Careerchat IV

[Isis]

On 3/30/2020 at 8:52 AM, lessthanluke said:

So when this is all over people are going to go back to going to bars and restaurants?

Using what money exactly considering how many people will have been out of work for months?

The proportion of people who's financial situation hasn't been affected will go back to normal sure but the ones who have aren't going to suddenly piss what little money they have away.

Government employees will largely continue to be paid. Healthcare workers continue to be paid. Most people I know (and a big proportion of these are people who work in and around hospitality and are therefore having a bad time rn on a spectrum from 'times are hard' to 'could lose my business') are absolutely desperate to go out and spend money in hospitality. 

[lessthanluke]

4 hours ago, Isis said:

Government employees will largely continue to be paid. Healthcare workers continue to be paid. Most people I know (and a big proportion of these are people who work in and around hospitality and are therefore having a bad time rn on a spectrum from 'times are hard' to 'could lose my business') are absolutely desperate to go out and spend money in hospitality. 

That won't last once the initial novelty wears off imo

 

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

A question I'd have on this front is what % of bars and restaurants can actually re-open their doors once people can go out again in earnest versus what % will be effectively wiped out before they'd even have that opportunity?

And then would those that could re-open potentially be packed if people feel confident going out again because there's less competition from the pub across the street that couldn't reopen?  

The former is my larger fear because it’s very precarious for a lot of individuals and small businesses, but should be addressed by fiscal policy.  It’s terrible to see otherwise sustainable businesses derailed because of a short term exogenous impact beyond their control.

The latter I doubt.  Most pubs, restaurants, etc have a realistic limit on capacity.  The most successful ones, who have the resources to re-open, were probably already operating close to capacity.  If there was really that much demand, we’d need to find a way to resuscitate the closed businesses somehow. 

[lessthanluke]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

A question I'd have on this front is what % of bars and restaurants can actually re-open their doors once people can go out again in earnest versus what % will be effectively wiped out before they'd even have that opportunity?

And then would those that could re-open potentially be packed if people feel confident going out again because there's less competition from the pub across the street that couldn't reopen?  

Two cafes I frequent locally have pretty much already admitted they won't be re opening after the measures are lifted. This is going to be very common I think.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Two cafes I frequent locally have pretty much already admitted they won't be re opening after the measures are lifted. This is going to be very common I think.

Yeah, outside of the government spending extraordinary amounts of money while forgiving almost all debt, things won't look the same. 

Had a long convo with my step-brother who works in Hollyweird this morning, and even though he might be one of the few lucky ones, for the short term, it sounds like nothing will be back up and running for a long time, and he works for the Mouse. Shits gonna get weird. 

[Isis]

11 hours ago, Triskele said:

A question I'd have on this front is what % of bars and restaurants can actually re-open their doors once people can go out again in earnest versus what % will be effectively wiped out before they'd even have that opportunity?

And then would those that could re-open potentially be packed if people feel confident going out again because there's less competition from the pub across the street that couldn't reopen?  

Lots of our friends are owners of small breweries and bars and bottle shops in the UK and most of them are terrified of their businesses dying. The government eventually stepped up to help the self-employed but as the help is based on profits it remains to be seen how much use it will be. It's certainly pulled the community together like nothing else before. We've seen how hard our friends have worked to get their businesses going so it's absolutely crushing to think they might fail and be wiped out by this. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Uncertainty matters here.  Most of us don’t know the probability of us losing our jobs in the next year, but we all know that probability is higher now than three months ago.  That uncertainty makes us less able to donate money to local causes or to make additional purchases from local businesses. 

If you knew for sure you wouldn’t lose your job in the next year or so, you could be more supportive of others around you.  But instead everyone starts acting just a little more cautiously, which becomes a reinforcing cycle even before actual spending capacity is reduced. 

[Pecan]

On 4/5/2020 at 5:21 PM, lessthanluke said:

Two cafes I frequent locally have pretty much already admitted they won't be re opening after the measures are lifted. This is going to be very common I think.

