11 ms·

Greyston Bakery hires on a first-come, first-served basis, no questions asked

145 points by adwmayer 8y ago

aturley 8y ago
I've half joked about doing this for technical positions. I think to make it work you'd need: 1. A strong management system in place that's committed to helping folks succeed. 2. A willingness to honestly evaluate people and let them go if they aren't working out. I've seen enough bad hires even in places that have well planned hiring processes that I'm having trouble believing this would be any worse.
- teilo 8y ago
  You forgot #3: A company with a lot of cash, and a lot of time to waste. I really don't think this can work. Whenever we post for a position, I get flooded with a bunch of garbage resumes from people who barely have an idea what programming is. We have work to do, and deadlines. We literally can't afford to turn ourselves into a technical training school.
  - andrewla 8y ago
    The idea here seems like it would be best suited to a working environment that has a deep pipeline, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled or specialized workers. People can be hired unconditionally to the unskilled pool, from which they can move up to the higher tiers either through training (either internally or externally) or through natural ability. A bakery, like in this example, seems like it could pull this off, since janitorial work at a bakery is straightforward but unlikely something you'd want to subcontract, and presents a natural place to interact with other workers in more specialized positions, through management or through learning more. In software this is more difficult, because there's no longer a pipeline for things like data entry, assembly, or basic IT support (traditional inroads), especially at a smaller company, much less janitorial or food prep work that presents an opportunity to advance. I think the hidden cost here, though, is that progression from one stage to another starts to resemble interviewing at a new company, with all the same biases and problems that result from hiring processes in general, with the possible exception that there's more direct information on personality and work ethic that can feed into the pipeline (for better or worse).
    - le-mark 8y ago
      A lot of companies used to actually do this. Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. It's unheard of today for obvious reasons (a lot more demand for high skilled jobs makes it easy to get training and leave).
      - 4lejandrito 8y ago
        My former employer did exactly this (dev incubator it was called) with people from the call center. During the time I was there one guy turned out to be a genius and after a few years left to work for a big bank and another guy got enough experience to start his career as a dev somewhere else. The rest of us learnt a lot mentoring these guys and feel quite proud of them. This was no more than 5 years ago.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        > Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. That is exactly my story ('85 or thereabouts), with the added caveat that I didn't learn anything from the Cobol training program. The bank where I worked did not even have a way for mailroom people to get into IT, it was mostly because they got sick of my continued applications to IT jobs for which they though I wasn't qualified that I got the chance to do the course (with the qualifier that if I didn't succeed they never wanted to see me again). So, I passed (and was the quickest person to complete the course) and ended up making a very rapid career in the IT department and after that started my own company. Some observations: - the entry level IT job paid four times as much as what the mail room job did - work went from 5:30 am to 2 pm to 9'ish to 4'ish (ish because nobody ever checked who appeared when and when they left again whereas in the mailroom attendance was very strictly policed) - in the mailroom you felt part of critical infrastructure, in IT there was zero pressure to perform - bringing the mailroom attitude ('let's get some work done') to the IT department was not appreciated by the rest of the department - the mailroom had zero office politics, if you stepped out of line you would get chewed out and that would be that, by comparison the IT department was a huge web of intrigue, and quite a few of the people there were downright mean and backstabbing each other all the time - the mailroom was all guys, the IT department had exactly two women programmers on a total crew of about 120, the only other woman was a secretary to the head of IT - There were a few talented people there but on the whole the talent level was rather low, but they were big on process and that really helped to get stuff out the door
  - aturley 8y ago
    So, I actually thought about including "enough of a cash buffer to survive a few bad hires", but the more I thought about it the more I remembered how much time was wasted on folks who made it through the interview process but didn't work out. Lots of companies are wasting money hiring folks with no plan for how to retain them or get them to work effectively. If you've solved this problem then good for you.
- macintux 8y ago
  I don't know how this would scale for any non-entry-level position. Even desktop support requires more knowledge than a random person on the street has, so unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on training every new hire who may or may not pan out, you'd need to think about some qualification screen at a minimum.
  - pasquinelli 8y ago
    just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply. people don't actually want to get a job they have no idea how to do. applicants will filter themselves. the question is how much better is a company's filtering process, really, than the applicants' self-filtering? would be embarrassing if it were no better, or even worse.
