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It’s not hard to afford Bay Area rent if one partner is still employed in tech, especially if they are older and have savings or home equity to cash in on.

The article you linked to seems to say only that employers have been unsuccessful at enforcing 100% in-office work. It does not say that people have been successful at keeping their 100% remote jobs in other states and far-off locations.

Overall, we seem to be reaching a compromise where many are forced to live within commuting distance of their office but aren’t necessarily there every day. This compromise is what is pushing up rents from what I am seeing among my network.

In other words, “remote” and “hybrid” are not at all the same but you are using the terms interchangeably. You can’t live in Idaho and commute to SF three days a week without major inconvenience and expense.

Maybe you aren’t aware, but house prices skyrocketed in many locations (like Idaho and Florida) during the pandemic because of an exodus of Californians who were told that they could keep their high-paying jobs and live almost anywhere. The tide has reversed now.

As for interviews, I have read multiple Hacker News comments from people saying that their solution to rampant AI cheating has been to make interviews in-person again. So I’m not convinced that you’re right about that either…

Or people who were remote got called back to the office. Or they lost their job while living elsewhere and had to move to the Bay to find a new one. An increase in the net number of jobs is not the only possible explanation. The jobs might just be changing their geographic requirements.

Anecdotally, I know one couple who is selling their house to move back to a tech hub for better job opportunities. Another couple working from a rural location recently had one partner lose their big tech job. If the laid-off partner doesn’t get a new job in the next few months, I expect that they will start talking about moving, too.

32x earnings is high. 32x revenue is probably insane.

You didn’t ask me, but (aside from the effects of tech and social media) my #1 hypothesis is the rise in single parenthood. Parenting is so hard that I doubt pretty much everyone’s ability to do it well on their own.

It doesn’t seem insurmountable. A simple tax credit that reduces taxable income when someone spends money on journalism could make a real difference.

If you are okay with plastic, Gravitrax is similar, cheaper, and fun. My son and I like to build marble runs together.

I think it is a mistake not to celebrate the holidays. You don’t have to pretend that everything is okay in order to celebrate each other.

I am similar to your daughter in some ways but much older. Lately, I have felt that I have reached a dead-end in my career (though I am still employed).

I have a few thoughts that might be useful. One is the concept of ikigai: finding the intersection of what you enjoy, what you are good at, and what the world needs. For a long time, it seemed like building software hit all three marks for me, but in the last couple of years, it no longer seems to hit the last one very well.

When I was younger, my reaction to difficult things was to simply try harder. I’d throw myself at the problem repeatedly until it yielded. That can be the right thing to do, but with age I have gained enough wisdom to realize that sometimes it’s better to go after the lower-hanging fruit.

I am not suggesting that your daughter give up, but if I were you, I would help her identify a back-up plan. Help her get excited about the possibilities in case plan A does not work out. If she feels that she has other options, she may regain her confidence regardless of what happens.

Oh, and make sure that she knows how much you love and respect her no matter her job situation.

Merry Christmas.

P.S. Cold applying is probably a waste of time. Too many people are applying using AI bots. Find ways to network with real people if possible. Maybe contact career services at MIT?

Maybe, but the typical person I have worked with in this industry is too smart to do something for 10 years and not learn much during that time.

I am afraid that this “1 year of experience 10 times” mantra gets trotted out to justify ageism more often than not.

And the biggest problem of all: They expect it to be free.

It comes down to who is liable for the edge cases, I suspect. Adobe will compensate the end user if they get sued for using a Firefly-generated image (probably up to some limit).

Getting sued occasionally is a cost of doing business in some industries. It’s about risk mitigation rather than risk elimination.

Getty and Adobe offer models that were trained only on images that they have the rights to. Those models might meet Netflix’s standards?

It’s better than “RIFed,” at least.

What about requiring new employees to sign non-disparagement agreements? Maybe companies are getting “smarter” and requiring employees to agree to not say anything negative about their employer from day 1 … not sure about the legality here.

The ad load isn’t heavy to convince you to subscribe. It’s heavy because many readers use ad blockers, and the publisher wants to stay in business somehow.

Hijacking the back button, on the other hand, is just rude.

No, it’s not. Yes, we have Medicaid in the U.S., which makes everything free for the poor, but GP is saying that effectively everybody (including the not-so-poor) can get this level of care in Hong Kong. Definitely not true in the U.S.!

Pricing transparency also does not exist here as GP is claiming it does in Hong Kong. I am supposed to get certain imaging tests done every year, and I never know how much those will cost me until after I have already done them (in the U.S.). Maybe there is some way to get a non-binding estimate ahead of time, but I have never received such a thing and am not even sure it is possible. So I can’t easily “shop around”—or if can, tell me how because I (and I think most people) don’t know how.

I most certainly cannot pay $300 to see a specialist the same day in the U.S. I would have to pay that much to see my GP after waiting 6 weeks despite my employer paying more than $20k/year to insure my family. To see a specialist, I would have to wait a few months and probably pay $1-2k for one visit, not counting any tests or imaging that is ordered.

The description of Hong Kong’s system sounds amazing if true.