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Why Bad Jobs (or No Jobs) Happen To Good Workers
sean_nestor writes "Back in October, an article appeared in The Wall Street Journal with the headline 'Why Companies Aren't Getting the Employees They Need.' It noted that even with millions of highly educated and highly trained workers sidelined by the worst economic downturn in three generations, companies were reporting shortages of skilled workers. Companies typically blame schools, for not providing the right training; the government, for not letting in enough skilled immigrants; and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages. The author of the article, an expert on employment and management issues, concluded that although employers are in almost complete agreement about the skills gap, there was no actual evidence of it. Instead, he said, 'The real culprits are the employers themselves.'" The linked article is an interview with Peter Cappelli, author of the WSJ piece, who has recently published a book on the alleged skills gap.
and workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages
Unfortunately, a company's definition of "good wages" is all too often directly at odds with what the workers themselves would consider to be good.
What happened to companies hiring a competent worker and training them for the specifics of the job?
Consdiering some of the people hired recently where I work, I would have to agree with this article. Things like personality, which is necessary to some degree depending on the job, are always considered highly above the genuine ability to do a job. People want those who they like around them, more than those that do their jobs.
Many technical workers are very specialized. Just because someone is "highly skilled", it does not mean they are necessarily a match for any given arbitrary technical job.
I am a good match for my current job. If I quit, they would have a very hard time finding a suitable replacement. I might also have a hard time finding work with a very specialized and technical skill set.
... and you turn down *ANY* legitimate job offer that offers at least 80% of your previous job wages, then your benefits can be terminated, immediately. There's currently a bill in the pipe in Canada to reduce that percentage to, I think, 60%. Somebody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about the exact percentage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There was once a comic of two people walking down the street in opposite directions, one person thinking to himself, "why can't I find anyone to hire?" and the other one thinking to himself, "why can't I find a job?"
A lot of it is companies not knowing how to find good workers, and workers not knowing how to draw attention of companies. If either one of these situations were fixed, then the problem would be solved.
Incidentally, one of the most crucial skills for programming managers in Silicon Valley right now is knowing how to find good workers for your team.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There are lots of people having kids these days, i've read its like the 50s baby boom. both parents work but need to pick the kids up from school/day care.
if you really want to lure people other than onsite child care have a flexible work schedule allowing people to work from home. there is very little that i cannot do from home and a lot of times i'm more productive at home than in the office.
There is supply and demand to empolyment. If the companies want people with specific skills they need to provide the money. The companies real complaint is that they can't find the people they want at the money they are willing to pay.
To the companies I say welcome to basic economics. If you want something specific you may have to pay a lot. In this case the companies are consumers of the labour market. And as we know it sucks to be a consumer.
Companies often hire the wrong people for the job, pay poorly, treat their employees badly and then wonder why they can't find good workers. I've worked at a number of places where companies seemed to go out of their way to ignore good candidates and hired whoever was cheapest or was related to the boss or was obviously just kissing ass.
The places which took the time to actually get to know the people they were hiring, paid them well and treated the employees with respect tended to have lower turnover rates, happier customers and were able to train their people any additional skills they needed. Of course that takes time and effort and might impact the short-term bottom line, so who wants that?
Of course companies are going to complain about lack of skilled workers when they treat their workers like dirt and offer terrible salaries. If you want the top brass you need to offer salaries and work environments that attract the top brass, simple as that.
It is actually pretty simple:
..
1.Networking. This simple word defines 99% of all recruitment decisions. If you don't know someone, then you cannot get the job. As a result, if the company provides good benefits, the chance that you, the lonely wold would pass the initial test and interview are very close to zero, minus zero actually (no pun intended).
2.As a result of the before mentioned networking, most of the bad developers are having the perfect resume, the perfect references, and the perfect self-confidence. And of course, as Darvin already proved, no skills are required, so they don't have them.
3.The consequence of 1. and 2. is that once they are hired, and prove their lack of skills, the HR team would panic, and would try to use some funny ways of finding the best candidate, which will end up hiring the worst candidate of course (the one with networking), and so the cycle is repeated....
It is not coincidence that the Great China Empire fall, not because of some external treat, but because of the corruption, ops, sorry, i mean "networking".
I think a lot of it comes down to what was mentioned in the article. Everyone wants 5-10 yrs experience with a super varied background relevant to their job.
However, nobody wants to do training or give an opportunity. I've worked for multiple companies and no manager ever really gives you any path to grow beyond what you're doing. Even if you do get to "lead" a project, which they think is great training, you get no ability to actually do anything. All the responsibility and none of the authority.
Many small companies with tight cash-flow situations and overworked owners simply do not have the resources to train new workers for the specifics of a job, and the human-resources departments of a fair number of bigger companies probably fear being blamed for new hires who take a long time to become genuinely productive. That's not to say some employers aren't being unreasonably picky, but as with most human affairs, closely examining the matter will inevitably reveal it to be more complex than the pictures drawn by simplistic answers. Frankly, I'd look at burdensome, complex regulations and a risky legal environment as major contributors to stubborn unemployment.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Whenever I interview with HR, it's a waste of time. HR has no clue about hiring technical people. There was one interview I had that was just classic--the tech guy put me in front of a computer and asked me to roll some HTML, said I could search for things (this was before Google became popular and people were still putting HTML in text files). Then I had to interview with an HR person, and she asked me all those stupid "where do you see yourself in 5 years" bullshit questions, "why do you want this job?". Duh! because I can do it, it pays well, and it looks like a good place to work. Stupid bitch. I'm sorry, pardon my French and sexism; but it's true. That's HR. Stupid bitches gatekeeping out competent people.
Saw a joke in a non-US paper, of a manager who's spouse is the vendor, who's parent is a vendor to the vendor. It went on to say, when you do not have to deliver why bother hiring the right people?
This whole "We can't find the skilled workers we need thing" is just a big H1B visa scam (here in the U.S. anyway):
1) Post ads for jobs with impossible qualifications (i.e. 20 years of Java development experience) or so specialized that only a specific H1B candidate can meet them.
2) Turn away every applicant as unqualified
3) Cry to Congress and the Labor Dept. that you can't find enough qualified workers to fill positions, ask for more visas
4) Get more H1B visas
5) Pay foreign nationals a pittance.
6) Profit!
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
When your a corporate CEO billionaire and need to lay off people in order to buy your own friggin hawaiian island and then come back and bitch and whine that you can't find "talented people" something is fishy.
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We live in a world where a doctor who saves lives and studied for 10 years will hardly make more than 3-400K a year (only the "superstars", of course), a physicist with a 160 IQ no more than 100K, and a firefighter who risks his own life makes no more than 50K. Instead, if you're a retard and make the trashy hollywood buffoon you'll get 10 millions per movie. A great incentive for graduating in a top university, right?
And many idiots think that it's fair because it's "free trade", "supply and demand" and all the other bull*hits that the average american has been filled the brain with.
Corporations need skilled workers? Well, maybe also skilled workers need skilled corporations. "The land of the free and of the brave"... yeah, with some fat on the belly.
Here, we've had a shortage of finding folks with the right education and some experience. We've had terrible experience hiring intermediate or senior folks into the company as it surprising how in our business (engineering consulting) how corporate environment can determine how well folks fit in. Our solution to all our hiring, has been to focus on finding youth with appropriate technical skills, hiring those who additionally had strong communication skills, and providing them continued skill development in both technical and communication while giving them the business skills they weren't given at school. The hiring and interviews are done by the project managers who need the staff themselves. Its long term thinking, not short term. Being employee-owned (and broad based ownership at that) we can afford to take the long term view. We have generally very low staff turnover (less than 5%) in any year, including retirements. Almost half our staff have at least 15 years with us. For us, it seems to be the logical way forward.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Much of it has to do with HR only looking at how long you did precisely x,y, and z as being the most important way to determine a candidates worth.
I gave up IT for these reasons. I had excellent reviews when I contracted out and beat expectations from all but one client who asked me to do something not IT related that I sucked at. Regardless when the economy tanks I substitute taught to pay the bills. HR considers this guy as having no real IT value and should go back to his strength teaching etc.
Meanwhile incompetent people who got in when the economy was good are gold as they have done precisely x,y, and did it for z time. They are gold
I am going back to school to get a teaching credential even though I hate the job. No one will hire me as I have a few contracts and I am not currently employed in IT.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm not mobile either. If the pay doesn't match up with the prices I have to pay for my extravagant lifestyle (i.e. small mortgage, car, food, clothing and insurance), there's no point in taking the job. What most employers don't get is that what used to pass for a middle class lifestyle of owning a home, a car, paying the bills, having children, taking a two week vacation and eating out once a week or so on now requires a 6 figure salary for at least one family wage earner, or at least it does in most urban areas. You might squeak by on less in a more rural area, but not by much. A car costs the same in Peoria as it does in New York. Food, insurance and medical costs too. Real estate is the big difference, but that's represents only a portion of your salary.
Enter globalization. Now I have to compete with engineers making $10 an hour in the Philippines. Their end product may be crap, but bean counters are famous for ignoring productivity, quality, risk, or anything they can't see as a number on a spreadsheet. So, as the company slowly sinks by saving money, my salary is suppressed. My costs.... not so much. So yes, employers have only themselves to blame.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
you take the training and move on letting the company start all over.
Cynicism works for both sides.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I was recently laid off for a job I was overqualified for. Three different reasons was given top me by three different persons there. What I think was the problem was that my immediate boss was anxious over me being more qualified than she is for her position... that was a real eye opener for me and even if my termination was somewhat illegal, I had no intention to contest it as I did not want to set a foot there one more day! That is one of the reasons qualified persons have trouble finding and keeping jobs.
Offtopic, when I go to interviews I intrerview my potential employers as much as they interview me. The 3 months approval period is also both ways. If the work environment is not sane, I will quit after 3 months. Last one simply was much more hypocritical than I believed.
Tomorrow is another day...
I work at a Fortune 5 company, where we outsourced to Oracle, and Oracle in turn applied for H1B workers because they "could not find suitable US applicants". Most of the Indian contractors that showed up had no expertise in installing the software, and were completely lost when they could not find something in the manual.
