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One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

finance.fortune.cnn.com

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Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#71

Post by Hyena »

ars wrote: post #24
Hyena wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All companies need unskilled people: you train them so your business can expand. That's where global supply chain managers and database programmers came from originally--and in many cases still do--they don't fall from the clouds. The issue is that a lot of these companies are only expanding overseas, so they're not really ready to hire and train people. Much of their profits come from cutting back on their junior st…

> you train them so your business can expand That only worked when people stayed with a single employer for years. These days they would take the training and get a better job somewhere else.

Most businesses take about 6 months to train people, it seems, from informal polling of acquaintances.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#72

Post by Hyena »

ericd wrote: post #27
Hyena wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All companies need unskilled people: you train them so your business can expand. That's where global supply chain managers and database programmers came from originally--and in many cases still do--they don't fall from the clouds. The issue is that a lot of these companies are only expanding overseas, so they're not really ready to hire and train people. Much of their profits come from cutting back on their junior st…

I don't want to hire a DBA that's never touched a DB before at this point, though - since that field has been around for a while now, there's now a lot of signaling where before noone could distinguish themselves. Those who have the aptitude and/or are motivated/interested in the field have made themselves into DBAs or something similar that could easily transition on their own time. I don't want to hire a warm body…

My point is that when DBAs were new(ish), you had a lot of people you had to train to become them. We don't see this as a problem now because we're past that point in the database arena. The people I knew who ran databases when I was in high school had all learned it on a job somewhere. It's only with my generation (it seems) that DBA was something you got a lot of external training for.

Some of the jobs quoted in the article are short workers because they're relatively new. "Managing integrated supply chains" is something most workers would have learned only recently, since before the spread of IT in the late 1990s/2000s it was pretty much the province of major corporations.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#74

Post by Hyena »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #47
cageface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employer, I'd be willing to take a chance on a new employee without experience if he/she could demonstrate some aptitude and some effort to learn independently. I got my first software job with no formal training this way. I spent several months studying Java on my own and did well enough on an interview test to persuade the company to give me a shot at a low salary. However, I don't think I'd be interesting in…

Yes! It's the U.S. educational system that refuses to move into the 21st century that is not providing the needed skills to new workers.

This isn't going to help us. The "reform the education system" model is usually an incredibly stupid idea. The issue is that you're essentially farming: you take 22 years to grow a new crop of skilled workers.

In the education reform arena, what we should concentrate more on is patching workers. Most people could probably gain hackable proficiency in languages like Java or Python in 6 months or less. We need to be concentrating on this sort of thing, not making high school and college better.

An example: the retraining benefits attached to UI are often meager and highly targeted towards special interests (the construction and healthcare industries seem to loom rather large in my conversations with EDD). What we could be doing instead, at least in California, is directing the CCs and CSUs to create 6 month curricula in more portable skills. Again, we could be teaching scripting languages plus basic data analysis skills.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#75

Post by oneofthefive »

achompas wrote: post #69
oneofthefive wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to be a programmer at a financial firm they usually care about your credit score.

This makes sense, as financial firms want to avoid cash-strapped employees who might sell HFT algorithms to competing firms for money.

Your credit score has nothing to do with being strapped for cash. You can have plenty of cash and a bad or nonexistent credit score.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#76

Post by known »

daimyoyo wrote: post #14

I have experienced this first hand. I have applied for a LOT of jobs in the last 2 years and one of two things happens: They don't talk to me, or they do, and I sail past the preliminary interviews only to get rejected after the background check. I am not a felon, a terrorist, or a scourge of society. I have bad credit.(Funny/sad aside, I once went to Best Buy to see if I could get a card to finance something with th…

Wondering if a potential employee can ask for employer's credit score

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#77

Post by patio11 »

mahyarm wrote: post #57
potatolicious wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why an employer would demand good credit. Even if the person is a spendthrift, what does it matter so long as they perform their job? My employee could be living in a shack having had every single item of worth repossessed... but if they can do their job well, why wouldn't I hire them? In any case, I know what you mean - I'm from Canada, and arrived in the US after the financial meltdown and subs…

I'm guessing your in the bay area? Goto the bank of america close to the stanford mall (which is next door to stanford), open an ebanking checking account and credit card. There is a canadian credit program that BoA has that should give you a ~$2000 credit limit card. Most BoA people are fairly clueless (Stanford mall BoA employees are pretty good!), but they do have it. If you can't go there, ask the BoA retail bank…

Thank you for a very helpful and specific answer here.