    - macintux 8y ago
      People are very good at not knowing how unqualified they are. Former brother-in-law of mine was convinced he was a computer expert because he built a computer once. IT pay is well-known for being better than average, so I'd bet you'd have people who can move a mouse trying to get entry-level IT work at a company known for hiring anyone.
      - sandworm101 8y ago
        Penetration testers who own a kali usb. Security experts who went to RSA one year and chatted with the NSA booth guys. Html "coders".
        kbart 8y ago
        Oh, that's far from worse.. the ones you've mentioned could at least qualify for entry level positions.
    - jerf 8y ago
      "just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply" I can only infer from this statement that you have never been in a hiring position in which you are receiving the raw resume submissions from the field. You either have never been in a hiring position, or you've only had the post-filter resume stream sent to you.
- dqpb 8y ago
  I think this pipeline already exists via open source software. Unskilled people are by default allowed to try contributing. As soon as they are actually capable of doing so, they can move up the ranks by getting hired somewhere.
  - pc86 8y ago
    "Work for free until we decide you're worth being paid."
    - eggpy 8y ago
      i.e. an internship
    - dqpb 8y ago
      In most cases, I'm firmly opposed to this. For example, I've known several people in psychology and social services careers where they essentially worked unpaid for years before qualifying for their licence. I think that's absurd because it forces you into creating value for others without receiving any of that value back. However, I'd argue that unpaid contribution to open source software as a way to build reputation is not absurd, because the value you are creating is still available for you to use and benefit from. Additionally, you are free to work on anything you like - something you can't do at an organization which is compelling you to work for free.
- Unbeliever69 8y ago
  I hire for a tech company and never background or drug check my employees.
  - pc86 8y ago
    Honestly not sure what that has to do with the discussion here.
  - kjeetgill 8y ago
    Hi. I think you meant to reply to this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17800066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17800066
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I think you would need to filter out all the people that apply without knowing what the job entails but it would be interesting to hire based on one of the online assessments.
nathanaldensr 8y ago
Can we not replicate click-bait headlines on HN?
- pure-awesome 8y ago
  Is it really click-bait, though? The title seems to pretty accurately describe the contents of the article.
  - ainiriand 8y ago
    The title should tell us which company did what in order to know if we are interested or not.
    - d0lph 8y ago
      If they don't mention a name in the title it's probably not someone big.
- dang 8y ago
  We've changed the title to part of the subtitle.
barry-cotter 8y ago
> People who are given a job start off as apprentices, during which they go through a 10-month job training and life-skills course. Around half the people who begin an apprenticeship choose to complete it and stay at Greyston, and when they do, they’re then assigned an entry-level job–working the mixing machines or overseeing the slicing and packaging of different-sized brownies for distribution. They pay minimum wage to the apprentices. I can see how a system like that would work. Just being able to show up and do the bare minimum to pass the apprenticeship period is more than an awful lot of low skill workers are capable of, whether due to life circumstances, low conscientiousness or other characteristics that make keeping a job difficult. The population of job seekers for badly paid, low skill jobs is full of the unemployable. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/who-wants-the-job/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/who-wants-the-job/
- pc86 8y ago
  Who is TheZvi and why should we care about what he's talking about? Especially when the about page is still the default WP about page...
tessi3r 8y ago
If pay started at $10 per hour and you had an incredible amount of staff to find actually talented people, this is maybe a bad idea. If you thought you'd "disrupt" hiring at your small company this could be a solid company-ending idea...
bluedino 8y ago
The companies who hire illegal immigrants do essentially the same thing. No background check (how could they) or drug test. They just shuffle people in, pay them minimum wage, and they if they mess up or quit showing up they just find some more people off the street. Just bodies to do low-skill, low-paying work.
harlanji 8y ago
More should do this. I am blackballed from Silicon Valley from a series of bad employers and have a misdemeanor driving-related arrest, so a Day Labor non-profit that does the same has been my only way of attaining employment. My income has dropped 10x but it’s enough to feed me, and most of my network has turned its back on me. I am hired by executives and doctors for cash now who feel I am wasting my skills too. I have great skills from over 18 years of passionate programming, being squandered. If any bay area tech companies hire like this, I’ll make your year.
- learc83 8y ago
  Have you tried contract work? Even if you have to lowball a bit to get traction, you should be able to make a lot more than as a day laborer.
