred miles of the Canadian or Mexican border! My local general aviation airport, with no commercial passenger flights, is an international airport because of nearby business/industrial activity.
This is a big deal for workers with families and closer-to-median income. Having to pay $20,000-$30,000/yr to replace services you're getting for free from family (child care, help with home improvement/repair projects, help with transportation, all kinds of stuff) might not be that big a deal to a family making $300,000, but it's huge to a family making $70,000. A 20% increase in income made possible by moving away from family might make good sense for the former, but be break-even at best for the latter (and a losing proposition of CoL is otherwise higher than where they are).
...and then people wonder why birth rate is declining.
Why would I pay to make the next generation of workers for corporate America?
Cities are more compact than suburbs. Kids are entirely dependent on their parents and adults to drive them everywhere, so in many poorly planned suburbs and bedroom communities, they're generally stuck at home. Similarly, the elderly can become isolated from family and friends that are scattered about with no easy way to visit them, or kept from participating in the social life of their town because either there is no social life due to hostile urban planning, or because they cannot get there as driving has become more difficult with age. The benefit of living in walkable cities and towns with good public transportation is especially obvious for these age groups.
Funny thing is, at least a few decades ago companies realized having a good employee's kid come work for them was a boon. Now they complain about the lack of good workers without thinking about the consequences of their good workers not reproducing in stable families.
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.
I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
> Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
I'm a manager at a smaller company and I can tell you we are very much aware that we are not a big corp and that "big co" things are not going to work for us. Me and the other managers I've worked with have read all the "gotta see your empire" comments on HN and other places and our general reaction is: "good, now I know what not to do".
I will say at my company, we were all in-office with maybe 5% remote in 2019, now that number is closer to 50%. We are seeing the advantages and the massage from higher ups (VP's, President, CEO) to all middle managers is: adapt or die. The way we look at it is, if we force RTO, all it will do is drive away talent. We now live in a world where you can't look up and see all your reports, some managers like it, some hate it, but the general vibe is: "we have to adapt (and no we are not Google)"
Oh, but then you'll miss out on all of those "random hallway conversations where the real 'innovation' occurs".
I suggest we should have something like an actor's guild instead, where a floor of basic protections are necessary but there's no ceiling on payment and benefits.
Often times when someone criticizes the idea of unions, it is because they don't fully understand their purpose, flexibility, and flaws. For example, that comment could imply that unions somehow cap payments and benefits, but that isn't some universal truth of unions (that person also could just be using guild as a synonym for union, but that isn't necessarily true and it doesn't appear to be how they're using it). Unions negotiate on behalf of their members. If the union members don't want caps on compensation, the union can negotiate for no caps.
On the east coast, you're going to be working probably for 10 years before you can get into your union and it's an uphill struggle the whole way.
And union or not, you're only going to get work if people like working with you. One day with a bad attitude and you can find yourself unable to get hired by anyone. Film and TV is long hours and a stressful environment and nobody wants to work with anyone who makes the day harder.
Or are you just stuck in the local that you started in (and would then definitely be unwilling to relocate once you’re in?
(Not sure how the regionalization works if the unions are national)
Tyranny is a pretty hefty word for "can't get a particular job without agreeing to the rules of the employer"
It works just like democracy does at larger scales. I can't just declare my property its own new state with me as governor just because I don't like the political opinions of the state's leadership. I can however leave that state or leave the country entirely just like a person can leave the union. However, there are obvious repercussions for that decision.
You say a small group can't just form their own country, or in this case, they cannot just form their own union, but they actually could if only the mega-union did not already exist. Thus, my claim that large unions prevent small groups from organizing and collectively bargaining is true. The small group could form their own union if the large union hadn't removed their ability to do so. I feel about large unions the same way I feel about any large group that prevents small groups from organizing.
The small group can form their own union. They just won't be a part of the big union anymore. Like I said, they need to leave the union/state/country.
I don't understand what argument you are really making here. Even within your hypothetical small group, there can be an even smaller group. You effectively are arguing against any type of collective because there will always be some people who disagree.
How is this different than, let's say, Amazon telling a group, "that's fine if you want to organize, but you'll have to find another company to do it at" and then firing the group. I believe it is illegal for a company to prevent a group from organizing, but apparently it is legal for a union to prevent a group from organizing.
I'm not sure what the solution is, I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union). I also recognize that once a union is large enough, sub-groups within that union might want to organize independently, but they cannot. Probably what I would argue for is making exclusive contracts with unions illegal.
Amazon is preventing the union from organizing. The larger union is not preventing another union from organizing, it is just saying you can't create a rival union while staying a member of another union. People are still free to create a smaller union, they just need to leave the big union.
