I’m not asking you to predict the future, though that would be awesome, but could you share some thoughts on when/how the labor market turning might unfold?
I'm not OP, though I see that he's among the few that shares this opinion of mine.
Take what I'm saying with a gigantic grain of salt because I am not some economist.
We have had 10 years+ of quantitative easing both in the US and in Europe, with it all peaking during the last 2 years due to Covid. This has delivered an aritificial stimulus to the economy in the form of basically free money. This has had a lot of consequences, including the craziness in the housing market & stock market, as well as a huge influx of money that went into other investments like startups, expansions and so on. Basically, in simpler terms, everybody could easily get money because money has been very cheap.
We are now starting to see the side-effects (of an otherwise arguably good thing) in the form of inflation. So the greater powers are now at a fork in the road - they either allow inflation to wreck the working and middle class or they turn off the money tap. The problem is that after living for so long with 0% interest rates, any significant change to this might trigger a recession that will make 2008 look like the good times.
I started my career after 2008, so I have only ever experienced an environment in which employeers were heavily competing for engineers (and generally workforce in all professions), so I'm afraid that anyone in a position similar to mine has simply no way of realizing the way things will look a few years from now.
Unless I'm seriously missing something of substance, then I'm afraid that there will be quite a few years in which people will lose homes, jobs, sanity and us privileged developers are maybe in a better position than most, but make no mistake - we will all suffer.
Keep in mind that large populations suffering often have political implications. That’s why economic predictions are mostly shots in the dark. They are reasonable and logical until people say “Nope”.
We’ll see what inflation is like this year, but it’s reasonable (due to Russia oil) to assume it’ll be just as bad as last year. This has a ton of economic and political implications. Some that can be predicted and some that will likely be surprising.
So making statements about what the the labour market will look like in 2 years…
> Keep in mind that large populations suffering often have political implications.
Not sure this is as insightful as you think. Yes, obviously that is the case. So? If inflation and housing continue to be this bad, then we have to stop printing the money or maybe find a way to better allocate the wealth, which would mean even more turmoil than your regular economic crisis.
> Some that can be predicted and some that will likely be surprising. So making statements about what the the labour market will look like in 2 years…
Yes, which is why I'm not making predicitons about company X in Y months from now. If you think that continuing in this manner for another 2 years is sustainable, then it means that one of us is _seriously_ misunderstanding the macro-economic situation. We can't have house prices increase 20% every year and inflation edging towards 10% inflation and stagnating salaries.
Something has got to give, and the point I'm making is simple. Things will get worse before they get better. If you think that is simply a coin flip or a matter of pure opinion, then I'm afraid, again, that one of us is really, really uninformed about the situation. Maybe it's me.
My point is you are drawing conclusions about the labour market when there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store.
One (just one) question is whether anyone has the political will or clout to make things worse in the short term to potentially correct it in the long term. Interest rates should have been raised long before covid if you’re thinking long term and yet that never happened. Raising rates right now could be political suicide (albeit the most logical path). There are a lot of other hard to reason about factors. Economists a couple months ago were predicting lower inflation this year, like in the 4% range. Seems unlikely now.
Any conclusion about the labour market is predicated on some pretty massive assumptions and therefore complete speculation.
>you are drawing conclusions about the labour market when there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store.
...isn't that the entire point of this particular thread? Looking at possibilities without necessary prediction?
Is there any point in history where you can't say "there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store."? Why predict anything ever then?
> Is there any point in history where you can't say "there are likely very large and potentially unpredictable changes in store."? Why predict anything ever then?
Pardon the rudeness, but that’s silly. Of course there are times of varying turbulence where predictions can be more / less accurate. To be honest though economic predictions in the last 20 years haven’t done better than a coin flip.
I think we’re mostly in agreement except the part about everyone will suffer so demand for software engineers will decrease. In fact I think the economy is probably worse off (not just QE causing issues) than you laid out.
But the demand for software engineers decreasing? I mean, maybe, but I don’t think your points support that. I think there’s a mountain of assumptions you need to make to conclude that.
In a vacuum I would actually argue the opposite and say software engineering is even more important today than yesterday and that we aren’t producing enough. For example (anecdotal), the almost complete lack of technical fluency shown during the remote learning shit show that was my kids education last year. But we’re not in a vacuum and the economy is so untethered to reality that I can’t predict anything about the labour market.
> But the demand for software engineers decreasing? I mean, maybe, but I don’t think your points support that. I think there’s a mountain of assumptions you need to make to conclude that.
If all businesses are suffering in that scenario, then who will employ the software engineers?
This is itself a massive assumption. What extremes are we assuming and how likely are they? There are businesses who flourished under covid and also businesses that basically print money during conflicts / wars. Almost all of them require and use software. So are we talking apocalypse here? If so, then I have no idea what the job market will look like, and neither does anyone else.
I do agree that low interest rates have helped fuel growth, but I'm not convinced that it's played that big of a role.
If we look at Europe and Japan, despite the historically low interest rates, they haven't exactly been a beacon of innovation in the last decades. In fact, the US and China have eaten most of their market share.
I think you are mistaking things because I didn't even mention growth.
You're also saying that just because the US and China have done better than Europe, that means that QE has not had a measurable effect on the job market?
I'm sorry, but it looks to me as if you're strawmanning becasue your reply is barely adjacent to the points I was trying to make.
Major tech companies (e.g. Netflix, Cloudflare, MongoDB, and nearly every other publicly listed high growth tech company) have seen their stock prices fall as much as 50% in the past few months.
When the value of the entire tech industry shrinks that dramatically this quickly, companies are bound to become a bit more conservative in their operations, which cloud slow the pace of hiring in tech (and for some, layoffs)
As for "when", the slow down has already started and will accelerate over the next few months (my prediction, no evidence).
