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Thanks for the articles. I'm not sure, however, that the examples cited within them are entirely fair - they took middle aged furniture workers and tried to ge

by philk 17y ago

Thanks for the articles. I'm not sure, however, that the examples cited within them are entirely fair - they took middle aged furniture workers and tried to get them jobs at Google after a few years retraining. Of course a guy who's had six weeks of classes in Linux isn't going to get a job at one of the most technical companies in the world. What I was thinking was more along the line of retraining them to do useful blue collar jobs - for example HVAC maintenance - which can't be easily offshored and still is useful to society. It's a myth to pretend that we can re-educate enough blue-collar workers to make a dent. We're going to have to find another way, and my suspicion is that it's going to involve a resurrection of trade barriers until older workers can retire. I'd be reluctant to do this, as it's essentially a tax on everyone else to support them and essentially surrendering to the fact that we can get very little value out of these workers.

timr 17y ago
" Of course a guy who's had six weeks of classes in Linux isn't going to get a job at one of the most technical companies in the world. What I was thinking was more along the line of retraining them to do useful blue collar jobs - for example HVAC maintenance - which can't be easily offshored and still is useful to society." Well, yes...the story is tragic because they never had a chance. But I wouldn't be quick to assume that this is a story specific to Google. You'll note that a lot of these people end up doing menial work, even after their re-training program. One presumes that if it were possible to find better jobs, these people would have found them -- they certainly sound like dedicated workers. Instead, they're working double-shifts at WalMarts and prisons. "I'd be reluctant to do this, as it's essentially a tax on everyone else to support them and essentially surrendering to the fact that we can get very little value out of these workers." That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that we've consistently exploited cheaper labor markets to undermine our own, without building non-US markets for our own products. Moreover, many of these foreign labor markets have been playing currency games to ensure that US workers can't possibly compete. It's a system that's rigged against US production, and taxing it is one way of reintroducing balance.
- davidw 17y ago
  > Another way of looking at it is that we've consistently exploited cheaper labor markets to undermine our own, without building non-US markets for our own products. That's a fairly zero-sum way of looking at it, and I'm not sure it's accurate. Germany is a big exporter, for instance, and they're certainly not China in terms of how they treat their workers, tax companies, and so forth.
  - bjelkeman-again 17y ago
    Germany has a culture which considers engineering to be something important. The UK has a culture which considers engineering something unimportant (relatively, you see it easily in the language use, in the UK an "engineer" is often what you and I would call a technician). In Anglo-saxon countries sales and marketing seems to be considered more important than engineering. And most sales and marketing people aren't in a position to innovate in traditional engineering sense, so they do what they can. Create killer marketing and compete on price. Whereas engineering culture led organisations compete on features and new tools. Compare German car companies and US car companies.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  One presumes that if it were possible to find better jobs, these people would have found them -- they certainly sound like dedicated workers. Instead, they're working double-shifts at WalMarts and prisons. I suspect if it were possible to find better jobs in Lenoir, N.C (Pop. 16,000), they would have found it. In fact, they probably would have found better jobs anywhere in the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton statistical area (Pop. 360,000). On the other hand, there are plenty of data center technician jobs in Newark and other parts of northern NJ. I don't see any reason to believe the people in this story made any effort to seek them out.
  - timr 17y ago
    If you read the articles I posted, you'll find that they talk about that point. The comments also discuss it extensively. The problem with that argument is that while you're almost certainly right, there are a lot of reasons that people get stuck in one place -- poverty, houses they can't sell, sick family, etc. -- and it's fundamentally unrealistic to expect everyone to move to find a job at a data center. Few work forces are as mobile as a 20-something programmer with no kids. Also, given that the cost of living is quite a bit higher in New Jersey than Lenoir, North Carolina, one has to carefully examine the risk/reward of the decision to move. Maybe it would work out, but for a lot of these people I suspect they'd be no better off than working at WalMart in Lenoir.

by philk 17y ago

timr 17y ago

" Of course a guy who's had six weeks of classes in Linux isn't going to get a job at one of the most technical companies in the world. What I was thinking was more along the line of retraining them to do useful blue collar jobs - for example HVAC maintenance - which can't be easily offshored and still is useful to society." Well, yes...the story is tragic because they never had a chance. But I wouldn't be quick to assume that this is a story specific to Google. You'll note that a lot of these people end up doing menial work, even after their re-training program. One presumes that if it were possible to find better jobs, these people would have found them -- they certainly sound like dedicated workers. Instead, they're working double-shifts at WalMarts and prisons. "I'd be reluctant to do this, as it's essentially a tax on everyone else to support them and essentially surrendering to the fact that we can get very little value out of these workers." That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that we've consistently exploited cheaper labor markets to undermine our own, without building non-US markets for our own products. Moreover, many of these foreign labor markets have been playing currency games to ensure that US workers can't possibly compete. It's a system that's rigged against US production, and taxing it is one way of reintroducing balance.

davidw 17y ago
> Another way of looking at it is that we've consistently exploited cheaper labor markets to undermine our own, without building non-US markets for our own products. That's a fairly zero-sum way of looking at it, and I'm not sure it's accurate. Germany is a big exporter, for instance, and they're certainly not China in terms of how they treat their workers, tax companies, and so forth.
- bjelkeman-again 17y ago
  Germany has a culture which considers engineering to be something important. The UK has a culture which considers engineering something unimportant (relatively, you see it easily in the language use, in the UK an "engineer" is often what you and I would call a technician). In Anglo-saxon countries sales and marketing seems to be considered more important than engineering. And most sales and marketing people aren't in a position to innovate in traditional engineering sense, so they do what they can. Create killer marketing and compete on price. Whereas engineering culture led organisations compete on features and new tools. Compare German car companies and US car companies.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
One presumes that if it were possible to find better jobs, these people would have found them -- they certainly sound like dedicated workers. Instead, they're working double-shifts at WalMarts and prisons. I suspect if it were possible to find better jobs in Lenoir, N.C (Pop. 16,000), they would have found it. In fact, they probably would have found better jobs anywhere in the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton statistical area (Pop. 360,000). On the other hand, there are plenty of data center technician jobs in Newark and other parts of northern NJ. I don't see any reason to believe the people in this story made any effort to seek them out.
- timr 17y ago
  If you read the articles I posted, you'll find that they talk about that point. The comments also discuss it extensively. The problem with that argument is that while you're almost certainly right, there are a lot of reasons that people get stuck in one place -- poverty, houses they can't sell, sick family, etc. -- and it's fundamentally unrealistic to expect everyone to move to find a job at a data center. Few work forces are as mobile as a 20-something programmer with no kids. Also, given that the cost of living is quite a bit higher in New Jersey than Lenoir, North Carolina, one has to carefully examine the risk/reward of the decision to move. Maybe it would work out, but for a lot of these people I suspect they'd be no better off than working at WalMart in Lenoir.