Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should be able to get one at this price if you go abroad.
There ain't a place in the world where a new 911 costs $33k USD.
Woosh!
American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
51–60 of 98 posts
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#52> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know this. In my observation, it's very few companies. Also, I don't think it's as easy as just saying it should happen. For one thing, hiring has changed. A lot of tech workers from my generation tended to be fa…
Great point. I'm in my thirties, my boss when I started was a mainframe systems programmer for years. They had critical business process on an unsupported platform and this guy and a colleague wrote a pretty decent TCP/IP stack for it. They also were experts in some random business processes that were ridiculously important. They were jack of all trades. When I got there they had moved into monitoring and management and were reasonably capable NT and HPUX performance guys.
Now there's literally a platoon of BAs, java programmers and others maintaining the successor system.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there were a special government program to help me to import one at this price so I didn't have to pay so much for a local one...
We could call it the 911-B program. I suppose we should write the law such that you have to prove you checked out the local dealerships first. You could even pay someone to look and then not bother checking to see if they actually did: http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/18/so-thats-how-h-1b-visa-fr...
Outstanding. Do you suppose I could just lease it for a few years at a fraction of the ordinary monthly payments? That way I can drive it extra hard and skip changing the oil and all that annoying stuff and then at the end of the lease, I just send it back. That'd be fantastic.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#54> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
>Unless they're saying they literally can't find qualified GenX workers at any price- That is actually the truth for many niche skilled labor positions. Manufacturing plants are starving for a lack of experienced E&I (electronics and instrumentation) technicians but they can't even attract the next generation despite offering ~$25/hr to apprentices. Being an E&I tech in a chemical plant is a dirty job but not in a ba…
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Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
My father used to tell me stories about the days when India was heavily aligned with the Soviet Union. Apparently, there would be approximately 5 people to stamp your visa. The excesses of socialism are never lost on me, because of this story.
I'm sorry, I meant socialism is a great system where everyone is equal! In fact it's so equal, that I want you to have sex with my wife.
You've posted many uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, and we've had to warn you about this more than once before. I actually just banned your account for this, but on reflection, decided to unban you since many of your comments are also the civil, substantive kind. The latter are the kind we want here. Would you please restrict yourself to those?
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
My father used to tell me stories about the days when India was heavily aligned with the Soviet Union. Apparently, there would be approximately 5 people to stamp your visa. The excesses of socialism are never lost on me, because of this story.
> Apparently, there would be approximately 5 people to stamp your visa. I'd say that this is still the case. Last time I visited India, when I was exiting the parking garage at the airport, there was an automated machine to let you out. Give them the ticket, put money in, the barrier opens, and you drive out. But there were also five people by this machine. One to take the ticket, another to take the money, and then…
What did you expect? India has a huge population. They all need jobs to support their families. So the local gov't has it covered. Would you prefer three of those five people being engaged in a riot and the other two, on gov't payroll, beating the shit out of them? I guess this pretty much ilustrates the difference between East and West. Mr. Rushdie has a book with short stories on that.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#57Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could call it the 911-B program. I suppose we should write the law such that you have to prove you checked out the local dealerships first. You could even pay someone to look and then not bother checking to see if they actually did: http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/18/so-thats-how-h-1b-visa-fr...
Outstanding. Do you suppose I could just lease it for a few years at a fraction of the ordinary monthly payments? That way I can drive it extra hard and skip changing the oil and all that annoying stuff and then at the end of the lease, I just send it back. That'd be fantastic.
Of course, of course. Otherwise, what would be the point? The best part is eventually the local dealerships will have to offer the same prices and same, eh, liberal maintenance policies if they want to have any hope of selling their wares.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read in the newspaper that Boeing has a skills gap with their machinists. The skilled older ones are retiring, and the younger ones aren't experienced enough. There are few in the middle. What happened? When they had layoffs, the machinist union rules specified the ones with the least number of years of service got laid off first. This left Boeing with a very unbalanced workforce.
Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors. One reason why I am skeptical when people say unions built the middle class. Employer competition probably does more for that than unions.
If a company has a bimodal age distribution, the question to be asking is "Why didn't they think about hiring someone occasionally over the last 15-20 years?" Of course, the answer is that no corporate manager wanted to miss his number by hiring another person.
So, the managers kicked the problem down the road and hoped that someone else would take the hit.
> Seems like unions benefit just the insiders and seniors.
Everybody gets old, you know.
Unions implemented this policy because companies were wiping out older workers because they were more expensive in terms of wage and healthcare.
> Employer competition probably does more for that than unions.
Agreed. But the same anti-union people are also against anti-monopoly regulations.
Re: American Firms Want to Keep Older Workers a Bit Longer
#60> With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Knowledge transfer should be baked into the day-to-day culture of work, not something desperately scrambled for during someone's last week. Those few companies with meaningful training and mentoring programs know t…
I feel it's a cycle of mistrust. Companies don't want to spend as much time training junior workers or apprentices because they often leave shortly after achieving proficiency. But this lack of perceived loyalty comes from a rational viewpoint. After the shift in business culture in the 80s, where workers were laid off in bulk even if the company was in good financial health, workers woke up to the new reality. (To b…
Cycle of mistrust or not, this would likely work better than gradually increasing the retirement age as it happens in Europe. The free market always provides better solutions than state or superstate bureaucrats. In the EU they just throw regulation at any problem.