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The problem is that we are losing the simple jobs. You have a lot of people with a basic education, who could do good simple work. The push for higher level of

by Loic 9y ago

The problem is that we are losing the simple jobs. You have a lot of people with a basic education, who could do good simple work. The push for higher level of education kind of work is removing them from the market. In Germany, the net effect is that you thousands of apprentice positions free and at the same time thousands of people looking for such positions. The requirements of today's positions are now to high for many young people. So we have a gap between educated people and worker people which is growing extremely fast. This results in a society which is polarizing itself more and more. This is not good on the long term.

abpavel 9y ago
But isn't it simply a misconception? The 10yr statistics doesn't support your argument: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/unemployment-rate As an employer, I find it extremely hard to find qualified people, and my entrepreneur friends are having even harder times, with people showing up for their first day of work either drunk, or not at all.
- Loic 9y ago
  I find it extremely hard to find qualified people. The problem is that a big part of the population is not qualified enough to work and will not be in the future. The 3.7% unemployment rate in Germany is considering something doing a part-time job for less than €400 per month as employed and the long term unemployed people are not part of the stats, the youths are also not in, etc. They are very good at removing many from the stats. If you look at the industrial core of Germany, the Rhein/Ruhr region, you see cities after cities cut in two, one side with 35% of population living from social support and the other side with just 5%. When you "start" your life in the wrong side, you are out of the employment stats right from the start. Note: I am French, living in Gelsenkirchen (such a typical city) and here, we have really hard time finding good engineers even with very good compensation and at the same time we have parts of the city where Doctors without Borders opened a station because the situation is catastrophic.
  - chefkoch 9y ago
    >at the same time we have parts of the city where Doctors without Borders opened a station because the situation is catastrophic. Are you sure about this? Here germany is not listed as country where they are currently have projects. https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/unsere-arbeit/einsatzlaender https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/unsere-arbeit/einsatzlaen...
    - Loic 9y ago
      They opened one in June, but maybe just the fact that they opened it moved the local authorities to act. I will check.
  - literallycancer 9y ago
    >we have really hard time finding good engineers even with very good compensation Everyone thinks they are offering good compensation, regardless of whether it actually is. Somehow, I doubt you'd have the issue if you offered 100k.
    - Loic 9y ago
      For the particular case I had in mind it was around 170k€, but in the Rhein/Ruhr Region, you can easily get 100k compensation for good chemical engineers with experience with very good work conditions.
      - literallycancer 9y ago
        Interesting that there's such a difference between fields, thanks for the data point. Numbers like 170k aren't seen too often in software engineering in Germany as far as I'm aware.
        Loic 9y ago
        Also in chemical engineering. This is usually for people having around 20 to 50 engineers reporting to them within a big company like Bayer, BASF, Covestro, Linde, etc. or for project managers coordinating large projects (10's to 100's of millions).
- Retric 9y ago
  Looking for qualified people is the issue being described. You can find plenty of people with a high school education but training one of them is less efficient then spending more time looking and more money on a qualified person. Which translates to nobody using a large swath of the labor force.
- scandox 9y ago
  > drunk, or not at all Uh is that statistical? Or just like one drunk person?
- otakucode 9y ago
  You find it extremely hard to find qualified people - for the price you want to pay, the environment you want to provide, etc. Expect that to continue. Until you start looking for people to work exclusively remotely, you'll have a hard time.
literallycancer 9y ago
>The problem is that we are losing the simple jobs. You have a lot of people with a basic education, who could do good simple work. The push for higher level of education kind of work is removing them from the market. The obvious solution to this is to make more people qualified, not to prop up "simple jobs" that aren't economically viable.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
  "make more people qualified" As this is an interesting topic to me, how many people have you qualified and what was the ratio of people failing? When I've qualified people, I could make around 25% of people good coders, others I've talked to have similar numbers. If you have higher numbers, I would be highly interested in the "how".
  - okaram 9y ago
    I have been teaching CS classes for 20+ years ... everybody can learn to code, it's just that it takes a different amount of effort for everybody (in a way the same argument as 'offer more pay', in this case, give them more time :)
    - _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
      "everybody can learn to code" Interesting, completely different from my teaching and CTO experience. Also interesting it looks very different from German universities, where e.g. in Berlin the majority of students I've interviewed can't do FizzBuzz in an online interview. How would you assess "good programmer"? From a very practical point of view, mine would be something like can write a feature on his/her own, gets transactions correct, doesn't create performance bugs that show in live systems, good maintainable, readable, understandable architecture. We definetly could not get everybody on that level even with a lot of mentoring. We had a CTO meetup recently and mostly everyone shared the same experience. Coming back, would be interested in "How would you assess good programmer"?
      - 9y ago

by Loic 9y ago

abpavel 9y ago

But isn't it simply a misconception? The 10yr statistics doesn't support your argument: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/unemployment-rate As an employer, I find it extremely hard to find qualified people, and my entrepreneur friends are having even harder times, with people showing up for their first day of work either drunk, or not at all.