The smaller union can negotiate with Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever else. The bigger union is also free to negotiate on behalf of its members and get Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever to not work with the smaller union. That is just a negotiation. The group with the more power will get a better deal. That is the whole point of a union. A smaller union has less power and therefore will inherently be less successful than a big union.
Unions often work to solidify power because that results in better deals for its members. That will include both mergers like the previously mentioned SAG-AFTRA merger and this type of behavior to squash rival unions. It all depends on what its members think is the best strategy.
>I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union).
I just don't understand why this is a flaw. What value do you think this second smaller union will bring to its members that the bigger union can't? If the smaller union wants its own seat at the negotiation table, then it no longer acting as part of the bigger union anyway in which case there is no restriction on the second union being created (unless the big union negotiates for this exclusivity which is within their rights).
There are lots of different unions with lots of different structures. This person is saying we should have a union with a structure similar to that union.
This is the current Master Agreement.[2] It specifies minimum wages, but not maximums. "Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent any individual from negotiating and obtaining from the Producer better conditions and terms of employment than those herein provided."
See section 5, "Hours". "Time worked on the employee's sixth workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's seventh workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Minimum call for the sixth and seventh days shall be four (4) hours. ... All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours (including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification."
These are standard union terms in Hollywood. This is why film scheduling is a discipline but software development scheduling is a joke. Hollywood has crunches, and they hit the producer's budget hard. So planning goes into avoiding crunches.
Despite significant efforts, TAG has been unable to unionize game developers.
[1] https://animationguild.org/
[2] https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2018-2...
If you work less than 40 hours in a week, your paycheck is likewise adjusted.
You won't be able to work a 9/80 schedule since the payroll week starts at midnight on Sunday morning. Nor would you necessarily be granted permission.
If you work 6 hours on one day because you were out for some reason rather than 8 hours, you will not necessarily be able to make it up on other days - or even be granted permission to work overtime (because that would be time and a half pay) to compensate.
As programmers we tend to take advantage of the "if all the work gets done we get paid." Get into work at 10 am, leave at 4 pm.
Under the hours provision in that agreement I suspect many programmers would chafe a bit. Under these (and similar) provisions people are butt in a seat for 40 hours a week if they want to be fully paid. Taking a sick child to the doctor on a day for 2 hours means you will only be paid 38 hours for that week.
What ?
No, you aren't going to be paid $450k a year to work on our website... that is fantasy land.
There's so many tech jobs available at all sizes of companies, including mega-corps you've never heard of - they're just not as sexy as your FAANG's & co.
Plenty of insurance companies, restaurant conglomerates, car dealership conglomerates, banks, manufacturing companies, big-AG, medicine, commercial property management companies - not to mention all the consulting companies adjacent to nearly every industry imaginable. They all need tech...
Tech != FAANG, was the point.
For example if go to "who is hiring" and do a search for c++ I find almost nothing. The few c++ Jobs that do exist require you to already live nearby because they can't offer relocation assistance or VISA sponsorship.
Meanwhile same search years ago I would find plenty of cool openings to send my resume to.
I am not even getting recruiter spam anymore where people offer me jobs that are unrelated to my skillset.
follow up - what market and which company(FAANG counts but must be a single org)?
There are endless dev jobs, the market's a little softer for pay thanks to megacap collusion once again, but I see an endless list of jobs online...
I think that's what they meant
Now there is an argument that operating in our 'capitalist' system introduces incentives to be a shitty manager (I think this is approximately Chomsky's perspective).
Part of me thinks so. I think if you renamed every managers title to other titles like “clerk” and “facilitator” and basically reset what it means to be a manager, it feels like things would be different. At least for a while.
But then my theories swing back the other way. I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.
Of course training alone is insufficient. The organizational culture and incentives also have to be aligned. The US military puts a major focus on training officers to be effective leaders, and yet the results have been mixed. Toxic leadership is one of the main problems driving their current retention crisis.
I strongly disagree with this. MBA programs are part of the problem in my opinion. They train people to be good "managers" for a company's interests which is often actively hostile to the people who report into that manager.
The MBA-ification of management and companies is to treat people like units of work not humans.
What a bizarre take. I like programming, I don't like dealing with all the people stuff. I've run my own business and it involved focusing on all the things I find uninteresting and focusing very little on the things I find very interesting. So for me it's just a matter of not liking that position. This belief that everyone who isn't in management is some sort of troglodyte who can't pick their own nose is very childish.
To get an a less biased view you can chat to people on public transport (in Europe) or talk to your neighbours (in the USA).
Why?
Reddit has shown little appetite for combating this issue because their value is the number of eyeball-seconds they receive every day. They want to report huge eyeball numbers you investors and advertisers.
