> People actually believed the idiotic notion that "other countries" pay the tariffs.
Many believed this, think about how many Americans do not understand the Progressive Tax system. I believe it has been intentional for many years to keep up some of these misunderstanding of basic governance.
I live in DC and do not wish for human rights violations against these people because they bother me. I understand how draining it is but IMO forcing us all into a surveillance state because of "undesirables" is the laziest way to solve this problem.
It also doesn't really sit well with what I have observed in over 25 years of working for remote companies. We hired juniors and grew engineers up just fine. The problem, at least at orgs I have worked at in the last decade, is companies no longer want to invest in junior hires.
I have been fortunate to have a C-level above me, who believes in hiring juniors, take over in the last year. We are hiring now and mentoring, but not enough companies around me are doing this.
People job hopping when they get past 'junior' status is what seems to have caused the reluctance to hire juniors, especially combined with the surge of 'opportunists' who started getting comp-sci degrees when it became obvious that it was the easiest way to earn a comfortable living. The job-hoppers made it obvious that it was just cheaper and faster to hire intermediate and senior developers (rather than investing in juniors to learn the basics, then have to pay them to stay). The opportunists further reduced the value proposition of developers to employers as many job-seekers (particularly juniors) have little passion or aptitude for the job, and will never be 'stellar'.
If your junior employees frequently job hop as soon as they have been trained up then your company is mismanaged. There are always personal reasons (I ended up immigrating to another country as I was coming into Senior-hood because my partner couldn't affordably immigrate into the US) but if it's a pattern then that pattern is owed to undercompensation and other failures of management.
In the 2000s it was seen as very fashionable to job hop frequently, but it was a biased impression that was assumed to be nationwide while it was only really common in SV with the hugely lucrative signing contracts folks like Google, Meta et. all were handing out.
What is the benefit (to the company) of paying to train a junior, which costs their wage, along with a significant proportion of a senior’s wage, if there is no long-term savings on the junior’s wages later on? This seems like a prisoner’s dilemma where every company counts on another to do the ‘apprenticeship’ training.
In other sectors, juniors are paid a subsistence wage for a few years, so they are still profitable for the company during training. A plumber still needs a cheap pair of arms to move around a bathtub.
There is a wide gap between an intermediate dev and a senior dev - and a senior dev that's spent years learning your codebase and problem area has a lot of tools ready to go that a newly hired dev won't even if they are quite proficient.
I would argue that job hopping was a symptom of companies under compensating for the market. This is a common problem even above Junior level. It's been easier to get a raise by leaving to another company that will pay more, then by just asking your employer for more money.
It might be under compensating for the market at large, but the market has companies where the revenue per employee is orders of magnitude larger than other companies.
I've worked at small companies that had revenue per employee of under $150,000.
Very few industries have an interview process that's as painful and time-consuming as the software industry. If people are "job-hopping", perhaps it's because they're dramatically undervalued by their employer. I left my first job for a 30% raise, despite really liking my colleagues and leaving behind a bunch of institutional and systems knowledge and starting with a blank slate.
> The job-hoppers made it obvious that it was just cheaper and faster to hire intermediate and senior developers (rather than investing in juniors to learn the basics, then have to pay them to stay).
Critically: While this is the common perception, it is generally un-true.
Just look at how often you get it as reply when you tell people complaining about how it's "impossible to find staff" to hire juniors.
Even in the situations where it is true, the effect of hiring seniors and refusing to hire juniors (thus pushing them into other fields) creates the shortage of seniors that makes it un-true again.
There's just a trend of employers having hard numbers on their staffing expenses, but barely if at all accounting for hiring costs and opportunity costs.
Many simply get it in their head that a senior costs $X/year, and therefore utterly refuse to pay a junior $X/year when they had to spend a flat amount $Y on training them up. Even when the real cost per hire for the senior is vastly bigger than $Y.
Before the post-covid/AI layoffs, tech firms throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars and years chasing seniors instead of just training up a junior was a common thing. So much so that it's a notable contributor to the overworking and burnout problems.
And it's still everywhere in the blue-collar world.
What do you mean by investing though? I think these days junior people have to just invest in themselves and learn by working right? It’s also hard for companies or managers to spend more on them when they can leave at any time, which means all that effort training them will just benefit some other employee.
I’ve noticed younger generations are especially a lot less loyal, probably in response to abusive and exploitative employers and horror stories. But the downside is if employees have less loyalty themselves, then even caring companies and managers cannot justify being loyal to them. They end up losing that time invested and learn a hard lesson.
