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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#111

Post by michaelt »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #104
angersock wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both you and gvb seem to perhaps lack first-hand experience of machine shops. It's not just "repairing code"... Oftentimes, small job shops will be taking a dimensioned drawing and write their own G code to actually generate the objects. This will probably involve some back-and-forth with the machine stepping through the part manufacture, and must be done carefully to guarantee that both the machining is done efficie…

I am struggling with the economics behind this - we seem to have discovered an entire industry that sits in a eddy of economic thought - the value added by an operator has a very low ceiling, so they cannot negotiate much, plus the operators themselves have non-interchangeable skill sets - so the number of jobs they are actually qualified for is very low, especially in a given locale. Hence 10 USD an hour. In short,…

  but then if the skills were transferrable (ie not 
  proprietary) then the market would adjust - but it seems 
  that there are very very few people with Machine X 
  experience in each locale, and they are desperate for jobs.
It's not a problem of proprietary skills - Siemens controllers, Fanuc controllers and Heidenahin controllers are extremely similar. Changing between Siemens and Fanuc is more like changing from Eclipse to Netbeans than changing from Java to C.

The problem is the entire market for CNC machine operators is very small.

Edit: I see you've edited your comment.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#112

Post by qq66 »

pebb wrote: post #103
qq66 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kenrikm, you have been hellbanned -- your posts are not visible but you're not informed of this. I hope you see this. I'm seriously considering leaving the HN community because of the frequency with which I see good contributors hellbanned.

Yeah, this is one of the most censored place around. It says a lot about the VC culture.

I don't actually mind censoring, but censoring someone without them knowing, and allowing them to contribute while thinking that their contributions are actually benefitting someone, is insane. In fact, just typing that out made me realize that I have to leave until they fix this issue.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#113

Post by npsimons »

moultano wrote: post #50
codewright wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a lot of encounters with YC founders, most of them negative. This anecdote well encapsulates the impression I had of a lot of them. I'd really like to meet the better of the crop, because I can't imagine PG and Jessica (she's usually the expert on character and personality in YC interviews) are intentionally picking petty people. I'm not the only person in the startup industry who's had this impression eithe…

I can imagine that for a company with a runway measured in months, immediate skills might be more important than for a well established company.

This was my first thought, although it comes from my POV where I think I am a slow learner because I can't pickup a new programming language over a weekend. I'm still exploring the dark corners of C++ after a year or two, but mostly that's due to the demands of the current and previous project. I went through the whole Python tutorial once, to never use it much again, then flubbed a Google on-site because of it. On the flipside, when given a week to work up some post-proc analysis code and the opportunity to do it Python, I was up and running in a little less than a day. It's amazing what you can do when you have access to reference materials and more than 60 minutes.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#114

Post by wwweston »

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…

This might remain true as long as human-level intelligence is the exclusive domain of humans.

And that's probably at least for decades to come. But if someone develops a strong AI, this goes out the window. Probably most familiar forms of employment along with it, possibly the entire idea of a society where the labor market is a primary form of economic participation.

Personally, I don't see any technology on the current landscape or the horizon that I think is likely to produce strong AI within decades, maybe even a century. Wouldn't rule it out, though.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#115

Post by Dylan16807 »

lincolnq wrote: post #102
enko wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your opinion is just that, your opinion And I never claimed otherwise. But I really resent your accusation of sexism, since I believe I am extremely fair to both sexes. It is a plain fact that the attitude towards HR departments here is mostly negative. It is another plain fact that those departments are mostly female. If these facts are sexist, then reality is sexist. Oh, and the all-male "IT department" is also r…

OK, I'll bite. Your social error, leading to claims of sexism, was linking bad HR people and women. I believe you when you say that's what you've observed. But, whether you like it or not, it's not okay (in public, at least) to make statements which link gender, race, etc., with competence. No fair, you (or some other reader) might say. I'm just reporting my observations. But I claim that you have a responsibility to…

