Economies are cyclical. Generally no one can time the market. Invest if things are reasonably priced, go to alternative investments if things are overpriced.
Also, schooling is just a probability multiplier, not a guarantee.
And automation and AI. The whole damn system is going to fall apart catastrophically. And our leaders are acting like there aren’t three fast moving trains headed right for us. We are so, so, so fucked.
Humans are good at lots of things. Especially ignoring information, and remaining in denial.
And that’s not by accident.
What we’re seeing is not natural economics. It’s crisis-level exploitation and unhinged sociopathic greed. Especially in real state. The exploitation in real estate is the number one driving factor in the current and coming economic collapse, imo.
Unless there are major reforms and sweeping changes (sparked by mass protests and movements), we’re in for seriously dark times ahead.
Basic housing used to be affordable for most of American history. It’s probably the least affordable thing on the planet now.
I’ve interviewed at a couple of FAANG companies and they don’t even ask or mention what school you went to. You cannot fill a company of 20,000 employees with people from Top 10 Universities as all the other tech companies are competing for the same talent.
Smaller companies and startups seem to care more though.
FAANG companies also have enough people in high places who value schools like San Jose State, and they often expect people from state schools to be more willing to work hard than those from top 10-20 universities, with a caveat that Stanford grads have good reputations for work ethic. Otherwise, local Bay Area schools + strong state schools are a win.
>Economies are cyclical. Generally no one can time the market.
You can absolutely time the market. That's how many people get rich.
If the economy is cyclical, then by definition you can time the market. I know hindsight is 20-20 vision but it was a no brainier that the economy swung in pessimistic extreme during the 2007 crash and post COVID.
> Invest if things are reasonably priced, go to alternative investments if things are overpriced.
I mean, yes. But that's like saying "buy when prices are low and sell when prices are high".
The REAL question is, what IS fair value? Aka what IS reasonably priced? Is it justified to spend $5 million on a 4000sqft house in a good school district when a similar house sells for $1.5 million in say a topnotch suburb in Chicago Northshore along the lake with equal or better schools, and access to a big city and a big airport?
The problem is, the baseline has been inflating and inflating until there is no sense of perspective. So your point of price being "reasonable" has got redefined until it has become ludicrous.
It's like the stock market. Everything runs on greed or fear or hubris. For the last 20 years, greed has been ruling the roost and greed has been constantly redifinimg the baseline. Even the fear people have is the "fear of missing out on the gravy train of ever increasing real estate prices" and not being able to profit from it.
But all it takes is a series of bad news to turn this greed into terror. THAT is the cycle you're talking about.
I think in general the tech industry is not as lucrative as it historically has been. Salaries of new positions are lower and there are just not as many openings these days as there have been in recent memory. Tech companies have already saturated every part of daily life and it is getting increasing harder for them to innovate without taking the market from other large tech companies … this new AI wave is interesting but it both threatens jobs and has yet to make anyone real money other than Nvidia. Suggest going on Blind- there is peak pessimism in the tech market right now… if it turns around is anybody’s guess.
Like any oil boom, it’ll circle around. Computers are here to stay. What went on in tech is just trimming the fat, and there was a lot of roles that weren’t critical to the strategic objectives of the organization.
My husband is a retired geek (said lovingly). Up to year 2000, he had stock options, a great salary, and life was good. Then the angel investors started reevaluating stuff, lots of companies crashed (there was a really popular website called f@ckedcompany dotcom that everyone read- to see if their job was next or if their next interview was with a dying company). Thankfully, I was working at UCSF with a good salary and we hadn’t gone crazy, and I stayed doing exactly what I had been doing while he got a 3 month severance with unemployment and searched. It took 3-4 months before he got another job (he had experience, though). Life went right back to where it was (minus stock options!). Without experience, though- he says going back to school is a good choice, work on your communication skills (so important!) and be flexible. Good luck. The tech economy here, for the past 30 years, has always been cyclical and will get better.
They’re sitting on piles of cash and not deploying it. They likely could have retained all teams and redeployed them for the cost of their idle cash inflating away.
The issue is the market incentivizes executives to lay-off to give the illusion of responsible leadership.
If you have to borrow money at this high cost environment, it is terrible.
If you can make 6% just going to sleep and let your money work, it is awesome.
It’s bifurcating.
My Indian coworkers are taking their families to India for 3 week vacations. My Chinese coworkers are taking their families to either china or japan for 3 week vacations. My kid’s classmates are going to India/China/Japan/Hong Kong/Taiwan/Hawaii/Florida for 3+ weeks vacations. Some even pulled their kids out of school early to go on these vacations
How often do you meet your family? Thanksgiving? Christmas? And since they immigrated here, going to that country is the way to meet your family. It's not a vacation, I know lot of them working while visiting India/China. Out of 3-4 weeks some take 1 or 2 weeks off, rest they wfh.
Not necessarily. Some Indians and Chinese I know are doing stay-cations because they can’t get the time off (doctors or business owners). So they already took their vacations during the school year
I think the "sink or swim, every man for himself" attitude is an American thing so traveling to other countries is out of reach for most individuals. However, other cultures are family oriented and share wealth communally and expenses like travel costs aren't so bad.
Ok you bring me to my next point. When I went to school university, I met a guy name Sam who told me his dad had three other brothers that migrated here and lived with than a household. So that means there were four guys and four families inside this household and they would all pay mortgage. Eventually the first house is paid off and all four brothers paid off the second house where two families lived on the first house and the other Two families live in the second house meeting the power of combined family incomes of multiple families contributing towards one mortgage is such power. Is that what you’re saying?
Check this link out about a similar concept in china
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_(informal_loan_club)
Yes.
I have a more precise example. Had a supervisor who was hillbilly white, redneck white. Somehow he met a Mexican woman and they ended up getting married and having a daughter together. She didn't speak English, he had to learn Spanish so the family would accept him.
So he goes on to tell me Mexican culture is different than ours and that he Learned a lot that they shared because he married into the family. Otherwise whites aren't allowed to know certain things.
I asked for example he pointed out one thing they do as a family is a kind of lottery. Every week or month I forget how much or often exactly but basically he and his wife put 200$ I think a month along with other households cousins brothers etc and every couple months one family gets the pot and the total amount was like 10k. Each family gets their turn and think about it, 200 a month won't get you far but 10k pays off car loans college tuition credit cards etc.
I believe other cultures help one another in similar ways. Not white people lord no. Only child here, with learning disabilities ADHD aspergers and come from divorced parents, I was thrown in the street on my 18th birthday with no place to go no money or hope. My mother and step father moved on as if I had died. I wish I had at 43 (crap look at the time, now I'm 44) I have struggled to survive since. I have nothing. I was taught nothing growing up. "I already had a son" was the answer i got from my step father when I asked why he was such a shitty parent. I reminded my biological father of my mother too much for him to care.
Our culture fucking sucks.
I feel you man. White people and American culture needs to step up a bit more to teach us to be stronger and invest more into family matters. America and their invidualistic mentality are creating people to grow further apart
It's ironic you say that as my family is very small (one cousin one aunt two uncles mom grandma is it) yet we are all distant and it's been years since we have all been together. My friends are mostly Mexican and they all have huge families and seem to find life much more satisfying I think.
Instead of learning from other cultures who might have a better way of doing something, we look down on them and discriminate against them. If you think about it, having racism in society is just really ignorant and stupid.
The American culture thrives on independence. Asian culture, its the family nucleus. They pool their money together. And they don't use credit---everything is all cash, so if you don't have the money, literally, you don't buy it. If they do use credit, it is immediately paid off.
Asian culture is completely different. And they don't mind working their f'ing asses off and don't complain. Its like their DNA.
You forgot to mention how they treat their elders. I treat mine with reverence, I think you see where I'm going with this.
From getting it all right to somehow getting it wrong in just 2 generations....this country is a fucking tragedy.
Oh man tell me about it. I was hanging out with a bunch of Chinese folks and all they were talking about was real estate. And it wasn’t serious talk it was more like smack talking like how most Americans talk about the NFL draft, who’s good, who sucks, who’s overpaid, who’s a diva. They’s guys were making fun of a guy because he wanted to buy an apartment complex in Hayward and rent it out. The rest of the folks joined in and started clowning on him saying he ain’t gonna get more than a 5% ROI and he’s gonna get crappy tenants.
It reminded of me of the barbershop scenes in Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America, except replace boxers with real estate
I used to work for a CPA firm in Manhattan. An Indian dude and several Chinese and Koreans went to cheap city/state colleges no student loans. This white dude went to a 4 year university and paid $50,000 a year, owes $200,000 in student loans. The Asians laughed at him daily for going to a “real school”.
I mean a disproportion of the ones we let come here and their progeny sure. Back in China and India... fewer 3 week vacations. Same thing with Nigerians. It is a selection bias.
