The consistent falsity is that the bulk of the great resignation is dropping out of the job market due to free government money. The majority is movin on up to a better gig.
The other thing is these fools keep writing articles about disappointing jerb data and then every month is being dramatically adjusted upward due to something something (I think a trump holdover is involved trying to make Biden look bad and/or there are some problems with the calculations not recognizing the current situation well).
The headline job number has always been hilarious like that. Markets focus on it, but has always been subject to massive revisions. Im guessing you are correct and the revisions, which are based on historical modeling data, are even more funky right now. IMO the right way to think about the number is a fairly wide confidence interval with the released number as a point estimate.
Wifeās teacherās union agreed to even forgo cost of living increases at the very beginning of COVID when it looked like the world might fall apartā¦. understandable, but should have easily gotten that torn up by now.
I think there will be a lot of this. In the conversations Iāve been in, the Big Plan to deal with turnover risk is to increase the budget for salary increases from 2% to 3% and push the narrative down to managers that this is Our Biggest Salary Budget In Years. Problem solved, I guess.
Iām honestly in awe of the reactionary right wing brainās ability to simultaneously hold multiple directly contradictory positions at the same time.
Also, boss brain is a disease. One of the most irritating things about our economy is itās propensity to award absolutely terrible behavior. The only people that seek out power over people with no money or power are complete nut jobs.
Yup. Every year itās like hereās another 1.5%, honestly youāre one of the only ones even getting a raise this year, youāre making more than your supervisor (I feel bad about this but thatās his problem, and I agree Iām more valuable than him), as usual please donāt discuss your raise with anyone. Basically treating me like theyāre doing me a big favor.
Hell it happens in scientific data all the time. Then people come up with all kinds of theories about why the process slowed down for 3 hours and then sped back up the next 3 hours instead of considering that something was biased in the day.
(Hint the 2:00 sample may have been taken in the 1:30-2:30 window such that the first 3 hours is really 2.5h and the second 3 hours is really 3.5h).
Ya itās super annoying but the fact is that so many people will just be frustrated about it but keep soldiering on. Applying for jobs or internal promotions if freaking time consuming and when you donāt get the job it feels like a massive investment of time for no payoff. But itās an unfortunate fact of life now that if we want to be fairly paid we all have to maintain the habit of keeping resumes up to date and just spending a few minutes here and there on the regular trawling the job listings for chances to move for a pay bump.
I think maybe the best advice I can offer is 1) when you get the disappointing pay increase express the dissatisfaction (this year the headlines about inflation give you a good excuse to complain without making it personal); 2) when you get the disappointing pay increase channel that anger into something productive by updating your resume so youāre ready to go with future job applications; and 3) channel youāre inner Alec Baldwin and chant Always Be Interviewing as a mantra because you want to be practiced at interviewing when the golden opportunity presents itself.
I preach item 3 a lot. I started disliking my last job in around 2018. That year, I applied for two really good jobs that would have been an excellent fit and I made the final three in each case but didnāt get either. I ended up slogging in my job and tried some internal moves but it didnāt go anywhere, so in 2020 I applied for literally 100 jobs I think and interviewed for about 10 including a few jobs I was definitely not going to take. But toward the end of 2020 an absolute peach of a job opened up and I aced the interviews because I had honed my interview skills and had all these polished stories that had been battle tested in other interviews. I totally killed it and got a new job that is much more fun and pays much better (like about 30% more). I bet you that if I had just sat on my hands until this new great job opened up, I would have interviewed, been a finalist, and not got it AGAIN, just like in 2018. I totally attribute my successful application for the new job to the time spent interviewing for less attractive jobs. Always Be Interviewing!
This is great advice but man itās hard when, like me, you would rather get beat with a tire iron than interview for a job. I hate them so much that I cut one off after like 15 mins when I knew I wasnāt getting the job.
āTell me about a timeā¦ā
Fuck you! Youāre really going to make this decision based on who is the best at making up self-promotional stories?
Yup, I totally hear you, and indeed I have nobody to blame but myself if my salary stagnates at this point. My situation is that Iām one of the very rare people in IT who stuck around at one place for a long time, I was in a good spot where Iāve been able to grow with the company (along with my salary and responsibilities) and have actually been with here just over 25 years.
Definitely gives me pause when I think about starting something new at the age of 50, even though I know thereās still a reasonable chunk of career time left to grow. I know if I stay here more than a couple more years Iām just gonna feel like Iām in ārunning the clock outā mode. And of course management knows that too, which gives them leverage over me when they give me peanuts every year and tell me I should be happy with it.
I mean, this is still how most jobs are placed unless they are strictly technical roles and the interview is question like āCan you use this software? Prove it.ā
Yes? Seems like that is what interviews are a lot of the time, unless youāre having people write code for you on the fly or using some other technical proficiency test as part of the interview. In my role, I work with scientific customers, so scientific communication is a #1 priority. So, āTell me your favorite scientific story from grad school or your postdoc,ā is a super effective interview question when Iāve been interviewing prospective coworkers.
I guess I should clarify that I mean āfrom your work in grad school or post doc,ā so that theyāre telling me how they went from hypothesis to conclusion on their own. Thereās no way you can just bullshit that with me. I did encounter someone who tried, but it was the most obvious thing in the world. Trying to just relay something youād read about falls apart with a single follow up question, even just, like, asking for clarification about some detail.
Fair enough, Iām really ignorant of the whole interview/resume process. Iāve been working for almost 40 years and at 7 different companies and never really had an official interview. Closest was the current job Iām in now but even that was basically a shoe in because I knew someone there. At least 3 were offers made in pubs shooting the shit.
Yeah this is some weird rivermanning imo. Interviews are just 2 things, ācan you do the jobā and āare you an assholeā and the tell me a time when questions are very much code for finding out the 2nd question.
Nah thatās just not true. āTell me about a time you overcame adversityā and āwhat are your biggest weaknessesā are just tells the interviewer sucks. Usually companies hate hiring so they assign the task to the biggest douche.
I will concede my general disposition isā¦not great for interviewing.