  - babaganoosh89 8y ago
    +1 to contract work. Could start your own projects which would also help build out your portfolio.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Try remote (and maybe contract) work. Also, Silicon Valley is not the only place to find tech work - don't forget there are plenty of companies all over the world who are building lovely things too. ;)
- whalesalad 8y ago
  All you do is sit and complain and act like a victim on your twitter account. Your mentality is what’s holding you back. You can’t be blackballed in Silicon Valley. I’ve hired so many people without reference checks and have been hired in the same manner. Change your attitude and you can return to programming.
  - bena 8y ago
    Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole. And no, I don't think it's Silicon Valley that's holding him back, it's more companies where the people value "not wanting to get shot at work".
ChuckMcM 8y ago
The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is very relevant. There are a lot of jobs at even a high tech company like Google or Apple that could be filled by someone with a high school degree and nominal fine motor skills, but those jobs are currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations. It was interesting to me to see the remnants of a system like this at IBM which had 10 "bands" of employment level, where band 1 was janitor level, and band 10 was principle engineer/senior manager type level. But it seemed like these days they only used bands 6 - 10 because that was where 'entry level engineer' started (band 6). Many if not all of the jobs in the lower bands were outsourced as far as I could tell. And a lot eliminated when they sold off factories or other parts of the business that had a lot of technician level labor. I will be interesting to see if we could get back to a more reasonable way of managing these things. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-rising-inequality-consider-the-janitors-at-two-top-companies-then-and-now.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...
- jt2190 8y ago
  > There are a lot of jobs... currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations. Would you mind elaborating on this point a bit? I have some notions of what you're suggesting, but I'd rather not assume.
  - ChuckMcM 8y ago
    The contracting company adds a cost layer between the worker and the employer. The money funding that cost layer comes out of the worker's salary not the price they charge the company they are providing services for. So the worker knows the contracting company is squeezing them and they get into a sort of adversarial relationship.
ilovetux 8y ago
As a felon myself working in tech, I find this attitude refreshing. It could work in IT...but would require significant changes to how things currently work. I can't say for sure whether it would be worth it to restructure entire organizations to benefit the disenfranchised, but my instincts are telling me that it would add a reddish hue to the bottom line and thus is unlikely to be adopted. I do think that this sort of attitude could add value and blacken the bottom line if applied to many other types of industries (eg. construction, manufacturing, machining, food service and much more).
- Kalium 8y ago
  I suspect this practice would take the expected time from hire to productive from maybe 1-3 months to 1-3 years. This seems likely to be an expensive prospect, and that's if we assume every single person makes a good engineer. Based on the comments of others, I suspect this approach is most useful in a business where you have positions at a variety of skill levels. In IT and tech, the base skillset required can be substantial.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    >if we assume every single person makes a good engineer. Not every person makes a good engineer. The US Army, with very good reason to train anyone who is willing, has decided that anyone with an IQ under 83 is not able to be trained to any position.
- pc86 8y ago
  If the overall effect is cost-negative, what is the incentive for a company to spend more resources to hire "the disenfranchised" (felons)?
  - ilovetux 8y ago
    There would indeed be little incentive for a lot of businesses (specifically IT but also others). There are, however, other industries where this sort of career path already exists and with less rework could implement an "open-hire" program. Edit: I didn't really address your question. While there would be little incentive, there would not be none. For instance a better public image (like being an equal opportunity employer, but even more so) I believe they would end up with a more loyal workforce (but this is debatable and even if true it would be difficult to quantify) but... They might also upset existing employees who were hired under a more traditional process There would be less incentive to pursue higher education if this were common practice In short...I am tempted to look for a way to make it work, but also torn because I know that the needs of the business take a backseat to philosophical ideals. I do, however, believe that this could be implemented in certain industries and be a net-benefit to all
gt_ 8y ago
Sounds like this has a lot of overlap with a federal job guarentee
tareqak 8y ago
A choice quote from the article: > People who are given a job start off as apprentices, during which they go through a 10-month job training and life-skills course. I found the part about life-skills pretty interesting. I have long thought that occupations keep specializing and populations keep growing the way the have, that some people will no doubt miss out learning about things that others may take for granted / learn from their own life experience.