>linking bad HR people and women

You seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding the original complaint. The idea was that HR itself is a problem. It's not about people being bad at HR. And your suggestion to 'Suppress your urge to report your observations when they could lead to others making sexist/racist assumptions in the future.' deeply bothers me. If we pretend things don't exist because they look sexist/racist/etc, we get in even deeper problems of trying to figure out what is real.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#116

Post by Dylan16807 »

TheAmazingIdiot wrote: post #85
enko wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not going to discuss the utility of the HR department, the issue here is that they are human beings whom no one has the right to reduce as being mere eye-candy this attitude, to me, is unbelievable. Of course they are human beings. What else would they be? If you're going to make a claim about HR, make it on its merits. I have said they're nothing but a bunch of good looking girls. They have zero understanding…

"Wah Wah Wah horrendous sexual remarks Wah Wah Wah closet feminist Wah" I think this about sums up the comment. You mentioned cute women in HR as ones who are cute and don't know about the job to properly hire. The next avenue to attack is "denigrating" booth 'people' because we are not allowed to hilight the obvious sexuality of the (shudder) women.

Where did he contrast cute women in HR with anyone else in HR? Oh wait, he didn't. You're objecting to a sexist comparison that never existed. The guy just dislikes HR.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#117

Post by sunstone »

eshvk wrote: post #40
enko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a core problem is "HR" departments with absolutely no understanding of the positions they are supposed to be hiring for, even for technology companies where technology is supposed to be a core competency. The only thing stopping me from calling out HR departments in general as a sign of organisational cancer, since I am yet to encounter one that pulls even a tenth of its weight, is that they tend to be compri…

Nice, very classy of you. Tell me again, how does it feel to time travel here from the fifties?

When I took an MBA from a world top 15 school several years ago they directly advised companies to abolish the HR department. (Yes I know I'm hell banned.)

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#118

Post by opendna »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #104
angersock wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both you and gvb seem to perhaps lack first-hand experience of machine shops. It's not just "repairing code"... Oftentimes, small job shops will be taking a dimensioned drawing and write their own G code to actually generate the objects. This will probably involve some back-and-forth with the machine stepping through the part manufacture, and must be done carefully to guarantee that both the machining is done efficie…

I am struggling with the economics behind this - we seem to have discovered an entire industry that sits in a eddy of economic thought - the value added by an operator has a very low ceiling, so they cannot negotiate much, plus the operators themselves have non-interchangeable skill sets - so the number of jobs they are actually qualified for is very low, especially in a given locale. Hence 10 USD an hour. In short,…

"Any travel guides welcome."

You might try reading up on the Heckscher–Ohlin model and Stolper-Samuelson theorem. There are a great number of criticisms of each but, to over-simplify, the counter-intuitive take-away is that returns will be highest for the most abundant factor of production. i.e. the larger the pool of unskilled labor, the more laborers will be paid. Scarcity actually causes the value of a factor of production to fall. (Yes, I know that's the opposite of everything you know about economics.)

For a more qualitative approach, try "The Coming Post-Industrial Society" by Daniel Bell (1973), available at a library near you [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/473951691]. For a more culture theory approach, try Neil Postman's "Technopoly" (1992) http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24694343]. If you're into old-school tech determinism and political economy, both Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization" (1934)[http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/560667] and Harold Innis' "Communication and Empire" (1972) [http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/281110] are more intelligible than Marshall McLuhan's work.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#119

Post by forensic »

danenania wrote: post #12
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…

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.

>it's fully understanding all the logical relationships, dependencies, performance characteristics, and edge cases of the desired features.

That IS programming. Don't confuse programming with typing. Programming means understanding a problem and coming up with a precise, logically valid solution.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#120

Post by gtirloni »

Companies are simply offering wages that are comparable to some worker in China would get. It only makes sense in a flat world. Question is: do we want that?

In the IT industry, specially IT support and break-fix development the same thing happens. Local people don't want to accept low salaries? Let's look what India or the Philippines are charging. Problem solved.

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