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Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#41

Post by Jach »

anigbrowl wrote: post #34

Part of Isbister’s pickiness, he says, comes from an avoidance of workers with experience in a “union-type job.” Isbister, after all, doesn’t abide by strict work rules and $30-an-hour salaries. At GenMet, the starting pay is $10 an hour. Those with an associate degree can make $15, which can rise to $18 an hour after several years of good performance. I'm not a fan of unions or work rules, but those are terrible wag…

Fortunately the market tends to weed guys like him out if he refuses (or is unable) to raise salaries to meet his required quotas, unless he's just clever enough to get government handouts that keep his company afloat indefinitely.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#42

Post by eshvk »

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!)

I believe age discrimination is being split into two chunks:

1) Some people with a mistaken belief that correlation does imply causation think that just because some programmers have let their skillsets atrophy implies that one should stay away from older programmers.

2) Older people by virtue of experience, skillsets are pricing themselves out of the job market. I have an older friend who is a phenomenal hacker but doesn't like going into management. He found himself either being offered VP of Engg type roles which required way more management than he was willing to do or being given Engineering roles with way less money than he was prepared to accept. Also, once you get a family, the amount of leeway you have in accepting a tiny fraction of what you are worth in exchange for money and stocks becomes quite limited.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#43

Post by enko »

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?

Why, did they tell the truth in the fifties or something? I assume "classy" is your stand-in word for politically correct.

I can see that no-one likes what I said but I assure you it's my honest feeling. HR departments' best contribution to an organisation is cute HR girls. You can deny this truth, or perhaps try to change the way of things. Clicking to downvote me, of course, changes absolutely nothing.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#44

Post by raverbashing »

mseebach wrote: post #22
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 e…

There are two sides to this:

Either you have another skill that they need, or they just want a "generic (good) rails programmer"

Of course skills are transferrable, within a timeframe. So if you're trying to ship something in 6 months this may not be acceptable

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#45

Post by venomsnake »

redguava wrote: post #36
mseebach wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I don't see a problem with requiring Rails experience. It depends on the job of course. If I don't mind a slow ramp up and want someone right for the job that might last a few years then I don't care. If I have some complicated technical issues I need fixed quickly, I want someone that can jump in and go right away. Particularly with Rails where it's convention over configuration, knowing the conventions is a great h…

Then you probably need consultant if it is only for a specific issue. Otherwise once this is solved you got bored to death employee, with skill set for which you are overpaying and under-utilizing.

Unless you need language guru, the languages known don't matter much. If someone can write a LISP interpreter in Haskell for 2 days I would hire her for a Java position even if she doesn't know what a loop is.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#46

Post by codewright »

mseebach wrote: post #22
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 e…

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 either. They remind me a lot of underqualified legacy Harvard kids who think they're god's gift because they snagged a status symbol.

Maybe the better founders are too busy shipping product to run into me :)

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#47

Post by pinaceae »

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?

well, it is a correct observation that HR (and marketing) departments have the highest female ratio in pretty much any company.

let's look at famous examples: Carly Fiorina? Marketing. Brigitte Ederer (Siemens)? HR. Meg Whitman? Marketing (started as a Brand Manager)

the cute moniker is unnecessary, I agree. the overall observation is correct.

i agree in particular with the fact that once HR takes over hiring from the team-leaders, the company has jumped the shark. one of the core tasks for a manager is hiring, ensuring his/her team is correctly staffed and has enough fresh blood to ensure senior people can move upward or away without disruption. if you don't, the Peter principle is in play.

overzelous HR is the ruin of a company because by definition HR has no clue about the core competencies of a company, no feeling for its customers nor products/services.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#48

Post by eshvk »

pinaceae wrote: post #47
eshvk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

well, it is a correct observation that HR (and marketing) departments have the highest female ratio in pretty much any company. let's look at famous examples: Carly Fiorina? Marketing. Brigitte Ederer (Siemens)? HR. Meg Whitman? Marketing (started as a Brand Manager) the cute moniker is unnecessary, I agree. the overall observation is correct. i agree in particular with the fact that once HR takes over hiring from th…

You are missing the point and flailing at straw men. I don't care about the female ratio (Neither I think does any one who downvoted the OP). 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 (which is particularly freaking sexist).

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#49

Post by kosei »

I cannot fathom how the author takes the side of the employers at the end of this article. So workers should reduce their expectations so that certain manufacturers can succeed while paying them below-expected rates? Does the author legitimately expect individual workers to look out for the country's employment best interests above their own?

The candidates smart enough to realize that they could earn 2x-5x as much after college won't take these jobs, and most of the people who can't earn those wages elsewhere aren't qualified to do these jobs.

Re: Skills Don’t Pay the Bills

#50

Post by moultano »

codewright wrote: post #46
mseebach wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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.
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