9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft. • Hacker News Board

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#131

Post by FrojoS » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 8:54 PM UTC

sixtofour wrote: post #95

MoreTuple wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every person that I know that has considered starting their own business has decided against it for one reason only, health insurance. They have always been the obtainer in chief of health insurance for the family and it is too risky to go without. I strongly suspect that a public health option would blow the job market wide open between folks who want to retire but can't because health insurance is idiotically expen…

"I strongly suspect that a public health option would blow the job market wide open ..." Excellent argument for real reform to health insurance access.

Well, I learned the same logic in school. I found it compelling, too. And I guess I still do. Our teacher said: 'Because we have this safety net here in Germany, we can take more risks.'

Yet, I see more risk taking in the US than in Germany. I suppose, its rather that Europeans are less risk taking, so they also support a better safety net. I know its not my business, but I can't help being scared about the idea, that the most dynamic country in the western world might slow down because of copying Europe.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#132

Post by chc » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 8:57 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #45

chc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have no skills, they never had very good prospects. Even "simple" farmhands need to have some skill at tending to the farm. It's not like you could just stand by a conveyor belt with a dumb look on your face and call yourself a factory worker for very long.

No-one who's ever farmed would say farming is unskilled. Just as I'm sure, programming would look just like typing to a farmer.

That was my point, and why I wrote "simple" in quotation marks. Even jobs that are viewed as "unskilled" generally involve some kind of skill — farmhands, factory workers, customer service representatives, etc. Any job that truly requires no skill essentially has no job security anyway, as the worker literally brings nothing to the table. The actual complaint here is that the demand for various skills waxes and wanes.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#133

Post by eurohacker » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 8:57 PM UTC

one would think that unemployed people would be motivated to study engineering to get a job,

but that does not seem to be the case ..

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#134

Post by samlevine » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:00 PM UTC

sixtofour wrote: post #80

In a reply elsewhere here, I said "people do need to suck it up and learn new skills." How many people know how to learn new skills, or are able to recognize quickly that they need to do so? Is that a missing element in our education? You spend 12 years drinking what they're selling, and then suddenly you're expected to know how to re-tool yourself. Shouldn't education be structured in part to teach and reinforce sel…

> Is that a missing element in our education?

The missing element may be learning itself. If you don't come out of college with an ability to learn new things on your own or with the help of others you may have missed the point.

I've spent a significant amount of my adult life teaching people how to use Microsoft Office products (i.e. I've done tech support in some fashion or another for a while now). Some of them have been seasoned office workers, others have been older folks and still others bright young people that know how to pilot a browser but are confused by a 2 paragraph e-mail (with pictures) on how to connect to the corporate network via VPN.

Almost no one I've ever supported wants to know how to do something differently. Everyone is mad that things are changing and the thing that they've done for several months, years or decades, no longer works for some inscrutable reason. The time they've spent learning is real and the changes they see seem arbitrary at best and frequently counterproductive.

I've supported people that were fine with e-mail, but thought that wikis weren't a good use of people's time. Others can figure out how to google things and look through forums, but most have difficulty sorting noise from useful information. I've supported people with PHDs that are incapable of reading any error messages because they have been trained not to read them by crappy software.

We have so many, many tools available to us today and we're not using them in many businesses, even when they've already been purchased. And even more businesses are still using paper and duplicating effort into multiple spreadsheets (and using Excel as a CRM, etc).

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#135

Post by gaius » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #129

gaius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EXACTLY the same problem in the UK. Under the last government's social engineering caper, millions of teenagers who would otherwise have learned a trade (electrician, plumber, carpenter, etc) from their fathers instead were swindled into going to hastily built "new universities" to get worthless, made-up degrees in "Media Studies" (and a mountain of debt). Now they're not only unemployed but unemployable - and all ou…

May I ask how old you are? Although some of your observations are correct, I distinctly remember such devaluation of the trades going on under the last conservative government as well, not just the Labour one that came to power under Blair. Indeed, worthless degrees were lovingly satirized by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide as far back as the 70s. To ascribe this problem solely to the faults of a single party…

I'm in my mid-30s. Sure it happened in the 80s - but i was a kid then. What was different about Nu Labour is that they sold snake oil too, a false promise of degree== job. Thatcher was heartless, but she never lied like that. She just said, get on with it.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#136

