None of the hard-to-fill positions could be filled by someone with "training" - those are positions that require experience and talent. Both of those can be cultivated (I'm not so pessimistic to believe they can only be imported, or are formed by a population of fixed size), but training/education isn't going to do it. Which is maybe the fault of education, or maybe it's just that we ask too much of education. But try-harder techniques (like increasing funding) won't result in the qualitative changes to make training a problem-fixer.
The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
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Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#22If everyone is competing for the top 1%, you're never going to solve the problem.
And of the people with the skills you want, why should they work at your crappy company instead of starting their own?
Try this on for size: "Here, I'll give you a salary and maybe a tiny fraction of equity to come work at my company. But you're over 30 so you'll need to be re-educated."
Why aren't you jumping at the chance!? Oh, maybe other people feel like you do. Imagine that.
If you want to hire talent, you need to pay for it. If you can't pay, then it's no surprise. (Would you work for me for what you're offering to me to work for you?) If you won't pay, then you're not "desperate for talent", you just have a preference for cheap labor.
You're not entitled to a cheap labor pool just so you can live out your personal aspirations to be a CEO. And I like how you expect other people to pay for all that education and training they'll need.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#23Maybe offensive but this is perhaps the 12th or 13th article related to income-inequality or Bush tax cuts that I've seen on HN in the past month or two. Frankly, these articles are getting old and I'm seeing almost no new perspectives. Most are written in a kind of, "this is unfair, let's do something about it," tone and the authors rarely have any real basis for understanding how wealth is created (or how the super wealthy sustained their wealth or created such massive new wealth over the past 4 decades). It just sort of gets old to read the same thing and then ultimately, read many of the same righteous comments on here.
Any chance someone is open to some new politics topics instead of this and healthcare?
How about abortion? Immigration maybe? Military spending? Education costs? Unemployment and underemployment?
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#24None of the hard-to-fill positions could be filled by someone with "training" - those are positions that require experience and talent. Both of those can be cultivated (I'm not so pessimistic to believe they can only be imported, or are formed by a population of fixed size), but training/education isn't going to do it. Which is maybe the fault of education, or maybe it's just that we ask too much of education. But tr…
I agree. I think people need to try harder to improve their situation. But that's easy for me to say because I'm employed. Maybe one creative (okay, not that creative) solution is for people who are employed to try harder to help those who are not so fortunate. If we have the training to keep income coming in and food on the table, certainly we have the ability to train others.
Although this will not generally directly benefit the trainer financially, it can help the overall situation of a community which benefits the trainer in the long-run. Plus there are the non-monetary benefits of helping someone less fortunate.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#25You'd be surprised at what is being done in the government to reeducate disabled and hurt soldiers. Some of the engineers at my company are working with some 20 veterans who have no training in software. Unfortunately they're being lead and managed by beaurocrats who also have no software experience. It's so awesome to see the kinds of pratriotism displayed but in many things government the effort/focus is in the wrong direction. They should have hired software folk to train these guys and lead them.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#26He is 1 step away from saying that the government should be telling people what education to take, and what jobs they'll fill. (Remember Gattaca?) Some industries (not all!) have a shortage of workers. This has -always- been the case. Each generation feels a different pull when they are children, and so has different goals for later in life. We even encourage children to pick a career in Elementary school! By the tim…
"1 final note: It's a LOT easier to find people for jobs if you offer better salary. Nobody ever mentions that when they're complaining that they can't find people to hire. Instead, they blame the 'market' or the 'government' and keep their offered salaries low."
This is something I see over and over. You'll a NYT article or whatever about how this or that business is _totally_ hiring! And then they mention what they're offering in terms of pay, and it's no wonder.
In times like these, companies can offer less pay and rely on people being grateful that they have jobs. There's no real security beyond "I have a job right now," but you've got paychecks for now. Commensurate with that, companies offer less pay and fewer benefits to new hires.
My guess is that a substantial number of people find these offers laughable and, structuring their lives around what the role used to be worth (e.g. children, aging parents, mortgage), they can't afford it. However, it costs a company next to nothing to leave those offers open.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#27None of the hard-to-fill positions could be filled by someone with "training" - those are positions that require experience and talent. Both of those can be cultivated (I'm not so pessimistic to believe they can only be imported, or are formed by a population of fixed size), but training/education isn't going to do it. Which is maybe the fault of education, or maybe it's just that we ask too much of education. But tr…
Not that long ago, I read several quotes along these lines:
"We have plenty of openings, and we're getting 5 times as many resumes as before, but only half as many qualified applicants."
Most of the quotes were from people in medicine, IT, and similarly complex fields. The problem isn't a lack of "training" of the sort that could be covered by a community college course and a 3-month internship; the problem is a lack of "training" of the sort that comes through years of hard work and experience, combined with an entitlement mentality that says "the world owes me a job" instead of "I will develop skills that are useful to an employer, and therefore be able to get a job".
As you say, this is not a problem that will be solved by increasing funding.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: zerohedge is a bunch of hysterical Austrian economist nutcases.
Ad hominem, try again.
Perhaps it's just bias, but i have real trouble taking any advice or getting news from somebody who goes by the pseudonym "Tyler Durden", or anybody who ends up getting published by said person.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#29The per-pupil spending graph reminds me of the healthcare spending as a percent of gdp graph. They are both symptoms of the very American ideology that the only way to improve anything is to blindly spend more money on it.
I doubt that it is an American ideology - it seems to be something pretty much everybody does.
Yes, but speaking as a citizen of the USA, we spend the most with the least progress to show for it.
Re: The irony of the US economy: no jobs and no one to hire
#30I question his (somewhat oblique) assertion that people in their 30's are too old to train effectively in new skillsets.
Absolutely. I'm in my 30s and haven't noticed any decrease in my ability to continue learning. It's definitely a challenge to discard your old mental models if/when they start to become hindrances, but far from impossible. My Mom (nearly 60) went back to school last year to learn occupational therapy, and has been doing great. It's not rocket surgery by any stretch, but it's exactly the kind of retraining that's rele…
I have 30 years of experience in software development, with a computer science degree from the University of Illinois. I applied for a position at SEOmoz a few months ago. No phone screen interview. The CEO's comments seem to imply a very selective criteria was used to hire, and that it took them months. We don't know what criteria was used by SEOmoz to hire those candidates. I found his comments regarding older people slower to learn new stuff "enlightening".