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Or, employers will start taking the long view and actually start investing in their employees.
by itamarst 9y ago
Or, employers will start taking the long view and actually start investing in their employees.
- vinceguidry 9y agoThat's not an investment, that's giving your money away. Would you spend $X0,000 on something that can walk out the door at any moment?
- sidlls 9y agoDid you ever consider that the employee might be a smidge less likely to walk out the door if the employer invested in him or her, recognized his or her achievements in a timely manner with responsibility and authority (promotion) and compensated him or her fairly? Seems to me employees "are likely to walk out the door" mainly because employers view them as expendible expenses and not humans trading labor for something of value
- vinceguidry 9y agoSure, but that still doesn't make it an investment, it just makes it a less risky bet. And betting on people being high-minded over being selfish has always been a bad one.
- ionised 9y agoAre you really equating company loyalty with high-mindedness here?
- vinceguidry 9y agoWell, yeah, that's what it means, right? If you pay me $50k per year and invest $20k of company resources to train me, and the second my training's up, I jump ship to a company promising to pay me $60k, wouldn't you feel ripped off? Nobody these days would turn down a $10k raise out of company loyalty. They might for other reasons, but loyalty is absolutely not one of them anymore.
- denimnerd 9y agoif completeting the training makes someone worth 10k more then give them that raise.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI don't know why I let myself get sidetracked into this worthless ideological discussion. Final answer, then I'm getting back to work. Because when you take risks, you should expect a reward. If your reward isn't worth the risk, but you still take it anyway, then you're the dumb one. When you're the one offering liquid compensation, you get to decide on the risk profile of the bought solution.
- ionised 9y ago> Because when you take risks, you should expect a reward Isn't the whole point of taking a risk is that there may not actually be any reward? If you expect reward every time then it's not really a risk.
- noonespecial 9y agoThe right thing to do is to start transitioning the $20k you were spending training the new guy into salary as he acquires the skills. Its stupid to spend the $20k, figure its "done" and then think you can just go on paying the $50k after the fact even though the employee is clearly now worth $70k. You want a $70k talent, you can either find one straight up or make one with some mix of lower salary + training until you have one.
- vinceguidry 9y agoYou don't see what's wrong with this? Unreal. If you hire someone for $50k, then train them with $20k, then give them a raise after the training is over for the $20k it takes to bring their comp up to market, you're out $90k. Accounting-wise, you just gifted the employee $20k on top of his comp. Or you can just go out and hire for $70k and just be out $70k. This is what's already being done, shifting the cost of training and education onto the ones receiving the benefits of that training. I'm trying hard to not post a diatribe about what's wrong with this kind of thinking and just point out the errors in reasoning that come from it, but this game of whack-a-mole is frustrating. You can't demand your employer to shoulder all the risks and grant unto you all the rewards. It's unethical and leads to underhanded dealing. We want a more professional labor marketplace, not one governed by promises and half-truths.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoall investments carry risks. e.g. if a company invests in a building for their office, there's always a risk that building will incur excessive maintenance expenses, become unusable because of some calamity, or that the location around the building will become a bad neighborhood and make that building a lot less useful. i think a company can invest in, say, teaching their employees a valuable skill and then make money off that investment, even if the employee leaves eventually.
- vinceguidry 9y agoYou can insure against risks. You can't against bets. Good luck getting an insurance company to sell you a policy covering training cost recovery in the event of employee-initiated turnover.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoInvestments are bets. You can totally insure your bets, the term “hedge your bets” exists for a reason. You seem to be equating bets with gambling for some reason.
- vinceguidry 9y agoSelf-insurance against the risk of employee defections costing them time and money is exactly what employers are already doing, by not taking on the risk of educating and training employees.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoYou can hedge your bets in many different ways with different assumptions for likely outcomes. For example, if you think it likely that your employee won’t hang around for very long, then you can act by treating them as disposable. You could also choose to mitigate the risk of them leaving if you thought you could be successful at it. Both approaches are forms of self insurance, none of them are full proof, and they can also lead to self fulfilling prophecy problems.
- denimnerd 9y agoAn investment and risk go hand in hand.
- vinceguidry 9y agoYes, but the difference between an investment and a bet involves the amount and type of risk. Investments generally don't disappear. Bets do. Also the expected rewards are higher too. If a company bets $20k in an employee, the best they can hope for is that the employee does a good job. Not that that bet doubles in value.
- learc83 9y ago> If a company bets $20k in an employee, the best they can hope for is that the employee does a good job. Not that that bet doubles in value. What do you think it means from the company's perspective to "do a good job"? A developer who does a good job will most likely double that $20k in a few months.
- hinkley 9y agoHow good is the documentation and process on your team? Any place I work, it’s easier to train my replacement than it was to train me. It allows me to pick up new projects or leave for a more interesting opportunity without guilt. Work yourself out of a job. It definitely means I’m easier to lay off. But I’ve survived 2 rounds of layoffs before and buddy, if you can figure out how to pay your mortgage without a front row seat to watch a company crumble around you then I highly recommend it. (Also only the 1st round offers a decent severance package, and survivor guilt is no fun). Personal finances help with that. As do maintaining relationships with people.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoConsidering the main reason most people walk out the door is because of a lack of investment, maybe they should.
- bluGill 9y agoJust remember the alternative: you don't invest $X0,000 and they STAY anyway.
- Kluny 9y agoApprenticeship has been a thing as long as professions have existed. A common way to justify training an apprentice is to indenture them - they agree to work for you for a set number of years at a given wage, in exchange for training. Then you get professional organizations who negotiate on behalf of trainees/apprentices to make sure that the training wages are fair and the conditions aren't too onerous. Membership in the professional organization is contingent on keeping your indentureship agreements. Programming is such a young profession that we don't have any of that, and I think we need to evolve it.
- vinceguidry 9y agoNobody's going to accept indentures in this day and age.
- Kluny 9y agoI would, for a chance to be trained in a technology that I don't know and have a steady job for 5 years or so.
- humanrebar 9y agoI'm surprised that no employers even offer this as an option when hiring. There might be some legal barriers to this problem like recovering the investments when the employee breaks the contract? Seems like some kind of insurance would help there, though.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI asked my last employer about this and they said that no contract can bind an employee to a company. Any contract would be one-sided in favor of the employee. Seems obvious when you think about it. Indentured servitude is wrong.
- humanrebar 9y ago> ...they said that no contract can bind an employee to a company. Seems to work fine for athletes, actors, medical residents, certain kinds of scholarships, etc.