They absolutely exist. Companies that train and support junior employees definitely exist even if it’s not because they care but some economic reason. But both types are more and more rare as younger generations become more and more likely to job hop.
You’re saying job hopping is smart - maybe it is. But my point is this causes ALL companies to invest as little as possible and to disregard junior candidates. Even if they wish they could have things be different.
I would caution seeing a Realtor as an easy way to avoid doing your homework on someone. I did this long ago and the Realtor's recommendation was one of the worst I have ever worked with.
There is, unfortunately, no shortcut to finding quality handymen.
Seconded. What Realtors value in a contractor is someone who will respond quickly and do a job that looks good on the surface to avoid delaying closing. For the most part they don't know whether the job was well done and will hold up over time since they are already on to the next house.
you can definitely save a lot of time by asking your friends for referrals. Anybody who loves their Electrician/Plumber should be listened to in particular.
Let me preface this by saying, I know this might be a privileged take. However, I've had some bad interview experiences but one thing I have never had happen and I never will do is cross the "just business"/"personal" line with anyone I may or am working with.
> hardest day of my life, my biggest life challenges, and other similar “trauma-baiting” questions.
I would take these types of questions as "from a professional standpoint". If the interviewer corrected and wanted personal answers, the interview would be over.
> you will just never be open to a personal friendship with anyone you ever work with?
Building relationships with colleagues is possible but I have tried to be careful. I have made some friends over time that were once co-workers. However, they were only able to move to full friend once they moved on to other teams or companies. I don't see someone I work with day-to-day as a personal friend. I compartmentalize them, keep the relationship professional and cordial.
Moving someone to a personal friend has risks, especially if there is a chance you may work for or with them again. Some personal friendships may be able to outlast work drama, but so far I haven't had that happen for me. I've lost a few along the way due to negative conditions at work.
Have you had a personal friend that stayed around after leaving a bad situation at work? Any pointers?
My best friend is someone i worked with, and we hit it off immediately. He also was one of the people who interviewed me before hire, too. I left the company because of medication induced issues with co-workers (long boring story... careful with SSRIs kids!)
and we still ... actually he just called so i gotta cut this short
we talk 5 hours a week on the phone plus we run a PBX and chat server and stuff so we're constantly in contact.
> Without google crawling your site, you don't get any new traffic. But with google crawling your site, you also might not get any traffic.
I may be strange and unusual, but I just have never cared about my Google ranking. I know this makes me out of the ordinary among site owners but I have been humming along fine.
This certainly will disrupt traffic but for some of my sites I honestly think this is a good thing. I want you to want to be there, not just stumble upon my site because you happen to hit the right search keyword. Plus if it gets bad, this does create a new opportunity for others with cross linking and search.
Only issue is what happens when the company that owns the search and has a dominant share of the browser market flags your site with the good old "warning: potential risk ahead" when people try to reach it directly? And buries the "I know the risk let me through" deep in the browser settings. Advocate for different browsers? Google is pushing web attestation in one form or the other. I wish the future would look bleak, because right now it's looking blue, red, yellow and green and it's worse.
> Only issue is what happens when the company that owns the search and has a dominant share of the browser market flags your site with the good old "warning: potential risk ahead" when people try to reach it directly?
My target market is more technical then that so likely, nothing would change for me. Again, I recognize the impact of Google's dominance for some, but if the "attestation" isn't helpful and only hinders using services that people have come to rely on, there will be push back.
I also have been advocating for years for everyone in my circle to avoid using Chrome. A homogenized browser market is a risk, and Chrome is the new IE. I hope you are also a part of the effort to advocate for browser diversity.
Don't forget that other browsers also just use googles web good boy list and if you report false positives point you towards google and cover their ears.
Yes! However most of my users were established through my network, not search.
I know that sites relying on ad income will and are being hurt tremendously by this effort on Google's part. However, if you are in the startup space and make money on services you offer, search should be one of several strategies you are deploying for user growth.
> The layoff rationale was not for artificial intelligence to replace jobs at LinkedIn, one of the people told Reuters.
Kind of a breath of fresh air but no rationale was given. Especially in the face of:
> The cuts come as revenue at LinkedIn, which sells recruiting tools and subscriptions, rose 12% in the just-ended quarter from a year prior, in an acceleration of growth in 2026, according to Microsoft's securities filings.
Currently working on a Gmail clone.
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