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> "It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so investing in o

> "It was far less common for people to change jobs back then, too. Neither employers nor employees feel any real loyalty towards one another, so investing in one another feels foolish. There's nothing to incentivise someone to stay once he's learnt the skills he needs to get a position elsewhere." Sorry, I still don't understand this attitude. I live in the UK, it's common here to have at least some level of on-the-job training, especially for jobs where there's a skills shortage. In my experience, training opportunities are a great way of building up company loyalty, you want to stay with the company because you know you can progress in the company.

joshyeager 10y ago
We invest a lot in training and mentoring, especially for a small company. Someone once asked "what if we train them and they leave?" Our CEO replied "what if we don't train them and they stay?"
calgoo 10y ago
There is "some" training, but I think the general understanding is: "There are 50,000 others who want the job, and if we dont like this one, we will get someone else" so why train them? The normal training I see here is "know the company" kind of stuff and the yearly health and safety course mandated by the government.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  I still find the attitude bizarre. If you train your current employees they generally become better at their job. If they become better at their job then the company can work more effectively without requiring additional staffing overhead. Those "50,000 others" are not equal in productivity and effectiveness to the employees you train in-house. In addition to all of this, sometimes you don't even need any additional budget to train employees, you just need to give them the space to work based on their own ingenuity.
vacri 10y ago
Developer skills take a very long time to train. For example, you can train someone to use a forklift in a day, but there are people who have developed for 10 years and still have trouble with version control software. Developers are a professional role, and you don't get unskilled, unemployed people and train them on the job to be professionals.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Depends. There are paths into development that don't rely on formal training. 10 years ago I was a customer service advisor, now I'm a test analyst (with coding experience). You can work your way into technical roles. One of the best things I did (other than immerse myself in learning about computing in my spare time) was to start learning SQL. Anyone that uses Excel to do their job can benefit from learning SQL, and it's been very useful to me even when I wasn't directly in a software development team. In addition, you can get plenty of use out of the basics and build up your knowledge over time. The point is, even if you can't train a new developer in a weekend, on-the-job training can help people build up to it eventually, with the added benefit of the employee being more effective at what they do along the way (basic coding skills are useful for cutting down on a lot of time-consuming tasks). Oh and if an experienced coder has trouble with version control software, perhaps that's a sign that the approach to version control may be overly complex. From what I've seen of version control systems, the hardest task is merging branches, and the need to constantly create branches can be mitigated against through better management of centralised repositories (which still works with DVCS like Git).
NetStrikeForce 10y ago
Job culture in the UK is soooo much better than in Spain. I've worked on both places, so this is first hand experience. In Spain I would get sent to a training, because we needed to have someone certified on that product to get discounts, then the company would ask me to sign a contract to either stay with them at least two more years or pay a 2k fine. The idiots only tried to do this after the training, thinking otherwise I might just refuse to get trained. Of course I refused to sign, but I was only one of the few who would refuse. In the UK I even get to choose my training. Not just technical, but also on soft skills. Even training that I might not apply in my current role, but I might need to move to a new role. The biggest shocker for me was the manager-employee relationship. In Spain the manager owns you. In the UK the manager is a team member with a very specific goal: make you and your team successful. And don't get me started on leaving the office before your manager does... Of course he would be the biggest sucker (otherwise you don't get to be a manager) and won't leave until 8pm. Leaving shortly after your shift ended was frowned upon by colleagues and verbally challenged by managers: - Where are you going? - Home. - Don't you have work to do? - Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again. That company was terribly toxic and I have seen it destroy several families and people's health.
- cwilkes 10y ago
  > - Don't you have work to do? > - Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again. Hah, good one. I'm curious in this toxic situation doesn't it just take a few good companies that treat their employees well to change things around? The good engineers will flock there leaving the bad ones at the old companies. Granted that probably means the managers will now try and get 2x the work out of the remainders. Maybe some will get a clue though and change their ways.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    I thought about it a few times. What would it take to turn this around? Surely I can take some capital and start a development company where the people are treated better hence more productive, so I can deliver better products? The problem is the customer. The customer ends up always being the government (national, regional or local) and they have a higher degree of employees that don't care about quality, so the big software factories (called butchers over there because they sell you almost by weight) can put under payed, under qualified and burned out developers on the project. I have hopes on all the new tech companies flourishing around the country that are looking outside Spain for their customers. I am hoping they will end up shaping the market for good.
dingo_bat 10y ago
I live in India, and on-the-job training is very common. And to be honest, I still feel a certain loyalty towards the company I interned at. Just because they invested about a month just training me and paying me.