I highly recommend Acid Pauli sets on YouTube. Great 1-3 hour sets of instrumental music. House/world music whatever you want to call it, I find it great for productive tech design/programming/review/debugging/testing
I see this sentiment online, but using MS Teams at work, I have a great experience. 2-n way chat threads and video calls, team bulletin boards, and integrated apps like sharepoint, excel, custom internal software, etc.
I use slack, zoom, and discord for a mix of school and personal use, and appreciate what each of these offer, but wouldn’t wish to switch off of Teams for work. I do wish you could message yourself on Teams like slack. That’s a nice quick reference utility.
it's a lot better than using nothing, I'll give you that much. I think great is a stretch though.
However, the product is really rough around the edges and lacks the quality you'd find in other products (well, the other product, but there are also open source alternatives* that are worth looking at as well imo).
Maybe this is a dumb question, but how would I score a clubhouse invite? Sorry for the question that doesn’t contribute to conversation. But I keep seeing interesting things mentioned on clubhouse.
Clubhouse gives invites to current members fairly liberally. Checked your comment history. You can email me if you want one (somewhere in my profile bio) I think I have to invite you with a phone number of yours though.
As someone who used to drive all over North America for work, peeing in a Gatorade bottle really isn’t the end of the world. That being said I was just on empty roads saving time, not stressed and rushed in high density areas with frequent stops.
I think that breathing is pretty profound in that, it’s one of the few body processes that you can actively engage in. I highly recommend breathing practices a la XPT / Laird Hamilton.
I would say the one downside to not using CC is the accumulation of rewards, (and possibly a few metrics related to credit score will suffer)...With a few strategic cards, I get 6% back on grocery purchases, and 3% back on other purchases.
Wow, looks like a wealth of knowledge. Forked it for myself, only for reference, hope that is ok. Just seems like a ton of great info that I’d love to comb through myself. Cheers.
Can you please give some advice as to how to convert cash savings to a better yield investment? Especially in this current market where it “feels” to me (I am ignorant) that the stock market is artificially high. Maybe start to dollar cost average in to etf/mutual funds, to avoid a bad timing of “shift cash into market at an all time high right before it crashes”? Sorry for the ignorant question but the thought of cash savings eroding quickly while I don’t really know the best plan for it keeps me up at night. Cheers.
The US markets may feel artificially high to you, but a conventional modest-return, low-risk investment account that you can arrange with any high-street investment advisor is going to be extremely broad in their portfolio. The US markets that you think are inflated may comprise 5% or something of it. It'll also be invested in Asia, Africa, South America, and in different industries.
These kind of broad and boring investments always return about 5-10% or something like that a year. Occasionally they go down one year if there's a big bust up, but if you look over a ten year window it's always going up.
So why doesn't everyone invest in them if they're so dependable? Am I selling a get-rich-quick scheme? The reason is they're too modest for most people who are trying to get more like 15%. But those people take more risk - the kind of risk you're probably worried about.
And so why does the bank pay so little interest? Well they're getting that 5-10% from similar modest-return, low-risk investments (well probably a bit less less as they're more cautious)... and pocketing it.
I would recommend you to form a habit of putting some money into investments every month, not because of DCA or whatever investment strategy is the best, no simply because starting small and growing incrementally is a tried and true strategy for everything in life. If things go wrong you can always quit.
For renovations I try to do as much work as possible, eg tile removal/replacement, backer board removal/replacement....let the plumber come in to a clean and prepped worksite for a valve sweat....he’s in and out ASAP, I’ve saved budget from just throwing money at a GP contractor to do everything, and I get to do the non-expert stuff myself.
But I think that the schmo vs pro divide is real when you get to electrical, plumbing etc. HE’S the pro, and I’m the Schmo. As my favorite interviewer says.
>But I think that the schmo vs pro divide is real when you get to electrical, plumbing etc. HE’S the pro, and I’m the Schmo.
IMHO, this is backwards. Electrical work is twisting wires and screwing them down. Plumbing is gluing or clamping stuff together (unless you're sweating copper). The actual mechanics of doing it takes little skill and pros aren't going to be that much better/faster than you. The real difference is the amount of knowledge the pro has of codes and how things need to be. However, the concepts for residential are pretty straight forward though and relatively easy to learn. You can pick them up starting with simple stuff.
Compare that to something like drywall. Your drywall finish work is going to suck compared to a pro and they're going to do it way faster than you could.
When I hired a plumber the things he did were basically impossible for me. He didn't sweat copper. The first thing he did was heat up the old pipe so that he could screw it out and replace it and by old pipe I mean the plumbing inside the wall, the pipe you'd screw your angle valve onto. I'm not going to play around with fire and screw things up for good. This was actually a freebie and wasn't strictly necessary. Second he connected the toilet which was moved by around 15cm to the right and he used crimped copper, selected parts out of a box with every possible piece you could need and it aligned perfectly. If I had to do that then it would take me multiple attempts and thrown out parts involving multiple trips to the store. I'd also be stuck with tools I'd never need again. Instead the plumber finished the work in around an hour.
I agree with you, but for me it’s a risk and liability thing. It’s also a function of what I have had the experience doing...I can actually hang/tape/mud drywall semi decently, DEFINITELY not as fast or as good as a pro. Same with tiling, flooring etc , most cosmetic things. But I’ve never had the opportunity to learn much about plumbing or electrical. And those could have huge consequences if not done properly.
I agree with you but drywall and other finish stuff is low stakes. Anything that could cause damage to the house or <clutches pearls> hurt somebody is high stakes by comparison. Or at least that's how a lot of people think about it.
That said I'm a cheapskate and do my own finish work even though I hate making things look nice.
