> “jobs”
Employment, and employees, are not fungible - why do people (and more importantly: the news-media and the people elected to direct the economy) continue to speak of it as though it is?
I've seen this mentioned a few times on HN. I find it a confusing concept.
My position is 100% fungible. I write code to solve problems. There are thousands of people that can write equivalent code to solve the same problems.
I'm legitimately interested: can you expand on how my position isn't fungible?
It's fungible only when the entire set of available workers shares your competence (i.e. your skill-set, relevant experience, and business domain knowledge) - or - can be quickly trained to acquire such competence.
...and I'll wager that the vast majority (90%-ish?) of the working-age and almost-working-age population in your country is both unqualified to write software professionally and is not interested in spending 2-4 years of their life to study CS or SE to a level sufficient to do the work you currently do. Of the other 10% at least 9.95% of them won't have your business domain knowledge needed to do your job such that you make the right decisions early-on or slow down others by bringing them in for help, and so on.
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What I was complaining about was when it's reported in the news, or ever really said by anyone, that "opening this new coal-mine in Greenhippieville, CA will create 5,000 jobs!" or that "the economy added 10,000 jobs this month" - because the "jobs" those numbers refer to could be anything without further qualification, and doing that will make the conversation too technical for a general audience.
You left out the most salient point here, most people are entirely unable to write software even if their life depended on it. Just like I doubt I'd be able to write a symphony in 4 years even with a ticking time bomb strapped to my skull.
A developers' core skill is not getting overwhelmed after being blindsided by new shit from every angle on a constant basis.
We have 30% of out team just dealing with auto-reported vulnerabilities in our code base. No choice. Getting an "exception" takes an architect about a week for a vuln that has no material impact and which can't be mitigated with a simple library update. Tip of the ice berg.
This is at an excellent tech focused company (relatively great place to work).
Gold is fungible. You can mine gold anywhere in the world and it's worth the same.
The level of skill to be able to code effectively is not something a large proportion of the population has. People have scoffed at the idea that programming requires a high IQ (let's call it what it is), calling it elitist or something, but you don't expect any random joe to be able to be a professional illustrator, musician, juggler, diver, climber, writer or mathematician.
The real problem, has Jordan Peterson points out, is what will society do with people on the low end of the IQ curve, as more and more skills are required and unskilled labor is being eliminated by technology?
And keep in mind, if you get paid minimum wage, your employer is telling you they'd pay you less if they could.
This is the crux, because what's happening is that housing is highly inflationary (especially in desirable locations) and wages are failing to match inflation, so entry level workers are being pushed further out to the boonies. Why would they commute all the way into the city centers if they don't actually pay better?
An interesting side effect of all the rampant real estate speculation and bidding wars is that cities are becoming dramatically more expensive to live in than the exurbs. I feel like eventually this will result in a much higher cost of living across the board as employers need to account for this difference in their pay scales. The entry level / service industry jobs in these places with insane housing prices will need to pay much better to attract workers, thus making these already expensive-to-live places even more expensive.
Perhaps it will eventually create some kind of equilibrium where new towns can provide some of the same quality of life benefits at a fraction of the cost since their real estate isn't so astronomical.
roommates are a critical social developmental step in your life.
They teach you how to negotiate boundaries without a direct authority figure.
They teach you how to live in a common space with somebody else.
roommates teach you that you must be responsible for your actions which affect the other people who live with you.
roommates teach you the importance of financial responsibility because when the rent is due you both need to pay up.
You may be lazy You may not want to do the dishes, but you know if you take that messy ass plate and you just throw it in the sink it will become a mountain of dirty ass shit and you owe it to somebody else to do your part.
If both of you hold up your end of the bargain and perform 3 seconds of work to place that dish in the dishwasher it avoids this tragedy of the commons.
roommates teach you that self-discipline is critical for a tolerable society.
E.g. Forget to pay your share of the rent when you live with a roommate? Room-mate yells at you. When you live alone you get an eviction notice.
Self-discipline is about the self after all. If you need another person there to be disciplined, then you are clearly not self-disciplined.
(That said, nothing wrong with roommates, it often makes financial sense and some people like having them, i just dont see the connection to responsibility)
But when housing costs are such that you have people in their late 20's and early 30's still living with roommates it seems like a societal problem.