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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#11

Post by kiba »

qq66 wrote: post #9
ivany wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar problem is HR departments abusing the "knobs" on the position's requirements. For a software-based CRM company, they required something like 7 years of Java EE development experience for the lower level development positions, and 14+ for the team lead positions. How many 14 year Java developers are there? Furthermore, do you really need 14 years of experience in a particular language for this position? I th…

I've seen several job ads requiring "5+ years experience with Technology X" where Technology X is not yet 5 years old.

Don't forget that companies also discriminate against old people in favor of young people.

The result? They don't hire anybody despite a looooooooooong line of overqualified greybeards.

(I am young myself, too!)

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#12

Post by danenania »

sami36 wrote: post #4
sharkweek wrote: post #2

...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…

No we can't. I base that on being a software architect who sat through endless useless marketing meetings from IBM & their ilk promising the imminent advent of Doodleware (have a business person with domain knowledge & no technical skills draw a process on this monkey-easy UI tool & we'll generate a working application from it.) I maintain that being a programmer will still be a highly paid skill in demand for decade…

Right, the biggest barrier to creating applications isn't programming, per se, it's fully understanding all the logical relationships, dependencies, performance characteristics, and edge cases of the desired features. Compared to getting all this right, writing code is a breeze.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#13

Post by jacques_chester »

sharkweek wrote: post #2

...highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine. -- Thinking meta for a moment here: How far does this concept go of machine process. Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines? One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_…

> Could we program machines that can run the computers that run the machines? And how about machines that program those machines?

Given the history of progressive rounds of optimism and failure on this idea, so far: no. Before you can replace humans, you need to ... um ... replace humans.

However, the general principle of progressively more specialised machinery and skills is not new. It's called "the division of labour"; it really ought to be called "the specialisation of process" or perhaps "the specialisation of outputs", given that capital too becomes progressively more specialised to particular tasks.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#14

Post by kenrikm »

qq66 wrote: post #9
ivany wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar problem is HR departments abusing the "knobs" on the position's requirements. For a software-based CRM company, they required something like 7 years of Java EE development experience for the lower level development positions, and 14+ for the team lead positions. How many 14 year Java developers are there? Furthermore, do you really need 14 years of experience in a particular language for this position? I th…

I've seen several job ads requiring "5+ years experience with Technology X" where Technology X is not yet 5 years old.

"Position requires 7 years of iOS Programming experience" ... the iOS SDK is only 4 years old.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#15

Post by molsongolden »

"The so-called skills gap is really a gap in education, and that affects all of us."

That closing line doesn't really sound like the gist of the piece at all. It sounds like manufacturing employers just don't want to or don't feel they can afford to pay works a fair wage.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#17

Post by achompas »

molsongolden wrote: post #15

"The so-called skills gap is really a gap in education, and that affects all of us." That closing line doesn't really sound like the gist of the piece at all. It sounds like manufacturing employers just don't want to or don't feel they can afford to pay works a fair wage.

Right. This article bombed in the last paragraph once the author went with the employer-friendly conclusion.

I'd say our education system is working out fine if we're skipping the high-barrier jobs that don't pay a premium wage.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#18

Post by frozenport »

I wonder what kind of skills are lacking. Claims of deficiencies are qualitative.

For example, how much math does somebody need to know for this kind of job? Is it trigonometry to find hypotenuses? Are they writing programs or entering in data to notepad?

This is an important distinction because we need to compare these skills to those of a shift manager at McDonald.

For example, at a hotel the shift manager must supervise the employees, handle money, and keep journal entries. The later two involve rudimentary mathematics and computer skills. There is a good chance that this is a fair wage when compared to similar jobs.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#19

Post by evv »

molsongolden wrote: post #15

"The so-called skills gap is really a gap in education, and that affects all of us." That closing line doesn't really sound like the gist of the piece at all. It sounds like manufacturing employers just don't want to or don't feel they can afford to pay works a fair wage.

Exactly. This article makes it sound like manufacturers somehow aren't restricted to the supply and demand of their labor.

If laborers are leaving manufacturers for better pay at fast food companies, workers need higher pay. Its not that complicated. If the company can't afford higher wages, maybe the demand for this skilled labor isn't what we think it is.

If these skills are actually in high demand, they will pay the bills.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#20

Post by re_todd »

Evbn wrote: post #6
sami36 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No we can't. I base that on being a software architect who sat through endless useless marketing meetings from IBM & their ilk promising the imminent advent of Doodleware (have a business person with domain knowledge & no technical skills draw a process on this monkey-easy UI tool & we'll generate a working application from it.) I maintain that being a programmer will still be a highly paid skill in demand for decade…

I dunno. Perl does a pretty good job of "do what I mean" style programming. Sure, not every hard problem can be solved automatically, but a lot of tasks can be accomplished by a short script or banging keywords into Google, etc.

But Perl also has the problem of "what the hell did the last guy mean that touched this?" style programming.
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