145 points by adwmayer 8y ago

I've half joked about doing this for technical positions. I think to make it work you'd need: 1. A strong management system in place that's committed to helping folks succeed. 2. A willingness to honestly evaluate people and let them go if they aren't working out. I've seen enough bad hires even in places that have well planned hiring processes that I'm having trouble believing this would be any worse.

teilo 8y ago
You forgot #3: A company with a lot of cash, and a lot of time to waste. I really don't think this can work. Whenever we post for a position, I get flooded with a bunch of garbage resumes from people who barely have an idea what programming is. We have work to do, and deadlines. We literally can't afford to turn ourselves into a technical training school.
- andrewla 8y ago
  The idea here seems like it would be best suited to a working environment that has a deep pipeline, from unskilled to semi-skilled to skilled or specialized workers. People can be hired unconditionally to the unskilled pool, from which they can move up to the higher tiers either through training (either internally or externally) or through natural ability. A bakery, like in this example, seems like it could pull this off, since janitorial work at a bakery is straightforward but unlikely something you'd want to subcontract, and presents a natural place to interact with other workers in more specialized positions, through management or through learning more. In software this is more difficult, because there's no longer a pipeline for things like data entry, assembly, or basic IT support (traditional inroads), especially at a smaller company, much less janitorial or food prep work that presents an opportunity to advance. I think the hidden cost here, though, is that progression from one stage to another starts to resemble interviewing at a new company, with all the same biases and problems that result from hiring processes in general, with the possible exception that there's more direct information on personality and work ethic that can feed into the pipeline (for better or worse).
  - le-mark 8y ago
    A lot of companies used to actually do this. Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. It's unheard of today for obvious reasons (a lot more demand for high skilled jobs makes it easy to get training and leave).
    - 4lejandrito 8y ago
      My former employer did exactly this (dev incubator it was called) with people from the call center. During the time I was there one guy turned out to be a genius and after a few years left to work for a big bank and another guy got enough experience to start his career as a dev somewhere else. The rest of us learnt a lot mentoring these guys and feel quite proud of them. This was no more than 5 years ago.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > Let the mail room or call center people apply for the cobol training program and become developers. That is exactly my story ('85 or thereabouts), with the added caveat that I didn't learn anything from the Cobol training program. The bank where I worked did not even have a way for mailroom people to get into IT, it was mostly because they got sick of my continued applications to IT jobs for which they though I wasn't qualified that I got the chance to do the course (with the qualifier that if I didn't succeed they never wanted to see me again). So, I passed (and was the quickest person to complete the course) and ended up making a very rapid career in the IT department and after that started my own company. Some observations: - the entry level IT job paid four times as much as what the mail room job did - work went from 5:30 am to 2 pm to 9'ish to 4'ish (ish because nobody ever checked who appeared when and when they left again whereas in the mailroom attendance was very strictly policed) - in the mailroom you felt part of critical infrastructure, in IT there was zero pressure to perform - bringing the mailroom attitude ('let's get some work done') to the IT department was not appreciated by the rest of the department - the mailroom had zero office politics, if you stepped out of line you would get chewed out and that would be that, by comparison the IT department was a huge web of intrigue, and quite a few of the people there were downright mean and backstabbing each other all the time - the mailroom was all guys, the IT department had exactly two women programmers on a total crew of about 120, the only other woman was a secretary to the head of IT - There were a few talented people there but on the whole the talent level was rather low, but they were big on process and that really helped to get stuff out the door
- aturley 8y ago
  So, I actually thought about including "enough of a cash buffer to survive a few bad hires", but the more I thought about it the more I remembered how much time was wasted on folks who made it through the interview process but didn't work out. Lots of companies are wasting money hiring folks with no plan for how to retain them or get them to work effectively. If you've solved this problem then good for you.
macintux 8y ago
I don't know how this would scale for any non-entry-level position. Even desktop support requires more knowledge than a random person on the street has, so unless you're willing to spend a lot of money on training every new hire who may or may not pan out, you'd need to think about some qualification screen at a minimum.
- pasquinelli 8y ago
  just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply. people don't actually want to get a job they have no idea how to do. applicants will filter themselves. the question is how much better is a company's filtering process, really, than the applicants' self-filtering? would be embarrassing if it were no better, or even worse.
  - macintux 8y ago
    People are very good at not knowing how unqualified they are. Former brother-in-law of mine was convinced he was a computer expert because he built a computer once. IT pay is well-known for being better than average, so I'd bet you'd have people who can move a mouse trying to get entry-level IT work at a company known for hiring anyone.
    - sandworm101 8y ago
      Penetration testers who own a kali usb. Security experts who went to RSA one year and chatted with the NSA booth guys. Html "coders".
      - kbart 8y ago
        Oh, that's far from worse.. the ones you've mentioned could at least qualify for entry level positions.
  - jerf 8y ago
    "just because you hire anyone who applies doesn't mean just anyone will apply" I can only infer from this statement that you have never been in a hiring position in which you are receiving the raw resume submissions from the field. You either have never been in a hiring position, or you've only had the post-filter resume stream sent to you.
dqpb 8y ago
I think this pipeline already exists via open source software. Unskilled people are by default allowed to try contributing. As soon as they are actually capable of doing so, they can move up the ranks by getting hired somewhere.
- pc86 8y ago
  "Work for free until we decide you're worth being paid."
  - eggpy 8y ago
    i.e. an internship
  - dqpb 8y ago
    In most cases, I'm firmly opposed to this. For example, I've known several people in psychology and social services careers where they essentially worked unpaid for years before qualifying for their licence. I think that's absurd because it forces you into creating value for others without receiving any of that value back. However, I'd argue that unpaid contribution to open source software as a way to build reputation is not absurd, because the value you are creating is still available for you to use and benefit from. Additionally, you are free to work on anything you like - something you can't do at an organization which is compelling you to work for free.
Unbeliever69 8y ago
I hire for a tech company and never background or drug check my employees.
- pc86 8y ago
  Honestly not sure what that has to do with the discussion here.
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  Hi. I think you meant to reply to this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17800066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17800066
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
I think you would need to filter out all the people that apply without knowing what the job entails but it would be interesting to hire based on one of the online assessments.