Evaporative cooling (if an environment appeals to people they'll join and if an environment gets more extreme those who least like that direction will leave). The presence of visible up votes and downvotes magnifies this effect.
Founder effects. Reddit in general and any given sub in particular was initially populated with people who are a bit unusual in some fashion. E.g. the initial reddit population was very techy. This effect also applies to any Internet forum (both in that Internet forums are used by somewhat odd people like us and that an Internet forum on Thing will pull people interested in Thing and interest in Thing very likely correlates with many other factors, such as socioeconomic status, culture, gender, subculture)
General interest in going online to talk about things. The vast majority of people do not go online to talk and argue with strangers, those who do are different along a number of axes (such as a lack of young kids or higher disagreeableness) which in turn correlate with other traits and beliefs.
In Reddit case there's also an element of active moderation, mostly due to founder effects, but also due to them being the only ones actually caring a lot (being activist) the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs) with similar views on issues such as trans rights and as a moral duty will actively attempt to remove people who express other viewpoints to keep the place tidy (without the viewpoints that are offensive and wrong).
This is easily evidenced and is not true. You can check for yourself. Parroting this talking point shows that you do not check your facts.
Top 100 subreddit moderators and number of subs moderated:
* https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be...
For example, r/GetMotivated and r/ContagiousLaughter which are not in that gist.
I picked a couple of other users on the list at random such as Sunkisty, TreKs and Blank-Cheque and they're also all over 100.
Where did you get the gist from?
The list is the top 100 subs.
Anyone can create a sub to moderate, so one person having 200+ is going to be mostly squatting -- almost all of those subs are going to be empty.
I got the list from someone who made a script to get the info and posted the results in the github I linked to.
Not sure how relevant that list is tbh...
I'm also perplexed as to what criteria is used for "top sub" given that r/ContagiousLaughter (which has 6.7 million subs) and isn't on the list while r/EldenRing (which only has 1.9m) is.
Anyway, are you satisfied that I was not just parroting talking points and had checked myself?
This is a common talking point and you are backtracking. By 'main subs' you meant something which you are now trying to get out of on a technicality. You have not proven that what you initially meant was based on any fact checking and my contention is that you were spouting hearsay.
The main subs (e.g. the most popular ones) ARE policed by people who also police hundreds of other subs, right? That was what I meant (and indeed what I wrote). I'm not actually sure what you think I wrote any more...
When the system intrinsically works by producing shitty managers the problem is in the system, by definition.
Is bad management intrinsic though? Wouldn't that make the presence of good management surprising?
It seems to me that people work better when they enjoy their job and nobody likes working under a bad manager, so bad management is a sign of incompetence and degrades operations.
The presence of bad management is an opportunity to optimize operations; treating people well is generally good for the people and the business.
We just saw multiple banks collapse with zero financial penalty for those who were in charge when it happened, even as they were collecting tens of millions in bonuses.
When your compensation is structured in such a way that you can be a monumental failure at your job and you STILL make hundreds of times more than the rank and file employee, then the system is broken.
This is an ownership class problem, not manager class. The owners and their lackeys are the ones approving and justifying these insane compensation packages even as companies lay people off.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cbo-american-wealt...
This could be the answer.
I think tech workers so far have been paid and treated well (at least where I work) and so haven't felt the need to unionize. But having a union would certainly protect against these kinds of problems. (Being relocated and then immediately laid off)
My experiences in unions were awful and I would never go back to that.
People in the US are so comfortable they don't seem to have a clue what real hardship actually is.
It isn't split up along poverty vs. accident lines, but this is not a major cause of death in the US.
> this is not a major cause of death in the US.
Wait, so people dying due to poverty isn't something that deserves attention just because it isn't common enough?
A tiny fraction of people dying from cold is not an indication that the US has a poverty issue.
Sure help them, no one is disputing that, but that's also not what's being discussed here.
If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)
Only because it's unique among developed countries in seeing healthcare costs as disposable income.
You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for.
> most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.
Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.
Maybe travel a bit and see what actual poverty is.
Can't wait until you people are justifying soylent green in a couple decades.
Even our poor people have cars.
We all benefit and even our pets have a higher quality of life than most people in the third world.
> Even our poor people have cars.
The luckier ones, sure, but there are plenty of people in the US that have none of that.
Maybe look it up.
They earn just enough money to cover their very very basic needs. That's essentially an indentured servant.
If you don't like it, work to change it. Don't hide from the fact trying to redefine it.
Have you ever been abroad? What is your standard of not being an indentured servant?
You describe the US workforce with profoundly negative terms that would, in my opinion, fit workforce in Bangladesh or Egypt, if not Congo.