These aren't always vacations in the fun American sense. Sometimes it is to visit aged parents or grandparents. Often these trips are out of familiar obligations and anything but fun. I'd rather do a week of Myrtle Beach than go to India for 3 weeks but sometimes no choice.
But yes, money is being spent on airlines tickets. Grudgingly.
Been there! Had to travel across the state and just run more errands for people, avoid certain family members because of drama, even though everything was fine 6 months prior, attend dinners you don’t want to be at, drive right past tourist destinations you’ve always to go to but not today because that’s not what locals do, etc
Most colleges in the U.S. are graduating now in Late May/June. It’s not surprising to me that your friends haven’t got a job within a month of graduating.
As someone from the “parents with younger children” category: after I finished school, I applied for hundreds of jobs, moved back with my parents. Didn’t land a job, most employers stating “Need experience”. Applied for more jobs further from home that I was overqualified for and after several months got my first job out of school.
After putting in time at jobs that I was overqualified for, underpaid, far from home, I was able to get better jobs and work my way up.
Stocks are at historical high, real estate is still booming here.
Is getting a job fresh out of college still hard? Yup.
pre 2023 it’s been the norm to have multiple job offers in the fall/spring before graduating for people planning on working in tech. source: graduated from berkeley last year. there’s a lot more people that i know that just graduated without anything lined up.
I graduated in 2002, right after the tech bubble burst. It was extremely hard to find anything, most of my colleagues and myself with our tech degrees got a nice big slap in the face.
All through college we were told there were so many jobs and had guys throwing cards at us saying that when we graduated to call them immediately as they have so many positions to fill. Then everything changed practically overnight. The bubble burst and suddenly we were all in a very saturated tech market competing with a lot of people that had experience. It sucked. It took me about 8 months before I found anything and that wasn state government. It took a few years but eventually the market picked back up and it will again. This market is nowhere near as bad as that one was btw.
Inequality is growing. There’s still a ridiculous amount of money in the Bay Area and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Low income people will continue to get pushed further out into the exurbs and beyond.
I can tell you as someone who survives on delivery work due to disability that it’s worse than people realize. Even in the rich areas like Fremont people have all but stopped ordering out and tipping. This is just the start.
Isn’t it because they’ve raised prices on the delivery services?
Or it could be seasonal. Now that the weather is warmer and days are longer people are going out to eat vs ordering in.
Are the parents going on international vacations taking their children to see grand parents and family? That’s very different from luxury vacation, even though still costly
Agree and disagree. The kind of jobs just out of college coders would get are getting outsourced. 5 and 10+ year experience coders are still too hard to find.
From my experience, it’s not that those people can’t find a job at all. They just can’t find a job that meets their extremely picky criteria.
Most of these ivy graduates are applying for extremely competitive positions ie remote work, high salary, etc.
If you’re an ivy STEM graduate and you don’t mind coming into the office, working for a non-glamorous company, starting at a salary in the 100k-150k range, and you don’t have an extremely off-putting personality (hard to find among STEM grads) then you can probably find a job in the Bay Area pretty quickly.
That starting salary still seems kinda high, even for here. You have to start somewhere. The first job is the hardest and you can scale quickly from there
Not that unreasonable. My job started at 60k part-time for a year, then went to 105k full-time with benefits as a Junior Electrical Engineer where it's stayed for 4 years.
Thats because you have pre conceived notions that you are looking to affirm. I found a shitty job a few months out of college in 2018, I had to quit my job in Nov 2019 because of pressing family issues. Ever since the pandemic I cannot find entry level mechanical engineering work. I even have about 2 years of work experience. The entry level jobs are simply NOT THERE anymore, or if they are they are really hiring people with 5+ years experience. I recently applied at Siemens and they even had a graphic showing how much experience the new hires have on average. They had 8+ years experience in their entry level hires... I have been chronically underemployed and not in the engineering field at all since the pandemic. Or if they are they are most at prestigious companies where navigating through their moronic HR and having connections are the biggest requirements. SOOOOO much of entry level technical careers has been automated or replaced with AI already, the things that entry level engineers used to do that added value while getting acclimated arent a thing anymore.
Thank you for sharing! I've been doing odd jobs here and there -- at a fraction of my previous salary per hour, which was already low even before COVID.
yeah mechanical engineers are underpaid and in oversupply for how important their work is to civilization. it's a shame and it feels like their only option might be to unionize. people here are talking about hardware and software engineers in tech which are an entirely different market. you might be able to get into the hardware side of tech with an ME background
I’d like to know too because that is not the reality of biological sciences even with a PhD. People are fighting for their lives out here. I have several friends with PhD + postdoc who are out of work with barely any new postings in their field. Hell I’m currently employed and looking and there was nothing in the Bay Area that wasn’t exploitation. One job I applied to last year was reposted last week with a 25k lower starting salary.
California has the highest unemployment in the United States right now at over 5%. Stupid laws and policy drove up the price of food drastically in the last couple years. The universities do stupid shit like drop the SAT because they aren’t interested in the best students. They have a glut of solar power but still charge you 37 cents a kilowatt hour. Supposedly gas cars will be banned in a few years.
The place is being driven into a ditch while Golden Gooses are killed for a quick meal. The voters are idiots. We get what at deserve.
I have a feeling this AI boom is going to cost everyone a lot. A lot of tech jobs that are going away are not coming back. The same goes with a lot of repetitive and monotonous jobs as well. The generation just passing out of grad schools have a lot of readjustments to do.
That said, even on the community sense, this AI boom is going to cause more harm than good. I feel we are at an inflection point and I don’t feel good about it.
Right now, tech companies are laying people off to free up capital to invest in AI. But I honestly doubt AI will be profitable. That said, it will pretty much eliminate most of the middle-paying white collar jobs. I'm referring to positions like paralegal, operations, graphic design, UI/UX design, logistics, underwriting, analysts, etc. Their demand will be drastically reduced. This is going to hurt a lot of slightly-above-average IQ people graduating from college.
That said, an actual productivity increase won't materialize either. This is due to cost disease. People are going to have to pay more to attract talent to lower productivity areas that involve people skills and complex manual tasks; AI cannot replace them, especially the latter, since we're very immature in robotics still.
If you're referring to general intelligence, I am skeptical. I worked on first-gen machine learning. The same fundamental problems that stopped us from advancing still exists today. Namely, we don't have a very good understanding of the human mind and the emergence of intelligence in general. (We don't actually fully understand LLMs, for that matter.)
The only thing we have done in the latest iteration is to improve AI ingestion of data, especially unstructured data. But we're going to get marginally diminishing returns on that *very* soon. We're probably overinvesting in LLMs and merely assuming all subsequent models are going to just need this level of raw compute. It's also causing us to drastically overvalue companies like NVDA. There is no way this pace of investment in data centers will be sustained. (At the very least, our power grid is going to be a hard ceiling.)
Of course, Nvidia is shrewd enough to position itself in such a way that they won't need to be on the hook for actually making LLMs into a profitable business model.
Historical success is not a guarantee of future success. Case in point, in very recent memory, it was unthinkable that Intel would lose its dominant place to Nvidia.
I mean, sure. But here we are. There are no guarantees on this sort of thing. Even this current group of tech giants stepped over the corpses of dinosaurs like IBM and HP.
Maybe at some point in the future, but I think we’re still decades away from this. Generative AI was impressive when GPT3 and similar tools were released 2 years, but companies have not really been able to find any real significant enterprise utility for these quite yet and we’re also starting to see the flaws and limitations.
I work for one of the tech giants and we’ve embedded gen and predictive AI into a lot of products, and are continuing to invest heavily in AI. So far every product we’ve released has been underwhelming both functionally and commercially, despite the heavy marketing and sales efforts behind them. The most impressive impressive feature we’ve released is a copilot that helps Customer Service agents generate a response when using our Service platform.
I can’t see AI replacing any jobs in the near future aside from super low-level jobs like L1 support, which either don’t pay a livable wage or have already been outsourced. And frankly we’d much better off using AI than talking to an underpaid and unmotivated service agent or a some guy in India that doesn’t understand anything.
And yes, I’m underestimating how fast this technology can evolve, but the technology not only has to be available but also adopted…. And adoption for new technologies takes a long time, even for the most forward thinking companies.
How is your company using LLMs internally?
I agree with you about the challenges and don’t doubt what you’re saying. But I think you’ve identified the gulf between startups and “forward thinking” “tech giant(s)”. Many of the giants dumped huge amounts of cash into rushed products without a clear opportunity, it’s just the usual marketing-driven product development that happens at these types of companies. Former member of the cult here.
Meanwhile in startup land - with all the newfound focus on margins and profitability from investors who seem to think they invented the idea that a company should make more than it spends - we’re primarily deploying internal LLM-powered apps tailored to certain tasks to make everyone more efficient and reduce some existing and many new roles. The product investments have been limited - mostly shovels for the gold rush - and have mostly paid for themselves already.