nathanaldensr 8y ago

Can we not replicate click-bait headlines on HN?

pure-awesome 8y ago
Is it really click-bait, though? The title seems to pretty accurately describe the contents of the article.
- ainiriand 8y ago
  The title should tell us which company did what in order to know if we are interested or not.
  - d0lph 8y ago
    If they don't mention a name in the title it's probably not someone big.
dang 8y ago
We've changed the title to part of the subtitle.

barry-cotter 8y ago

> People who are given a job start off as apprentices, during which they go through a 10-month job training and life-skills course. Around half the people who begin an apprenticeship choose to complete it and stay at Greyston, and when they do, they’re then assigned an entry-level job–working the mixing machines or overseeing the slicing and packaging of different-sized brownies for distribution. They pay minimum wage to the apprentices. I can see how a system like that would work. Just being able to show up and do the bare minimum to pass the apprenticeship period is more than an awful lot of low skill workers are capable of, whether due to life circumstances, low conscientiousness or other characteristics that make keeping a job difficult. The population of job seekers for badly paid, low skill jobs is full of the unemployable. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/who-wants-the-job/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/who-wants-the-job/

pc86 8y ago
Who is TheZvi and why should we care about what he's talking about? Especially when the about page is still the default WP about page...

tessi3r 8y ago

If pay started at $10 per hour and you had an incredible amount of staff to find actually talented people, this is maybe a bad idea. If you thought you'd "disrupt" hiring at your small company this could be a solid company-ending idea...

bluedino 8y ago

The companies who hire illegal immigrants do essentially the same thing. No background check (how could they) or drug test. They just shuffle people in, pay them minimum wage, and they if they mess up or quit showing up they just find some more people off the street. Just bodies to do low-skill, low-paying work.

harlanji 8y ago

More should do this. I am blackballed from Silicon Valley from a series of bad employers and have a misdemeanor driving-related arrest, so a Day Labor non-profit that does the same has been my only way of attaining employment. My income has dropped 10x but it’s enough to feed me, and most of my network has turned its back on me. I am hired by executives and doctors for cash now who feel I am wasting my skills too. I have great skills from over 18 years of passionate programming, being squandered. If any bay area tech companies hire like this, I’ll make your year.

learc83 8y ago
Have you tried contract work? Even if you have to lowball a bit to get traction, you should be able to make a lot more than as a day laborer.
- babaganoosh89 8y ago
  +1 to contract work. Could start your own projects which would also help build out your portfolio.
Rjevski 8y ago
Try remote (and maybe contract) work. Also, Silicon Valley is not the only place to find tech work - don't forget there are plenty of companies all over the world who are building lovely things too. ;)
whalesalad 8y ago
All you do is sit and complain and act like a victim on your twitter account. Your mentality is what’s holding you back. You can’t be blackballed in Silicon Valley. I’ve hired so many people without reference checks and have been hired in the same manner. Change your attitude and you can return to programming.
- bena 8y ago
  Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole. And no, I don't think it's Silicon Valley that's holding him back, it's more companies where the people value "not wanting to get shot at work".

