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The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

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Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#21

Post by petercooper »

robrenaud wrote: post #13
ovi256 wrote: post #4

>My clients were amazed by how much productivity they could squeeze out of their people in the downturn. Overworking only works for a few months, after which people's health will start to suffer. All these managers are deluding themselves if they think this is going to keep on indefinitely. OTOH, if some people were underworked and they are just starting to pull their weight, that's another matter.

If you can make your employees more productive, I would think you would want more of them, to capture more of the market. That is, if employee output increases, but the cost per employee are constant, you are better off hiring more employees until the marginal output of the next employee reaches the cost of that employee. But what do I know, I am just an engineer ;).

Employee productivity isn't the most important variable in such a case. More important is the productivity and capacity of the bottlenecks and constraints within your production system (and that's not always the workers themselves).

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#22

Post by j_baker »

"For about five years now, particularly after dinners that featured wine, human-resources executives have been telling me, "We've come to realize we don't really want most employees for the whole of their careers. We want their particular set of skills when we need them — but then things change so fast, we don't need that particular skill set any more." And many of these are companies famous for being good at H.R. "

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but the solution would seem to be not hiring people based solely on short-term requirements. In other words, hire people that are good no matter what the requirements are.

But then again, this is HR departments we're talking about.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#23

Post by karzeem »

Is 0% unemployment a good end in and of itself? Sometimes industries go through changes that reduce the number of people required to get the work done. It seems like if you're too aggressive about driving unemployment to 0, you end up with all your companies looking like GM.

That isn't to say that unemployment is desirable, and at current levels, it's almost certainly destructive. But the measures required to take unemployment from, say, 2-3% to 0 may cause more harm than good.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#24

Post by petercooper »

btilly wrote: post #16
j5eb6ach wrote: post #5

We have a situation of 'haves' and 'have nots'. A corporation of 100 employees has every reason to prefer that those employees work at 120% (50 hrs/wk). Our society would benefit if instead the corporation hired 20 additional employees, and everyone worked at 100%.

Your math ignores retraining costs. A corporation of 100 employees that hires 20 more will in fact temporarily have just created extra work for the existing 100 for some time before they see a benefit from the hires. And given normal turnover, retraining would become a higher portion of that corporation's costs permanently, resulting in permanently decreased productivity.

It forgets wasted time, too. In most situations that are not manual labor, you can't just trim 10 hours from one person's schedule, give them to someone else, and expect equivalent or better performance. In most clerical positions, time is spent accumulating knowledge, socialising, and waiting for process related bottlenecks.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#25

Post by petercooper »

karzeem wrote: post #23

Is 0% unemployment a good end in and of itself? Sometimes industries go through changes that reduce the number of people required to get the work done. It seems like if you're too aggressive about driving unemployment to 0, you end up with all your companies looking like GM. That isn't to say that unemployment is desirable, and at current levels, it's almost certainly destructive. But the measures required to take un…

Total employment is certainly bad from a productivity POV. For a better overall level of production, it's necessary for any system (even one as large as the entire labor market) to have some idle capacity to cope with growth and expedition.

That said, this is an economic standpoint, rather than a social one, but hopefully I'm not being too opaque with my bias :-)

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#26

Post by petercooper »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #2

Since 1975, the upper class has done a great job of making sure the proceeds of economic growth and progress go mainly to them. Increased productivity is good only when the benefits are shared.

By "upper class," are you referring to the rich? If so, you're noting that the rich are doing a good job at staying rich. That's unsurprising because they can take bigger risks without losing their shirts due to their wealth buffer.

In the recent Sunday Times Rich List (of the top 1000 richest people in the UK), 751 were "self-made" with only 249 having inherited their wealth. Most of the billionaires had humble beginnings. There is no defined "upper class" or level of wealth that's impossible for people born into the least economically beneficial situations to attain.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#27

Post by pw0ncakes »

petercooper wrote: post #26
pw0ncakes wrote: post #2

Since 1975, the upper class has done a great job of making sure the proceeds of economic growth and progress go mainly to them. Increased productivity is good only when the benefits are shared.

By "upper class," are you referring to the rich? If so, you're noting that the rich are doing a good job at staying rich. That's unsurprising because they can take bigger risks without losing their shirts due to their wealth buffer. In the recent Sunday Times Rich List (of the top 1000 richest people in the UK), 751 were "self-made" with only 249 having inherited their wealth. Most of the billionaires had humble begi…

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. The two factors are strongly correlated, but not the same thing.

The upper class is a tightly-connected group of people who work to consolidate power, social resources, and wealth within their own ranks. Most of them are parasites and a lot of them are criminals whose politics are regressive.

Most rich people are technically upper-middle class. In fact, if you weren't born upper-class, upper-middle is as high as you can go (your children and grandchildren have a shot, though).

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#28

Post by petercooper »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #27
petercooper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "upper class," are you referring to the rich? If so, you're noting that the rich are doing a good job at staying rich. That's unsurprising because they can take bigger risks without losing their shirts due to their wealth buffer. In the recent Sunday Times Rich List (of the top 1000 richest people in the UK), 751 were "self-made" with only 249 having inherited their wealth. Most of the billionaires had humble begi…

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. The two factors are strongly correlated, but not the same thing. The upper class is a tightly-connected group of people who work to consolidate power, social resources, and wealth within their own ranks. Most of them are parasites and a lot of them are criminals whose politics are regressive. Most rich people are technically upper-middle class. I…

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich.

I had to ask (and semi-assume) because, generally, "upper class" is based significantly on wealth and fame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_upper_class

Your definition seems to cover a more conspiratorial and political superclass (perhaps in an old European sense of "upper class"), and while I believe an insidious old-boys network of sorts exists, it can't be confused with the typical rich "upper class" that isn't inaccessible to newcomers.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#29

Post by starkfist »

petercooper wrote: post #28
pw0ncakes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. The two factors are strongly correlated, but not the same thing. The upper class is a tightly-connected group of people who work to consolidate power, social resources, and wealth within their own ranks. Most of them are parasites and a lot of them are criminals whose politics are regressive. Most rich people are technically upper-middle class. I…

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. I had to ask (and semi-assume) because, generally, "upper class" is based significantly on wealth and fame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_upper_class Your definition seems to cover a more conspiratorial and political superclass (perhaps in an old European sense of "upper class"), and while I believe an insidious old-boys network of sorts…

From other posts I've surmised that pw0ncakes lives in an Edith Wharton "Age of Innocence" version of New York with the scenes and characters updated for modern readers.

Re: The Strategic Imperative Not to Hire Anybody

#30

Post by wrs »

pw0ncakes wrote: post #27
petercooper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "upper class," are you referring to the rich? If so, you're noting that the rich are doing a good job at staying rich. That's unsurprising because they can take bigger risks without losing their shirts due to their wealth buffer. In the recent Sunday Times Rich List (of the top 1000 richest people in the UK), 751 were "self-made" with only 249 having inherited their wealth. Most of the billionaires had humble begi…

No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. The two factors are strongly correlated, but not the same thing. The upper class is a tightly-connected group of people who work to consolidate power, social resources, and wealth within their own ranks. Most of them are parasites and a lot of them are criminals whose politics are regressive. Most rich people are technically upper-middle class. I…

> if you weren't born upper-class, upper-middle is as high as you can go (your children and grandchildren have a shot, though)

Therefore one can be born upper-class to upper-middle parents? Otherwise that doesn't make sense.

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