"If I was the company owner or the boss, I might do that to in order to protect my money"
It seems weird to me to have professional unions, doctors are an outlier there, where it's common, and (partly I suppose because) there isn't a professional institution (which overlap slightly) - it's split between unions and the GMC (licencing body, and as a doctor you'd whistle-blow to them for example).
I'd like to see more software engineers be professionally registered, and it be more worthwhile to. (Yes, quite chicken-and-egg I'm sure.) I'm a member of the IET, but to be honest their light on software-relevance. The chartership requirements for example seemed like they would require quite a bit of bullshitting (not lying exactly, just sort of business-speak style forcing something to fit the very specific irrelevant questions) to satisfy; I abandoned it, so far at least.
American workers do put up with a lot. But the cruelty of having one’s health care access perfectly intertwined with employment probably explains much of their reluctance to engage in the sort of individual and collective action needed to address malignant employer behaviour.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
[1]:https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
What if that makes someone think, I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't, if performance was above or below a super bare minimum, how that's defined for a programming job, etc.
Granted, I don't think a judge needs to be the deciding factor on letting an employee stay or go. But I do believe a contract stating expectations, a minimum employment contract (if employee meets those expectations) is necessary and should be enforced in today's business world. Even apply it to salaried, or "skilled workers". A busboy at a restaurant doesn't need a contract, but an accountant with 5 years experience should at least have that safety net.
By default, the notice period depends on the length of the contract (statutory minimum is 1 month notice, longest is 6 months). But it does allow companies to establish their own notice periods (or no notice period) as long as both parties agree.
> Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't
Courts are slow and cumbersome, but also mostly designed for this purpose. Any notion of a bad actor would be a legal one eventually.
Lots of people already do this.
Laying people off after coercing them to abandon stable means of sustenance is indefensible. The devil doesn't need sympathy.
I don't otherwise disagree with what you say but the point is actually to require people to think and come up with strong reasons to disagree (or agree, as it might go).
And the practice isn't usually evil, just horrible planning. Companies aren't usually hiring people knowing they'll fire them. Rather it's company-wide layoffs or something, and the manager is as surprised as the employee.
So it's important to look at tradeoffs rather than just declare that one side is evil.
You mean, like they already do (ultimately, with administrative agencies as a first line) because of public unemployment insurance?
The difference is, of course, the company can afford the risk. The have hundreds/thousands of employees. You have one job.
No one is stopping you from trying it.
It's amazing the reactions I get from people when I tell them the simple truth that nobody is doing you a favor by hiring you. It's a business deal, nothing more and nothing less, and if you aren't thinking of it in that way, you're going to be taken advantage of.
That used to include the so-called "professional class" but the story of the intersection between social status and work for the last few decades has been MBA types pushing those positions downward‚and preventing them from ever rising, in the software world. They may not be doing it consciously, but a lot of stuff about work-life for software folks sure looks like what you'd do if you wanted to squash the social status of a cohort that earns enough money that they'd otherwise be on their way to solid membership in the upper-middle, like micro-managy "methodologies", avoiding giving us personal offices, widespread and oft-expressed but IME rarely-accurate stereotypes about software folks necessarily being bad at everything except fiddly computer shit, and the way interviews are run.
Professors and doctors were two big groups that held high status and had a fair amount of freedom and trust to run their own affairs, once they'd paid their dues, but both those worlds have been invaded by MBAs who've taken over running everything and brought the same contempt for "mere" workers that we see in the rest of the business world. AFAIK lawyers have held them off, so far, but I may just not be aware of MBA-ification there.
Good. The rest of us are idiots
Politicians and big business really fucked us with the whole money printer thing.
Boomers and GenX hypernormalized around a 70 year bubble.
Like those at Exxon who accurately modeled climate warming in the 80s, the ecological cost, those who knew knew they’d be long dead before it became obvious.
Yes there are significant transaction costs but it isn’t as though you are starting again with your housing equity.
Yes this is true, but only at this point in time when interest rates have shot up from historically low. Most of the time this won’t be the case, and soon this effect could work in the other way in that you could move to a house of similar value for a lower cost.
And the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is unique to the US. Here in the UK, we only fix for 2-5 years typically.
So easy on the downvotes!
Right now US supply has shrunk so prices don’t seem to be declining enough to offset the rise in interest rates; the monthly payments for anything in the market are still eye-watering even factoring in price declines.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/low-mortgage-rates-home-sales-l...
https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_existing_home_sales
The situation may be different in other countries.
There's no way I can afford to move.
Are you aware that 30-fixed in the US is essentially gov't backed via three mega pseudo-gov't guaranteed orgs called Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie Mae? It is great for increasing home ownership and utterly oppressive to low income people renting. It is tough.
