Side-note for people switching work, move your money from your direct deposit account before starting a new job.
I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still.
Anyone can do this with a canceled check. If she didn’t authorize the withdrawal she calls the bank and they put the money back. And they start their own investigation. Our banking system is trash but it’s not lawless.
The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
A very different story from my friend still living in Russia.
In Russia, a lot of companies are issuing debit cards for their own employees, and those are often their sole bank accounts, especially for people low on social ladder.
Once the employer got a whiff of the person switching jobs, he fired him, and tipped the bank to block his account on "fraud" suspicion. Banks are known to tacitly play along in such scenarios.
Of course, an avenue to sue is still open for the man, but how do you sue if you have no money to pay the court fee, and your usual income will still be drained if you go to court even for such a trivial case.
The man lost 80k roubles, which also close to around $1k
Advice: anybody in such relationship should never hold any money in "hostage" bank accounts. Always cash out your income from salary accounts, and, for businesses, their merchant accounts with acquirers (paypal, we are looking at you.)
There are a number of banks out there that - once you have an account - you can create additional accounts in minutes. That's useful so you can have one connected to direct deposit for each job, one for Paypal, etc, etc with the bulk of your savings in any account not connected to anything else.
If my mortgage company is compromised, there's only ~3 days/month there's any money in that account.. and then it's the exact amount of the mortgage payment.
Anecdotal but in Montreal,Canada it's a very different situation. Recruiter calls, number of jobs posts are much higher in the last month or so (despite summer vacations). Many companies from San-Francisco reaching out. Is it because in Canada the Covid-19 spread is under control or because it's all remote now so why not Canada?
Seeing the same in Ottawa. Big startups are hiring here now. In fact, rates are quickly climbing up here from my observations - from local tech forums & job postings. Amazon & Apple jobs started popping up. Looks like companies are looking at Canada & South America due to the same timezones yet smaller rents.
Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.
This is what people are afraid of. If you live in a city where you have IT salaries over 100k (Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.
There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.
Hmmm...well the facts are what they are, but based on the number of job postings and recruiter calls I'm seeing, it sure doesn't seem much lower. I got a new job starting in early June, and it didn't take any longer than normal (I admit I was probably lucky).
One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent" employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never met in person, if it's as a contractor?
The recruiting dept of a lot of companies are only pretending that they’re hiring to justify their own existence as long as possible.
Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find budgets/priorities have “shifted”
They don't even have a recruiting dept, they outsource HR, hiring, and payroll, cuz that is below them—they are too busy changing the world!
If these companies were really so desperate for skilled workers, we wouldn't see the same jobs posted repeatedly, or never taken down from career pages, and they would be more responsive to inquiry. The monthly hiring thread here is full of it.
I'm worried this will really damage tech workers in the USA. I'm in meetings with overseas clients most of the day and it's getting to the point that some are back in offices and we're still locked in our kitchens. Mental health seems to be crashing if you judge by Twitter peers. I'm in the same boat. I've been locked in an apartment alone for 6 months outside of grocery grabs and some outdoor hikes and it's starting to really affect me.
Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.
From what I see--and admittedly a fair number of the people I know and work with were largely remote before this--many offices at least in the US are never going back to "normal." Most of the people I know are planning to be primarily remote indefinitely. Which means that even those who do go back into an office will have to deal with a largely distributed workplace.
How would this damage tech workers? Almost everyone in IT has done work with a remote co-worker or distributed team. Doesn’t matter if they are in Indiana or India, we have the tools to collaborate and conference if needed.
Most of the US tech space is still booming right now, from big tech to the dozens of large cloud companies that have been reporting between good and stellar quarterly results.
We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the year, for now it's weak.
Moreover, many of the giants are seeing increased usage while everyone is home. A large amount of the industry doesn't work that way, but rather, is based on profit and loss, not share price and vanity metrics.
Is this due to the economic conditions? I feel as though companies might be holding off on hiring because the logistics of hiring & onboarding someone remotely is extremely difficult, doubly more so in tech.
I don’t know how much closer to reality this is. I can see tech hiring probably slowed down but my guess is it’s opportunistic. The companies that are doing poorly before the pandemic simply cut jobs. I don’t see a real impact on the market. Of course I do realize I am arguing against data here and saying stuff without evidence but the sample size is small for the data and it’s a gut feeling that it will not hold long term.
I don't know if you're necessarily arguing against data. Data is a funny thing and it can lie very easily. For example, the following statement is data-driven and technically true, but a complete lie at the same time:
"Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle"
I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've observed.
Is this actually so pronounced? If you look at the "Mixed bag for tech positions in tech hubs" table, the change in tech postings trend looks more or less the same as the change in all postings trend (I bet it's not even stat sig). Reading the article, the claims being made are not even strong ones.
I don't want to dismiss this post out of hand, but the last few instances I've spent any time browsing Indeed, it did not strike me as representative of the tech hiring market.