This is not about experience, this is about screwing hard working and capable Americans out of jobs so that Larry Ellison and creeps like him can buy private islands and retire. It's about putting shareholders above employees and morals. It's about damaging the country that made your success possible in the first place.
And I found it quite interesting. The main point I took away from it was that the "skills gap" is a perception of employers because they are no longer willing to do in-house training to get the specific skills they need/want. For example, they won't hire new graduates because they don't have at least a few years experience in those specific skills. We've all heard the new graduate catch-22 - can't get hired until you have experience, can't get experience until your hired.
I guess I've been lucky in my career in that the three companies I've worked for since graduating were all willing/able to hire new graduates and have the senior employees mentor them. Even in my new job (just over two years), there's a lot of industry specific knowledge that really can't be learned anywhere but on-the-job. So, we regularly have learning sessions (formal and informal) about what we need to get the job done.
I see way too much mindlessness on here.
First, companies really don't care about your wages as much as people think... most companies would love to pay all their employees a ton but the fact is their products need to be priced to compete.
Second, to hire a person for X dollars a year costs an employer around 3X dollars. (If you don't believe me, start a company.) It gets higher and higher the larger the company is. This only increases as governments put in more and more required "benefits" to employ someone. This has the effect of crushing entry level jobs as employers seek to maximize the return on an increasingly costly investment. Before you get your paycheck, the company has spend at least as much just having you employed. You have health insurance, office space, utilities, unemployment insurance, payroll taxes, administration costs, retirement accounts, etc.
If it was as simple as just paying more, we could have a minimum wage of $100,000/year. Then everyone would be set right? No more poor! Even the most naive socialist understands such nonsense.
You can't aim to be an employee and expect the wages of an owner or entrepreneur. When you accept that lifestyle you have to accept your wages are set by the market.
Nowadays, and especially back when there was the USSR, and the pre-Deng People's Republic of China, we are told that our economy is capitalist because it follows the natural law of economics. The economic school which is taught came into being in the late 19th century. We're taught value comes from marginalism. That there is supply and demand and the price point is where these things meet. If demand increases, then it leads to higher equilibrium price and higher quantity. What they're saying goes against this, which is more or less one of the core ideas for the rationalization of running the economy as it is run. For those with deep enough pockets, there can't be unmet demand according to the economic principles we supposedly live under. If there really was demand, salaries would rise. Prices would reflect the demand. Claims that there are a shortage fly in the face of every economic theory that justifies the capitalist economic system we live under.
In a tangentially related note - another thing that flies in the face of our hegemonic economic theories are the RIAA/MPAA story. In the economic theories which justify us living under capitalism, prices are based on marginal utility, and the marginal utility of each equivalent commodity decreases as the supply of units increases. However, with an MP3 or MPG, it effectively costs nothing to replicate each commodity. Thus *under this theory*, everything the music and movie studios sell is virtually worthless, and should be sold for maybe a penny, if that. The arguments they make, of how the singer is creating the wealth and needs to get paid, are echoes of the old labor theory of value which was discarded by mainstream economists around the turn of the 20th century. It is the idea that labor creates wealth, the first cited exponent of was Benjamin Franklin, and then all the early classical economists (Adam Smith, Ricardo, Say, Malthus, Mill) adopted. Ricardo delved into this idea especially. In the middle of the 19th century, Karl Marx delved into the idea that labor creates all commodity wealth (although not natural wealth) even more, to such an extent it is more-or-less nowadays considered a Marxist idea. After Capital was published, the right formulated the modern economic ideas justifying the current economic setup. The problem is, these ideas don't justify commodities that can be replicated for little to no cost. So the RIAA/MPAA have really been making Marxist arguments for why "the artist should get paid", as the foundational ideas of capitalist economies don't justify Hollywood's prices.
workers themselves, who all too often turn down good jobs at good wages.
I saw the article the original poster referred to in his/her blurb.
The phrase the they used went something like
"shortage of skilled workers willing to take those jobs at the pay offered".
Translation: not necessarily a shortage of skilled workers, but skilled workers willing to work for the lower pay companies wanted them to accept.
That was the most startling part of the article, for me. Why are employers so strong in that? How should employers be persuaded to change?
Time for some real talk.
Employers pay people shit.
Employers treat people like shit.
Employers pay themselves / their CXOs way too much.
Employees have to deal with increased costs of living - housing, health care, food, gas, debts from student loans, cars, etc.
Employees want, need, and deserve more money, or at least coverage for health care, gas, daycare costs, part of housing, etc.
Thus employees hate their employers, and do just enough to not get fired.
Employers don't want to pay for these things so they hire schlubs who don't care because they're young and stupid, and looking for their first job offer straight out of college.
Employers end up hiring useless people.
Employers end up requiring more of applicants. Minimum of a bachelor's degree and 10 years experience with this or that for an entry level position.
People who normally wouldn't (and shouldn't) go to college end up wasting 4 years and a lot of money at one.
Colleges are concerned about their reputation (because it affects their income stream when some jackhole publishes a popularity contest ranking the X "best" colleges).
Colleges then actively work to ensure that enrollment stays high and graduation rates stay very high.
Colleges let a lot of dumb people in, and give a lot of dumb people degrees, charging them out the ass for it.
Graduates are either unskilled and desperate, or skilled and know their worth.
Employers can't tell the difference, and don't realize that their job postings, with low pay and high requirements, attract the unskilled and desperate (who will either lie about their years of experience or just hope that they don't find anyone who actually qualifies so they'll have to settle).
Employers hire shitty employees and the cycle repeats forever.
The solution has to come from both ends:
Employees: Pay your employees well and pay attention to who you're hiring. This might be hard when you're current employees are incompetent and don't even know what you need. Expect high turnover at the beginning of this change,
Academia: Not everyone is fit for college. It's not some ticket to success. In most cases it's a ticket to a life of debt. Stop selling the bullshit dream of college for everyone and focus on the kids who actually care and would benefit. Again, your current crop of fluffers are incompetent, and you'll have to deal with that at the beginning of this change.
The two biggest factors are work/life balance, environment, and the inability for the company to provide challenging work to it's workforce. Believe it or not, people will work for _much less_ money if you create an engaging place to work.
On work/life balance, companies should be offering 4 weeks vacation after 30 days of employment. They should offer a two month sabbatical every 3 years. I don't believe it "working from home" but time off and vacation _should not be audited_ unless a problem occurs with a particular individual. Scary though, huh? We're all adults, treat people like them rather than high school students.
On environment, they should allow drinking in the workplace (oh gasp!). They need to tear up timesheets (no one takes them seriously anyway). They need to _fight_ actively to retain key talent. Furthermore, they need to cut the crud out of their management chain by routinely firing incompetent managers (which creates a morale boost). The need to hire fresh talent for the older jockeys to train.
Finally on the work itself, they need to allow their engineers to drive the majority of the decision making process. First, if an engineers comes and says, "hey if we cut this out of our software stack, it'll make our stuff faster." Rather than say, "No, that's a key investment we chose two years ago" say, "Oh yeah? well prove it. Take one of your teammates and come back to me in two weeks with a POC." This will do two things, first, it will get them to shut up. Second, it may turn into something awesome; win-win situation. The biggest mistake is companies with management overhead blocking engineers from creating value. Engineers are loose cannons. You don't reign them in, instead you let them create lots of raw product, then you pick the best ideas and refine them. Failure to leverage a company's key assets (their engineers) will result in your business paralysis. As soon as engineering decisions become political, you'll see an exodus of your key talent and you won't be able to hire anyone, in essence, you have created your own starvation.
For an excellent, very detailed and well-documented read on the current job market, I highly recommend Work's New Age, by Jim Huntington. He keeps up a decent blog, too.
Posting AC on this one.
I work for a Fortune 500 company. My department is currently hiring several software positions. But the hiring managers complain that corporate hiring policies prevent them from hiring the right people. First of all, everyone must start as a contractor. This is for legal reasons. They are afraid to fire employees, and they can ask contractors questions they can't ask when interviewing for employees. Then, the contracting agency must be a full corporation. No s-corps or sole proprietors. Well, the best contractors are their own business so that filters out the best people. The contractor requirement also inflates the cost: suppose an employee recommends a friend, but then that friend must find a contracting company to act as a middleman. It also delays the hiring process because they have to find a contracting company, and go through all their hoops, then apply for the job. Even a contractor who just finished a project must resubmit their resume to apply to work in the cube next door on the next phase of the project.
Contractors are limited to 1 year, even if the project schedule requires them for more than that. After one year we must cancel the contract and hire a replacement. Imagine the impact to a schedule that needs 2 contractors for 1 year and 1 month - it takes months to hire someone, so the schedule will always be late. Sometimes the contract was supposed to be 12 months but the project runs late - well you have to finish the project without your contractors now. Sometimes the intention is to hire the contractor at the end of a "trial" period, but after a few months the position is no longer open. Someone 5 levels above in management decided that the number of open positions must shrink. So now you just vetted the person, trained them, put them on the schedule, but you can't hire them. So instead, you fire them and replace them with another contractor! That makes sense, right?!?!?
Once someone passes the interview process, they then get an interview with HR who can reject the candidate for any reason they like. But HR doesn't understand the technology so they ask wrong questions then reject the candidate when the candidate was right and the HR person was wrong.
Most recently, HR decided that all employees must come through a super-recruiter company, who will only work with authorized recruitors/contracting companies. Of course, no company wants to sign up for this because the draconian contract says that the contracting company is legally/fiscally responsible for errors. Even if some company did agree to this, they would raise their rates to cover the additional liability. And this super-recruiter company is yet another layer of bureaucracy and cost.
So ultimately, I blame is the legal system, and top-heavy corporate structure.
Price is set by supply and demand. If the point where those curves meet is higher than a bunch of potential buyers would like it to be, that is not a shortage, that is just greed.
Increasing the supply will bring the price down. But that isn't the automatic right response to an unpleasantly high price. If increasing the supply also brings quality down, flooding the market with cheap crap, everyone winds worse off in the long run.
