[FirmwareBurner]

>a bunch of organizations already utterly swamped with eager and qualified job candidates relative to their hiring numbers

So....the same challenges that everyone working in the private sector has? What am I missing here?

[crote]

Imagine if Google or Apple suddenly went bust. What do you think that would do to the job market in San Francisco?

[rockskon]

NASA is still around. The layoff announcements for contractors at certain locations have been staggered as far as I know.

Still - it appears to be a tremendously hurdle for her to find alternate employment with her skillset in parts engineering without physically relocating - which would necessitate selling her house and her husband finding employment at the new region as well.

[FirmwareBurner]

Shit happens, what can you do about it? Do you think garbage men, teachers or doctors will care about the tough job market of SW engineers? Everyone's job and everyone's lives have challenges, nobody else will cry for you, it's still up to you to deal with whatever problems life throws at you.

[soulofmischief]

No. Flip it around. I care about the salaries and working condition of garbage men, teachers and doctors, even if they don't value mine. All three of those jobs you listed have vested interest groups who are standing in the way of a better life for those who provide these essential services, or are artificially controlling the market.

What we do about it is educate the public and form institutions that are motivated to protect these people. We failed on the former and now it's disrupting the latter.

Deciding whether I should care about another group based on whether they care about my own predicament is a straight path to evil.

[skissane]

> I care about the salaries and working condition of garbage men, teachers and doctors, even if they don't value mine. All three of those jobs you listed have vested interest groups who are standing in the way of a better life for those who provide these essential services, or are artificially controlling the market.

Do doctors really belong on that list? In my personal experience-I’m not a doctor, but lots of people in my family are, including my mother and brother (and when she finishes med school, my sister too)-I really don’t get the impression doctors are poorly paid at all. If we talk about those with established careers (so not junior doctors), the poorly paid ones are still earning twice what the average person does, and the better paid ones are off the charts. On average, medicine pays better than software engineering.

Oh, and I’m in Australia-in the US, medical salaries are even better than they are in Australia. Like take what people get paid in Australia and add 50%. Yes, American doctors would owe more in student loans-but when you are on US$400K, and the average US medical school debt is under US$300K, how long is it going to take you to pay it off?

[FirmwareBurner]

>No. Flip it around. I care about the salaries and working condition of garbage men, teachers and doctors

Great that you care? And what are you dong about it? Are you voluntarily paying more taxes to your local city/council/state?

[soulofmischief]

What would handing money over to my government without any strings attached do?

In America we ostensibly participate in a representative democracy founded on the sentiment of no taxation without representation, and so our first duty is to be politically involved by educating ourselves holistically, voting appropriately for our local, state and federal representatives, participating in accompanying community building, wealth and knowledge dissemination in order to create and maintain the institutions which I mentioned in my previous comment.