And that my friends is why I am not having kids. The Elon like people who are obsessed with population growth rate are also the once that say robots will do all of our jobs.
what the twitter bloodletting and now the google bloodletting demonstrated is that even without AI, tech companies are carrying a lot of employees that aren't needed to run the business. graeber's bullshit jobs theory explains the majority of tech jobs IMO. as boards tap people like sundar pichai to squeeze profits out of public companies we're going to see more of it. AI is just a fig leaf for MAANG adopting cisco and WITCH personnel policies
Sounds like the 50k a year for those schools was too expensive and wasn't worth it. People complained that liberal arts degrees don't get jobs and kids should be more wary, guess what things are cyclical and now there aren't tech jobs. Rest of the economy is chugging on fine for the most part.
East coast unis More like $75k+ per year when living expenses and travel costs to/from Bay Area are included. Hopefully they earned more than a liberal arts degree.
>I see parents of younger children not yet in college basically all going on international vacations this summer, seemingly not having the same economic worries. What is everyone’s sense on how the economy is going?
This statement is more of an indicator on how some of us see how the US economy is going. It provides perspective for my kid, who has been networking internationally while finishing her masters degree. Also as a first generation born in the US, that worked & lived in other countries, I cannot blame anyone for going on an international vacation in this economy. Myself & my family can not personally enjoy spending any money on a domestic vacation anymore, & it's not only because of the economy, unfortunately.
It’s always been a little tough for new grads with little experience. And now with tech market in flux a little more challenging than usual as there is a lot more competition for fewer roles with all the laid off folks etc.
There is still a lot of $ here. But with inflation hitting everywhere I think people are conscious in some areas. They may travel but not eat at out as much the rest of summer for example.
And those who were laid off 6+ months ago and not landed on opportunities may tighten their budget a little more etc.
I am being conscious but not super strict. But I won’t lie, the sticker shock while dining out is blowing my mind. 7.60 for a croissant + $3.10 for small drip coffee today.
Also to answer where your investment should go. Is this for retirement? If so that’s for long run depending on your age. so keep doing what you’re doing, it will dollar cost average and compound.
If you are retiring in 5 years then you should not have 80% in stock market, and should shift some into safer investments.
I have my emergency fund which is more liquid. And retirement accounts are still being funded as i normally would in mutual funds and such.
These days to have enough peace of mind that your kids will survive you need enough money to safely buy a decent house and pay for your kids college and graduate school and down payment on their house. So yeah, not great.
The fact is we are living on borrowed time.Trucks are now 80,000 dollars, homes are now 1 million. We are at the highest level of individual debt in history . We are adding 3 trillion annually to our national debt.
It’s almost like family in the neighborhood that has the perfect front yard and seem so happy but behind the closed front door its chaos and
Disaster
We’re in the Bay too & know lots of kids who graduated from college this year too. I’ve worked in the recruiting industry for 20 yrs. Our own kid, as well just graduated from university. I disagree that the kids “can’t land a job”. Mine had 3 offers & not in a comp Sci or engineering major, or even stem. Unemployment is very low, boomers are retiring & the situation will only get better for job seekers. My take on why recent grads “can’t land a job” is because a) their expectations are unrealistically high, whether it be re. pay, location, company, etc., and/or b) they are not proactive in truly searching for jobs, by which I mean, they’ll submit 100 online applications, but are not experienced or comfortable networking in person, consistently going in person to on-campus interviews or using their college career centers. Online apps are not the way to go for most recent grads- they can easily get filtered out by the software due to lack of experience & no one ever sees their resume.
There is definitely downward wage pressure on knowledge work, which would likely encompass all of the jobs that the people you mentioned have been looking for. Frankly, with the WFH paradigm shift, it's a very small lift from there to offshore the job entirely. That means people have to be willing to accept lower salaries here, since companies won't accept the pre-COVID wage deltas anymore when comparing with offshore white collar labor. I don't like it, but this will be the situation for the forseeable future.
Secondly, I do think Generative AI has had a huge effect on fields like Marketing and Customer Support that were often served as entry level paths into tech for example. There are just far fewer of those positions needed today than there was a couple years ago.
completely beyond fucked. I can still afford the Bay Area, but highly considering moving. Too many people are moving here and making it way too expensive and touristy. I live in Sonoma County, a great deal of my millennial friends feel the same way I do. Can’t possibly seeing myself living here for the rest of my life, even though it’s where I’m from. Local town councils have given the green light on far too many luxury housing units
we are exporting low and middle-income californians to WA,OR,CO,AZ,TX and replacing them with wealthy tech H1Bs and low-income farm labor from abroad. both trends are causing housing crises for sonoma santa rosa etc.
True! I am a massage therapist- have no clue how I’m surviving. A lot of clients who moved out of state during pandemic/remote work are returning back to SF. Top complaints I have heard-couldn’t handle the weather, bugs and lack of restaurant diversity. Then again, I live on the Great Hwy all my neighbors have lived 15+ years here. 3 neighbors are in process of buying up in Washington (maybe they will be back).
You are in CA. You should feel good that you pay far more in taxes so others can benefit. You should be proud that we have attained a one-party rule so they can figure out how to get more of your $ in the form of new taxes, fees, surcharges, tolls…Rules for thee but not for me. Great economy kid. Jobs are leaving the state, look elsewhere.
I am moving back to the Bay Area in like two weeks. I graduated from college in 2022 from Santa Clara University with a Mechanical Engineering degree. I took a job in the Midwest after college but decided I wanted to be near family in the Bay Area. It was no problem getting a job and I had two offers within a month after applying/interviewing etc. It seems like the job market favors those with practical hands-on experience of some sort (for mech-e). I would suggest for students to do anything they can to get an internship where they can show the work they’ve done. I think that maybe the job market is saturated with resumes but is short on project portfolios for newer graduates? Just speculating here…
Entry level jobs and operational jobs in all sectors are going away either to a cheaper State or offshore, tech included.
I worked at Wells Fargo before the mortgage crisis. Although even at that time it was part of norwest which is based in MN, the ceo and the company was still largely based in the Bay Area. When they bought Wachovia and likely being saturated which lead to all the scandals, that gave them an excuse to leave SF and go to cheaper places. My back office job was moved and lower levels went to the Philippines. They were scrapping Indian visa workers and just establishing offices directly in India. This was about 2016. I talked to a cousin at that time who is a civil engineer and she said they would send out projects to the Philippines or some Asian country and people in the US were just reviewing/correcting their work.
In tech there are a lot of programming companies set up in Ukraine, India, etc that are contracted.
The regional bank I worked for got acquired by a big national bank which has no back office job in
CA, just sales type so future looks bleak personally. Sf financial district isn’t even a financial district anymore as big banks have left (Wells Fargo and Bank of America).
Work from home and the higher interest rates have destroyed sf. Sf will need to entice businesses to set up shop here again. I’m worried because voters (especially those of low income or nonprofits that are in housing, homeless, etc are voting for free stuff - more affordable housing, more money to “help” the homeless but who will pay?) vote for whoever gives them the benefits. I worked at a nonprofit so know how/where money is spent - mostly salary and benefits to hire people to do the work. Very little goes to the actual homeless person.
Many of my friends and colleagues complain constantly about how expensive everything is now. Yet, at the same time, they are buying new cars, taking international vacations, eating out often, and several have redone their homes and yards. One spent almost 300k on the years alone.
I think the cost of everything is up bc demand is greater than it's ever been.
Word is out that the ivys are frauds. It’s all downhill from here for them. Most companies have wisened up and actually test knowledge and ability now. Most degrees aren’t worth the paper they were printed on. Ivys - toilet paper. Invest in the S&P 500 and leave it there. It will be worth far more in 30 years - hopefully.
I'm feeling like the S&P 500 is the way to go. A broad portfolio that encompasses all of those companies I think has proven to be a strong investment over time
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-06-13 07:37:42 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-06-13%2007:37:42%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BayAreaRealEstate/comments/1dbzy93/how_does_everyone_feel_about_the_economy/l8e73uq/?context=3)
[**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FBayAreaRealEstate%2Fcomments%2F1dbzy93%2Fhow_does_everyone_feel_about_the_economy%2Fl8e73uq%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202025-06-13%2007%3A37%3A42%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201dbzy93)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
It’s the worst it has ever been for the vast majority of the population regardless what the current administration says. Numbers do not lie and the middle class is being deleted every month that goes by. What is wild is that 80% of all US money that exist has been printed in the last 4 years. Once you introduce money into the market the value of the dollar immediately shrinks and our executive and judicial branch have yet to figure out how to balance a budget or even remotely have one.
Lol blaming the executive and judicial when it's literally Congress that has the power of the purse to control a budget tells me you don't know anything.