I cannot believe that more countries do not (politically) prioritise a similar system: Cheap, fixed 30-year'ish home mortgages. To be clear, I'm not saying this is economically ideal, but it is great for your political party!
Yep, and if you fell for one of your lender's incessant pitches on borrowing on your equity or refinancing and taking equity out, you're really locked in to your situation. I'm very convinced that most people doing home equity loans or refis with cash out don't understand how much they are backsliding when they do that.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...
https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2023/05/housing-may-15th-...
The supply demand situation is probably even worse in high demand areas.
Those who refuse to sell now are just keeping up the price for the ones who do sell. If the price is not sustainable ot will go down.
If you started your mortgage before then its a neutral to positive rate-wise.
Are you living under a rock? Mortgage rates going up make that impossible.
Remember, the day you buy a house, you are no richer. This is because the asset (house) is offset by the liability (the mortgage).
I buy a house with a $300k mortgage. The price rises to $500k. I then sell the house and buy another for $500k, rolling my $200k equity and $300k mortgage for no net change.
If you are trading up then yes, the more expensive house rose faster than your house. But that’s the case anytime you move and not unique to a job relocation.
I don't think anyone is crying about it but this is reducing labor mobility and slowing down economic growth. It's one of the unintended consequences of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates due to inflation.
We bought in 2007. Our house more than doubled in price since then. I’m not sure I could afford to buy it now if I was a typical 20% down buyer.
In your case (assuming $300K original house price) you will sell it for $600K, net $264K profits after commissions. Use profits plus $60K of original downpayment and any additional equity in the old house as a downpayment for a similar house at $600K. The new mortgage will be similar to one you had in 2007. Same rate and most likely smaller principal. Not a big difference.
The problem is that I'd be taking on a new 30-year mortgage while being about 10 years away from retirement rather than ~26 years away from retirement, which has certain implications on my ability to afford that mortgage over its full term.
Statistically very few people stay at the same house for 30+ years, most move within eight.
I don't have mortgage now, so no, I am not leaving money on the table.
This would only theoretically work going from a HCOL area to a lower one, and then moving again becomes even harder.
Even if you have significant equity in your house, the supply of "better" comparable homes is sparse at best.
And likely your existing mortgage is at a rate 1/2 of the current rates.
In California, Prop 13 means that property taxes are essentially fixed and nonincreasing at the time you purchase your house.
This is sometimes used as a defense of Prop 13, but all it really means is that any increase in total tax burden has to fall disproportionately (in fact, almost exclusively) on new purchasers and their tenants.
Forcing someone to relocate means giving up that privileged tax status and starting over "from scratch".
Or maybe not, I have never negotiated relocation and the only industry I have to base an example off of is oil and gas and they pay ridiculous amounts of money so you get a comparable house/mortgage to your old one
I can't imagine a relocation package pricing in foregone tax benefits.
But even if it did, that's a one-time payment in exchange for giving up a benefit that exists in perpetuity. There are ways in accounting to discount the benefit of indefinite/perpetual annuities and compare them against current cash value, and in practice they almost always undervalue the former, often by limiting the future time window.
This is a ridiculous system, and there really needs to be property tax reform in CA, but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners, which is really difficult.
This is impossible. The current system is such an extreme and unsustainable transfer of wealth towards property owners that there's no way to create a sustainable (let alone equitable) system that doesn't involve current property owners giving something up.
Why is limiting government expenditure a goal in and of itself? If the government is able to raise enough tax money to support that spending, and voters agree with it, why shouldn't the government spend more?
Your new interest rate is going to absolutely demolish any inflation benefit your current house has. I don't think people really understand how bad higher interest rates are when there's a housing shortage.
- A $500k house at 3% is $2,100/month.
- A $500k house at 7.5% is $3,500/month
- That's a difference of nearly $17,000/year
The house that was $500k at 3% in 2021 is still $500k at 7.5% in 2023. Housing prices haven't budged. We'd need to see a 20-40% reduction in prices across the board to stabilize affordability, but that won't happen because there's too much demand.
This is actually advantageous to first-time buyers since higher interest rates (and lower prices) mean their down payments go further.
How big is your family? I can't fathom needing a 360 sqm house except if I had 3+ kids.
Also... how do you clean it all? How much is heating, cooling, etc?
Cleaning… a lot of the space goes unused or just stores stuff so it doesn’t get too dirty or people don’t care as much outside core areas. Central HVAC helps keep the dust down a bit vs. dead air and radiators.
For example my house is ~1800sqft which is very comfortable and a massive upgrade over the apartments I used to live in that were half as large, but as someone who works from home it'd be nice to have one more room than my house has to use exclusively as an office to maintain mental partitioning between work and downtime. Similarly it might be nice for my garage to be a bit bigger so I could better fit in a "workshop corner".