Post by dedward » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #61

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #54

IMO, the problem is much more than just automation and advancement in technology. It's actually far graver, and maybe inexorable at least in the short term. Hate the man or his policies (or both), but you can't deny President Obama's observation that training education is the real problem in the so-called "jobless recovery". America as it currently stands has a total, almost prideful disregard for education (public a…

I agree with everything you said but the #1 obstacle to owning you own business is seed capital. You don't have to be a genius or rich to start a company, but you do have to be willing to take a potentially big financial risk to do so. People fresh out of college don't have 20k to live off of for 6 months before they can turn a profit on a business. The average household has 10k+ in debt; those people cannot start a…

Even if they all had the money, 95% of them will fail. HN likes to focus on the success side of the equation - but with high risk also comes a high failure rate.

I know tons of people who started their own businesses -it's got little to do with seed capital and everything to do with execution. They had it, and they blew it, through bad decions mostly.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#137

Post by gaius » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #122

chernevik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is training, and a passivity-inducing misconception of "entrepreneurship". And the solution is: 1) A flood of government equity, distributed by those ever-so-entrepreneurial bureaucrats. There is, of course, no chance that the same people who brought us ethanol subsidies ("so stupid not even the Soviets tried it"), the Fannie Mae housing bubble and the $3000 hammer won't screw it up. 2) A no-cost-to-go…

"1) A flood of government equity, distributed by those ever-so-entrepreneurial bureaucrats. There is, of course, no chance that the same people who brought us ethanol subsidies ("so stupid not even the Soviets tried it"), the Fannie Mae housing bubble and the $3000 hammer won't screw it up." It would be put into a trust, disbursed and managed as a credit union by participant states and guaranteed by the NCUA, not cen…

The $3000 hammer is an accounting artefact. To make it easier they sold a package of gear to the military as if everything cost the same. So you got a very expensive hammer, and a very cheap gas turbine!

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#138

Post by americandesi333 » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

The article does a great job highlighting the stark reality of today's labor market.

I was at the unemployment agency in silicon valley doing some research, and they informed me that even though unemployment rate is around 9-10%, there is this whole category of 'under-employed' and they make up 20% of workforce population in silicon valley. Therefore, there are around 30% workforce that are looking for jobs...

One part of it is training, but most urgent is the need to recognize value of 'informal' learning; thats learning outside the university structure. The ever increasing costs of degrees has made it difficult for common Americans to pursue or even justify college education. As a result, these people are not developing skill sets through traditional means. These are the ones that need help.

Once we start recognizing continuous learning (certifications, workshops, books, events) as a medium to build a skills portfolio and get jobs, this skills 'gap' will start diminishing.

We in the tech world can create tools to help answer these challenges. Help people create their informal learning, let them track progress and share that progress with the rest of the world. Thats what the unemployed need and the employers will value.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#139

Post by beagle3 » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

FrojoS wrote: post #131

sixtofour wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I strongly suspect that a public health option would blow the job market wide open ..." Excellent argument for real reform to health insurance access.

Well, I learned the same logic in school. I found it compelling, too. And I guess I still do. Our teacher said: 'Because we have this safety net here in Germany, we can take more risks.' Yet, I see more risk taking in the US than in Germany. I suppose, its rather that Europeans are less risk taking, so they also support a better safety net. I know its not my business, but I can't help being scared about the idea, tha…

Israel has a German-like safety net (health, food, unemplouyment, training and otherwise), and more risk taking than the US - at least where technology is concerned (only silicon valley tops israel in startups per capita - even California does not). So neither explanation is good.

Re: 9.2% Unemployment? Blame Microsoft.

#140

Post by jshen » Mon, Jul 18, 2011, 9:20 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #125

jshen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Education is supposed to transform you from a consumer into a producer" What the ....? I'm guessing there are many reasons to get an education, but isn't the primary reason to understand the world better than before?

Yes that's very warm and fluffy but it should be obvious that an education system that doesn't create more value than it consumes will eventually bankrupt it's host society.

I think you're mixing multiple issues into one big ball of yarn.

A solid case can be made that America's biggest problem right now is our populations inability to think critically. "here, take this loan with fluctuatings interest rates that only lasts 5 years. don't worry you can refinance in 5 years after your house is worth more". "Don't worry about eating well or exercising, here are some pills that will solve it all for your". "let's pray for a solution to our national debt" <- I wish I were making that up