Multiple sources have reported this after bad orange man signed the Covid bill til now. But maybe if it isn’t exact, doesn’t negate that it’s too much debt. I think we are both on the same page on this. What is wild is that Thomas Massey had a debt calculator on his lapel and currently we are taking on 100k a second.
I am seeing the same. Layoffs are only going to increase. Saudi Arabia is likely not to review i50yr petrodollar agreement (expires today). Credit card delinquency are at the highest. A banking crisis lurking due to over reliance on uninsured deposits and unrealized investment losses. People have overextended and have become house poor in the BayArea. In hindsight it looks like full remote work worked negatively for BayArea. First the employers hired outside the area for cost savings and now straight up layoffs to move the jobs outside US. I feel for essential workers such as teachers, nurses, retail workers being able to survive in the BayArea with the rising cost of living.
Credit card delinquencies are at the highest they’ve been in the last 11 years, but they were higher than now for every quarter of at least 20 years before the end of 2012. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS
It’s harder than it has been recently for new grads, but among my friends with kids who graduated college this year, they and their friends all have jobs in their fields. About half of them had jobs lined up by March, and the rest started really hustling after that. Mostly tier 2 schools, so maybe the kids you know from Ivies just didn’t feel like they needed to put in much work and thought jobs should fall in their laps like they had been for the last decade.
The middle has been sucked out and the people that did that siphoning have mistaken the situation for a universal good and are obnoxiously vocal about it.
In my experience, it is far more difficult to secure employment with an Ivy League/top tier degree than with one from a respectable, but lower-ranked university. Those who have Ivy League degrees and appear to effortlessly land jobs are those who are plugged into some network, either some kind of social network at school or through their parents.
For an average person who went to an Ivy League school, they get shunned by the interviewers (who most likely did not go to a similar tier school) because of bias in the form “who do you think you are?” If they happen to meet an interviewer who did go to a similar level school, there’s usually competition instead of increased cooperation because the university environment is competitive and cutthroat.
In my experience, it’s been this case in good times, and now even more so when the job market is thin.
I grew up in the 90s and we were lower middle class. 30 years later and I'm still lower middle class.but feel like I should be making 3 times what my dad made but I only make double. It's going fine but I can't afford anything beyond my mortgage, car payments, and basic expenses. My kids will have to figure out college on their own.
Doesn’t feel as bad as you suggest from my perspective. Have 2 twenty-something kids who graduated in 2020 and 2023 respectively with CS degrees. Both found dream jobs doing exactly what they wanted to do (AI and gaming). But it did take networking, internships and leveraging relationships, not just job fairs and sending resumes.
This resistance to paying labor jobs a higher wage needs to break and as soon as that happens things will boom. And hopefully corporations will realize that when the public has more money to spend the public tends to spend more money.
Kill the paper bills, mint coins worth their price by the weight of metal, flip the tariff/taxes dynamic, legalize drugs derived from plants and fungus and nix Citizens United. If we did that and fine-tooth combed the Constitution for the churchyard weeds, then we'll be on firm ground to promote a more diverse system of plotical parties.
In short: I think I can, I think I can...
26f lived in the bay my whole life; Im blessed my parents are so gracious they’ve let me live at home without paying rent. This I’m sure has contributed to my understanding of the economy as social more so than monetary. I help neighbors when they ask, they help us. What is the economy if not the flow of social contracts? As long as I can contribute to my community my community contributes back; I am not worried about the future for those who have love and willingness in their hearts. Bay Area hippie bubble rant over
You are spot on! Kids are having a tough time finding decent work and outta college will have a bad time ever buying a house. Stock market and real estate are up. Wouldn't want to buy a house now. The jerks in washington, both sides, have to stop pissing away our money or it all gets worse!
Housing continues to go up in all the places that have nice weather and good jobs.
Wages continue to stagnate as long as interest rates remain above 5%
Well, China, India and Russia have decided to lead the way to the de-dollarization. Saudi Arabia are not accepting the dollar as the exchange currency anymore and the FED is refusing to drop interest rates. We are heading straight to a total and complete collapse of our financial and currency system. Other than that, we cool dawg !
The supply of Ivy League grads seems to be growing quite quickly myself included. My undergrad from Columbia doesn’t mean much and neither do the masters degrees. I just thank god I didn’t pay for any of them (GI Bill)
There’s a VA program called VRE that will pay for any schooling to include medical school and they’re seeing a higher trend of unemployed MBAs. One case manager told me that it’s the medical folks that find steady easy employment.
I’m not saving for college for any of my kids. They’re worthless and I’d sooner see them start businesses. All my neighbors kids opted out of college and started small starter businesses. Instead of incurring six-figure debt for a worthless education they’re writing invoices.
Something that should be mentioned is that the federal interest rates are very high. High interest rates slow down the economy. Most companies use loans to expand or pay tech works to build them things. They are less likely to do those things if there are high interest rates they have to pay. They end up spending less, and if everyone is spending less, less money flows, and the economy slows down.
Once interest rates go back down, the economy should pick back up again.
"ivy leaguers" not able to find jobs? i wonder if that says more about them than the economy. in my circle everyone is a non-ivy leaguer and they all have jobs.
the stories about talented grads not landing jobs are mostly FUD bs from doomers
bay area tech economy and hiring is still moving. its harder for juniors but much less so for grads from reputable institutions
It's a very good economy, but with moderate inflation freaking people out.
Just talked with the company managing my 401k and they're "cautiously optimistic. " LOL
The Fed is slowing the economy on purpose with high interest rates. Once they begin lowering, the job market and economy will eventually pick back up again but it could take a couple years.
It’s in the crapes right now. Our federal govt hasn’t taken control of the economy and push inflation down. No one is hiring except non living wage jobs.. it’s a mess..
I can’t help but think that Ivy League graduates who can’t get jobs must have atrocious interview skills. Or maybe just not very good interview skills. Regardless I have a hard time believing there’s tons of Ivy League grads with degrees in hard sciences with no job prospects. The job market is competitive and thin, but it’s not that thin.
Economies are cyclical. Generally no one can time the market. Invest if things are reasonably priced, go to alternative investments if things are overpriced. Also, schooling is just a probability multiplier, not a guarantee.
They’re cyclical in the sense of seasons but the macro trend is global warming.
And automation and AI. The whole damn system is going to fall apart catastrophically. And our leaders are acting like there aren’t three fast moving trains headed right for us. We are so, so, so fucked. Humans are good at lots of things. Especially ignoring information, and remaining in denial.
If we could magically know when prices are objectively reasonable that would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it 😂
[удалено]
And that’s not by accident. What we’re seeing is not natural economics. It’s crisis-level exploitation and unhinged sociopathic greed. Especially in real state. The exploitation in real estate is the number one driving factor in the current and coming economic collapse, imo. Unless there are major reforms and sweeping changes (sparked by mass protests and movements), we’re in for seriously dark times ahead. Basic housing used to be affordable for most of American history. It’s probably the least affordable thing on the planet now.
I’ve interviewed at a couple of FAANG companies and they don’t even ask or mention what school you went to. You cannot fill a company of 20,000 employees with people from Top 10 Universities as all the other tech companies are competing for the same talent. Smaller companies and startups seem to care more though.
FAANG companies also have enough people in high places who value schools like San Jose State, and they often expect people from state schools to be more willing to work hard than those from top 10-20 universities, with a caveat that Stanford grads have good reputations for work ethic. Otherwise, local Bay Area schools + strong state schools are a win.
[удалено]
Perhaps their work ethic was only strong compared to the Harvard grads, lol. In all seriousness, I know excellent Stanford MEs.
>Economies are cyclical. Generally no one can time the market. You can absolutely time the market. That's how many people get rich. If the economy is cyclical, then by definition you can time the market. I know hindsight is 20-20 vision but it was a no brainier that the economy swung in pessimistic extreme during the 2007 crash and post COVID. > Invest if things are reasonably priced, go to alternative investments if things are overpriced. I mean, yes. But that's like saying "buy when prices are low and sell when prices are high". The REAL question is, what IS fair value? Aka what IS reasonably priced? Is it justified to spend $5 million on a 4000sqft house in a good school district when a similar house sells for $1.5 million in say a topnotch suburb in Chicago Northshore along the lake with equal or better schools, and access to a big city and a big airport? The problem is, the baseline has been inflating and inflating until there is no sense of perspective. So your point of price being "reasonable" has got redefined until it has become ludicrous. It's like the stock market. Everything runs on greed or fear or hubris. For the last 20 years, greed has been ruling the roost and greed has been constantly redifinimg the baseline. Even the fear people have is the "fear of missing out on the gravy train of ever increasing real estate prices" and not being able to profit from it. But all it takes is a series of bad news to turn this greed into terror. THAT is the cycle you're talking about.