When employers need people with a difficult and costly-to-obtain skillset, they should not expect such people to be cheap and should not expect that lowballing and bargain hunting will yield them a cheap but high-quality product.
it is simple economics. In my (california) company, the big boss (ceo) simply states "the economy is tight, so you need to find someone desperate for a job." We see all types of SKILLED and HIREABLE people all the time, and I would love to hire ANY ONE OF THEM. Then they see our benes and salary (this is abridged, obviously, for Slashdot):
Mid-level to Senior engineer/tech with at least 3 years microsoft server 2008 admin, 3 years vmware (vsp5 + proven record of HA cluster design), Exchange 200x -> 2010 upgrade experience (lead), at least CCNA, A+, copper and fiber cabling skills (pulls, terms, xc), documented senior WAN design expierience (MPLS, FR, PRI, ATM), documented LAN design, expertise in wireless design and installation, based in so.cal but be available for travel from the oregon border to western AZ w/1 day notice, rotating 24x7 on call, required to work 30% of weekends and expected to work after-hours when needed. 80% @ customer site. No comp time. 7 days vacation AFTER 1 year (vacation is not accrued but lump-sum'd at the end of each working year), paid legal holidays, no bonus, no spiffs, no retirement plan, employer paid PPO. Average work week is 50-60hrs. Salary: $50k/year
Candidates see the bene package and walk. Apparently they are not desperate enough.
The CEO thinks that $50k/year for the above is HIGH. So we get to complain "we can't find anyone to work for us," blame it on the economy, and another company gets added to the 'we can't find skilled employees to fill our positions. And I wind up trolling Craigslist for bottom-feeders with fake resumes.
It's pretty simple. It's a country-wide decline in standard of living due to globalization. Get used to it . We've got a long way down to go, still. There are still people willing to do your job for 1/100 of what you get paid.
I don't respond to AC's.
Online job applications sucks and some are very buggy.
Why not levy a large tax on each H1B visa you fill? If you really need the worker, you should be willing to pay for them on top of the wage you pay the employee.
"Needs 5 years experience with Pascal." (edits resume to change C++ to Pascal). It's a catch-22 where they want people to have experience but they can't gain experience if they never needed Pascal previously. What former-sorority girls or fratboys - now HR people - don't comprehend is that if you are a programmer, you are a programmer. It matters not what language you are using.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I interview so many candidates both right out of college and those that have been working years. It is very easy to see that there is a gap between supply and demand. Sometimes it is attitude that is clearly visible as a no-no, sometimes the candidate clearly shows that he/she doesnt have a clue what he/she is talking about and just wants a job.
Expecting the company to train this person in every aspect is crazy. I mean, if you dont have any experience in HPC, do you expect me and my company to start from the basics by expanding HPC for you? If you dont have relevant experience, it will take us 6 months to make you productive. I would rather wait 4 months to get a candidate that fits and has worked in this field before. Many a times, we hire a candidate who has not worked in this field and train him and it is pretty evident that he is really not interested in this field and it was just a stop gap arrangement so that he can go back to a job where he has the relevant experience.
Among recent college graduates, we dont expect them to know our field, but to at least know about what they have worked on. ~1 in 4 candidates experienced or otherwise will be good. It is so easy to see whether a candidate is good or not and when they are fibbing (we interview separately and almost always reach the same consensus about the candidate).
Recent graduates have nothing to fear as companies replace experienced people with new many a times. If they are good, it will show during the interview and companies usually scramble to get that person on-board before some other company hires them.
The only time we hire bad people are when we have been searching for long and are on the point of losing our req due to company policy. This clearly shows there is a gap. Our expectations are not too high as we hire recent graduates too and an experienced person that is good as a recent graduate is enough for us.
I'm a hiring manager (and I write a ton of code too, so don't give me that PHB bullshit either, I'm in the trenches digging with everyone else when I'm not nibbling on a sandwich for lunch and screwing around on /.). I look for two things:
1) Technical competency -- can you do the job? (I don't even expect that all the buzzwords or libraries/frameworks exactly line up so long as you seem to have a brainwave and aren't afraid to use it.)
2) Personality -- can I work with you without wanting to strangle your ass?
There are all too many arrogant, abrasive pricks or other severely socially maladjusted losers in technology who seem to think that just because they can hack code it's carte blanche to be a jerkosaurus rex in the office. I'm not saying you have to be a charisma roll 18 character, but some basic social graces go a long way. I'm not even saying we have to be best buddies, just ... can I stand being in the room with you for 160 hours every month? If the answer is "no", idgaf how talented you are technically, you're not getting on my team.
I work in a small-ish company doing tech work. There are several departments, but I'm an entire department to myself.
Pay is decent enough, but I'm seriously overworked. We even have three full time accountants, but only one RF guy: me. I can't keep up with my work, everyday is 10 to 12 hours, and working weekends are common. Holidays are also next to impossible, because when I return a mountain of work will pile up in my absence, along with many angry waiting customers.
It would be nice to have at least one other RF guy, but three would be ideal.
At least once every month we get a resumes from qualified applicants, but my boss won't hire them. He's holding out for a white person. Seriously. Canada, land of tolerance...
Companies typically blame schools, for not providing the right training; the government, for not letting in enough skilled immigrants; and workers themselves
I remember a time when companies invested in their staff, at all levels of employment, and decendents were incouraged to join. With the advent of the Internet, Kitchen Table Geneics, Watson, Siri, and 3D Printing; I truly question the need for the American government to maintain Entitlements for the obsolete concept of "Corporations."
An interesting comment from the linked article:
Yeah, you know, the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people.
The implication is that the Silicon Valley approach to personnel management helped destroy the traditional system, and it makes a lot of sense when you talk with people who work in the industry. Traditionally, companies would train and develop college hires and employees because they could reasonably expect their employees to stay with them for a set period of time, guaranteeing an ROI on their investment. However, many of these new start ups basically came in throwing around money and stock options, stealing people groomed by these companies. Even employees who would be required to pay back tuition and training costs would still make the jump because the poaching firm would pay for it. The companies that developed these employees then have incentive to give up on the practice and resort to the same sort of poaching.
When I talk with college hires before the floor fell beneath the economy, I saw that mentality: I'll go work for X firm long enough to get training from them and then jump ship to go make big money in start ups or consultancies. If you're a large firm, why would you invest in grooming employees if this is the mentality that the best and brightest are embracing? If the pool is ready to jump ship for the next big salary bump, why should you pay for expensive training and development? Only problem is that we've now begun to exhaust the pool of experienced employees and the "shortage" emerges.
I've worked at a small company about 20-25 employees for 10 years. I've seen every employee except the two business owners move on. I've seen a lot of new faces. Only about 1 in every 15 people they've hired are competent enough to do their job. And I'm talking about the administrative side of things. Not the technical side of things (that's a different story). I'm talking about internal ordering, quoting, dispatching, administrative assistant, even the damn receptionist. Only about 1 in 15 people hired have the intelligence to do those jobs well. And ANYONE can be trained to do those jobs. Only requirements are a basic understanding of how to use Office. We've had people work for a year that just don't have the intelligence and critical thinking skills to do the jobs effectively.
That's the fucking problem.
And I'll go on to say that this has always been a problem. Decades ago, there was a place for that person that couldn't handle dispatching 5 techs to about 20 work orders a day. They worked in manufacturing or in textiles. They made enough money to support their family. And everyone was happy.
There's just no job for that person now. So they get hired at my place of work and can't do the job. They get paid shit and drive wages down for all of us. My stress level goes up when they can't do the job because they lack the intelligence. There are no manufacturing or textile jobs for them to do.
Here's the super easy/obvious way to solve unemployment...while helping the country out.
Require 20 hrs of verifiable community service work each week to be on unemployment. Doesn't matter what you do, that's your choice. Teach computer science, clean up a park, write open source code, help the homeless, whatever. The remaining 148 hrs of the week are yours to look for a job.
I GUARANTEE you that at least 50% of people will get off unemployment with in a month.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
If you won't protect the wages of your skilled workers who you claim to need by not allowing foreigners into the country, then you must not protect the intellectual property of companies offering patent and copyright and tariffs to protect against dumping. Period. The USA is prohibited from treating one individual different than another by the 14th amendment. Precisely analogous to not allowing minorities equal civil rights is not allowing workers equal economic rights--sometimes they overlap.
i am so very tired....
Company X trains warehouse temps on forklifts, Company Y poaches them for a ten cents extra, gets experienced people and doesn't spend a dime on training.
Result, neither company trains anymore and bitches about it.
True on the job training requires something from the employee as well. Gratitude dare I say it, even loyalty! That is in short supply.
Of course, since employers are no longer training, nobody has a reason to be loyal anymore... a vicious circle of hatred and resentment. Ah work, don't you love it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Fine if you don't want have pay for training at least count the stuff we take on our own with saying that nice but it;s not college or it not CS.
As CS is not IT.
To the *employees*, not to the politicians being influenced to allow more work visas as the "solution" to get skilled workers cheaply. Let the market sort itself out properly. You want good employees? Pay a suitable wage for them.
Oh, but that would cut into your profits and bonuses? Too bad.
Show me a single H1-b worker at IBM, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Siemens. Oracle, etc (the kind of companies that lobby for visas) who is paid a "pittance".
Well, at least if Canada is like Holland, then what you said is 100% bullshit. You get 100% for 3 years with no requirement to job hunt. Oh wait, you weren't talking about politicians? Never mind.
One rule for those who make the rules, another for those who have to follow them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you want to turn down a job offer for some reason that's important to you then you that's your choice. Maybe it's the right decision for you. But don't expect to do that on my tax dollar.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
They do this in the U.K. What it ACTUALLY does is take away jobs from actual computer science teachers, park maintenance workers, programmers (and whatever). All the while creating a free labor force that's used by corporate interests. A labor force that's VERY compliant, because if they don't do exactly as they are told, their benefits are cut off, and they will become homeless/starve/etc.
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
In the olden days, you would hire someone at an entry position. They they would work with someone experienced who would both train and mentor the employee. At the end of the process, you had someone trained and ready for the position.
But some time ago, companies realized it was cheaper to poach from other companies. Let them do the training, then swoop in, and offer just enough to pry them away.
What we are seeing today is the end result when everyone poaches from other companies and no one is actually doing the training. For some reason, there's a lack of qualified people. DUH!
If you are on UC and turn down ANY job offer, no matter how little it pays, you are cut off.
Done.
