http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=667481


in reply to Re^3: "Tired of FUD" Followup: Where the Jobs Are
in thread "Tired of FUD" Followup: Where the Jobs Are

I see 10K jobs in each. I only have to be 1 of 10K. Sounds like pretty good odds to me, as long as I've worked to be the best I can be.

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Re^5: "Tired of FUD" Followup: Where the Jobs Are
by menolly (Hermit) on Feb 12, 2008 at 00:46 UTC

    If Plugh coders make up 2% of the population -- which is unrealistic, but hypotheticals are easier with round numbers -- there are 2K Plugh coders in Florin, and 20K in Guilder.

    Given 10K jobs per country, Plugh coders in Florin can name their price; Plugh coders in Guilder have to be in the top half of the field,and may have trouble finding another position if they lose theirs or don't like the conditions. Or they move to Florin, where it'll be easier to get a gig. But without per-capita job data, how are they to know it's easy to find Plugh work in Florin?

      The whole Per Capita issue is a red herring. There is a false underlying assumption when we talk about it.

      It doesn't matter if there are 10,000 openings in a city of 1Million or just 20,000. The question is how many people qualify for that job in the city of 1Million vs 20,000 and how many of them are looking for a job. So to make any real sense of per-capita data (and make any conclusions from it), you'd need a lot of meta data that you don't have. What's the unemployment rate. If the city of 20,000 has 15,000 plugh programmers and the city of 1Million has 10,001 then the 'per capita' data will falsely lead you to assume that you are better off in the burg than the city.

      I'm with Merlyn on this. Having per-capita data does more harm than good. It's a useless statistic without loads of demographic data.

      --
      I used to drive a Heisenbergmobile, but every time I looked at the speedometer, I got lost.
Re^5: "Tired of FUD" Followup: Where the Jobs Are
by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 12, 2008 at 00:22 UTC

    Competition... though, for some reason, I suspect you're only pretending to be dense.

      Your presupposition is that I'm dense. Maybe I'm more aware than most. Really, you need only one job. So your goal should be to be ahead of the herd. The only people who need fear that are the people who aren't.
        We can't all be from Lake Wobegon.

        Wouldn't that make your presupposition that the best person for the job gets hired? Which seems pretty silly to me. If you assume that random people get chosen (which seem true from my company ;) ) then the odds are better where there are more jobs per capita (assuming that there are is the same percentage of qualified programmers in each area). Maybe the last assumption is false, but i still like my odds at getting one of 10k jobs while only competing with 100 people, versus the odds of getting on of 10k jobs while competing with 20k people ;)

        I'm sure we'd all like to live in your fairy tale land of the one true job that is just waiting for us to come along and take it!


        ___________
        Eric Hodges