I have the same sentiment, Indeed does not seem to be a representative source for the tech jobs market. I have an impression that most postings there are for staffing firms and the number of their posts do not correspond to the actual vacancies (they might be all posting the same job or post fake jobs to collect resumes).
The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or something), in the recent months.
1. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are developed.
2. ???
3. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels.
There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a]
So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it."
The tech sector is no exemption.
--
[a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings, malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines, conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.
I think there's reason to be confident it'll work. In many areas people rushed back to those things even before the pandemic was over. I'm not saying this was an unreasonable concern to have, but it seems to have been disconfirmed.
[+] [-] djsumdog|5 years ago|reply
I was talking to a security researcher about a friend who had a full interview with a company, sent papers for hiring, filled everything out, and then discovered the company she was interviewing for was named similar to a real company, with the only difference being a hyphen in the website name. The company was fake and once they had direct deposit information, drained her bank account. She was lucky there was only ~$1k in it. still.
Do your due diligence. Be careful out there.
[+] [-] yardie|5 years ago|reply
The company committed bank and wire fraud. They’ll get dealt with by the secret service and FBI.
[+] [-] baybal2|5 years ago|reply
In Russia, a lot of companies are issuing debit cards for their own employees, and those are often their sole bank accounts, especially for people low on social ladder.
Once the employer got a whiff of the person switching jobs, he fired him, and tipped the bank to block his account on "fraud" suspicion. Banks are known to tacitly play along in such scenarios.
Of course, an avenue to sue is still open for the man, but how do you sue if you have no money to pay the court fee, and your usual income will still be drained if you go to court even for such a trivial case.
The man lost 80k roubles, which also close to around $1k
Advice: anybody in such relationship should never hold any money in "hostage" bank accounts. Always cash out your income from salary accounts, and, for businesses, their merchant accounts with acquirers (paypal, we are looking at you.)
[+] [-] caseysoftware|5 years ago|reply
If my mortgage company is compromised, there's only ~3 days/month there's any money in that account.. and then it's the exact amount of the mortgage payment.
Bank account firewalls ftw.
[+] [-] tinus_hn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _AzMoo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] myth_drannon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kache_|5 years ago|reply
Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wil421|5 years ago|reply
All the big tech companies are remote. What would Canada and COVID have to do with it?
[+] [-] jmeister|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] contrarianmop|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wolco|5 years ago|reply
No one is calling about remote.
[+] [-] djsumdog|5 years ago|reply
There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.
[+] [-] rossdavidh|5 years ago|reply
One factor might be that I prefer to work as a contractor, and get my own health insurance; it might be different if you're looking for "permanent" employment. Perhaps employers are more willing to hire someone they've never met in person, if it's as a contractor?
[+] [-] dpeck|5 years ago|reply
Many actually are not, though not all of them even know that they are pretending until it goes to VP/exec for final sign off and they find budgets/priorities have “shifted”
[+] [-] angel_j|5 years ago|reply
If these companies were really so desperate for skilled workers, we wouldn't see the same jobs posted repeatedly, or never taken down from career pages, and they would be more responsive to inquiry. The monthly hiring thread here is full of it.
[+] [-] thinkingkong|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mjayhn|5 years ago|reply
Its so embarrassing and I'm nowhere near as productive as I should be. Most of my EU peers are probably having to take up the slack.
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 1nverseMtx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|5 years ago|reply
We'll see if this article's premise holds any water over the remainder of the year, for now it's weak.
[+] [-] bdcravens|5 years ago|reply
Moreover, many of the giants are seeing increased usage while everyone is home. A large amount of the industry doesn't work that way, but rather, is based on profit and loss, not share price and vanity metrics.
[+] [-] kache_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tharne|5 years ago|reply
"Newborn baby's have _on average_ one testicle"
I think you're right about it being opportunistic, at least that's what I've observed.
[+] [-] Hydraulix989|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tehchops|5 years ago|reply
Where's the LinkedIn data?
[+] [-] pandaman|5 years ago|reply
The drop could be just the result of some of those firms ceasing their activity as I definitely don't see as many CyberCoders and whatever was that bot, which automatically reposted vacancies on Linkedin (JobNetwork or something), in the recent months.
[+] [-] cs702|5 years ago|reply
1. Government supports the economy while vaccines and treatments are developed.
2. ???
3. Economic activity returns quickly to pre-pandemic levels.
There's no "guarantee" this plan will work... but we are all acting as if it will, because the alternatives are too unpleasant to contemplate.[a]
So, much of the economy is "faking it until we make it."
The tech sector is no exemption.
--
[a] We all prefer not to think too much on the possibility that large swaths of the economy could remain under stress for a long while -- office buildings, malls, retail stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters, airlines, conference centers, etc. These businesses employ a gazillion people, use a mountain of assets, and depend on a ton of software and technology for everything. We all want these businesses to survive as intact as possible so they can thrive in a post-pandemic world and continue to buy technology.
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwfheveryday123|5 years ago|reply