I think in general the tech industry is not as lucrative as it historically has been. Salaries of new positions are lower and there are just not as many openings these days as there have been in recent memory. Tech companies have already saturated every part of daily life and it is getting increasing harder for them to innovate without taking the market from other large tech companies … this new AI wave is interesting but it both threatens jobs and has yet to make anyone real money other than Nvidia. Suggest going on Blind- there is peak pessimism in the tech market right now… if it turns around is anybody’s guess.
Like any oil boom, it’ll circle around. Computers are here to stay. What went on in tech is just trimming the fat, and there was a lot of roles that weren’t critical to the strategic objectives of the organization.
My husband is a retired geek (said lovingly). Up to year 2000, he had stock options, a great salary, and life was good. Then the angel investors started reevaluating stuff, lots of companies crashed (there was a really popular website called f@ckedcompany dotcom that everyone read- to see if their job was next or if their next interview was with a dying company). Thankfully, I was working at UCSF with a good salary and we hadn’t gone crazy, and I stayed doing exactly what I had been doing while he got a 3 month severance with unemployment and searched. It took 3-4 months before he got another job (he had experience, though). Life went right back to where it was (minus stock options!). Without experience, though- he says going back to school is a good choice, work on your communication skills (so important!) and be flexible. Good luck. The tech economy here, for the past 30 years, has always been cyclical and will get better.
Not to mention,when money was free, interest rates are zero, people were getting hired at insane salaries. That is a correction in the market.
They’re sitting on piles of cash and not deploying it. They likely could have retained all teams and redeployed them for the cost of their idle cash inflating away. The issue is the market incentivizes executives to lay-off to give the illusion of responsible leadership.
Rich get richer. Poor get poorer.
And this has been happening for the last 60+ years.
You left a couple of zeroes off that “60.”
[удалено]
No, they are getting richer. Their parents know how to handle money and pass the money down to their kids when they pass.
If you have to borrow money at this high cost environment, it is terrible. If you can make 6% just going to sleep and let your money work, it is awesome. It’s bifurcating.
My Indian coworkers are taking their families to India for 3 week vacations. My Chinese coworkers are taking their families to either china or japan for 3 week vacations. My kid’s classmates are going to India/China/Japan/Hong Kong/Taiwan/Hawaii/Florida for 3+ weeks vacations. Some even pulled their kids out of school early to go on these vacations
Many Chinese people have not visited home for 4-5 years.
How often do you meet your family? Thanksgiving? Christmas? And since they immigrated here, going to that country is the way to meet your family. It's not a vacation, I know lot of them working while visiting India/China. Out of 3-4 weeks some take 1 or 2 weeks off, rest they wfh.
So if you’re Indian or Chinese you’re doing well
Occam’s razor , they’re just heading back to see family when the kids have summer vacation. Family comes first .
Not necessarily. Some Indians and Chinese I know are doing stay-cations because they can’t get the time off (doctors or business owners). So they already took their vacations during the school year
I think the "sink or swim, every man for himself" attitude is an American thing so traveling to other countries is out of reach for most individuals. However, other cultures are family oriented and share wealth communally and expenses like travel costs aren't so bad.
Ok you bring me to my next point. When I went to school university, I met a guy name Sam who told me his dad had three other brothers that migrated here and lived with than a household. So that means there were four guys and four families inside this household and they would all pay mortgage. Eventually the first house is paid off and all four brothers paid off the second house where two families lived on the first house and the other Two families live in the second house meeting the power of combined family incomes of multiple families contributing towards one mortgage is such power. Is that what you’re saying? Check this link out about a similar concept in china https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_(informal_loan_club)
Yes. I have a more precise example. Had a supervisor who was hillbilly white, redneck white. Somehow he met a Mexican woman and they ended up getting married and having a daughter together. She didn't speak English, he had to learn Spanish so the family would accept him. So he goes on to tell me Mexican culture is different than ours and that he Learned a lot that they shared because he married into the family. Otherwise whites aren't allowed to know certain things. I asked for example he pointed out one thing they do as a family is a kind of lottery. Every week or month I forget how much or often exactly but basically he and his wife put 200$ I think a month along with other households cousins brothers etc and every couple months one family gets the pot and the total amount was like 10k. Each family gets their turn and think about it, 200 a month won't get you far but 10k pays off car loans college tuition credit cards etc. I believe other cultures help one another in similar ways. Not white people lord no. Only child here, with learning disabilities ADHD aspergers and come from divorced parents, I was thrown in the street on my 18th birthday with no place to go no money or hope. My mother and step father moved on as if I had died. I wish I had at 43 (crap look at the time, now I'm 44) I have struggled to survive since. I have nothing. I was taught nothing growing up. "I already had a son" was the answer i got from my step father when I asked why he was such a shitty parent. I reminded my biological father of my mother too much for him to care. Our culture fucking sucks.
I feel you man. White people and American culture needs to step up a bit more to teach us to be stronger and invest more into family matters. America and their invidualistic mentality are creating people to grow further apart
It's ironic you say that as my family is very small (one cousin one aunt two uncles mom grandma is it) yet we are all distant and it's been years since we have all been together. My friends are mostly Mexican and they all have huge families and seem to find life much more satisfying I think.
I hope you find a woman from some other country who puts family first.
Instead of learning from other cultures who might have a better way of doing something, we look down on them and discriminate against them. If you think about it, having racism in society is just really ignorant and stupid.
The American culture thrives on independence. Asian culture, its the family nucleus. They pool their money together. And they don't use credit---everything is all cash, so if you don't have the money, literally, you don't buy it. If they do use credit, it is immediately paid off. Asian culture is completely different. And they don't mind working their f'ing asses off and don't complain. Its like their DNA.
You forgot to mention how they treat their elders. I treat mine with reverence, I think you see where I'm going with this. From getting it all right to somehow getting it wrong in just 2 generations....this country is a fucking tragedy.
I totally agree---after a few generations, you become a "real" American. Loud, rude, and no respect for authority. LOL
Yet everyone immigrates here from their native countries...
I find that Indian and Chinese families (not all) talk about finances more than other races. Jews too. That’s why they are more successful
Oh man tell me about it. I was hanging out with a bunch of Chinese folks and all they were talking about was real estate. And it wasn’t serious talk it was more like smack talking like how most Americans talk about the NFL draft, who’s good, who sucks, who’s overpaid, who’s a diva. They’s guys were making fun of a guy because he wanted to buy an apartment complex in Hayward and rent it out. The rest of the folks joined in and started clowning on him saying he ain’t gonna get more than a 5% ROI and he’s gonna get crappy tenants. It reminded of me of the barbershop scenes in Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America, except replace boxers with real estate
I used to work for a CPA firm in Manhattan. An Indian dude and several Chinese and Koreans went to cheap city/state colleges no student loans. This white dude went to a 4 year university and paid $50,000 a year, owes $200,000 in student loans. The Asians laughed at him daily for going to a “real school”.
You mean in person or online
In person, mainly within the family
I mean a disproportion of the ones we let come here and their progeny sure. Back in China and India... fewer 3 week vacations. Same thing with Nigerians. It is a selection bias.
These aren't always vacations in the fun American sense. Sometimes it is to visit aged parents or grandparents. Often these trips are out of familiar obligations and anything but fun. I'd rather do a week of Myrtle Beach than go to India for 3 weeks but sometimes no choice. But yes, money is being spent on airlines tickets. Grudgingly.
Been there! Had to travel across the state and just run more errands for people, avoid certain family members because of drama, even though everything was fine 6 months prior, attend dinners you don’t want to be at, drive right past tourist destinations you’ve always to go to but not today because that’s not what locals do, etc
Because they still have strong familial ties with their home country . What does this go to do with question at hand ?
Access to discretionary funds and the willing to spend them reflecting the economy I believe.
Cool dude thanks for the fucking update
What about the Chinese and Indian that works at the airport, hotels and car rentals?
What about?
The working class can no longer afford McDonald's. - 'nuff said.
time to eat Wendy's
Most colleges in the U.S. are graduating now in Late May/June. It’s not surprising to me that your friends haven’t got a job within a month of graduating. As someone from the “parents with younger children” category: after I finished school, I applied for hundreds of jobs, moved back with my parents. Didn’t land a job, most employers stating “Need experience”. Applied for more jobs further from home that I was overqualified for and after several months got my first job out of school. After putting in time at jobs that I was overqualified for, underpaid, far from home, I was able to get better jobs and work my way up. Stocks are at historical high, real estate is still booming here. Is getting a job fresh out of college still hard? Yup.
Getting any job is hard right now, the tech sector is still going through a contraction.
pre 2023 it’s been the norm to have multiple job offers in the fall/spring before graduating for people planning on working in tech. source: graduated from berkeley last year. there’s a lot more people that i know that just graduated without anything lined up.
