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Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

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Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#221

Post by vmarsy »

ythl wrote: post #208
mamon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is higly correlated with regulatory laws governing agriculture in US and Europe. EU has much more strict policies, limits on pesticide use, no GMO rule, plus specific laws to protect traditional (sometimes centuries old) product recipies from being faked by inustrial-scale producers, replacing natural ingredients with chemicals. That's why food generaly tastes much better in Europe.

> replacing natural ingredients with chemicals. How is natural vanillin any better than synthetic vanillin? Matter is matter. Organic molecules are identical whether a plant produced them or a chemist.

Not the parent, but that's a good example : I cook with vanilla sticks sometimes, and it's just 100x more flavorful: I can leave the vanilla stick "marinate" overnight in my preparation and the flavor will be much different than pouring vanilla extract (real or synthetic). Synthetic vanilla sticks simply do not exist, and I think the impurities and other things in those vanilla sticks contribute to the taste.

Vanilin itself is a good example of the exact same molecules, but for instance I remember on chemistry class discussing banana flavor extract: it tastes "like banana" but it's not actually the same chemical component. Making a cake with that chemical and labeling it banana bread could be done and probably won't taste the same.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#222

Post by Chris2048 »

emodendroket wrote: post #220
Chris2048 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many companies need "basic code"? Many need much more than that. Your phrasing makes it seem like advancing beyond that point is just as easy, but it's not. What happens when you need to debug, and you don't understand anything because you copy-pasted from a tutorial? How long would an employer be willing to wait while you google for the right tutorial telling you how to fix the problem?

Have you ever looked into how many businesses do nothing but set up WordPress sites for customers with light customization? Quite a lot of companies want such services.

"Writing code is not really hard" isn't the same thing. Maybe you can bang together such a site without really coding, as soon as you do, even simple PHP or HTML it gets harder. I'd also take "writing code" to mean writing code, not just a subsection of particularly easy code - you can't advertise as "software developer" in general if all you can do is wordpress.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#223

Post by uremog »

jobu wrote: post #211
yomly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor hygiene leading to food poisoning too

This comment made me think of Chipotle. I haven't eaten there since all the food poisoning problems. Chipotle is a big chain and got national attention for the poisonings, but in the age of Yelp a few people getting sick can tank a small local business. Better to pay a little more for decent employees that care about their job and also give them benefits so they don't come in sick and spread disease.

Don't you think it's likely to be a supply chain problem in this case though, seeing as multiple locations were affected simultaneously?

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#224

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

specialist wrote: post #191
dorfsmay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine an expensive chef to setup processes that allows cheaper personnel to keep producing quality party. Slowly that process will suffer from time rot (eg: different floor that requires a diff cooking, but cheaper labour can't figure it out), also innovation will suffer. I see the exact same thing in dev envs, and even more so in ops/sysadmin. Cheaper unskilled labour going through old fashion processes with…

"...that allows cheaper personnel to keep producing quality party. Slowly that process will suffer from time rot." I'm not so sure. I think its binary. I think there's always a touch, a qwan, assumed knowledge, skill & craft, or something that's not captured in the SOP. The master baker in the shop next door made the most delicious brioches. Left to start her own catering company. Whereas her trained replacements, us…

Joel Spolsky spoke about this several years ago, using Jamie Oliver as an example. In a nutshell, as long as everything stays constant, the process can turn out excellent food. The problem is that unless you manage the living hell out of your supply chain, the inputs change all the time and it takes a lot of skil to compensate.

Continuing with your pancake example: the way I make bread in summer is different than in winter. In summer, I expect the dough to rise faster. If it's a really humid or dry day, I'll do things differently. If the flour isn't the same as last time, I can compensate for that, etc...

Process either requires tight feedback to work well, or all variables have to be minimized.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#225

Post by logicallee »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #206
logicallee wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say it wasn't difficult - just that someone could be trained in how to do the tasks in a bakery that someone else has already come up with, in 90 minutes. Imagine someone who has no programming experience (0, in any programming language, does not know what a loop or an if statement is) and that you have 90 minutes to train them to join your development team. Come on.