Is that sort of thing needed? Absolutely not and many get along just fine with far less, but it'd still be a welcome quality of life upgrade.
https://www.nahb.org/blog/2022/03/new-single-family-home-siz...
The smallest home my builder was building when we were looking was 3100 square feet. It was $335K in 2016.
As far as what a family did with a 5 bedroom 3.5 bath house. Bedroom for me and my wife, bedroom for my son, guest bedroom with a bath, office, and gym. There was another room that was converted to a dance studio for my wife.
We did downsize late last year and now we stay in a 1300 square foot condo.
I just mentioned it.
1. Master bedroom
2. Son’s bedroom
3. Gym with three pieces of cardio equipment and weights
4. Office
5. Guest bedroom
The 6th room was a dance studio for my wife. She taught online fitness classes during Covid.
It’s not like we paid millions of dollars. I qualified for it when I was only making $115K and put 3.5% down - less than $12K. In 2016.
It’s now worth twice that (we rent it out to our son and two of his friends at a discount).
My wife and I have since moved to a condo in a resort area where one fee ($650) pays all utilities, access to a decent gym, 3 pools, a running trail, three restaurants on site and a lake. It’s the same price that our house was in 2016.
That looks like a lot of work, probably 1 full day per week (probably more) to:
- vacuum everything (including the skirting boards)
- mop the floors
- dust everything else
- clean all the windows
- change/wash/dry the linens/towels
- clean the kitchen
- clean the toilets
- it took maybe an hour to take care of the hardwood.
- having a larger house doesn’t mean you have more to wash. How much you have to wash is a function of how many people live there.
- you would have a kitchen either way
- one bathroom only got used when guests come, one was our sons (and his responsibility). That left only two - the one in attached to our room and the half bath.
The gym got sanitized with everything being wiped down and air freshener after every use.
I'm fairly sure your kitchen in the 360sqm house is bigger than my kitchen in the 90 sqm apartment :-)
My house is mostly wood floors but I maybe Swiffer and vacuum once a week (probably a lot less) for about 15-20 minutes. I run Roomba once or twice a week to take care of the rest.
> mop the floors
I can count on one hand how many times I mop floors per year in any size house.
> dust everything else
I definitely don't do the blinds/baseboards/etc enough. Wife usually does the furniture once a week and the rest is on demand.
> clean all the windows
Only when I get a wild hair.
> change/wash/dry the linens/towels
Size of house doesn't change this. See above.
> clean the kitchen
Still only one kitchen.
> clean the toilets
Same number of people
My kids each have their own space. My wife has her own space. I have an office/space for myself. We have a guest bedroom (well 2, if we pick up the playroom).
It keeps the kids clutter out of the common areas. Gives us each a place to escape to.
For example I play music a lot. That would be obnoxious in the living room all the time. Though I do play in common areas here and there.
Utilities cost about 200-300 USD month. Repairs we keep stashed away as they can cost more. For example our well pump died and it was 3k. Our ac died before that and it was 8k to replace. We live well below our means though and pay cash for stuff like that.
And all this is sponsored by the banks and governments because of interest payments and money from taxes.
It's absolutely ridiculous some 80yo shack costs half a million dollars/pounds/euros. There is no justification for it from a technical perspective.
Remote work has disrupted countryside housing markets too, since workers moving in make much higher salaries than locals, who often lack the skills for picking up those jobs. A trickle out of metro areas in the millions is a tsunami for towns with population in the thousands.
I couldn't find info about salaries per se, but average hourly wage in the US increased by around 800% since 1970.
according to below, its gone up by 2 inflation adjusted dollars compared to 1979...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-ear...
You can build wealth more reliably and cheaply with automatic transfers to a target date fund than hoping any given real estate market takes off.
I think you misunderstood my point, I was talking about most people barely keeping it together most months and not having income to ever afford buying a home and have a “comfortable” life. It’s not about investing in real estate but inheritance of a house when their parents die.
Investing into index funds regularly is pretty much always gonna be a better investment strategy with higher returns and lower risk than hoping for an inheritance.
In 2022, the proportion of households which are occupied by owners stood at 65.9 percent.
Renters are politically invisible in the United States due to the economic situation. Rent will continue to rise to unsustainable levels and nothing will done. As Charlie Munger (Berkshire Hathaway #2) says: "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."
Given how razor thin election margins are, ~33% of the population is far from a invisible class.
For a variety of reasons, homeowners vote. Outside New York City, which unsurprisingly has solid tenant protections, American renters do not.
Correct. Dated, but related and a classic: "We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain [people who have recently moved's] lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout rates."
