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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#21

Post by continuations »

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.

"Requirements:

- 25 years of HBase experience

- candidate must be 22 year old or younger"

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#22

Post by mseebach »

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…

It's not just HR. I did an interview with a YC startup that obsessed over my lack of Rails experience. I have several years of industry relevant professional experience in Java, Python and PHP, but only ever dabbled in Ruby and Rails. Their offer (which did come through, grudgingly, through many repetitions of "so will you commit to teaching yourself rails before starting?" (No, I won't.) was quite a bit on the low end, but I'd probably have turned it down anyway for that strange lack of comprehension of programming skills.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#23

Post by opendna »

Classic: according to the article, the definition of a qualified new hire is one with the qualifications to get accepted into university engineering programs.

Ya'll have probably read some of Prof Peter Cappelli's editorials (he's been making the rounds to promote his book "Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs"). One of the things he's pointed out is that HR use of resume databases encourages people with poor search habits to believe there is no choice. Basically, it's a failure consider the Bayesian math of nested filters.

Consider a company, in a city of a million people (don't want to pay for relocation), which wants someone with a bachelor's degree and five years of experience. The US unemployment rate for people with bachelor's degrees or higher is ~3.8% and about ~7% of the population is between 25-29 years old. Rough and tumble numbers put the pool of candidates around 2500-2700 before including any subject-specific knowledge. Ask for a specific discipline, like "Computers, mathematics, and statistics" for which 4.2% of bachelor degrees were awarded, and you can cut your your pool of candidates down to about 100 (1/10,000). If you also filter to require mastery of PHP, javascript, and Marqui, 10 years experience with Server 2008 and fluency in a Romance language...

tl;dr: the absence of time travelers in the applicant pool is not evidence of a skills shortage.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#24

Post by wyclif »

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.

Yes, absolutely. I remember back when Java was only a few years old, it was common to see jobs where the company wanted 5-6 years of experience. Now, it could have been agency recruiters who had no idea what they were talking about, or it could have been coming from HR. But the result is the same: flagged for spam.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#25

Post by robryan »

evv wrote: post #19
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 t…

It is the same thing with propping up the auto industry. If a company can't afford higher wages and it isn't economically rational for people to invest their time in an area then maybe the only rational thing to do is for that manufacturing to head offshore.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#26

Post by wyclif »

kiba wrote: post #11
qq66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

The problem is that age discrimination laws in the US aren't readily enforceable.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#27

Post by opendna »

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.

I'm glad you caught that line because I thought it was confusing

Who are we supposed to understand is under-educated? The employers? Or was this a vain attempt to pull a fast one and shift blame to public schools for...? What? Pumping out kids with the mathematical literacy to understand that $14 is greater than $10 therefore McDonalds pays better than manufacturing?

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#28

Post by chrismealy »

Economist Dean Baker comments on this: That Shortage of Skilled Manufacturing Workers is Really a Shortage of Employers Willing to Pay the Market Wage

News stories have been filled with reports of managers of manufacturing companies insisting that they have jobs open that they can't fill because there are no qualified workers. Adam Davidson at the NYT looked at this more closely and found that the real problem is that the managers don't seem to be interested in paying for the high level of skills that they claim they need.

Many of the positions that are going unfilled pay in the range of $15-$20 an hour. This is not a pay level that would be associated with a job that requires a high degree of skill. As Davidson points out, low level managers at a fast-food restaurant can make comparable pay.

It should not be surprising that the workers who have these skills expect higher pay and workers without the skills will not invest the time and money to acquire them for such a small reward. If these factories want to get highly skilled workers, they will have to offer a wage that is in line with the skill level that they expect.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/that-shor...

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#29

Post by logn »

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…

Yes, it's similar. To explain the manufacturing situation in our terms, they're advertising for the equivalent of "Java programmer, 1 year of experience" and paying $10/hr. No one applies. Then there's a phony "skills gap". But also, no one wants to study to go into the field which actually creates a real skills gap.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#30

Post by Causalien »

frozenport wrote: post #18

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 sup…

This industry is more experience based. Sure, theory will teach you that under certain conditions a plasma cutter ( or welder)'s arc is going to be certain shape and the speed need to be certain inch/minute for minimal dross, however, it is never 100% accurate. Therefore, the actual skills lies in the know how to adjust.

Moving on, with CNC automation, you need experience in both industry to understand how to program a CNC machine. With full automation becoming the trend, I see a huge lack of skilled workers who can fit this wold. Afterall, why would you go into manufacturing of metals if you understand computers.

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