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Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

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Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#31

Post by s0rce »

jerf wrote: post #15
pasquinelli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply. people don't actually want to get a job they have no idea how to do. applicants will filter themselves. the question is how much better is a company's filtering process, really, than the applicants' self-filtering? would be embarrassing if it were no better, or even worse.

"just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply" I can only infer from this statement that you have never been in a hiring position in which you are receiving the raw resume submissions from the field. You either have never been in a hiring position, or you've only had the post-filter resume stream sent to you.

Exactly, the majority of the applicants probably don't have relevant or adequate qualifications.

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#32

Post by 4lejandrito »

le-mark wrote: post #11
andrewla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here seems like it would be best suited to a working environment that has a deep pipeline, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled or specialized workers. People can be hired unconditionally to the unskilled pool, from which they can move up to the higher tiers either through training (either internally or externally) or through natural ability. A bakery, like in this example, seems like it could pull this…

A lot of companies used to actually do this. Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. It's unheard of today for obvious reasons (a lot more demand for high skilled jobs makes it easy to get training and leave).

My former employer did exactly this (dev incubator it was called) with people from the call center.

During the time I was there one guy turned out to be a genius and after a few years left to work for a big bank and another guy got enough experience to start his career as a dev somewhere else. The rest of us learnt a lot mentoring these guys and feel quite proud of them.

This was no more than 5 years ago.

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#33

Post by ChuckMcM »

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people.

That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is very relevant. There are a lot of jobs at even a high tech company like Google or Apple that could be filled by someone with a high school degree and nominal fine motor skills, but those jobs are currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations.

It was interesting to me to see the remnants of a system like this at IBM which had 10 "bands" of employment level, where band 1 was janitor level, and band 10 was principle engineer/senior manager type level. But it seemed like these days they only used bands 6 - 10 because that was where 'entry level engineer' started (band 6). Many if not all of the jobs in the lower bands were outsourced as far as I could tell. And a lot eliminated when they sold off factories or other parts of the business that had a lot of technician level labor.

I will be interesting to see if we could get back to a more reasonable way of managing these things.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#34

Post by jacquesm »

le-mark wrote: post #11
andrewla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here seems like it would be best suited to a working environment that has a deep pipeline, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled or specialized workers. People can be hired unconditionally to the unskilled pool, from which they can move up to the higher tiers either through training (either internally or externally) or through natural ability. A bakery, like in this example, seems like it could pull this…

A lot of companies used to actually do this. Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. It's unheard of today for obvious reasons (a lot more demand for high skilled jobs makes it easy to get training and leave).

> Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers.

That is exactly my story ('85 or thereabouts), with the added caveat that I didn't learn anything from the Cobol training program. The bank where I worked did not even have a way for mailroom people to get into IT, it was mostly because they got sick of my continued applications to IT jobs for which they though I wasn't qualified that I got the chance to do the course (with the qualifier that if I didn't succeed they never wanted to see me again).

So, I passed (and was the quickest person to complete the course) and ended up making a very rapid career in the IT department and after that started my own company.

Some observations:

- the entry level IT job paid four times as much as what the mail room job did

- work went from 5:30 am to 2 pm to 9'ish to 4'ish (ish because nobody ever checked who appeared when and when they left again whereas in the mailroom attendance was very strictly policed)

- in the mailroom you felt part of critical infrastructure, in IT there was zero pressure to perform

- bringing the mailroom attitude ('let's get some work done') to the IT department was not appreciated by the rest of the department

- the mailroom had zero office politics, if you stepped out of line you would get chewed out and that would be that, by comparison the IT department was a huge web of intrigue, and quite a few of the people there were downright mean and backstabbing each other all the time

- the mailroom was all guys, the IT department had exactly two women programmers on a total crew of about 120, the only other woman was a secretary to the head of IT

- There were a few talented people there but on the whole the talent level was rather low, but they were big on process and that really helped to get stuff out the door

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#35

Post by jt2190 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is v…

> There are a lot of jobs... currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations.

Would you mind elaborating on this point a bit? I have some notions of what you're suggesting, but I'd rather not assume.

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#36

Post by Retric »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is v…

A significant potion of this is an end run around immigration law. Cleaning companies need to compete with companies willing to employ illegal immigrants for very low wages which drives down the costs below what companies like IBM would pay people.

Change some of these loopholes and the outsourcing overhead becomes far more significant. Though employing large numbers of part time workers works better at scale so the practice has some advantages.

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#37

Post by WaylonKenning »

harlanji wrote: post #13

More should do this. I am blackballed from Silicon Valley from a series of bad employers and have a misdemeanor driving-related arrest, so a Day Labor non-profit that does the same has been my only way of attaining employment. My income has dropped 10x but it’s enough to feed me, and most of my network has turned its back on me. I am hired by executives and doctors for cash now who feel I am wasting my skills too. I…

Tried out upwork.com?

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#38

Post by ChuckMcM »

jt2190 wrote: post #35
ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is v…

> There are a lot of jobs... currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations. Would you mind elaborating on this point a bit? I have some notions of what you're suggesting, but I'd rather not assume.

The contracting company adds a cost layer between the worker and the employer. The money funding that cost layer comes out of the worker's salary not the price they charge the company they are providing services for.

So the worker knows the contracting company is squeezing them and they get into a sort of adversarial relationship.

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#39

Post by ChuckMcM »

Retric wrote: post #36
ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is v…

A significant potion of this is an end run around immigration law. Cleaning companies need to compete with companies willing to employ illegal immigrants for very low wages which drives down the costs below what companies like IBM would pay people. Change some of these loopholes and the outsourcing overhead becomes far more significant. Though employing large numbers of part time workers works better at scale so the…

I have heard variants on this as well but haven't seen any actual data or research that supports this notion. If you come across any I'd be interested in reading that.

There is a tremendous exposure to legal risk both for the contracting company and the company that hires the contracting company if they employ workers who do not have the right to work in the US. Having worked with IBM's legal department I'm pretty sure they run audits on any company they employ to insure they comply will all laws (they are really fussy about that stuff). In the New York Times article the Apple contract janitors weren't illegals either just under paid.

Now the 'gig' economy? Sure. People who hire day laborers from the parking lot of the home improvement store? No question. But running a contracting business? I've not seen anything that backs up that assertion, and certainly nothing that is 'significant.'

Re: Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

#40

Post by phyzome »

harlanji wrote: post #13

More should do this. I am blackballed from Silicon Valley from a series of bad employers and have a misdemeanor driving-related arrest, so a Day Labor non-profit that does the same has been my only way of attaining employment. My income has dropped 10x but it’s enough to feed me, and most of my network has turned its back on me. I am hired by executives and doctors for cash now who feel I am wasting my skills too. I…

The racist rants on your Twitter sure ain't helping, bud.
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