What's that? you used to make $50,000 a year? Wendy's offers you $7.75 an hour (thats less than $16,000 a year if you get full time)
Take it or we will cut you off.
-- Sig under construction...
Because they still think they can find people with 5 years experience in [core skill] to fill low paying, entry level positions. It also doesn't help that very few technology recruiters actually know what they're talking about.
.
To conservolibertarians, there are only three political ideologies. If you agree with the right wing propaganda (FOX News, Limbaugh, rightist think tanks, etc.), you are a conservative. If you disagree with FOX News, Limbaugh, et. al. on the topic of drugs and isolationism but agree with everything else, then you are a libertarian. Every single other political view in the entire world gets lumped together under "socialism".
So from there point of view, what you mention is socialism by definition, simply because it is not in line with right wing propaganda. This also explains why they can occasionally look at two opposing positions on a particular issue and declare both to be communist/socialist. You have to remember that they may use the same words, but those words have different meanings to them.
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The article pretty clearly states the real underlying problem: Companies strongly prefer hiring experienced people who are doing the exact same job, right now. But they are not owning up to the fact they may be poaching from a limited pool, because they and all their competitors are bidding for the same people. Obviously that will inevitably create a bidding war when the sector is doing well.
Investment in training people can help here -- that is the traditional answer. But companies are scared of that investment because their competitors will poach once the investment finally begins to really pay off, of course.
Now we come what we slashdotters see as the elephant in the room: the the H1B visas. The visa process is so long that provides a partial lock in, and therefore a measure of safety for the employers. Not only will many H1B visa candidates accept slightly lower salary offers, but they are more likely to accept lesser raises until they has their visa.
I do not feel strongly one way or another about more or fewer H1B visas. But it is clear that large companies have a powerful incentive to simply throw up their hands and claim they need more H1B visas, regardless of the underlying reality. They do not care if there is a thousand potential employees who be fabulous after 12 months of in house experience lining up on the street, clamoring for a chance.
Good programmers can pick up new languages as needed, and do so quite quickly. Bad ones, not so much.
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There certainly are women like that, but I don't understand how anyone could assume that all women are like that.
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Market rate salary is above the median and above the mean. Therefore, we have a shortage.
Two random thoughts I always have on these news stories.
First, anyone good won't be willing to work for peanuts (or will find your other employment terms unreasonable), may not be easy to find or will find the work they will be doing at your company unchallengling.
Secondly, if the claim that "good people are hard to find" is true, you'll need to maybe invest in some training. If you're scared of the ROI if they end up leaving - the answer to that is pay people a respectable wage and/or stop treating them like 3 year olds. This alone would keep people from working elsewhere, if they were treated well.
Simply saying that there is a shortage of technical people given the current state of unemployment/underemployment makes me cringe. Isn't there 50% unemployement of people coming out of college? You can't tell me all those kids suck and can't be tapped somehow?
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Managers/bosses are to blame because they wont hire anyone that could outshine them. Good jobs are scarce and anyone with one will want to protect theirs, so they wont hire people that could be someone that is a good enough employee that could threaten their posistion. They want underlings that wont stand out to their superiors, ones that wont really work hard for the company, they want mediocre employees that will work just enough to not get fired and be happy they even have a job at all.
Another reason is a lot of companies now wont hire a "hungry" worker. Someone that is willing to be trained, wants to do a good job, want to works and takes pride in it because they have no degree or prior experince. They want you to come in with experince and education in something already because they dont want to spend any time or money on teaching you. When I had lost my job I actually had a mcdonalds tell me I had to have 2 years of fast food experince to work there. Why? Because he had a stack of like 75 applications from the past day or so and he could pick and chose whoever he wanted because everyone needed a job. Companies cut back, send jobs out of the country, downsize and only want to cut costs as much as possible so they wont actually teach anyone because they want you to have experince but they wont give it to you, so how is anyone supposed to get experince? So they end up with the employee who doesnt want the job as bad or as willing to work as hard at it, so they end up with a less experinced employee but one that doesnt have the desire as well.
Another reason is companies are cheap. They dont want to spend money on an employee or anything really or anyone. Infact by being cheap with employee hires they are just cheating themselves.
We can’t do that, so you’ve got to be able to do the job perfectly from day one. The only people that can do that are people who are currently doing the same job someplace else. So it’s obviously pretty hard to find people if that’s your definition—if you say, “We want to hire people, and they’ve got to be doing the job right now”—because as you’ve probably heard, a lot of employers won’t accept applications from people who are currently unemployed. So basically we’re saying we’ve got to hire from our competitors. And you know what? There is kind of a shortage of people if you say, “You’ve got to be working for one of our competitors doing exactly the same thing you’re doing now. That’s what we want, and it’s hard to find those people.” Well, it’s probably true, but that’s not a skills gap.
That, that's the issue. I'm gainfully employed but I still find this to be a huge issue. If I want to switch jobs I can pretty much only get another job doing almost exactly what I'm dong here only someplace else. If you want to switch your focus you can only switch one or two key techs at a time. If I get tired of what I've been doing for the last 10+ years, too bad because no one will hire anyone with less than 10 years of experience in a long list of precise criteria any more.
More hypocritical ideological bullshit from a low user ID. What else is new?
Yes, people with the unmitigated gall to not swallow your particular brand of mind poison bringing favor back slavery. Have fun in your cartoon universe.
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Requirements for senior level positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
+16 years of relevant work experience
Willingness to work for $40,000 a year or less with no benefits
Requirements for junior level positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
+8 years of relevant work experience
Willingness to work for $20,000 a year or less with no benefits
Requirements for internship positions:
PhD or equivalent level of education
Relevant work experience a big plus
Willingness to work for free with no benefits
"But we don't understand why we don't get any applicants that match these criteria! There must be a lack of skilled workers!"
How about a 40 hour a week job building a road, school, or bridge? Oh wait, that'd be a stimulus, you right wingers hate those unless they are targeted to the already wealthy.
Great! Now the management can layoff the computer science instructors and park maintenance employees in favor of getting free workers paid by the government and put the money saved towards more worthy pursuits like their performance bonuses!
That will do wonderful things for the unemployment rate.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
for a bowl of rice a day"
There is basically zero unemployment for good software developers right now.
Define "Good".
From what I've seen and experienced, "GOOD" means currently employed.
Unemployed mean "Bad". The reasoning being that if you're any good you'd have a job.
You become unemployed - even at no fault of your own - you are now "bad"; which then shrinks the labor pool farther, raising wages of everyone else.
The tragedy, some really good people are now unemployable because of some arbitrary and capricious hiring standards.
And people wonder why I'm so goddamn bitter.
To head of platitudes and bromides: there's nothing that can be done.
To all of you, stick it to the man. Get every penny you can while you can - fuck'em before they fuck you. ANyone who says they want "loyalty" is a liar.
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I work for a company that just did a round of hiring for Support Engineers in the Valley. For this job, we require a decent working knowledge of Linux (or relevant *nix), basic scripting, and case handling skills. There were other, more specialized skills we also looked for, but competent Unix driver would suffice. We don't need hardened sysadmin, just people who aren't helpless when they see #. Sounds easy, right?
This was the first time I interviewed candidates. We went through piles of resumes to weed out candidates that weren't a good fit (no Unix/scripting/etc) and then started interviews.
I was honestly stunned at by the sheer number of lies on resumes. Candidates would advertise "5+ years of Linux experience" when in fact they had zero Unix skills. They couldn't name 10 Unix commands, let alone how they were used. Out of 300 candidates for 8 positions, we got 3 usable hires - out of Silicon Valley! The talent shortage wasn't due to salaries - we were offering decent money, even considering west coast cost-of-living. The candidates we got weren't even as talented as I would have preferred, but they were usable, and trainable.
I can't excuse the tactics immigration attorneys are using to stuff cheap H1B visas down our throats - we've seen too much of that already. I see the job postings with "Requires 20+ years of Linux experience," "15+ years of Java experience" - for 40K. H1B visas need to pay actual, prevailing wages, and they certainly don't now. That garbage needs to be stopped, now.
The talent shortage might be due to any number of external causes, but it certainly does exist.
It's not that they can't find skilled workers, it's that they can't find skilled workers willing to agree to McD wages.
To be fair to them though, most of those workers aren't willing to meet in the middle, either...
A wage "commensurate with your skills" is equal to what you can get somebody to pay. If nobody is willing to pay what you want for your services, then your services are worth less than you thought at that moment.
This amount may be less than what you were paid before. It may be less than what it cost you to attain the skills. It may even be less than what you need to live. But your needs do not magically make your skills worth more.
Now, employers setting the bar for pay that low may be a poor long-term business decision. It may be short-sighted and foolhardy. But really that doesn't change the current amount your skills are worth to you.
It is a two way street. Many employees have decided that the "grass is always greener" and hop jobs all the time. I work at a university and we have that problem. We are big on employee retention. There are very strong protections for employees and layoffs really are a last resort. A good number of people who work here value that, and are loyal. My boss has been here for 25 years, I've been here for 8. However a good number don't either, they job hop.
For example we need a new undergraduate adviser. The reason is our old one quit, again, for the third time. Guy worked for us as an accountant, then left for another school in the state, came back to work as the undergrad adviser, then left to work for another school, then came back again, and now has left again. Guess what? He's now black listed, won't be getting hired in this college again (the university as a whole doesn't blacklist people).
Despite the fact that his position was highly secure, we have good benefits, and so on he keeps jumping around. Clearly it isn't because we are just too horrible to work for, he keeps coming back. Rather it is that he's always looking for something "better" and keeps jumping around. He doesn't think there's any reason to show loyalty.
Ok, fine, nobody could or would force that on him but he's done here. We've no interest in rehiring him.
None of this is to say employers don't bear a great deal of responsibility for this as well, but you can't just pretend like employees are blameless. If you want to see places that are loyal to employees that means when you find one that seems to be, you need to be loyal to them.
Employers want people with exactly the experience they need, but fail to recognize that everyone with that experience is ALREADY WORKING. To hire them away, you need to pay them more money than what the going rate is because they are already getting the going rate.
If you want to pay someone the going rate, you need to find someone that does NOT have the experience you need and train them. Because everyone currently with the experience was hired, trained, and earned raises.
