11 ms·

Not really related to the subject of the article, but your comment reminds me of employers in Romania complaining they can't find people to hire, while they off

by drclau 6y ago

Not really related to the subject of the article, but your comment reminds me of employers in Romania complaining they can't find people to hire, while they offer small salaries and people just leave the country for better paying jobs abroad. The solution to their problem is really simple: make better offers.

intrasight 6y ago
That is, of course, the solution everywhere that companies complain about not being able to hire skilled employees. Fund it and they will come.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  This kinda sounds like saying "why are poor countries poor? Can't they just pay everyone more and then they won't be poor?" I get what you are saying but I don't think this will work if the problem is country-wide. You can't just magically increase everyone's wages in a country.
  - intrasight 6y ago
    1. The problem isn't country wide. 2. Don't have to increase everyone's - just those with a "shortage". Companies want a market economy - except when it comes to salaries.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      > 1. The problem isn't country wide Sorry, I though I was on the Romania subthread.
filleduchaos 6y ago
> The solution to their problem is really simple: make better offers. That's certainly a simple solution. The problem with simple solutions is that they are near guaranteed to not actually be feasible or realistic.
- alecbz 6y ago
  If it's literally this or the company folds, that seems realistic.
- yrgulation 6y ago
  Unrelated to the initial post. > The problem with simple solutions is that they are near guaranteed to not actually be feasible or realistic. This. There is no amount of money anyone sane can be given to stay in Romania. Most recently i’ve read they (hospitals) were tying covid patients to their beds. Couldn't help but comment on this as some of things i discovered are shocking for an eu member country (or any country for that matter), such as EU leading human trafficking, police corruption, collapsing health care, and the list goes on. But sure, the simple solution is to give people money, not the constant abuse taking place at work and outside that makes people want to flee that place.
  - fishtacos 6y ago
    That's every poor country in existence. Not everyone has the same mindset as you, however. Provided with basic incentives, many, if not most, would not want to leave family, friends, common culture, etc, just for a wealthy life - they just want basic stability. Companies paying more (offering more at least) would begin to slow this domino effect, which raises standards of living and provides more funding for the government to provide services and ultimately pressure for increases in quality of life by the voting public. Everyone wins. Ultimately not everyone can emigrate - it's an impossibility. The brain drain will continue to be real, so it's incumbent upon these companies hiring to raise their wages and retain talent.
    - yrgulation 6y ago
      Agreed - my statement is in regards to "simple solutions".
      - fishtacos 6y ago
        That was my point. The simplest solutions are sometimes the most effective, as well. Incentivizing brain power to remain the country via pay increases seems like the most basic approach one can take, considering the GP was talking about Romanian studios complaining they can't find/hold talent and they are competing with the rest of the EU.
NewLogic 6y ago
The exact same thing is happening in Australia in regards to farmers and fruit picking labour. With international borders shut they are unable to exploit foreign workers and complain that young adults are refusing to relocate for $5 an hour hard labour jobs.
- kolbe 6y ago
  Farming is low margin. Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products, and they aren’t handed billions in capital to burn through or 1000x multiples on their profit in the public markets. When most businesses say they can’t hire someone and the reason is because they don’t pay enough, the underlying cause of their low pay is usually because that’s what the company can afford. Sure, farmers could pay $10/hr, but unless your Doritos were $10 a bag, they’d lose money.
  - WJW 6y ago
    ...yes? The alternative to farmers is not harvesting their crops at all, since with the borders closed foreign labor is not available. If nobody wants to buy $10 doritos, that means the product can't exist in a market without cheap labor.
    - antihero 6y ago
      Well perhaps that's the problem of the market. That it can't particularly function to enrich some people without gross levels of exploitation.
      - ihsw 6y ago
        Being paid $5/hour farming in Australia vs $0.50/hour assembling shoes in Malaysia. Wow, such exploitation. "Exploitation" is a relative term, some people would rather be exploited in the countryside of a first-world nation rather than the countryside of their homeland.
        6y ago
psychlops 6y ago
You've just described the US H1-B visa program.
asdfman123 6y ago
Well, the problem is this: it might not make economic sense for those specific companies to hire people at a higher rate. Companies aren't going to say "I guess we're inefficient and should just die." They're going to fight to survive and thrive, which is what you're seeing. Then again, some companies ARE just cheap. You never know.
- phkahler 6y ago
  I was at a hotel with crappy service and asked about the problems with house keeping. The manager told me everyone in town (Traverse City MI) was trying to bring in foreigners to do housekeeping because they couldn't get local labor. They said the standard is 30 minutes per room per day. I figure at a very generous $50 per hour (100k / year) it should run $25 to have my room taken care of. Now that doesnt cover the shared costs - doing laundry, cleaning the pool, front desk, etc... but my room was something like $150 per night. How the fuck can they not find people to clean rooms? Answer: they're too cheap to pay a decent wage. But why? My suspicion is that all these places are actually leveraged far too much and paying rent/interest/dividends so much they can barely operate. I suspect low interest rates and other incentives to "stimulate" economies are actually causing these problems.
  - thitcanh 6y ago
    You make no sense. No one will pay $25 to clean a single room in a hotel. Just because your room is $150 it doesn’t mean that “there’s plenty to pay everyone 100k/year.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I assume the cost of a room cleaning (including costs other than direct labor) is closer to $5. That's about what hotels will often give you in some sort of funny money to skip a cleaning.
  - zebnyc 6y ago
    The service industry might be labor intensive but is hardly the only cost for the owner(s). What about mortgage payments, marketing, integrating with third parties (expedia), gas & electricity, general maintenance / accounting / security etc. I am sure there are hundreds of other costs that I have no visibility into
Verdex 6y ago
At college I had a professor who I worked for who grew up in Romania. Apparently the song that kids had back in the day was: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
vbezhenar 6y ago
https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q sorry for pun. But that's not always a solution. Sometimes employer is greedy. Sometimes his business just does not allow to pay enough salary.
k3oni 6y ago
Ha, I know this all too well(2000-2006) and it's strange to see/hear it's still happening now.
908B64B197 6y ago
Don't forget the whining from bureaucrats when American tech takes over the local market, and ships profits back to it's headquarter where... they employ Romanians expats!