Do you think this is because they absolutely can't reopen, or is it because their businesses weren't all that great to begin with and the shutdown is just going to make it harder, thereby giving them an incentive to just sort hang it up? A lot of smaller cafes run on fairly thin margins I believe, so I can see where it might be tempting to move on with your life. 

[Pecan]

On 4/5/2020 at 5:31 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Had a long convo with my step-brother who works in Hollyweird this morning, and even though he might be one of the few lucky ones, for the short term, it sounds like nothing will be back up and running for a long time, and he works for the Mouse. Shits gonna get weird. 

I think people that work in the movie and TV production business will have a tough time because so many of them only work when production is ongoing, so any sort of disruption to the pipeline means longer periods of unemployment. 

[Pecan]

23 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Something my organization has done is that there's one of these 100 questions surveys one must do when they apply with questions like "What is your favorite part about your job?" or "What do you do when a coworker complains?" etc...

One thing that's quite annoying is that you often have to do the thing again if you apply for another position even just a few months later which is quite annoying.

But at the end they also ask you "Did you respond how you felt or how you thought you ought to respond? or something to that effect, and I confess I'm not sure what answer they'd really want there.   

I had to fill out one of those in the last year or two. I can't remember the company, but I remember resenting the hell out of it at the time. 

[Joe Pesci]

Well got a job offer coming my way tomorrow that I think I will actually accept after a little negotiating once I read through it. The timing certainly is great with the $600 going away and who knows if/what/when will replace that. I've turned down 3 in the last month or so due to getting lowballed twice and it being blamed on Covid, not sure if anyone else has seen that in their job hunts or not? I do have to say, I've really enjoyed the summer off whilst getting paid pretty well to go to the gym and lay around a pool, but it'll be fucking nice to get back to work again.

[S John]

22 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

 I can still pay my mortgage and other bills + my son’s $1,300 per month student loan payment.

Dear God. Is that standard now? Granted, I’ve been out 15 years but that’s nearly triple what mine were, and I definitely had difficulty coping with that on an entry level salary in addition to rent and other expenses. 

[kairparavel]

I'm 6 weeks into my new job and while I have no regrets (I would still be on furlough that started March 23) I'm now the new person if cuts/layoffs happen. I'm not super worried but public transportation is kinda dire right now so who knows. 

It's also been surreal starting a new job in a completely new to me industry and also meeting my coworkers and training with them through MS Teams all while cramped up in our open concept apartment.  

[Iskaral Pust]

@Chataya de Fleury I understand that stress.  You went from secure to precarious in a heartbeat.

I won’t go into details but I have my own similar stress.  I relocated 9 months ago for a big career move, but it meant I had to both draw down and forfeit a lot of savings, plus get indebted with a much larger mortgage.  That’ll work out fine within a couple of years, but not if I lose my new job in the near term.

The tragedy is that most Americans are always that precarious.  It’s no way to be.  I hate to feel financially at risk (a childhood anxiety haunting me) so usually I live very much within our means, but this was just one of those points in life when it was worth taking a big risk.

So I always have a lot of empathy for people who live with that kind of looming uncertainty.  And I really hope there will be more done to cushion people right now.  It’s not like everyone can just go out a find a new job right away.  Large parts of our economy will be operating at lower capacity for quite a while. 

[Alarich II]

5 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

He went out of state. So it’s $140k that I’m on the hook for

140k student debt before you even get your first job, this is insane. Seriously, who in their right mind supports and votes for this kind of bullshit education system? With these kind of numbers, you probably get a better ROI on a plumbers apprenticeship than a college degree. Which makes me wonder, why parents still send their kids to college when it is such an obvious debt trap; especially the academically mediocre middle-class offspring (not your son, Chats, I'm sure he's brilliant) is probably not going to be able to pay back this kind of money for a long time and would maybe better served with learning a trade or craft.