Companies refuse to train their employees and are surprised that they can't find what they are looking for.
All those kids that used to live on family farms? Well let's school them to be good factory workers. That's not enough though, let's use the "no child left behind" notion to, not integrate every kid but rather, start lowering standards for every student. And why are we spending so much money on those inconsistent teachers with their different approaches to differing students. And get rid of teacher unions, which just work for livable salaries and benefits which are well below that of the typical CEO giving advice to newspaper transcribers (used to be journalists, now hardly even reporters).
Then, then! Let's eliminate those factory jobs we trained those students to obey without thinking or resenting too much by moving the factories to cheaper countries. Countries where pollution controls and labor laws are rarely practiced. And place them in tax-free zones so no taxes are wasted on schools and infrastructure and such. Yeah the local workers have crap lives, but it's slightly better than farm life, right? And those factory workers in the original country, the ones that lost their jobs? They can go back to school!
And those people that pursue higher education, especially the ones doing it for better jobs? Well let's make universities extremely expensive, so graduates are in debt and will take any job and abuse in order to start paying back loans. Especially their credit card loans, which were offered in hopes of burying them in 12-30% interest payments for life; in addition to the 1.5 to 3% the credit company skimmed off the top. There is a need for a few scientists to figure out what's really going on in the world, and to make new devices (to simplify jobs, reduce worker headcounts, and entertain the poor who can't afford a vacation). And a need for a few financial wizards (that since the 1970s have gained control of 1/3 of the US economy), but those can come from the 1% of already rich families which have about 50% of the country's wealth; and the occasional (H1-B?) computer mathematician who can figure the odds on stocks, nanosecond currency exchanges, and credit default swaps--and fix the laptop. And if those financiers screw up and the whole economic system crashes, there's always the regular taxpayer providing insurance (why is it called "bail outs?") to corporations and their executives, keeping the cash flowing. Those same corporate execs who whine about paying taxes even when they don't. Yeah the newspapers publish that once in a while, but no one changes the tax laws to be more fair; so the facts recede from memory and we can get back to blaming immigrants, teacher salaries, sexuality, skin shadings, religions, and other nationalities--and if someone investigates too honestly there's always "national defense" to end inquiries.
Well, the laws do get changed, mostly by corporate lobbyists, who want to decrease taxes on the rich, remove laws that are costly to corporations (no matter what the effect on people and the environment), and increasingly shift jobs that are performed fairly well by government (social security, healthcare, military, prisons, schools, water, energy, roads) to the private sector. The private sector, AKA corporations, where a select few can make big salaries, shareholders can get their dividends, and workers can be replaced by someone even more poorly off who's willing to work for rent and food money while doing without healthcare (that's what the ER is for, and credit cards, and payday loans). And to make the business profitable, why not reduce expenses like retirement, healthcare, living wages, long-term livable surroundings, education, clean water, cleaner energy, and reliable roads? It's just business, got to keep those shareholders from selling their stock. Nevermind the stakeholders or the public.
And those people with a bad job or no job, what about them? Well they're poor or homeless because of the schools. Obviously. We should implement vouchers for private sector schools, and start training children correctly.
Some parts have shortages and others have a glut. Efforts to solve the shortages often exacerbate the glut leading to resentment and accusations that employers are being dishonest about the shortage.
The whole H1B visa thing always bothered me as an engineer because it seemed pretty obvious it was depressing my wages. Later on in my career I became a manager responsible for hiring and managing engineers. It turns out there is some truth to both sides of this argument. Partially because of immigration and H1B visas there are plenty of medium-skilled engineers to be had. For every opening I have looked to fill there have been plenty of medium-skilled candidates who can be had at just about any price you want to pay (thus they are depressing wages). Highly skilled candidates are very rare, even when you go into the search planning to spend well over 100k.
The problem is that when you manage engineers you quickly realize that a highly-skilled engineer is often worth 10 medium-skilled engineers, and more importantly, can accomplish the tasks that no amount of medium-skilled engineers could ever manage. That's not to say that there isn't a place for medium-skilled engineers. It often works well to have a few highly-skilled engineers on a team with a bunch of medium-skilled engineers. The highly-skilled ones figure out strategy, solve the really hard problems, and provide a skeleton structure for the project that provides the medium-skilled engineers with bite-sized tasks they can accomplish on their own. However, without the highly-skilled engineers you are doomed to failure. It is also imperative that the highly skilled engineers have subject matter expertise in whatever you are working on. There has to be a 'trainer' before you can do any training, and having a team where no one knows anything about what they need to work on is a recipe for failure.
Startups have a particular need for highly-skilled engineers. In a new company there is no structure and only the high-level plan of what needs to be done. In this environment you need almost all highly-skilled engineers with domain-specific knowledge on the team to get the first product ready. No amount of medium-skilled engineers will let you accomplish this. Likewise hiring a bunch of super bright engineers whose background experience is in designing long distance power lines is probably not going to be a winning combination if you are trying to build a revolutionary new scalable map-reduce mega server cluster. They will take years learning the skills needed and rediscovering the mistakes that someone with domain experience would already know to avoid.
It is very important to understand that "highly-skilled" is not closely correlated to schooling by the way - I have met plenty of medium-skilled engineers with master's degrees (and evenPhD's). I have also seen great engineers with only bachelors degrees. (It is worth noting here that there is still some correlation between schooling and skill - there is a greater concentration of highly-skilled engineers with PhDs that I have worked with then among those with only their B.S.). Experience is only loosely correlated as well. You can spot the really good engineers pretty early in their careers. This doesn't mean that an inexperienced but highly talented engineer is worth as much as one with experience and talent, but it does mean that within a few years out of school they are often worth more then the experienced medium-skilled engineer.
Bottom line: the US would be far better off if we could get more highly-skilled engineers. There are so many opportunities (and potential new jobs for all the supporting staff and medium-skilled engineers) that companies (including mine right now) simply cannot pursue because there are not enough of these individuals to staff the efforts. The problem is that there is really no effective way to get these individuals without letting in a lot of additional medium-skilled engineers into the country.
Another way to think of it is this:
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
I've seen many ads that are advertising for entry level IT/developers but still want experience. What part of entry-level do employers not understand?
Also, I've seen many ads for IT/developer positions on craigslist get reposted month after month. In many cases, for entry-level-ish positions
that there are probably lots and lots of qualified people available. Rather, I have the impression that employers are being ultra stingy with positions
that, to be honest, anyone randomly picked from a screened pile of resumes can accomplish. Employers want people with impossible qualifications for positions
that don't require those qualifications. And they wonder why there's a shortage of workers?
Additionally, the true exploiters will find a 'community service' program that will just sign off on them - think the phantom jobs that existed when the mob ran the unions. What counts as community service? Who signs off on the hours? etc. might be problematic and time spent on community service is time not spent searching for a job.
A lot of it is companies not knowing how to find good workers, and workers not knowing how to draw attention of companies.
wrong.
Companies want purple unicorns and when they can't find them, they scream "Shortage of qualified workers."
I can see it now: Lay off the maintenance worker, and as a requirement for receiving his benefits, he has to do the same job he was just working at. Now at 60% or so of what he was getting before, and with a lot less leeway.
And something few people seem to want to admit.
A big part of the problem for sure is many companies deciding to treat employees as disposable, to show them no loyalty. Well, you show people no loyalty, you can't expect any in return.
However another part of the problem, one people seem to want to ignore, is employees deciding that companies are just things to be exploited and who don't want to show them any loyalty. They figure they'll just leave whenever something slightly better comes along, and then leave that, maybe go back to the first company later, and so on.
Ok, nobody is saying you can't, but you then can't complain when a company doesn't want to invest in you. Why would they? If your resume is a bunch of 6-24 month jobs there's no sense in any long term investment, they can count on you leaving in a big hurry. It would be a waste for them to invest you in the long term. You aren't an asset to be invested in, you are a resource to be exploited.
As with most situations it isn't as simple as "one side bad, other side good." Employers are to blame, but so are employees. We really need both sides to start to get the idea of loyalty back, that you work for one place for 5, 10, 20 years and as such they invest in you.
That is one of the major reasons why the military requires a contracted term of enlistment. They spend a lot of money training a soldier, they need to then actually have that soldier for some time to be worth the money. If that person were to go through training and then leave, it would be a big net loss.
We need an attitude shift not only from companies, but from employees too. What I tell people is that if you DO find an employer that is loyal to their employees, and they do exist, then be loyal to them. Hopefully, slowly, we can change the way things are done.
Reading over what this guy is saying, I swear he's been reading my comments I've posted about the web. For example:
âoeThe real culprits are the employers themselves.â
You pay what it takes to get the people you need, and if wages have to go up, then so be it, right?
The only people that can do that are people who are currently doing the same job someplace else.
a lot of employers wonâ(TM)t accept applications from people who are currently unemployed.
youâ(TM)re always going to have this problem if employers are relying on the schools to produce their skills for them.
But the screening is never as good as somebody who has human judgment,
in many fields you canâ(TM)t easily learn this stuff in a classroom.
So the shortfall is in giving people experience, ... getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, ... virtually none of them [employers] are willing to do it.
These things, and others, I've been saying since I got my first degree. And that wasn't last year, either.
If all you expect are to find people who have the experience you want, you will eventually run out of experienced people because no one was trained to replace them because everyone was looking for experience. To beat the proverbial dead horse: how can someone gain experience if all people are looking for is people who already have experience?
Some of my own comments on this ridiculous situation:
http://home.earthlink.net/~kspandle/main/columns/articles/whining_for_employees.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~kspandle/main/columns/articles/here_we_go_again.html
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is one prime reason why I prefer to work somewhere that pays well: With their pay they indicate they are dedicated to ensnare the most talented and best programmers. And that is a company I want to work for. Honestly, the good pay is just a bonus.
Well since those collecting unemployment checks are being paid by the government, I'd call them government workers. As a government worker they should have to take random drug tests to collect those checks. After all working people have to pass random drugs tests to pay for those checks. Those in government housing (section 8 housing) they should not be able to set the place up as they lease. They are like a collage dorm. All those 55+ inch TVs they got to go. The $2000 (a rim) rims on your 10 year old car, those are out too. Those 'designer' clothes sorry but you are getting a free house, free food, free clothes, free money, you are a government worker and the government should say what you can do with the money being handed to you. IF you want to spend money any way you want, go out and get a job. That money you earn. What you earn is yours.