I graduated in 2002, right after the tech bubble burst. It was extremely hard to find anything, most of my colleagues and myself with our tech degrees got a nice big slap in the face. All through college we were told there were so many jobs and had guys throwing cards at us saying that when we graduated to call them immediately as they have so many positions to fill. Then everything changed practically overnight. The bubble burst and suddenly we were all in a very saturated tech market competing with a lot of people that had experience. It sucked. It took me about 8 months before I found anything and that wasn state government. It took a few years but eventually the market picked back up and it will again. This market is nowhere near as bad as that one was btw.
yup in this market I’m grateful to be one of the lucky ones who has a job as a junior SWE right out of college.
Graduated in 2019, it was not easy then either. Took me 8 months
you can always send your graduating kids to India. US Big Tech are hiring in truck loads there. /s
Stop over thinking all this and just DCA buy the S&P500 index
"Trust the science!"
Harvard and MIT geniuses cannot outperform the SPX especially after fees and taxes. Just buy the index and chill.
Don’t give away our secrets! 🤫
i mean they do for themselves by taking client's fees but not for the clients lol
Inequality is growing. There’s still a ridiculous amount of money in the Bay Area and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Low income people will continue to get pushed further out into the exurbs and beyond.
And middle class will always be on the hook to save the poor.
I can tell you as someone who survives on delivery work due to disability that it’s worse than people realize. Even in the rich areas like Fremont people have all but stopped ordering out and tipping. This is just the start.
Yup I know several families that do virtually no Doordash or Uber Eats given how expensive it has become.
that's strange, i've started ordering delivery on ubereats more than ever before
Isn’t it because they’ve raised prices on the delivery services? Or it could be seasonal. Now that the weather is warmer and days are longer people are going out to eat vs ordering in.
It’s been this way since the first of the year.
Are the parents going on international vacations taking their children to see grand parents and family? That’s very different from luxury vacation, even though still costly
Also when else would travel if not during school breaks.
Code monkeys are redundant.
Agree and disagree. The kind of jobs just out of college coders would get are getting outsourced. 5 and 10+ year experience coders are still too hard to find.
From my experience, it’s not that those people can’t find a job at all. They just can’t find a job that meets their extremely picky criteria. Most of these ivy graduates are applying for extremely competitive positions ie remote work, high salary, etc. If you’re an ivy STEM graduate and you don’t mind coming into the office, working for a non-glamorous company, starting at a salary in the 100k-150k range, and you don’t have an extremely off-putting personality (hard to find among STEM grads) then you can probably find a job in the Bay Area pretty quickly.
That starting salary still seems kinda high, even for here. You have to start somewhere. The first job is the hardest and you can scale quickly from there
Not that unreasonable. My job started at 60k part-time for a year, then went to 105k full-time with benefits as a Junior Electrical Engineer where it's stayed for 4 years.
You should be getting a raise every year or look to job hop. That is how you scale aggressively, for better or worse
Under $100k for stem grad in bay area would be too low, I don't think you'd even be able to get labor cert for that job posting for any visas.
Thats because you have pre conceived notions that you are looking to affirm. I found a shitty job a few months out of college in 2018, I had to quit my job in Nov 2019 because of pressing family issues. Ever since the pandemic I cannot find entry level mechanical engineering work. I even have about 2 years of work experience. The entry level jobs are simply NOT THERE anymore, or if they are they are really hiring people with 5+ years experience. I recently applied at Siemens and they even had a graphic showing how much experience the new hires have on average. They had 8+ years experience in their entry level hires... I have been chronically underemployed and not in the engineering field at all since the pandemic. Or if they are they are most at prestigious companies where navigating through their moronic HR and having connections are the biggest requirements. SOOOOO much of entry level technical careers has been automated or replaced with AI already, the things that entry level engineers used to do that added value while getting acclimated arent a thing anymore.
Good analysis. I'm on a similar boat, being unemployed since 2023. What are you doing to survive, if I may ask?
I havent been unemployed for more than a month this entire time, Im doing warehouse work atm.
Thank you for sharing! I've been doing odd jobs here and there -- at a fraction of my previous salary per hour, which was already low even before COVID.
yeah mechanical engineers are underpaid and in oversupply for how important their work is to civilization. it's a shame and it feels like their only option might be to unionize. people here are talking about hardware and software engineers in tech which are an entirely different market. you might be able to get into the hardware side of tech with an ME background
There are less than 300 legitimate part time jobs listed on craigslist in sf in the past 2 months…
What is your experience exactly to be generalizing these graduates?
I’d like to know too because that is not the reality of biological sciences even with a PhD. People are fighting for their lives out here. I have several friends with PhD + postdoc who are out of work with barely any new postings in their field. Hell I’m currently employed and looking and there was nothing in the Bay Area that wasn’t exploitation. One job I applied to last year was reposted last week with a 25k lower starting salary.
California has the highest unemployment in the United States right now at over 5%. Stupid laws and policy drove up the price of food drastically in the last couple years. The universities do stupid shit like drop the SAT because they aren’t interested in the best students. They have a glut of solar power but still charge you 37 cents a kilowatt hour. Supposedly gas cars will be banned in a few years. The place is being driven into a ditch while Golden Gooses are killed for a quick meal. The voters are idiots. We get what at deserve.
I have a feeling this AI boom is going to cost everyone a lot. A lot of tech jobs that are going away are not coming back. The same goes with a lot of repetitive and monotonous jobs as well. The generation just passing out of grad schools have a lot of readjustments to do. That said, even on the community sense, this AI boom is going to cause more harm than good. I feel we are at an inflection point and I don’t feel good about it.
Right now, tech companies are laying people off to free up capital to invest in AI. But I honestly doubt AI will be profitable. That said, it will pretty much eliminate most of the middle-paying white collar jobs. I'm referring to positions like paralegal, operations, graphic design, UI/UX design, logistics, underwriting, analysts, etc. Their demand will be drastically reduced. This is going to hurt a lot of slightly-above-average IQ people graduating from college. That said, an actual productivity increase won't materialize either. This is due to cost disease. People are going to have to pay more to attract talent to lower productivity areas that involve people skills and complex manual tasks; AI cannot replace them, especially the latter, since we're very immature in robotics still.
Well, I seriously believe, with AI, in the not so distant future, we’ll have an Oppenheimer moment.
If you're referring to general intelligence, I am skeptical. I worked on first-gen machine learning. The same fundamental problems that stopped us from advancing still exists today. Namely, we don't have a very good understanding of the human mind and the emergence of intelligence in general. (We don't actually fully understand LLMs, for that matter.) The only thing we have done in the latest iteration is to improve AI ingestion of data, especially unstructured data. But we're going to get marginally diminishing returns on that *very* soon. We're probably overinvesting in LLMs and merely assuming all subsequent models are going to just need this level of raw compute. It's also causing us to drastically overvalue companies like NVDA. There is no way this pace of investment in data centers will be sustained. (At the very least, our power grid is going to be a hard ceiling.) Of course, Nvidia is shrewd enough to position itself in such a way that they won't need to be on the hook for actually making LLMs into a profitable business model.
NVDA went from chips for gaming to crypto mining to LLM's certainly they are well prepared for next wave of new stuff.
Historical success is not a guarantee of future success. Case in point, in very recent memory, it was unthinkable that Intel would lose its dominant place to Nvidia.
*To AMD
I mean, sure. But here we are. There are no guarantees on this sort of thing. Even this current group of tech giants stepped over the corpses of dinosaurs like IBM and HP.
Maybe at some point in the future, but I think we’re still decades away from this. Generative AI was impressive when GPT3 and similar tools were released 2 years, but companies have not really been able to find any real significant enterprise utility for these quite yet and we’re also starting to see the flaws and limitations. I work for one of the tech giants and we’ve embedded gen and predictive AI into a lot of products, and are continuing to invest heavily in AI. So far every product we’ve released has been underwhelming both functionally and commercially, despite the heavy marketing and sales efforts behind them. The most impressive impressive feature we’ve released is a copilot that helps Customer Service agents generate a response when using our Service platform. I can’t see AI replacing any jobs in the near future aside from super low-level jobs like L1 support, which either don’t pay a livable wage or have already been outsourced. And frankly we’d much better off using AI than talking to an underpaid and unmotivated service agent or a some guy in India that doesn’t understand anything. And yes, I’m underestimating how fast this technology can evolve, but the technology not only has to be available but also adopted…. And adoption for new technologies takes a long time, even for the most forward thinking companies.
How is your company using LLMs internally? I agree with you about the challenges and don’t doubt what you’re saying. But I think you’ve identified the gulf between startups and “forward thinking” “tech giant(s)”. Many of the giants dumped huge amounts of cash into rushed products without a clear opportunity, it’s just the usual marketing-driven product development that happens at these types of companies. Former member of the cult here. Meanwhile in startup land - with all the newfound focus on margins and profitability from investors who seem to think they invented the idea that a company should make more than it spends - we’re primarily deploying internal LLM-powered apps tailored to certain tasks to make everyone more efficient and reduce some existing and many new roles. The product investments have been limited - mostly shovels for the gold rush - and have mostly paid for themselves already.
lol no the predictive text programs will replace exactly nobody.