[Raja]

6 hours ago, kairparavel said:

It's also been surreal starting a new job in a completely new to me

Good luck, friend

[Iskaral Pust]

8 hours ago, Alarich II said:

140k student debt before you even get your first job, this is insane. Seriously, who in their right mind supports and votes for this kind of bullshit education system? With these kind of numbers, you probably get a better ROI on a plumbers apprenticeship than a college degree. Which makes me wonder, why parents still send their kids to college when it is such an obvious debt trap; especially the academically mediocre middle-class offspring (not your son, Chats, I'm sure he's brilliant) is probably not going to be able to pay back this kind of money for a long time and would maybe better served with learning a trade or craft.

Perhaps it’s time for a thread to discuss this again.  I see a lot of points from your perspective: it’s a huge financial drag for most people to absorb that kind of debt as they’re starting in life, and there’s a serious question of whether it will ever be worth it.  Especially since most US undergrad degrees are relatively unfocused and broad and not particularly vocational.

OTOH, one of the main problems here is that the cost of university is so high, mainly because facilities have become very luxurious (rampant consumerism among families selecting university experiences) and because universities have become enormously bloated in their administration, which is partly unchecked bureaucracy and partly more non-education demands both from policy makers and from students/parents.

Once the cost is that high, there is a real trade-off question about who should pay for it.  If govt pays for it through higher taxes, then that’s actually regressive.  Many tax-payers don’t get to go to university and it’s arguably less fair for them to foot the bill than the students who directly benefit and who decide individually how much effort to put into their study and which studies to choose.  Most countries with taxpayer-funded university end up setting the bar higher on who gets to attend, which is a form of merit-based rationing that often excludes disadvantaged minorities.  OTOH third level university does appear to be a public good that benefits society widely and perhaps therefore warrants more public investment.

Bottom line for me is that this isn’t a simple choice.  There are trade-offs.  And probably the biggest inefficiency is that students and parents have such imperfect information about their own individual trade-offs — you make this decision at a young age with a huge price tag, but the benefits are uncertain, and there isn’t a compelling substitute available — so they usually err on the side of caution and just buy the most they can possibly afford, which creates a spiral effect in competition.

To me it looks similar to healthcare.  Americans pay more for healthcare without getting better outcomes.  But they also have a lot more consumerism in their healthcare use, they have a bloated administration that adds to cost, and they don’t make good trade-off decisions at a personal level so they generally end up over-consuming and over-paying.

 

[HoodedCrow]

Support your local community college and state University. I realize, though, That the university system in America is a self perpetuating contacts and status symbol monster.

It is weird living there. Everyone would mistake my universities for American ones. They would say where their kid went very archly, but for many years the snobbery was wasted on me.

[HoodedCrow]

Being saddled with student debt is a dreadful thing. Betsy De Vos wants you to pay for private grade school and her family will not stop loan sharkIng the University loans. 

[Alarich II]

7 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

So this isn’t really a broken educational system but an indulgent parent, with her own issues* who was intent on helping her kid.

I see; interesting perspective. My parents did put me and all my four siblings through at least 5 years of college, however university here is mostly free, so they paid for rent and food and for all else we had to get jobs (which is still a great deal, all things considered). But 140k for each of 5 children would've been very hard. They didn't attach any strings but especially for the three eldes of us it was pretty clear, that we couldn't just hang out and chill because our younger siblings would also want to go to university.

So leaving all emotional stuff aside and just looking at the raw numbers, are the 140k justified in terms of better education or future education? Leaving aside the current state of unemployment because of extraordinary reasons, I would really be interested wether this kind of money can actually buy you a carreer that allows you to amortise your investment within a reasonable time-frame (say 15 years), compared to the free alternative.

Isk indicated that there is a fair bit of consumerism involved in the fees, so maybe not, otoh - if you go "out of state" its presumably for a high reputation university?