I have seen some section 8 places where the people there live better then the rest of us. They have no incentive to change. That should not be the case. They should want to get out of that situation. Putting restrictions on what they can do should happen.
Where I am the small business lobby keeps trying to get measures like this implemented so that they can apply for "back to work" schemes and get free labour from people who they don't value enough to hire as employees. Why create jobs when the government will send you free slaves? I agree that it might be a good thing if the work had some social utility and did not benefit private enterprises, but it would most likely end up as a form of corporate welfare.
I hear what you're saying and you're right. People don't seem to remember that companies have to remain profitable.
When CompanyX sells widgets for $100 and CompanyZ sells widgets for the same amount, they compete on their offerings beyond the widget and its price like service or greeness or whatever. CompanyZ needs skilled workers and offers training. That's a real cost that has to be paid, so the widget must now be sold at $102. But, having trained the worker, CompanyX starts poaching, but the increased wage is less than the training cost so, CompanyX can sell the widget for $101 and CompanyZ is again facing a worker shortage. So, what's the answer?
Everyone here says, CompanyZ needs to pay better, as well as provide training. So, CompanyZ raises wagers to match CompanyX poaching offers in an attempt to retain the newly trained workers. CompanyZ is now forced to sell its widgets at 103, but it's losing sales to CompanyX who is contemplating raising salaries to poach workers. This forces them to sell widgets for $101.50, but it's still less than CompanyZ whose employees are starting to look elsewhere because sales are slumping and "the writing is on the wall".
The cycle continues until CompanyZ has burned through their capital. All the good staff is moved over to CompanyX and the chaff is laid off. CompanyX wins, and a few workers are happy, but... With no competition and a pool of laid off, if mediocre, workers available, CompanyX starts cost cutting to increase margins. They start squeezing their existing employees for more, implementing RIFs and offering lower wages for eager new hires, even if they do lack skills. Short term, CompanyX makes more money.
This brings us to where we are today. Again. Now what? Rinse and repeat.
The good news is that the new management lacks the experience and historical knowledge to realize that they are repeating the same mistakes that their predecessors made. So, "new" ideas and strategies(training, cost cutting) will be implemented(again) to keep the cycle spinning round and round. The worker simply has to hold on and with luck be born into the fortunate period of the cycle. Of course, if they are not so lucky, well, they can have ridiculously low pay or unemployment. What's not to love?
Simply put: I have 30 years' industry experience, but I don't want to sit in a cube. Most employers have a "need to see people here doing the work" mentality, and they're apparently satisfied with the quality of those people they can find to sit in a cube.
I'm even willing to accept a lower salary, because being remote is worth quite a bit to me, but there are few managers who understand their own needs well enough to communicate these needs effectively to a remote worker.
Bring in foreign workers on VISAs because they change jobs a whole lot less often because of the process required and the fears involved in that.
In my experience in the valley, workers on H1Bs acted like they were nailed to the company whereas all of the natives were much less inclined to stay put.
There may be some cultural aspects about that too.
A language is just syntax. Contrary to the line here on Slashdot, the "proper tool for the job" just doesn't hold true - we're not talking about carpentry here, after all.
A programming language is just syntax and that is all. Sure, if I were writing a system program I would write it in 'C' because the libraries have that ability. BUT if there were a chip set that had a Java JVM in it, I could write an operating system in Java or COBOL or whatever - actually C# and Java. .
Folks here on Slashdot like to shove in all of our faces that IT != CS but yet, they all comment like a scripting grunt - to be blunt.
If you think the "right tool for the job" applies to programming or CS then you haven't learned a goddamn thing about CS.
As a computer scientist all I can say is that most of you (Slashdot posters) aren't.
If you're a TRUE Computer Scientist, you can implement your algorithms in ANY computer programming language.
If can't then there are some serious issues with your algorithm or the machine you're implementing it on.
Once you've worked there, you don't want to go back and they don't want you back.
I am VERY good at applying for, interviewing for, and getting hired for jobs. About 10 years ago I took a bunch of courses on how to write resumes, interview well, etc... Unlike most classes of this sort, these were run by an older black gentleman who I can only describe as a genius when it comes to the hiring process.
There are basically 2 ways a company can hire. The old way, which is based on gut instinct. The interviewer reads your resume, meets you, and if they like you, you're hired. This method is fraught with problems that revolve around the basics of human nature. Someone with a weak handshake will almost never get hired. They are immediately seen as passive, slow, lazy. Someone that understands the system (like me) can thoroughly thwart the system by simple changing the subject during the interview. You talk about things that interest the interviewer. Their questions are ALL bad. Every question they ask is a question that is meant to in some way disqualify you. The more you can get them distracted from their questions, the better chances you have. Do they have a sports teams pin on? Pictures of their kids? You bring all of this up... they talk about everything but you and leave the interview with a warm/happy feeling about you.
Some businesses have recognized the inherent problems with human nature and tried to implement methods to get around them. Unfortunately these systems almost always involve scorecards of some sort. The hiring manager lists out the key skills he's looking for... this is the first problem, the managers expectations are almost always wildly over the top. Their asking for someone with a doctorate and they really need someone with a 2 year degree. The person conducting the interview basically scores you off of your resume. As well as on things like appearance, personality, etc... etc... The solution to this type of interview is rather simple... lie. Just flood your resume with technical data. The interviewer gets so overwhelmed they just score you high, irrelevant of your real skills. Always ware a suit. Suit = 10 points. Anything else is < 10 points. A firm handshake and confidence is easy to fake.
The simple fact of the matter is, it is impossible to judge someones ability to do the job you want them to do based on a resume and interview. A degree is slightly better, but as we all know the vast majority of people with those degrees have proven nothing more than that they are good at memorizing things for tests. Actually being competent in a working environment is something entirely different. The entire system is flawed to its core. Many people refuse to be misleading in their interview or on their resume and think that shows integrity... when all they really get shown is the door.
When employers hire people... they hire the people that aggressive at selling themselves as a product... People that are fluent and at ease in an interview. If that person also happens to be good at the job... great! Despite what many people think, if you bluff your way into a job your not qualified for, you don't just get fired immediately. The manager doesn't want to look like a fool for hiring the person and usually they can hang onto the job for as long as they'd like to. Raises and promotions are another thing.
The basic problem with the workforce today is employers have no idea what they need, and even if they did, they have no way of finding out who has the skills they actually do need. Simple as that.
Very good article. However, it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. This tend in which employers stop creating their employee's and just expected to find them didn't really happen until the advent of the 'MBA' which then teaches to commidify everything as much as possible -- but even that is not the problem. This is all part of the evolutionary time-line of capitalism. If you look at it from a physical modeling perspective and apply the processes of self-organized criticality based on complexity theory and cellular autonoma using the fundamental laws of capitalism as the basic laws (the Newtonian laws if you will) of the system the current state as described in this article will evolve each and every time. We must apply the same processes of evolution here. Matter interacts with each other and certain patterns arise over time. Cells are formed, these multi-cellular creatures interact with each other animals are formed, animals interact with each other and evolve and humans are formed, humans interact with each other and classes are formed, societies emerge they interact with each other (imperialism, etc..). John Adams and Adam smith applied some of this analysis in wealth of nations. However, they missed a lot of big pieces. They talk about competition as being a force in the system but they don't really analyze the counter force (and as we know there always must be an opposite force) co-operation which exists in the capitalist system as well -- this is what causes classes to form, etc...
Anyway, the point is while it's true most people who run companies these days aren't scientific or technical and a typical "MBA" major only learns about capitalism and not really the necessary scientific skills to learn how to analyze anything correctly -- but this is really due to how the education system has evolved under the capitalist system (as even in this report it states how many students are no majoring in business).
So really, in order to fix this we need to change the fundamental laws that operate in the system. Get rid of the commidity relations and then allow the processes of Self-organized criticality to evolve newer/different lifeforms.
We need to get rid of capitalism.
The only reason I'd turn down a "good" job as they put it, with good wages, is if I could already tell it was mismanaged, the technology was awful, there were undesirable employees like people with bad attitudes or people completely lacking in basic computer or office work skills or excessively lazy people.
If you pay enough attention to the small things during a tour and/or interview, you can pick up on those types of things. No amount of money would make me work at a "bad" place so I 100% agree that it's actually the employer's fault.
In fact, how can even say it's some sort of skill gap when they interview 5 people and offer the job to the top one who turns it down so they call the 2nd person and they turn it down too. That seems pretty obvious to me. It'd only a skill gap if they interview 5 people and offer the job to 0 of them because they all sucked.
It's also worth mentioning that Tek Systems, my old IT placement and long term project contracting company, was desperate for COBOL and RPG programmers and had dozens of listings for them at insanely high wages. Well guess what, upgrade your technology and you'll find plenty of workers to fill your jobs! It's not the college's fault that your system is 25 years old.
A lot of job postings are also created by going in and asking the person leaving what they do. While on the org chart they were a electrical engineer, over time they took on DB admin because that person got downsized, then network admin when they downsized that person, and janitor, when they got rid of the cleanig service and someone had to vacume and take out the garbage. This continues until the person does no electrical engneering anymore, but spends all his time being a sysadmin.
So the posted job, based on what the person leaving did, becomes "wanted : electrical engineer. Must have Oracle cert, VMware cert, CCNA, and MCSE and be able to lift 50 pounds reguarly and have a CS degree. " Jobs have so diverged from what the postion was for originally it screws up being able to hire because the listed skills no longer have any reference to the actual job being done.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Not to mention ... actually *keeps* people from finding a replacement job, since they're too busy cleaning up dog shit to do applications and interviews.
When a man and a Lioness starve, the Lioness starves last.
No brain, no pain.
...and you don't get, what you don't pay for.
That's really what it boils down to.
I remember in the 80's when I joined the job market having moved jobs a lot was seen as a bad thing. You stuck with a crappy job for at least 18 months because you wanted to show you could stick with things. You moved to often and in interviews you were perceived as a flake and were not desireable.