For folks who do not have exactly this situation, the easiest way to boostrap up a US credit card history is to go to the bank you have direct deposit with (they have the most reason to like you) and ask to open a secured card. They will open a special savings account and require you to fund it, generally to the tune of $500. That account is then frozen: it continues to accrue (pitiful) interest, but you can't withdraw it. They will simultaneously issue you a credit card with a $500 limit. It is exactly like every other credit card: you pay interest if you revolve balances, it has to be paid on time, and it reports to the credit bureaus.

After 6 to 12 months of "good behavior", they will a) unfreeze your deposit and b) "upgrade" the credit card from a secured card to one of their standard beginning product lines. Expect something like a $2,000 limit at a fairly unfavorable interest rate, much like you'd get if you were a college student.

Continue periodically buying a stick of gum on that card and paying it when it is due, and you'll have 800 FICO within about two years.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#78

Post by paulcedars »

danenania wrote: post #56
doctoboggan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious as to why you state that government employees are not producing?

Some of them produce useful goods and services, but at a drastically lower efficiency than the private sector due to lack of competition and economic incentives (spending other people´s money). Still it´s good that someone is planning out the roads and running fire departments, even if they´re bad at it. On the other hand, the government also produces a lot of counterproductive ´services´ like war, financial meltdown…

I think that your position is ideological and not correct. The government provides institutions that lower risk to the rest of the economy and enable more stability and growth.

Is regulatory capture a problem at some agencies? Sure. Are some departments outdated or ineffective? Sure. But it is irresponsible to look at a few cases and claim that the entire government is a problem.

You want to see less government? Visit Yemen or gangster Russia

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#79

Post by cageface »

Hyena wrote: post #74
nowarninglabel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! It's the U.S. educational system that refuses to move into the 21st century that is not providing the needed skills to new workers.

This isn't going to help us. The "reform the education system" model is usually an incredibly stupid idea. The issue is that you're essentially farming: you take 22 years to grow a new crop of skilled workers. In the education reform arena, what we should concentrate more on is patching workers. Most people could probably gain hackable proficiency in languages like Java or Python in 6 months or less. We need to be co…

What if it takes 20 years to grow a crop of skilled workers? Go ahead and walk down to the unemployment center, pick 20 people at random, and let me know how their Python coding is coming along six months from now.

I was able to jump into programming because I was lucky enough to get a solid math & science education that nurtured whatever innate talent I had. The kind of analytical thinking it takes to do higher-level information work can't be taught from scratch in a few months.

Both my parents teach at the University level and they tell me that the students they see coming into their classes now can't even write a simple, logically coherent essay.

Re: One in five American men don't work: Where's the outrage?

#80

Post by spamizbad »

mahyarm wrote: post #61
dools wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard this for the first time on HN the other day. I think (and certainly hope) it's illegal for potential employers in Australia to use your credit file as a factor in deciding whether or not to hire you. Not hiring people with bad credit seems to me to be patently absurd. Talk about kicking someone when they're down - as if non-payment of debt was a crime! It seems that the likely result of this for most is the d…

Because you'll become poor, and then medicaid and welfare will cover you, somewhat. It's a healthcare system with cracks, but it covers the elderly, college students, most of the employed and the poor, which is the vast majority of the voting populace.

> and the poor

The poor tend to have a lower rate than the rest of the population. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voter_Turnout_by_Inco...

I imagine this discrepancy is even larger for low-turnout elections but I haven't seen data to confirm or deny that suspicion.

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