Maybe if they are doing prep work or washing dishes, that's fine. If you've never made a loaf of bread and don't know the steps, you aren't training them in 90 minutes. The first loaf likely won't even bake - heck, a lot of baked goods take an hour or two. The dough for croissants takes some hours in itself. You might have 15 different sorts of breads you make (admittedly some will use a master dough). And this is as…

I got a lot of push-back for my comments and Googled, completely neutrally, the exact searches "how long does it take to become a baker" (without quotation marks) and "how long does it take to become a software developer" (since the statement I replied to used 'softwere development.')

The former gave me confidence that I could be hired as a baker apprentice tomorrow and learn on the job over a matter of months. The latter gave me confidence that if you hire the staff of a bakery or coffeeshop and want to get them all started as junior software developers, they won't be productive junior software developers after a day, a week, or a month (unless someone happens to already code as a hobby.) They just can't start making contributions.

It's completely incomparable. Plus, I very specifically talked about joining an existing process of manufacturing to someone else's recipes and designs - not developing new ones.

Junior software developers don't do anything that you can train most servers (waiters/waitresses), dishwashers, bakers, bus drivers, pizza delivery people, to start doing after a few hours or a couple of days of training.

I completely stand by my statement that no, software development doesn't happen the same way. It's just different.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#226

Post by logicallee »

emodendroket wrote: post #215
logicallee wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the comment I replied to said: >The drive to employ cheaper, okay workers in action. Applies to software development as well. That says "software development" and was the only reason for my comment. There are no "cheaper, okay" non-developers (as in, the 90%+ of the population who does not know how a loop or if statement works in any language) you can train in under a day to do "software development". It was…

> “It depends on the needs of the website,” said Boris Epstein, co-founder of the tech recruiting firm Binc. “Coding academies and boot camps” — short courses lasting a few weeks to several months — “graduate people who are perfectly fine.” As a result, wages for web developers nationally increased only modestly during the same period, though the rate of increase was most likely higher at more tech-heavy companies, w…

you quoted "a few weeks to several months" as a "short" course in web development. how long do you think a "short course" is in baking?

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#228

Post by grinnbearit »

coldtea wrote: post #198
grinnbearit wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profits come from satisfying people's values [1], if more "higher quality" doesn't lead to more profits, it isn't valued. As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers. [1] negative externalities aside

> Profits come from satisfying people's values Even bigger profits come from selling crap to people. Especially if you help build and sustain a whole culture that teaches them to have low expectations from what they buy, lure them with BS ads that tout unsubstantial products to high heavens, etc... > As an aside, I'd be skeptical of Artists who produce "Inspiring work" which refuse to find any takers. So like van Gog…

One man's "crap" is another's fine dining.

I believe values are subjective and we choose what we value with our wallets.

> teaches them to have low expectations from what they buy

Do you not think that this is a paternalistic view of the world? What makes your opinion on what's "good" better than mine or anyone else's?

> So like van Gogh who died penniless?

I'd bet that there are several artists who died penniless who aren't as well remembered, skepticism is not the same as condemnation.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#229

Post by eli_gottlieb »

wyclif wrote: post #161
metaphor wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> In general, Americans don't value high quality food. What precisely qualifies food as "high quality", and what meaning does value have if it's allowed to be subjectively redefined by others?

The popularity of Whole Foods in the USA seems to contradict that statement.

Whole Foods is repackaged Costco crap that people pay markup for.

Re: Pastry Chefs Are in Demand, Why Aren’t Wages Rising?

#230

Post by clock_tower »

jessaustin wrote: post #87
clock_tower wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To think that people yell at me when I say that the US's higher-than-Europe GDP doesn't mean that the US has a higher quality of life...

Haha yelling is a sign of confusion...

Good point! People -- including people who should really know better, like government economists -- have been sold GDP as the economy's high score. (Think of Il Sorpasso, when Italy's GDP first passed England's.) It was never intended as more than a best guess, and is one of the many temporary measures for WWII that are still with us today...
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