Now is the exact oposite. If you don't move every three years you are seen as stagnant. Lots of movement shows a lot of desireability! As long as their are no major breaks in employment then moving jobs every 4 to 6 months is seen as a good thing! Obviously these other people sniped you away from someone else and now its this companies chance and you should be hired immediatly.
Whats sad is trying to explain this to my father, he can't understand why I HAVE to move jobs reguarly to make my raises and improve my job status. Things have truly changed in the last ten years.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
what the fuck is wrong with you. get back to your basement and sip your mountain dew. if it makes you feel better, we can say that teaching computer science or working in parks is not allowed. i guess you would prefer that we just hand out free money but ask nothing for nothing in response.
The aforementioned "cheap labor" flooding into the country is only a problem if you are the guy who wants to charge more. Why do you deserve the job more than he does?
If a certain skillset becomes more commonplace, why shouldn't that drive the price for those skills down? Are you saying that you like Supply and Demand only when it works in your favor?
Actually, it does matter. A candidate with 5 years writing Perl scripts isn't necessarily going to be able to immediately write pro PHP scripts (vs a candidate with 5 years hard PHP experience) and certainly isn't going to be a pro C programmer whatever his/her Pascal or Visual Basic experience might be.
Can the candidate learn? Certainly possible.
In time to do the work that needs doing, with good quality (and good security practices)? Quite likely not.
I actually had a job interview where they described a system they were running (in terms of the GUI etc) and asked if I can program addons etc for that. When I asked what language it was (or needed to be) made in, they couldn't answer me. In fact, they seemed annoyed that I kept asking about it. I wasn't able to determine if it was a web-app, Java app, compiled C++ binary, or whatever. In the end, I more or less passed on the job because I couldn't determine my own qualifications for the position.
I'm definitely proficient in the scripting languages I use on a regular basic (generally PHP/Perl), used to be decent with C++ (haven't used it much in awhile), and was able to pick my way through enough of other languages to fix other people's code, but the idea of taking on a job with hard deadlines and no clue as to what tools I'd be working with... not a good idea IMHO.
I've seen plenty of people who do seem to have your opinion. Yes, they can fuddle through and may get code that approximately gets the job done. They don't write GOOD code though, so what you end up with is often a buggy, inefficient mess. I've not a pro in various languages myself but I've still seen the horrific jobs that occur in such situations.
I find it rather disturbing that a recommendation to lie on your resume has a moderation of insightful.
"When I went job-sniffing last year at this time, I had my pick of offers to choose from. I negotiated the offers I was interested in, and the one with the best mix of pay, culture, and benefits won."
Wow, aren't you a lucky one. Most people, responding to a job offer with 'let me think about it" or "Pay me more" or any other type of negotiating is a guarenteed to get a door closed in your face. People are even advised not to ask about benefits any more else compromise your prospects.
"The one I accepted wound up bumping by annual salary by almost $15k (before bonuses)"
Wow there were times I would have jumped at a $15k salary with no bonuses, and the last bonus I got about 5 years ago was a whole $200. My wifes last raise was 15 cents and we were happy for it. Of course our health insurance premiums went up $100/mo or roughly 60 cents an hour.
" the culture was very friendly"
Good for you. What is this mythical company? The last 4 companies I worked for have been rife with in-fighting, incompetence, hot-head bosses and uncaring employees.
So employers must do one of two things:
1. Pay more.
2. Train more.
Training and paying market-plus wages have to both be considered a long-term investment in the employee. Businesses are reluctant to train because a trained employee can leave and take that training to the competition; the way to stop that is to compensate trained, valuable employees well enough that they don't want to leave.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
You have an employee who's plodding along doing half her job, then decides to take several months off because she was busy getting laid. So you have to hire someone to fill in for her while she's gone, or else admit that the work she was doing before added precisely no value to the company and thus she shouldn't be there in the first place. So that guy comes in, being told that there's a massive backlog of work that he urgently needs to do, which he works his ass off to fix, but because he's there for a job, rather than a social club, he actually catches up the backlog, plus works ahead enough so that when, finally, the chick decides it's time to go back to playing grown-up, and the company is legally required to reward her abandonment either by kicking the dude who's actually trying to be an employee out to the curb or by doing that and giving her a promotion, with even more time to slack off and repeat the process because the chump^H^H^H^H^H temp already did all the $#!% she would have just then gotten to ignoring.
It's even worse if she's in the military, where she can go collect a paycheck for up to two years, just long enough to find out she's going to get deployed, then get knocked up and not receive a D.D., but the company has to do all the saving her old job rigamarole plus backdate her seniority.
I GUARANTEE that you haven't researched any of this, and that you haven't thought through any of what you said.
Agreed, with one caveat - the one situation I've seen where it's better to *not* take the job is when it's a temporary or part-time gig. UI (at least in Canada) tends to claw back very aggressively, so unless your job pays more than UI + traveling costs, it's actually a step down. Temporary gigs tend to mess up reapplying.
Stateside, it seems the lack of benefits is the big glitch - I know someone who's been actively looking, but can't find a job (in two states, now!) that pays better than UI when he accounts for the loss of healthcare.
Instead, he said, 'The real culprits are the employers themselves.'
I've heard companies complain about not being able to find qualified applicants, then ignore dozens of qualified people and not even bother to call them. It would be different if they made offers and were turned down, but they don't even call.
You can't claim you can't find qualified applicants if you're not returning phone calls.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
On the other hand, why should we keep willing workers out of the country just so you get paid more?
If you want your resume to be read by HR people (Remember, the programs used to sort through resumes use keywords), find job posts seeking people for the job you want, take all the keywords out of those job posts, and put them in your resume. Even if you have minimal experience in something, you can place the keyword in your resume in some context, even "Learning about ...." or whatever. I get calls ALL THE TIME seeking to interview me, and I'm convinced its because I keyword spam the heck out of my resumes.
If there is a stupid system, just figure out the system and use it to your advantage. The interview will sort you out if you aren't the type of worker they are looking for.
I started looking for a job and got one within 2 weeks, this was only a few months ago. It can be done.
Candidate A was amazing, a true diamond in the rough (the kind of programmer you DO NOT let get away if you have any sense). Intimate knowledge of our domain, a ton of legitimate prior experience - the complete package.
Candidate B was a stretch to even call "mediocre," came to the interview wearing flip-flops and a popped collar, and may even have addressed me as "bro" (can't recall for sure... I try to repress the memory of this sad story).
Who got hired?
Candidate B, of course. HR determined that he was a better fit for the office (whatever that means) and that, based on HR's expert technical opinion (???), he had the necessary skills.
True story.
19990704
The Financial Times by Rebecca Christie as reprinted in the Kansas City Star
Business wary of high-tech training
WASHINGTON - Companies often are uninterested in training workers for high-technology jobs, preferring instead to compete for a limited pool of existing talent, according to a Commerce Department report.
Short development cycles and product lives contribute to some companies' reluctance to train workers, said the report prepared by the departments' Office of Technology Policy. This is compounded by fears that a worker might take a new job before employers are able to reap the benefits of training investment.
The report quoted one technology executive from Arizona who said: "I am afraid, as an employer, of getting people who would require an awful lot of training. We have eight hours to learn a new system. We don't have three months or six months."
Labor Department statistics show that between 1983 and 1998, demand for employment in core technology occupations grew six times faster than the overall job growth rate.
Central recommendations from the new report included tax breaks and government-funded training initiatives designed to expand the labor pool.
The report also said the U.S. education system needed more emphasis on science and technology, particularly for middle school children. Some schoolchildren rule out a career in science as early as middle school and stop taking the classes they would need to study mathematics or engineering in college, the report said.
+555555 for Mr. Cappelli!
He gets it! It's partly caused by the skills "combo multiplication" issue and the fact that hands-on experience for a specific skill is inherently a limited resource regardless of education resources.
Table-ized A.I.
1) hire untrained people and train them
2) once they are trained, pay them enough that the competition can't steal them.
I know, I know, most managers can't cope with the thought of paying their underlings as much or more as the managers themselves make. Well, too damn bad.
Part of the problem is HR/upper management.. instead of retaining good talent and getting rid of the crappy talent, the layoff's happen with a proven formula... sort employees by salary, get rid of the highest paid employees... then you are left with employees who don't make as much and are not as talented (most of the time)... and eventually they are in charge and they won't hire anyone more talented than them as it threatening to them... so they will either hire someone that's not good or keep stalling.. it's funny how a supposedly C# expert was interviewing me with questions and answers printed off some website ...
A more apropos query would be: Why does incompetent leadership appear to be in charge? Kowtowing to shareholders who can give a rat's ass about employees and their requirements for a sustainable income seems to contradict viability in today's market. Just look at China, a real perk to work there is fences on roofs to curtail suicides.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
I have been looking for a job in my field for a while. To some degree. I didn't help myself by getting a master of fine arts. I studied what I wanted, and I became a creative person and a damn good photographer. I freelance, but I really would like to do some commercial work. Trouble is, until I have that magic 5-8 years of experience, I am under-qualified for a lot of the jobs I see out there. On the other side of the coin, to pick up part time work that is more entry level, a lot of employers look at me like I'm nuts. Why would a guy with a master's want to work here? I wish an employer would look at my slight lack of experience as a chance to mold me into what they need. But whatever, it's all a waiting game, but I haven't had a steady salary or benefits for four years.
Rent out your house for $1500 a month (to cover the mortgage). Rent a cheap apartment for $500.
Problem solved, and you can say, "I'm in real-estate", if anyone asks.
Later, when you have enough equity built up in your house, take out a second mortgage, and buy another equivalent property with cash -- and rent it out.
Rinse, repeat. Become Donald Trump.
Do you really think that asking for a reasonable salary is the same thing as a communist revolution? Really? I love these little flashes of insight into the right-wing mind. It's fascinating, like microscopic close-ups of insect faces: here's this creature which is biochemically and genetically more or less like you, and yet completely alien.
I really love club dresses ,
Dude. You should find another job and let them attempt to fill your shoes. Don't facilitate douchebaggery.