The authors suggested "linking the maintenance of registration to an action that is usually an intrinsic part of moving" such as the "change-of-address notice at a local post office." Interestingly, "holding elections on Sunday, making election day a holiday, or extending the hours that the polls are open...are designed to facilitate people who are registered" and would thus "do little to improve turnout."
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-s...
This is different from the proportion of adults in the US that own a home. Many non-homeowners live in an owner occupied residence.
Can I just say -- you rock. I've been a renter my whole life (I prefer it that way), and I appreciate when the property owner steps in to keep property management companies from being total cheapskates with repairs. It makes sense -- it's the owner's investment, after all, and I don't mind paying a bit of a premium for a place that is well maintained.
But, none of those engaged a property management company. Maybe that makes the difference.
My grandparents were landlords for like 50 years. They said they wouldn't be worth it if their children weren't doing all the work for free.
The idea that a typical small landlord sits on their ass and cashes fat checks is not matched by what I’ve seen not anything I’ve heard from friends who wouldn’t take my advice to stay away.
job losses will trigger home sales by necessity, and the great mass of people with 3% mortgages will be unwedged by force
same thing happened after 2008...the recession pushed people out of the best mortgages they ever had
No it doesn’t. It wants home values to go down. That can occur without job losses. (Which even now, largely aren’t occurring outside tech.)
Temperature highs are 19-25C year round and winter lows are around 10C.
Barely need heating or cooling, just need to bump up the indoor average by a few degrees and that seems to be it.
Other big loads would be a fridge and hot water, but those are getting pretty efficient.
Being a distant landlord is even worse. Yes you can get a property manager. But, then you have to pay them.
Except it is now cheaper to rent than to own[1].
If you have to move for a job, you rent for at least a year if not a few years as you get a feeling your job stability. Of course, the main point stands that you can be fired at any time, which is why you never buy a house when affordability is at an all-time low since the crash[2].
[1] https://jbrec.com/insights/demand-shifting-from-owning-to-re...
[2] https://www.atlantafed.org/center-for-housing-and-policy/dat...
I've noticed that over the long haul (in my area, anyway), it's neither cheaper nor more expensive to rent vs own. In the short term, one can be more expensive than the other, though.
But the big difference is that you're building equity if you're buying, and you're not if you're renting. So which is better, financially speaking, depends a lot on what you're trying to accomplish.
You build equity when you are renting, just not in the housing market.
Real estate is entirely local, such that making broad generalizations like this is detrimental. In some markets it may be better to rent, in others it is better to buy. Regardless of the cost, availability is also a factor - in my market, you might as well buy if you are qualified, as the market for rental properties is even tighter than buying and rents have increased faster than home prices.
I own a home and moved. I rent in the new city and let my mother live in the house I own, that way I don't have to sell it. If I ever want to go back I won't have any issues doing so.
She doesn't mind as it's much, much better than the income assistance apartments she lived in before and I'm asking for a lot less than they did, which helps her too.
Ultimately I'd like to buy another house and let her have that one, because she'll never be able to afford a house again on her own, but that's an aspirational goal at the moment.
If he gets to a point where he couldn’t pay rent because of a systemic problem, I trust him well enough to know that he wouldn’t make me go through a long eviction process. He would have to move. But we would help him find sone place cheaper. No for logistical reasons, he couldn’t stay with us.
But my wife and I said, that once they move, we are selling the house. We do not want to be landlords.
I could sell it now and net $300K.
It's pretty much impossible to "win" in housing unless you're investing major sweat equity, or factoring-in intangibles like satisfaction with a like-minded community or peace of mind.
One is frustration, the other is a sense of peace that comes with recognizing that there's no marginal reward to trying so hard. Just avoid the obvious scams, which isn't too hard.
A third option to skirts the coin, is to really embed yourself in a local community, renting in the meanwhile. There actually are "winner" situations and good deals if you go this way, but they generally come on the back of who you know and are friendly with – variously referred to as cronyism and nepotism, but it's how humans work.
apologies, I was misinformed. consider this comment retracted
This post and thread are talking about moving due to losing a job. Not about a calculated move done for financial gain.
The other poster said that because of rising home prices, someone who owned a home couldn’t afford an equivalent home. My argument is that their current home probably also went up in value and they could use the equity to pay a large down payment to make a new home affordable.
Alternatively, pocket the equity and rent instead of making a commitment to buy.
Most people who are fired do not end up winning the housing profit lottery.
The problem isn't that you're an existing homeowner. The problem is housing is exorbitant.
Everyone has to pay out of the nose for housing. The only difference is that you have an asset that has appreciated significantly, and in a way you're indirectly receiving dividends from it in the form of affordable mortgage payments.
But if you didn't have that house, you'd be in an even worse spot.