ChuckMcM 8y ago

The key is the onboarding program. Bakeries are nice, they have a range of jobs that go from very simple (sweeping up and cleaning) to very complex (scheduling different products for baking). If you have that range you can absorb a lot of different people. That said, if you recall the story we had here a while back [1] about how janitors used to work for the company and now they work for a contracting firm, this is very relevant. There are a lot of jobs at even a high tech company like Google or Apple that could be filled by someone with a high school degree and nominal fine motor skills, but those jobs are currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations. It was interesting to me to see the remnants of a system like this at IBM which had 10 "bands" of employment level, where band 1 was janitor level, and band 10 was principle engineer/senior manager type level. But it seemed like these days they only used bands 6 - 10 because that was where 'entry level engineer' started (band 6). Many if not all of the jobs in the lower bands were outsourced as far as I could tell. And a lot eliminated when they sold off factories or other parts of the business that had a lot of technician level labor. I will be interesting to see if we could get back to a more reasonable way of managing these things. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-rising-inequality-consider-the-janitors-at-two-top-companies-then-and-now.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/upshot/to-understand-risi...

jt2190 8y ago
> There are a lot of jobs... currently firewalled behind a general contracting company. That perversely misaligns the end employees motivations and the company motivations. Would you mind elaborating on this point a bit? I have some notions of what you're suggesting, but I'd rather not assume.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  The contracting company adds a cost layer between the worker and the employer. The money funding that cost layer comes out of the worker's salary not the price they charge the company they are providing services for. So the worker knows the contracting company is squeezing them and they get into a sort of adversarial relationship.

ilovetux 8y ago

As a felon myself working in tech, I find this attitude refreshing. It could work in IT...but would require significant changes to how things currently work. I can't say for sure whether it would be worth it to restructure entire organizations to benefit the disenfranchised, but my instincts are telling me that it would add a reddish hue to the bottom line and thus is unlikely to be adopted. I do think that this sort of attitude could add value and blacken the bottom line if applied to many other types of industries (eg. construction, manufacturing, machining, food service and much more).

Kalium 8y ago
I suspect this practice would take the expected time from hire to productive from maybe 1-3 months to 1-3 years. This seems likely to be an expensive prospect, and that's if we assume every single person makes a good engineer. Based on the comments of others, I suspect this approach is most useful in a business where you have positions at a variety of skill levels. In IT and tech, the base skillset required can be substantial.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  >if we assume every single person makes a good engineer. Not every person makes a good engineer. The US Army, with very good reason to train anyone who is willing, has decided that anyone with an IQ under 83 is not able to be trained to any position.
pc86 8y ago
If the overall effect is cost-negative, what is the incentive for a company to spend more resources to hire "the disenfranchised" (felons)?
- ilovetux 8y ago
  There would indeed be little incentive for a lot of businesses (specifically IT but also others). There are, however, other industries where this sort of career path already exists and with less rework could implement an "open-hire" program. Edit: I didn't really address your question. While there would be little incentive, there would not be none. For instance a better public image (like being an equal opportunity employer, but even more so) I believe they would end up with a more loyal workforce (but this is debatable and even if true it would be difficult to quantify) but... They might also upset existing employees who were hired under a more traditional process There would be less incentive to pursue higher education if this were common practice In short...I am tempted to look for a way to make it work, but also torn because I know that the needs of the business take a backseat to philosophical ideals. I do, however, believe that this could be implemented in certain industries and be a net-benefit to all

gt_ 8y ago

Sounds like this has a lot of overlap with a federal job guarentee

tareqak 8y ago

A choice quote from the article: > People who are given a job start off as apprentices, during which they go through a 10-month job training and life-skills course. I found the part about life-skills pretty interesting. I have long thought that occupations keep specializing and populations keep growing the way the have, that some people will no doubt miss out learning about things that others may take for granted / learn from their own life experience.