joshyeager 10y ago

We invest a lot in training and mentoring, especially for a small company. Someone once asked "what if we train them and they leave?" Our CEO replied "what if we don't train them and they stay?"

calgoo 10y ago

There is "some" training, but I think the general understanding is: "There are 50,000 others who want the job, and if we dont like this one, we will get someone else" so why train them? The normal training I see here is "know the company" kind of stuff and the yearly health and safety course mandated by the government.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
I still find the attitude bizarre. If you train your current employees they generally become better at their job. If they become better at their job then the company can work more effectively without requiring additional staffing overhead. Those "50,000 others" are not equal in productivity and effectiveness to the employees you train in-house. In addition to all of this, sometimes you don't even need any additional budget to train employees, you just need to give them the space to work based on their own ingenuity.

vacri 10y ago

Developer skills take a very long time to train. For example, you can train someone to use a forklift in a day, but there are people who have developed for 10 years and still have trouble with version control software. Developers are a professional role, and you don't get unskilled, unemployed people and train them on the job to be professionals.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
Depends. There are paths into development that don't rely on formal training. 10 years ago I was a customer service advisor, now I'm a test analyst (with coding experience). You can work your way into technical roles. One of the best things I did (other than immerse myself in learning about computing in my spare time) was to start learning SQL. Anyone that uses Excel to do their job can benefit from learning SQL, and it's been very useful to me even when I wasn't directly in a software development team. In addition, you can get plenty of use out of the basics and build up your knowledge over time. The point is, even if you can't train a new developer in a weekend, on-the-job training can help people build up to it eventually, with the added benefit of the employee being more effective at what they do along the way (basic coding skills are useful for cutting down on a lot of time-consuming tasks). Oh and if an experienced coder has trouble with version control software, perhaps that's a sign that the approach to version control may be overly complex. From what I've seen of version control systems, the hardest task is merging branches, and the need to constantly create branches can be mitigated against through better management of centralised repositories (which still works with DVCS like Git).

NetStrikeForce 10y ago

Job culture in the UK is soooo much better than in Spain. I've worked on both places, so this is first hand experience. In Spain I would get sent to a training, because we needed to have someone certified on that product to get discounts, then the company would ask me to sign a contract to either stay with them at least two more years or pay a 2k fine. The idiots only tried to do this after the training, thinking otherwise I might just refuse to get trained. Of course I refused to sign, but I was only one of the few who would refuse. In the UK I even get to choose my training. Not just technical, but also on soft skills. Even training that I might not apply in my current role, but I might need to move to a new role. The biggest shocker for me was the manager-employee relationship. In Spain the manager owns you. In the UK the manager is a team member with a very specific goal: make you and your team successful. And don't get me started on leaving the office before your manager does... Of course he would be the biggest sucker (otherwise you don't get to be a manager) and won't leave until 8pm. Leaving shortly after your shift ended was frowned upon by colleagues and verbally challenged by managers: - Where are you going? - Home. - Don't you have work to do? - Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again. That company was terribly toxic and I have seen it destroy several families and people's health.

cwilkes 10y ago
> - Don't you have work to do? > - Yep, that's why I'm coming back tomorrow again. Hah, good one. I'm curious in this toxic situation doesn't it just take a few good companies that treat their employees well to change things around? The good engineers will flock there leaving the bad ones at the old companies. Granted that probably means the managers will now try and get 2x the work out of the remainders. Maybe some will get a clue though and change their ways.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  I thought about it a few times. What would it take to turn this around? Surely I can take some capital and start a development company where the people are treated better hence more productive, so I can deliver better products? The problem is the customer. The customer ends up always being the government (national, regional or local) and they have a higher degree of employees that don't care about quality, so the big software factories (called butchers over there because they sell you almost by weight) can put under payed, under qualified and burned out developers on the project. I have hopes on all the new tech companies flourishing around the country that are looking outside Spain for their customers. I am hoping they will end up shaping the market for good.

dingo_bat 10y ago

I live in India, and on-the-job training is very common. And to be honest, I still feel a certain loyalty towards the company I interned at. Just because they invested about a month just training me and paying me.