I've just been trawling for Jobs with this article in mind and what puts me off most of the jobs is the language used in the advert. The majority of adverts are pointless business speak bullshit. I must admit to being a bit down hearted about the whole job market this week so am probably being harsh, but my point is, the adverts are full of pointless crap and that makes me think that the company culture will be the same and so I skip over it. Well, that and the fact that the requirements are unrealistic and the salary offered is less than the UK national average.
I work for a large (150,000+), employee-owned company - that's larger than Macy's and McDonalds. We consistently score in the Fortune Top 100 Companies to Work For in the general employee population, and Computerworld Best Places To Work in IT. Our customer satisfaction scores are always in the top 3 out of hundreds of players in our marketspace. Although we're far from perfect, one of the keys to our success (and, therefore, the propagation of our culture) is that from day one, the fact - and responsibility - of employee ownership is instilled in every single employee. Once inside, people move from department to department with a fair degree of fluidity, and nobody is scared to test their skills in a position because they have a vested interest as a stockholder. If more companies were majority-owned by the shop floor rather than the top floor, I think you'd see more of those companies succeed, with happier customers to boot.
Project yourself as a highly skilled wage slave.
Casteism
I blame Certifying Organizations--they're breeding like horny hamsters! Every week I look at job ads and every week I find a new requirement for a certificate that I've never heard of. Often, one I can't imagine there being a need for.
When I look up the cert, I find that the keyboards on their laptops haven't even cooled from slapping up a new website. Two years ago, to do what I want to do required A+, Network+, and Security+. Now there's a certificate in backups, printers, storage, interfaces. I used to be an operator in a hospital--there's a specialized test for that. Insurance? Special test. Now instead of 5 tests (costing on the order of $1000 total) there are 11! Just taking the tests will cost me $2200 and taking the classes for all of the tests $15000. And when I'm done, I will be qualified to apply for a $30000/yr job! And I must maintain all of those certs, for they keel over and die every 2 years.
I studied philosophy because it's what I really loved. I'm a letter carrier now, because I applied for tons of jobs that required me to already have certain skill sets that I didn't have on paper, and that I either could've acquired in a week or didn't have official documentation of actually knowing. That's partially a cost-saving measure, because employees can produce more if you don't have to train them in any way and they can get right to work and not waste a seasoned employees time, but also the fault of universities who hand out degrees to people who can't be trusted to do or think about math well, for example. Without knowing someone in the company you're applying to, there isn't a reasonable way to differentiate yourself from anyone else, and so you become, practically, just another "underqualified" candidate.
Outsourcing isn't the most accurate word, but businesses have learned that they can displace most training costs by requiring that colleges teach workers how to do their jobs. That way, you pay to learn, rather than being paid to learn which is the scenario even at a damn McDonalds. They will pay you to learn how to use the fry machine.
I'm also not willing to pay to work, (unpaid internship), because I live alone and have no additional support. But, tons of people are willing to produce a product or service without being paid. I'm no where near as valuable as someone like that.
Union Membership over Time
Without a fairly high percent of the workforce pushing for benefits, pay, and working conditions, all businesses race to the bottom.
Well since those collecting unemployment checks are being paid by the government, I'd call them government workers.
So if your house burns down, when you collect the insurance check, you'll call yourself an insurance company worker?
Well, I'm sure when you worked at Apple you had to deal both with Bad Steve and then, sometime, if you were lucky, No Steve.
Regardless of good or bad workers, I'm sure everyone who worked there eventually came know that.
Meanwhile in Germany, Japan etc the employees in the automobile manufacturing industry get higher wages but don't work for the idiots in the US industry that virtually destroyed their companies through a long series of stupid mistakes over decades.
The US auto industry sunk itself despite Ford and GM being able to produce quality vehicles at their offshore branches. It appears they expected the government to protect them against imported vehicles so that they could just continue to make cheap shit instead of building the designs they already owned that were competing successfully on a level playing field elsewhere. They had all the elements of success but refused to put them together, instead hoping that consumers would reverse the trend since the 1970s and buy heavy antiquated pieces of shit made on lines that long ago cost more to maintain than replace with something that could produce more modern designs.
At least? It's not possible to have any more than three years and a few months yet even if four is coming up any day now. Where do they get these clowns that write this bullshit? It was probably 5 years until an adult pointed out how many years ago 2008 was but were unable to stress that the difference in experience between 1,2 and 3 years is probably nil in practical terms for MS admin if they we doing all that other stuff as well.
That's the thing that would drive me off since such requirements tend to creep once you get the job.
You guys need some politicians with a spine to stop this sort of exploitation of conditions for their voters.
Unfortunately most companies here go through (a handful of) employment agencies, and they're making a packet.
This is one of the reason why employers are at fault. Instead of using as intended, contingent/casual/contract/indirect/non-FTE labor is used as a benefits dodge and a means of controlling employees.
Start by making the mode of labor as much a choice as it is to join a labor union. That is, you get the choice to work directly, indirectly, full-time, part-time, etc. with the assurance that the benefit level is the same. It would make the mode of work flexible such that you would not be required to join an agency or take temporary work.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You mean like the 7,481 times (and that's just last week) that I had to type the exact same employment history info into Taleo forms, instead of having one Taleo.net account? Or how I spent three hours crafting a profile on Monster.com only to have the "Apply Now" button pull up a Taleo page?
Blame it on technology that tries to weed out resumes with "poor match", whatever that means.
Eh, that's the hazard, but there has to be a way to do this that prevents abuse, encourages getting off the system, and gives the unemployed some measure of dignity while collecting benefits so they can go into interviews confident and assured.
I think there are tasks that the community needs that really aren't eating into the private sector. Things that maybe aren't terribly cost effective to hire someone to do, but which, having a bunch of people collecting benefits *anyway* might as well work on.
There are the usual community service projects, for instance, like reorganizing the library shelves and whatnot. Perhaps there is a huge backlog of historical records that need to be entered into a database somewhere, but which aren't critical to the town's functioning, so it's no great loss if they put it off.
I'm sure there are some number of real, "shovel ready" jobs that improve the community without undercutting the rest of the community from that work. Jobs which are "nice to have done" so those doing them can feel a sense of contribution, but boring enough that no one would want to make an "unemployment career" out of. It would be more useful than inventing a need for a new narrow sidewalk with telephone poles in the middle of every sixth square, and paying full-graft contractor rates for the privilege.
The community probably isn't going to be encouraged to "keep people on unemployment" for the community service hours if the effective hourly rate is substantially higher than they would pay to a private contractor for the same work.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If you're good, there are jobs to be had..plenty of them.
In this day in age, however, you do need to be prepared to move to where the jobs are, or commute, etc...the day of one job, in one city for life have LONG been over.
Wow, some psych student could write a thesis on those two lines. To misquote Eddie Murphy, "Do you understand the words that are coming out of your mouth?"
There are plenty of jobs, but jobs are so rare you have to be willing to sacrifice your life in their pursuit like an old forty-niner gold prospector.
There's lots of jobs, but you have to be willing to adopt a nomadic lifestyle shorn of family and friends in the hopes of catching one of these wonderfully rare and plentiful things.
Water is plentiful. I can find a lot of it within twenty miles of where I live. Tornados are not plentiful. Barring astoundingly bad luck, you have to be willing to race hither and yon to see one of them up close. Jobs have been documented and made the source of a movie with Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, therefore jobs are easily found.
OK, maybe that's not entirely a fair restatement of your argument. :-) How about this? "There are a lot of jobs if you're willing to subjugate your needs to the needs of your employer."
OK, how about this idea? "You should work to live, and not live to work."
I'm a military brat. Every four years -- sometimes less -- new orders came and away we'd go. It's a rootless existence that screws families up, as evidenced by the staggeringly high rates of suicide, divorce and homelessness among the children of the military. If people can't find work without living like Okies in California, then that in itself is a problem that needs to be fixed.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The only reason we have such large monstrosities in some American industries, oil, and pharmaceuticals, just to name a couple, is because the burden of regulatory compliance is far too high for smaller firms wanting to compete.
Return with me to the thrilling days of yesteryear, when no evil government regulations impinged upon the energy or pharmaceutical industries. Swoon as you watch them throw naked children into coal mines to crawl through the tunnels, because small tunnels are cheaper to dig than bigger ones. Laugh as many of those kids take a pratfall and never get out of those makeshift ratholes alive. Thrill to the medicine shows churning out opium-laced hooch that was as likely to make you blind as anything else, but at least the barriers to entry were marvelously low.
Ye Gods, man. Seriously? You can stand here in the shadow of Deepwater Horizon and Fen-Phen/Yaz and argue that the problem is that they're regulated too much?! Good grief, if we had any sense, we'd install a psychotically paranoid regulator with a shotgun in a corner office on every floor of their buildings with orders to shoot to kill on mere suspicion alone...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I used to be the lead engineer for a small consulting firm, and during the last two years I worked there I regularly had to work 70 or 80 hours a week, on vacations, etc... because the owner of the company kept saying he couldn't find qualified people to hire, and indeed the people I interviewed were almost all terrible, couldn't even answer basic foo-bar-baz questions. The rare good ones never accepted offers... finally I started asking what sort of offers he was making... at first he would say he couldn't discuss it, etc... but eventually I found out that he was offering only $75k - $90k when he was looking for senior / principle engineers with 8-10 years of experience or more!
DUH!
I was there for almost 12 years, worked on great projects with big clients and I was paid well and always got raises and large bonuses, but apparently, I was the only one. Suddenly it made sense why so many people we hired only stuck around for a year or two and why we couldn't "find" qualified people. I know for a fact the the contracts I worked on were worth millions, he could have easily made some decent offers, but instead he took the entire summer off and stayed in some fancy rental house in nantucket with his family! Screw that...I promptly started looking for another job and found one in two weeks. Now I get paid *more than double* my old salary (which I already thought was pretty much top rate, it was so over the top that I wondered if it was a mistake) and in the 1.5 years since I left, have not once had to work more than 40 hours in a week, and I get to work from home as much as I feel like. The only problem is I made the mistake of not using a google voice number on my resume, so now I am constantly hounded by head-hunters and people trying to poach me from my current job. I'm assuming this is because during 12 years of consulting I learned so many languages and technologies that I probably have all the keywords on my resume and I can actually talk intelligently about all of it because I'm not just padding the resume, I actually have used all that stuff.