Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

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There is another side of that which I've noticed as an American expat. If one country or industry decides to keep wages high, there are at least two effects.

1. The minimum required experience is also increased. You see this in industries where it's very difficult for new blood to break into because the minimum required experience/skill level is above an "entry level" position because the pay expectations of the industry require a certain degree of skill and experience going in.

2. Companies outsource. They seek to maximize profits, which means reducing costs, which means paying those with low demands for work that's good enough.

I actually moved out of the US for work because I found that I had better opportunities outside the US than in it. Not higher-paying (those would be in the US), but opportunities to build work experience from nothing, which I didn't see an option for in the US as a fresh college grad with a journalism degree looking to break into software engineering. I've been working outside the US for ~3 years now and although there have been challenges it's changed my life and career for the better. YMMV.

Youre exactly right, I compare job ads in the US vs another country all the time.

The US job ads have such absurd expectations and requirements, and demonstrate a total lack of any holistic approach to hiring, even for junior jobs. The companies come off as arrogant and entitled in their writing, even for areas which supposedly have shortages (eyeroll).

The job ads overseas are much less rigid and more flexible. I often see ads that lack any sort of requirement bullet points.

It seems much easier to get in, get trained and work your way up in the other country.

Then, you can return to the US and compete for senior roles, which can be pretty cushy in the US, and seem much more in-demand, if you want.

I wonder how much of the "requirements" in jobs notices are required. I have gotten several contracts while missing some of the key items they wanted. I have also seen ridiculous things like when DHH, the inventor of rails, couldn't get a job because he didn't have enough years of rails experience.

All but the dumbest recruiters know that a huge amount of people filling their roles are liars and I say this as a contractor. Just like any other group of people some contractors and recruiters are great and some are garbage. When garbage recruiters make garbage demands they get garbage contractors.

>> industries where it's very difficult for new blood to break into

What are examples of such industries?

Technology is very hard to get into without experience(or even with the wrong kind of experience). Healthcare, anything with a license(usually requires some kind of apprenticeship).

The canonical example is in Medicine: Doctors, Surgeons, Dentists. All of these professions have strict professional bodies which limit the number of people that can enter them, therefore be it intentionally or not, the wages are kept high.

I think when it comes to healthcare, it will always be the exception, give the inelasticity of the demand for healthcare.

Actually the demand for healthcare will change when there is a change in price. There will always be a base demand level, but if you change the price of seeing a doctor then people would be more inclined to see them for minor things - annoyances, rather than emergencies. Therefore if you allow for more doctors to be created the salary should drop, and if all goes to plan the price for healthcare should also drop.

Although my opinion is in the current US climate, the prices will remain the same and someone else will just suck up the profit.

I actually don't see the connection between a "minimum standard of living" and a "minimum required experience." Is this the case with company under discussion, Whole Foods? If that requirement is a high school diploma, well that's why we strive for universal high school, but I'm not sure what the connection is here. Please, don't use intuition from high paying intelligentsia type careers to the majority of laborers in the US, much less the world.

I do grant I'm not sure the government with the law that exists can do anything about Whole Foods, or should it, and thus, I am making a bigger point about that the government is supposed to function for the public good. I think the glimmer in Whole Foods is more an indictment of the system in the US than anything.

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