Loic 9y ago
I find it extremely hard to find qualified people. The problem is that a big part of the population is not qualified enough to work and will not be in the future. The 3.7% unemployment rate in Germany is considering something doing a part-time job for less than €400 per month as employed and the long term unemployed people are not part of the stats, the youths are also not in, etc. They are very good at removing many from the stats. If you look at the industrial core of Germany, the Rhein/Ruhr region, you see cities after cities cut in two, one side with 35% of population living from social support and the other side with just 5%. When you "start" your life in the wrong side, you are out of the employment stats right from the start. Note: I am French, living in Gelsenkirchen (such a typical city) and here, we have really hard time finding good engineers even with very good compensation and at the same time we have parts of the city where Doctors without Borders opened a station because the situation is catastrophic.
- chefkoch 9y ago
  >at the same time we have parts of the city where Doctors without Borders opened a station because the situation is catastrophic. Are you sure about this? Here germany is not listed as country where they are currently have projects. https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/unsere-arbeit/einsatzlaender https://www.aerzte-ohne-grenzen.de/unsere-arbeit/einsatzlaen...
  - Loic 9y ago
    They opened one in June, but maybe just the fact that they opened it moved the local authorities to act. I will check.
- literallycancer 9y ago
  >we have really hard time finding good engineers even with very good compensation Everyone thinks they are offering good compensation, regardless of whether it actually is. Somehow, I doubt you'd have the issue if you offered 100k.
  - Loic 9y ago
    For the particular case I had in mind it was around 170k€, but in the Rhein/Ruhr Region, you can easily get 100k compensation for good chemical engineers with experience with very good work conditions.
    - literallycancer 9y ago
      Interesting that there's such a difference between fields, thanks for the data point. Numbers like 170k aren't seen too often in software engineering in Germany as far as I'm aware.
      - Loic 9y ago
        Also in chemical engineering. This is usually for people having around 20 to 50 engineers reporting to them within a big company like Bayer, BASF, Covestro, Linde, etc. or for project managers coordinating large projects (10's to 100's of millions).
Retric 9y ago
Looking for qualified people is the issue being described. You can find plenty of people with a high school education but training one of them is less efficient then spending more time looking and more money on a qualified person. Which translates to nobody using a large swath of the labor force.
scandox 9y ago
> drunk, or not at all Uh is that statistical? Or just like one drunk person?
otakucode 9y ago
You find it extremely hard to find qualified people - for the price you want to pay, the environment you want to provide, etc. Expect that to continue. Until you start looking for people to work exclusively remotely, you'll have a hard time.

literallycancer 9y ago

>The problem is that we are losing the simple jobs. You have a lot of people with a basic education, who could do good simple work. The push for higher level of education kind of work is removing them from the market. The obvious solution to this is to make more people qualified, not to prop up "simple jobs" that aren't economically viable.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
"make more people qualified" As this is an interesting topic to me, how many people have you qualified and what was the ratio of people failing? When I've qualified people, I could make around 25% of people good coders, others I've talked to have similar numbers. If you have higher numbers, I would be highly interested in the "how".
- okaram 9y ago
  I have been teaching CS classes for 20+ years ... everybody can learn to code, it's just that it takes a different amount of effort for everybody (in a way the same argument as 'offer more pay', in this case, give them more time :)
  - _Codemonkeyism 9y ago
    "everybody can learn to code" Interesting, completely different from my teaching and CTO experience. Also interesting it looks very different from German universities, where e.g. in Berlin the majority of students I've interviewed can't do FizzBuzz in an online interview. How would you assess "good programmer"? From a very practical point of view, mine would be something like can write a feature on his/her own, gets transactions correct, doesn't create performance bugs that show in live systems, good maintainable, readable, understandable architecture. We definetly could not get everybody on that level even with a lot of mentoring. We had a CTO meetup recently and mostly everyone shared the same experience. Coming back, would be interested in "How would you assess good programmer"?
    - 9y ago