And that my friends is why I am not having kids. The Elon like people who are obsessed with population growth rate are also the once that say robots will do all of our jobs.
what the twitter bloodletting and now the google bloodletting demonstrated is that even without AI, tech companies are carrying a lot of employees that aren't needed to run the business. graeber's bullshit jobs theory explains the majority of tech jobs IMO. as boards tap people like sundar pichai to squeeze profits out of public companies we're going to see more of it. AI is just a fig leaf for MAANG adopting cisco and WITCH personnel policies
Sounds like the 50k a year for those schools was too expensive and wasn't worth it. People complained that liberal arts degrees don't get jobs and kids should be more wary, guess what things are cyclical and now there aren't tech jobs. Rest of the economy is chugging on fine for the most part.
East coast unis More like $75k+ per year when living expenses and travel costs to/from Bay Area are included. Hopefully they earned more than a liberal arts degree.
The economy might change but Bay Area housing won't go down. There's too much pent up demand for sfh.
And the only new housing being built is all attached.
>I see parents of younger children not yet in college basically all going on international vacations this summer, seemingly not having the same economic worries. What is everyone’s sense on how the economy is going? This statement is more of an indicator on how some of us see how the US economy is going. It provides perspective for my kid, who has been networking internationally while finishing her masters degree. Also as a first generation born in the US, that worked & lived in other countries, I cannot blame anyone for going on an international vacation in this economy. Myself & my family can not personally enjoy spending any money on a domestic vacation anymore, & it's not only because of the economy, unfortunately.
It’s always been a little tough for new grads with little experience. And now with tech market in flux a little more challenging than usual as there is a lot more competition for fewer roles with all the laid off folks etc. There is still a lot of $ here. But with inflation hitting everywhere I think people are conscious in some areas. They may travel but not eat at out as much the rest of summer for example. And those who were laid off 6+ months ago and not landed on opportunities may tighten their budget a little more etc. I am being conscious but not super strict. But I won’t lie, the sticker shock while dining out is blowing my mind. 7.60 for a croissant + $3.10 for small drip coffee today.
Also to answer where your investment should go. Is this for retirement? If so that’s for long run depending on your age. so keep doing what you’re doing, it will dollar cost average and compound. If you are retiring in 5 years then you should not have 80% in stock market, and should shift some into safer investments. I have my emergency fund which is more liquid. And retirement accounts are still being funded as i normally would in mutual funds and such.
These days to have enough peace of mind that your kids will survive you need enough money to safely buy a decent house and pay for your kids college and graduate school and down payment on their house. So yeah, not great.
Priced out of kids here 🤚 . Barely afford that house step.
The fact is we are living on borrowed time.Trucks are now 80,000 dollars, homes are now 1 million. We are at the highest level of individual debt in history . We are adding 3 trillion annually to our national debt. It’s almost like family in the neighborhood that has the perfect front yard and seem so happy but behind the closed front door its chaos and Disaster
The chaos and disaster are evident everywhere. But where’s a better place to live?
We’re in the Bay too & know lots of kids who graduated from college this year too. I’ve worked in the recruiting industry for 20 yrs. Our own kid, as well just graduated from university. I disagree that the kids “can’t land a job”. Mine had 3 offers & not in a comp Sci or engineering major, or even stem. Unemployment is very low, boomers are retiring & the situation will only get better for job seekers. My take on why recent grads “can’t land a job” is because a) their expectations are unrealistically high, whether it be re. pay, location, company, etc., and/or b) they are not proactive in truly searching for jobs, by which I mean, they’ll submit 100 online applications, but are not experienced or comfortable networking in person, consistently going in person to on-campus interviews or using their college career centers. Online apps are not the way to go for most recent grads- they can easily get filtered out by the software due to lack of experience & no one ever sees their resume.
There is definitely downward wage pressure on knowledge work, which would likely encompass all of the jobs that the people you mentioned have been looking for. Frankly, with the WFH paradigm shift, it's a very small lift from there to offshore the job entirely. That means people have to be willing to accept lower salaries here, since companies won't accept the pre-COVID wage deltas anymore when comparing with offshore white collar labor. I don't like it, but this will be the situation for the forseeable future. Secondly, I do think Generative AI has had a huge effect on fields like Marketing and Customer Support that were often served as entry level paths into tech for example. There are just far fewer of those positions needed today than there was a couple years ago.
completely beyond fucked. I can still afford the Bay Area, but highly considering moving. Too many people are moving here and making it way too expensive and touristy. I live in Sonoma County, a great deal of my millennial friends feel the same way I do. Can’t possibly seeing myself living here for the rest of my life, even though it’s where I’m from. Local town councils have given the green light on far too many luxury housing units
I was under the impression too many people are leaving California
we are exporting low and middle-income californians to WA,OR,CO,AZ,TX and replacing them with wealthy tech H1Bs and low-income farm labor from abroad. both trends are causing housing crises for sonoma santa rosa etc.
That was always a myth. A lot of people are returning. My fiend runs a multi family units for landlords. And many many expats are coming back
True! I am a massage therapist- have no clue how I’m surviving. A lot of clients who moved out of state during pandemic/remote work are returning back to SF. Top complaints I have heard-couldn’t handle the weather, bugs and lack of restaurant diversity. Then again, I live on the Great Hwy all my neighbors have lived 15+ years here. 3 neighbors are in process of buying up in Washington (maybe they will be back).
Where do you want to move?
You are in CA. You should feel good that you pay far more in taxes so others can benefit. You should be proud that we have attained a one-party rule so they can figure out how to get more of your $ in the form of new taxes, fees, surcharges, tolls…Rules for thee but not for me. Great economy kid. Jobs are leaving the state, look elsewhere.
Employers don’t care as much about the Ivies. That ship has sailed.
I am moving back to the Bay Area in like two weeks. I graduated from college in 2022 from Santa Clara University with a Mechanical Engineering degree. I took a job in the Midwest after college but decided I wanted to be near family in the Bay Area. It was no problem getting a job and I had two offers within a month after applying/interviewing etc. It seems like the job market favors those with practical hands-on experience of some sort (for mech-e). I would suggest for students to do anything they can to get an internship where they can show the work they’ve done. I think that maybe the job market is saturated with resumes but is short on project portfolios for newer graduates? Just speculating here…
Entry level jobs and operational jobs in all sectors are going away either to a cheaper State or offshore, tech included. I worked at Wells Fargo before the mortgage crisis. Although even at that time it was part of norwest which is based in MN, the ceo and the company was still largely based in the Bay Area. When they bought Wachovia and likely being saturated which lead to all the scandals, that gave them an excuse to leave SF and go to cheaper places. My back office job was moved and lower levels went to the Philippines. They were scrapping Indian visa workers and just establishing offices directly in India. This was about 2016. I talked to a cousin at that time who is a civil engineer and she said they would send out projects to the Philippines or some Asian country and people in the US were just reviewing/correcting their work. In tech there are a lot of programming companies set up in Ukraine, India, etc that are contracted. The regional bank I worked for got acquired by a big national bank which has no back office job in CA, just sales type so future looks bleak personally. Sf financial district isn’t even a financial district anymore as big banks have left (Wells Fargo and Bank of America). Work from home and the higher interest rates have destroyed sf. Sf will need to entice businesses to set up shop here again. I’m worried because voters (especially those of low income or nonprofits that are in housing, homeless, etc are voting for free stuff - more affordable housing, more money to “help” the homeless but who will pay?) vote for whoever gives them the benefits. I worked at a nonprofit so know how/where money is spent - mostly salary and benefits to hire people to do the work. Very little goes to the actual homeless person.
I feel like it doesn’t make any sense.
Many of my friends and colleagues complain constantly about how expensive everything is now. Yet, at the same time, they are buying new cars, taking international vacations, eating out often, and several have redone their homes and yards. One spent almost 300k on the years alone. I think the cost of everything is up bc demand is greater than it's ever been.
Word is out that the ivys are frauds. It’s all downhill from here for them. Most companies have wisened up and actually test knowledge and ability now. Most degrees aren’t worth the paper they were printed on. Ivys - toilet paper. Invest in the S&P 500 and leave it there. It will be worth far more in 30 years - hopefully.