Number 2 is that I get my work & meetings done in the morning and can call it quits at lunch every day (and often do nothing Fridays).
A lot could be included in this, but let's make some specifics explicit: if you locked in housing costs in 2020, it's entirely credible that a move could involve a 50-100% increase on that front right now.
Remote work can have pros/cons but it's more or less a declaration of independence for both employees and employers from having to care about market-specific housing costs in general.
Maybe it's a big company thing, but every time I've had to end someone's job it took several months of performance management and about 50 to 100 pages of documentation. Imagine about a year of having your team limping and not being able to achieve its commitments, while you have to be polite and supportive to a hostile person who's obviously on their way out but can't see it, and all the while your 1:1 meetings with your boss start with "Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." Every meeting you walk into where they ask why "X" isn't done yet, you can't tell them that Charlie fundamentally can't deliver it, because any mention of that is wandering into HR territory, and you can't take Charlie off of "X" because that's going to screw up the continuity of your documentation. Meanwhile, Charlie is wandering around the halls trying to foment some kind of misguided rebellion against you, and probably stealing stuff.
So not really a whim.
If we are talking about a place with very few labour protection laws (HK/SG/US), forget it: You can layoff after a 10 min discussion. No biggie. Maybe throw a few months of severance pay. If we are talking about Japan, France, or Germany, it is a negotiation with the labour union. (Denmark is a very interesting exception due to "Flex-Security".)
I cannot help but bring up the infamous "Amazon PIP" (performance improvement plan): What is the point? Just sack me with a package on Day One. Much easier and less emotionally damaging!
And the "performance management" thing it's only at certain positions and certain industries. For most people, that is not a thing ( which can be a plus too ).
Assuming they've been employed for longer than 2 years. If they've been there less than 2 years, it's pretty much in line with the US.
So Charlie is such a big problem they need to get rid of them, but not enough of a problem where the solution is money.
This is a problem that could be solved with money. If Charlie is as bad as described the boss would pay for them to go away instead of dragging it out through a drawn-out documentation process.
This is needless and makes me value the rest of the insight less.
Most companies aren't massive and don't have these types of reputational or liability concerns.
"Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." sounds like you hounded your boss into firing your teammate instead of continuing to coach them.
This is so true.
I've never been "performance managed", but if I were to be, I'd immediately start looking for another job because of what you're describing. Even if I wasn't eventually fired, I know that black mark will color everyone's perception of me from then on.
My last boss offered me a $30k/yr raise to move to a different country for a small promotion with no real path forward beyond that. I said, "no way... it would take 6 years (after income taxes) for me to pay for that move with the increase in salary, and the new country's higher income taxes."
Absolutely. I would never move for a job.
America is only a Good Place(tm) for the very rich while its suffering expands out in a Power law distribution. No other "rich" country abuses homeless, the disabled, the almost homeless, and the working poor with as much unequal treatment as much except so-called "third-world" countries. The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
I would defend those in the middle class by saying that they are more comfortable than the poor in America, but have about the same amount (zero) of political power. The middle class is still a worker class, and as such is still subject to the whims of the wealthy capital owners.
I don't think I am in the middle class, as I don't even own a home, but I do make a good living and I would say I am more well-off than many people in the town I currently live in. I know about what's going on in America, and it pisses me off, and if I had the power to change a tiny bit of it I would, but I don't.
I don't know about that. At the very least, a large percentage of Americans know how bad they have it.
Certain Arabic country comes to mind, where fancy skyscrapers and the richest are the only news that one hears from there.
This is it. The risk is completely one-sided and massive. Just ~6 months ago a recruiter reached out with a job that to be honest was perfect for my career path goals. But not remote, they wanted me to move across the country. Briefly considered it but it makes no sense, the risk is way too unreasonable.
If a company wants me to move, give me a contractual guaranteee of at least two years salary to be paid even if they reorg my position away. Then it's fair game.
But with remote work relocation will be less of a necessity.
Usually all the fees are covered by the relocation benefits.
Exactly!
Plus, if you already have a house, you probably have refinanced into a low-rate mortgage which itself has enormous value contrasted with dropping it for a higher-rate mortgage on a new home. Even a new apartment lease will likely entail higher costs.
Plus the expense and time of moving.
Except for workers basically just out of college and making a major upgrade in title and pay, I cannot see anyone moving for a new job unless there is a hard written contract with liquidated damages if fired/laid-off (and very tight specifications on being fired for cause).
Employers' behavior over the past several decades has simply eradicated any credibility they once had.
For people in relationships it also means both people being able to pursue a wide spectrum of changes in their careers without moving, and one person don't need their partner to make a sacrifice in their career to pursue change.
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.