Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers

Post by scarmig » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #3

I think this all goes back to the fact that wages are stagnant for most of the world, and companies don't foster employees anymore. You need to cultivate experience in workers sometimes, especially if you have a complex system in place. Employees have no loyalty anymore, because of the cutting of benefits and wages. Employers have no loyal employees anymore, which means they require 3 to 5 years experience to give th…

Post by jt2190 » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:42 PM UTC

  "[I]t’s kind of bizarre if you think about it: if you were, say, a computer company, 
  and you had a product that was all based on this particular chip. You didn’t build 
  the chip yourself. You were expecting to buy it on the outside, and your expectation 
  was just that you’ll be able... to buy this chip on the outside in the quantity you 
  want at the price you want to pay... The software engineers, the systems architects, 
  are often the key component in these companies, expecting to hire them right 
  out of college, and they don’t really have much relationships with the colleges... 
  They don’t get close to their suppliers; they’re just hoping it will come up. 
  If you did that with a chip, your board of directors would probably fire you for 
  terrible risk management, but when it comes to skills and employees, it seems to be 
  kind of a standard practice."

Post by graysnorf » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:45 PM UTC

ebiester wrote: post #9

The unstated counter-argument is that the employer will have to train inexperienced workers who will leave as soos as they become competent and experienced, or pay as much as you would for the experienced person in the first place. Myself, I'd rather train someone up in my process without them learning bad habits, even if that means they're pairing with me for 30 hours out of 40. That said, I'm an exception. Once upo…

Post by mratzloff » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

wbrendel wrote: post #6

TallGuyShort wrote: post #4

I landed a great programming job with no experience and no degree because I could walk in there and talk about what I had taught myself and done on my own time. I know this doesn't transfer to every situation in every industry, but I think much of the problem stems from people who haven't put in much effort to make themselves marketable and to educate themselves. If I saw that, I would make the assumption that the co…

Sounds like you did have experience: stuff you had done independently. More and more that's becoming a requirement to get a good job out of college, at least in certain fields. Combined with your ability to speak intelligently about that experience, it sounds like the hiring decision was pretty easy. What I've found more common, is recent graduates who expect their degree /alone/ will get them a great job out of coll…

Post by imgabe » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:52 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #10

ebiester wrote: post #9

The unstated counter-argument is that the employer will have to train inexperienced workers who will leave as soos as they become competent and experienced, or pay as much as you would for the experienced person in the first place. Myself, I'd rather train someone up in my process without them learning bad habits, even if that means they're pairing with me for 30 hours out of 40. That said, I'm an exception. Once upo…

If people leave after training then that's a retention problem and has nothing to do with how skilled they where when they started. And yes, giving a 22 year old tech worker a 25+% raise might seem crazy, but if you want to keep up with their increase in value you have to consider such things normal.