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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#131

Post by nostrademons »

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…

People are responsible for their own stupidity.

(Although personally, I don't see what the gender of the HR department adds to the discussion anyway.)

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#132

Post by nostrademons »

lilsunnybee wrote: post #93
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.

I'm ready to jump ship too. It's gotten ridiculous. I wonder if they keep track of which mods are hellbanning people. Is it just a few bad apples or is it systemic? I've seen so many thoughtful, but invisible posts lately that it makes me feel sort of sick.

It's not necessarily a person - I think PG has a machine-learning algorithm that's trained on the decisions of actual human mods, and then uses various features of the comment history to determine whether to hell-ban.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#133

Post by nostrademons »

qq66 wrote: post #112
pebb wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's how most large sites handle abuse & anti-spam protection. One of the cardinal rules of spam-defense is that you don't let spammers know that you've caught them, you just silently quarantine their spam. Otherwise, they'll adopt countermeasures and you're stuck in a rat race.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#134

Post by nostrademons »

zmmmmm wrote: post #3

I see a similar problem even in software jobs. Employers frequently advertise for highly specific skill sets that almost nobody has. Then when nobody or only fraudulent people apply, they reject them all and claim a skills shortage. The problem seems to be a basic misconception about how transferable software skills are. An excellent programmer with no experience in Python will be out performing a poor Python program…

Often times the absurdly specific skillset requirements are an H1B game. To get an H1B, you have to prove that no citizen is qualified for the position, so when companies find a foreign candidate they like, they'll put out a job ad with exactly the skillset that that candidate has, and then when nobody responds or all the candidates are unqualified, they can hire the person that they really wanted to hire in the first place.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#135

Post by wisty »

WildUtah wrote: post #126
rsheridan6 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test. Why would you use a mental ability test outside of the US, but not in the US? Is it illegal in the US or something?

Yes, using a general mental ability test (IQ type test) in hiring is illegal in the USA. Some protected groups do worse on average on such tests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1991

> Some protected groups do worse on average on such tests.

Are those the same protected groups which tend to not have degrees or other certifications? Because "ban the IQ test, ask for a degree" might have a similar effect.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#136

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#137

Post by rapind »

angersock wrote: post #94
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #54

This is fairly speculative, but I have been thinking this paradox over for a while. A high demand for scarce highly skilled workers must drive salaries up in competition. Unless the skills are not actually high skilled, but obscure skills . I predict that "high skilled manufacturing" is a morass of proprietary solutions to highly specific process needs - that is, the metal fabrication plant alluded to at 10USD per ho…

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…

This actually sounds pretty interesting to me as a programmer. I'm surprised there aren't small shops of highly skilled and well-paid workers eating everyone else's lunch (or are there?).

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#138

Post by lifeisstillgood »

michaelt wrote: post #111
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes sorry about that - as a general rule for comments and emails, if I put f%%k in there, I really should rethink it.

opendna below suggests there is research that small (isolated) pools of labour fail to benefit from the intuitive supply/demand wage growth.

My antennea are wavering - this feels like a disruption happening. If I ever pick up my research MSc I think this will be the perfect subject.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#139

Post by enko »

nostrademons wrote: post #131
lincolnq wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People are responsible for their own stupidity. (Although personally, I don't see what the gender of the HR department adds to the discussion anyway.)

> People are responsible for their own stupidity

No doubt, but this doesn't scale. Right now you and I both are suffering from bad hiring decisions from local government up. I cannot wait for the great wheel to turn and bad hirers to be punished in the afterlife.

> I don't see what the gender of the HR department adds to the discussion

HR is a girl's club, just like IT is a boy's club, and deserves to be called out as such. The gender is relevant, indeed central.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#140

Post by angersock »

rapind wrote: post #137
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…

This actually sounds pretty interesting to me as a programmer. I'm surprised there aren't small shops of highly skilled and well-paid workers eating everyone else's lunch (or are there?).

Shoot me an email--I'd love to chat about this topic.
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