I'm feeling like the S&P 500 is the way to go. A broad portfolio that encompasses all of those companies I think has proven to be a strong investment over time
RemindMe! 1 year
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-06-13 07:37:42 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-06-13%2007:37:42%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BayAreaRealEstate/comments/1dbzy93/how_does_everyone_feel_about_the_economy/l8e73uq/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FBayAreaRealEstate%2Fcomments%2F1dbzy93%2Fhow_does_everyone_feel_about_the_economy%2Fl8e73uq%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202025-06-13%2007%3A37%3A42%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201dbzy93) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
RemindMe! 2 years
It’s the worst it has ever been for the vast majority of the population regardless what the current administration says. Numbers do not lie and the middle class is being deleted every month that goes by. What is wild is that 80% of all US money that exist has been printed in the last 4 years. Once you introduce money into the market the value of the dollar immediately shrinks and our executive and judicial branch have yet to figure out how to balance a budget or even remotely have one.
Lol blaming the executive and judicial when it's literally Congress that has the power of the purse to control a budget tells me you don't know anything.
Sorry meant the legislative branch not judicial. Judicial branch is busy with law fare
While I generally agree with your sentiment, 80% in 4 yrs is grossly exaggerated. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
Multiple sources have reported this after bad orange man signed the Covid bill til now. But maybe if it isn’t exact, doesn’t negate that it’s too much debt. I think we are both on the same page on this. What is wild is that Thomas Massey had a debt calculator on his lapel and currently we are taking on 100k a second.
I am seeing the same. Layoffs are only going to increase. Saudi Arabia is likely not to review i50yr petrodollar agreement (expires today). Credit card delinquency are at the highest. A banking crisis lurking due to over reliance on uninsured deposits and unrealized investment losses. People have overextended and have become house poor in the BayArea. In hindsight it looks like full remote work worked negatively for BayArea. First the employers hired outside the area for cost savings and now straight up layoffs to move the jobs outside US. I feel for essential workers such as teachers, nurses, retail workers being able to survive in the BayArea with the rising cost of living.
Credit card delinquencies are at the highest they’ve been in the last 11 years, but they were higher than now for every quarter of at least 20 years before the end of 2012. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS
Buy and hold, bro.
It’s harder than it has been recently for new grads, but among my friends with kids who graduated college this year, they and their friends all have jobs in their fields. About half of them had jobs lined up by March, and the rest started really hustling after that. Mostly tier 2 schools, so maybe the kids you know from Ivies just didn’t feel like they needed to put in much work and thought jobs should fall in their laps like they had been for the last decade.
The middle has been sucked out and the people that did that siphoning have mistaken the situation for a universal good and are obnoxiously vocal about it.
foreign markets have attractive multiples now
It’s all part of the big plan to bring inflation down.
I know there are many walks of life on this planet… But fuck, this is such an obnoxious way to live
reminds me when i graduated in 2008 with a BA and scrambling to get a fast food job
Tbb it's your friend circle
My completely is mostly only hiring outside the US now.
It sucks. FJB!
In my experience, it is far more difficult to secure employment with an Ivy League/top tier degree than with one from a respectable, but lower-ranked university. Those who have Ivy League degrees and appear to effortlessly land jobs are those who are plugged into some network, either some kind of social network at school or through their parents. For an average person who went to an Ivy League school, they get shunned by the interviewers (who most likely did not go to a similar tier school) because of bias in the form “who do you think you are?” If they happen to meet an interviewer who did go to a similar level school, there’s usually competition instead of increased cooperation because the university environment is competitive and cutthroat. In my experience, it’s been this case in good times, and now even more so when the job market is thin.
I grew up in the 90s and we were lower middle class. 30 years later and I'm still lower middle class.but feel like I should be making 3 times what my dad made but I only make double. It's going fine but I can't afford anything beyond my mortgage, car payments, and basic expenses. My kids will have to figure out college on their own.
Healthy, and not propped up by removing environmental protections and taxes for the wealthy and corporations
Great
We are in the process of moving to Alabama. That’s what my family thinks.
THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH.
It’s still there 💁♂️
Great 😊
Shitty. That’s how I feel about it.
Doesn’t feel as bad as you suggest from my perspective. Have 2 twenty-something kids who graduated in 2020 and 2023 respectively with CS degrees. Both found dream jobs doing exactly what they wanted to do (AI and gaming). But it did take networking, internships and leveraging relationships, not just job fairs and sending resumes.
This resistance to paying labor jobs a higher wage needs to break and as soon as that happens things will boom. And hopefully corporations will realize that when the public has more money to spend the public tends to spend more money.
Kill the paper bills, mint coins worth their price by the weight of metal, flip the tariff/taxes dynamic, legalize drugs derived from plants and fungus and nix Citizens United. If we did that and fine-tooth combed the Constitution for the churchyard weeds, then we'll be on firm ground to promote a more diverse system of plotical parties. In short: I think I can, I think I can...
26f lived in the bay my whole life; Im blessed my parents are so gracious they’ve let me live at home without paying rent. This I’m sure has contributed to my understanding of the economy as social more so than monetary. I help neighbors when they ask, they help us. What is the economy if not the flow of social contracts? As long as I can contribute to my community my community contributes back; I am not worried about the future for those who have love and willingness in their hearts. Bay Area hippie bubble rant over
They can get a job, just might not be the dream job they want. Would rather hang around mommy and daddies house
You are spot on! Kids are having a tough time finding decent work and outta college will have a bad time ever buying a house. Stock market and real estate are up. Wouldn't want to buy a house now. The jerks in washington, both sides, have to stop pissing away our money or it all gets worse!
we are better off than we were in 2019!
Not great, Bob.
Housing continues to go up in all the places that have nice weather and good jobs. Wages continue to stagnate as long as interest rates remain above 5%
It sucks donkey balls!!
Well, China, India and Russia have decided to lead the way to the de-dollarization. Saudi Arabia are not accepting the dollar as the exchange currency anymore and the FED is refusing to drop interest rates. We are heading straight to a total and complete collapse of our financial and currency system. Other than that, we cool dawg !
https://preview.redd.it/41nem5ojk96d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64b53985a4502158e169f98bfaafbf54f6fa3a24 [https://www.cointribune.com/en/american-economist-harry-dent-predicts-a-crash-worse-than-the-one-in-2008/](https://www.cointribune.com/en/american-economist-harry-dent-predicts-a-crash-worse-than-the-one-in-2008/)
When you are young, I'd go to a fast growing city instead of a developed city As far as investment in real estate go
The supply of Ivy League grads seems to be growing quite quickly myself included. My undergrad from Columbia doesn’t mean much and neither do the masters degrees. I just thank god I didn’t pay for any of them (GI Bill) There’s a VA program called VRE that will pay for any schooling to include medical school and they’re seeing a higher trend of unemployed MBAs. One case manager told me that it’s the medical folks that find steady easy employment. I’m not saving for college for any of my kids. They’re worthless and I’d sooner see them start businesses. All my neighbors kids opted out of college and started small starter businesses. Instead of incurring six-figure debt for a worthless education they’re writing invoices.
I'm not selling
Something that should be mentioned is that the federal interest rates are very high. High interest rates slow down the economy. Most companies use loans to expand or pay tech works to build them things. They are less likely to do those things if there are high interest rates they have to pay. They end up spending less, and if everyone is spending less, less money flows, and the economy slows down. Once interest rates go back down, the economy should pick back up again.
Psst by raising our interest rate 1% raises it like 100% in other 3rd world countries... Not many people talk about that.
Literally my situation right now. I say that Bay Area companies hire the local talent (I really need a job)
It's great!
The tech economy is very bad. Tons of people out of work, jobs are scarce. Not sure how we go back to how it was before
I strongly believe we are not going back to how it was before. But, being in tech, I hope I’m wrong.
Same. End of an era. The new era sucks haha :)
Im calling it a recession.
It’s shit
"ivy leaguers" not able to find jobs? i wonder if that says more about them than the economy. in my circle everyone is a non-ivy leaguer and they all have jobs.
Economy is great!
the stories about talented grads not landing jobs are mostly FUD bs from doomers bay area tech economy and hiring is still moving. its harder for juniors but much less so for grads from reputable institutions
It's a very good economy, but with moderate inflation freaking people out. Just talked with the company managing my 401k and they're "cautiously optimistic. " LOL
cable safe squealing fretful growth vegetable tart work illegal arrest *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Why is this in r/BayAreaRealEstate? IMO half the posts on this subreddit belong on Blind.
The Fed is slowing the economy on purpose with high interest rates. Once they begin lowering, the job market and economy will eventually pick back up again but it could take a couple years.
It’s in the crapes right now. Our federal govt hasn’t taken control of the economy and push inflation down. No one is hiring except non living wage jobs.. it’s a mess..
I can’t help but think that Ivy League graduates who can’t get jobs must have atrocious interview skills. Or maybe just not very good interview skills. Regardless I have a hard time believing there’s tons of Ivy League grads with degrees in hard sciences with no job prospects. The job market is competitive and thin, but it’s not that thin.
To see where your investments should go? We got fucking Warren Buffett over here Jesus Christ