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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#911

Post by Kirby64 »

ta20240528 wrote: post #866
Kirby64 wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think any form of forced work in the US prison system is pretty awful, but don’t try to equivocate Chinese “reeducation” camps with regular prison. Not anywhere close to the same thing.

Have you asked any of the inmates at the Angola "working farm" in Louisiana? Apparently 63% are serving life terms, 27% more than 20 years. Doesn't seem worse than China's attempt to iron out a seditious, violent sub-culture that was actually detonating bombs amongst civilians? Most seem to have closed, so the maximum term Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.

> Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.

Inmates in any prison in the US ostensibly have gone through due process and were convicted of their crimes. You can argue about whether the US justice system is truly fair, but it's (at least in historic years) certainly more fair than rounding up large portions of a specific ethnic minority for 'reeducation'.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#912

Post by tptacek »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #494

[flagged]

You're right: it's a bit racist. It's also faulty reasoning: you went to a high school in Cupertino with a markedly higher population of second-generation Asian-Americans, and went to a high school in an extraordinarily wealthy area; in fact, I think you might be attempting to generalize from the zip code with the highest density of immigrant professionals in the United States. If you want to generalize from China, that by itself is 1.4 billion people; they're as varied as any large population.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#913

Post by rlpb »

UltraSane wrote: post #850
glitchc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actu…

In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.

That’s sounds like a functioning free market. Either they find the quality of labor they require at that rate, or they don’t. Either you take such a job at that rate because you have the required skills and knowledge and that’s your best offer, or you don’t.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#914

Post by rlpb »

charlie0 wrote: post #812
silisili wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them? It's pay. It's always pay. You gave a range so I'm guessing the lower end is starting out, why take that when nearly every entry level job, with far less demand, pays about the same? Start your pay at $45/hr and people will flood in. If they aren't, it's because the factory is too remote for population to get to. Put…

Preach. How long does it take train someone to get them to $45hr level of experience? The truth is that it doesn't. Companies love using yoe as an excuse to pay newer workers less. Manufacturing is not like software engineering where you have to constantly be re-educating yourself.

Staff who’ve been around a while, understand how a company operates and can seed that understanding into new staff are more valuable to companies. For example: if every worker were replaced with an equally skilled worker tomorrow a company regardless would not be able to function. It therefore makes sense that a senior employee can demand a higher wage [than a new starter] even if their direct productivity is no different and so a gradient in wage for seniority is exactly what one would expect to see in a free market.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#915

Post by beachtaxidriver »

greenie_beans wrote: post #880

> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t h…

Lol that was my reaction too, this guy is an asshole. He should just leave.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#916

Post by bornfreddy »

dangjc wrote: post #907
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that. A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when…

This! My company is mid size and we can’t hire junior people for fear they’ll jump to FANG right when they’re starting to become productive for us. And we can’t afford FANG compensation for senior people.

If you are willing to have a remote team then this is not a problem - lots of great (senior) developers in EU, Asia,... No need to pay FAANG level compensations either. Curiously enough not many US companies do that, or those that do, put rounds and rounds of interviews in front of each candidate. Which is OK I guess - if you pay FAANG salaries. But if not, maybe just limit to 3 interviews, one hour each? If that's not enough to judge a potential hire then I don't know what is. Once the hiring is fixed you should have lots of great candidates available.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#917

Post by aleph_minus_one »

nickff wrote: post #904
ta20240528 wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally patents. But you have to take out a copy of the patent in EVERY country you want protection. Most companies don't do this and then whine about copies. And lest someone whose never done it says they don't work: note how diligently generic drug companies wait for patents to expire.

What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.

> What you’re describing is monstrously expensive

I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#918

Post by bsder »

silisili wrote: post #723
korse wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers. 'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years, The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly…

> There is a dearth of applicants for jobs exactly like what I've posted. Why don't people take them? It's pay. It's always pay. You gave a range so I'm guessing the lower end is starting out, why take that when nearly every entry level job, with far less demand, pays about the same? Start your pay at $45/hr and people will flood in. If they aren't, it's because the factory is too remote for population to get to. Put…

> It's pay. It's always pay.

Indeed.

I attended an injection molding conference and one of the panel discussions was about the poor state of hiring and retention. I stayed expecting to hear the standard complaints about the fact that injection molding was considered "obsolete" (really?), the pipeline was too weak so wages were out of hand and there was too much churn. I was interested in which companies were hiring off the people so much that it warranted a panel session.

Then I heard the complaints of what their primary competitor was: Amazon warehouses. They were losing injection molding workers to freakin' Amazon floor jobs!

I lost it and lit off on an absolute rant about how if a company couldn't keep their employees from joining one of the objectively worst employers in the country then they absolutely deserved to go bankrupt.

I, very suddenly, made both a bunch of friends and a bunch of enemies that day.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#919

Post by leereeves »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #917
nickff wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re describing is monstrously expensive, and doesn’t actually prevent IP violations, it just allows you to recover some of your losses, which is also expensive, and is unrealistic if the violators are fly-by-night operations.

> What you’re describing is monstrously expensive I would actually consider this to be an desirable side effect: if you want governments to enforce your monopoly using their state authority, you better pay for this really well. :-)

So you'd prefer there be no protection for inventors who aren't already wealthy?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#920

Post by charlie0 »

rlpb wrote: post #914
charlie0 wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preach. How long does it take train someone to get them to $45hr level of experience? The truth is that it doesn't. Companies love using yoe as an excuse to pay newer workers less. Manufacturing is not like software engineering where you have to constantly be re-educating yourself.

Staff who’ve been around a while, understand how a company operates and can seed that understanding into new staff are more valuable to companies. For example: if every worker were replaced with an equally skilled worker tomorrow a company regardless would not be able to function. It therefore makes sense that a senior employee can demand a higher wage [than a new starter] even if their direct productivity is no diff…

If you replaced every worker with someone else of equal skill of course manufacturing company would continue to operate.

Making employees replaceable cogs is what industrialization was completely about. It's what happened during globalization. Think about all those seniors who lost their jobs when the factory went overseas. That was successful in large part because the distinction between a junior and a senior is not that great.

There would be some exceptions here for management and execs, but we are not talking about them here.

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