by drclau 6y ago

intrasight 6y ago

That is, of course, the solution everywhere that companies complain about not being able to hire skilled employees. Fund it and they will come.

smnrchrds 6y ago
This kinda sounds like saying "why are poor countries poor? Can't they just pay everyone more and then they won't be poor?" I get what you are saying but I don't think this will work if the problem is country-wide. You can't just magically increase everyone's wages in a country.
- intrasight 6y ago
  1. The problem isn't country wide. 2. Don't have to increase everyone's - just those with a "shortage". Companies want a market economy - except when it comes to salaries.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    > 1. The problem isn't country wide Sorry, I though I was on the Romania subthread.

filleduchaos 6y ago

> The solution to their problem is really simple: make better offers. That's certainly a simple solution. The problem with simple solutions is that they are near guaranteed to not actually be feasible or realistic.

alecbz 6y ago
If it's literally this or the company folds, that seems realistic.
yrgulation 6y ago
Unrelated to the initial post. > The problem with simple solutions is that they are near guaranteed to not actually be feasible or realistic. This. There is no amount of money anyone sane can be given to stay in Romania. Most recently i’ve read they (hospitals) were tying covid patients to their beds. Couldn't help but comment on this as some of things i discovered are shocking for an eu member country (or any country for that matter), such as EU leading human trafficking, police corruption, collapsing health care, and the list goes on. But sure, the simple solution is to give people money, not the constant abuse taking place at work and outside that makes people want to flee that place.
- fishtacos 6y ago
  That's every poor country in existence. Not everyone has the same mindset as you, however. Provided with basic incentives, many, if not most, would not want to leave family, friends, common culture, etc, just for a wealthy life - they just want basic stability. Companies paying more (offering more at least) would begin to slow this domino effect, which raises standards of living and provides more funding for the government to provide services and ultimately pressure for increases in quality of life by the voting public. Everyone wins. Ultimately not everyone can emigrate - it's an impossibility. The brain drain will continue to be real, so it's incumbent upon these companies hiring to raise their wages and retain talent.
  - yrgulation 6y ago
    Agreed - my statement is in regards to "simple solutions".
    - fishtacos 6y ago
      That was my point. The simplest solutions are sometimes the most effective, as well. Incentivizing brain power to remain the country via pay increases seems like the most basic approach one can take, considering the GP was talking about Romanian studios complaining they can't find/hold talent and they are competing with the rest of the EU.

NewLogic 6y ago

The exact same thing is happening in Australia in regards to farmers and fruit picking labour. With international borders shut they are unable to exploit foreign workers and complain that young adults are refusing to relocate for $5 an hour hard labour jobs.

kolbe 6y ago
Farming is low margin. Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products, and they aren’t handed billions in capital to burn through or 1000x multiples on their profit in the public markets. When most businesses say they can’t hire someone and the reason is because they don’t pay enough, the underlying cause of their low pay is usually because that’s what the company can afford. Sure, farmers could pay $10/hr, but unless your Doritos were $10 a bag, they’d lose money.
- WJW 6y ago
  ...yes? The alternative to farmers is not harvesting their crops at all, since with the borders closed foreign labor is not available. If nobody wants to buy $10 doritos, that means the product can't exist in a market without cheap labor.
  - antihero 6y ago
    Well perhaps that's the problem of the market. That it can't particularly function to enrich some people without gross levels of exploitation.
    - ihsw 6y ago
      Being paid $5/hour farming in Australia vs $0.50/hour assembling shoes in Malaysia. Wow, such exploitation. "Exploitation" is a relative term, some people would rather be exploited in the countryside of a first-world nation rather than the countryside of their homeland.
      - 6y ago

psychlops 6y ago

You've just described the US H1-B visa program.

asdfman123 6y ago

Well, the problem is this: it might not make economic sense for those specific companies to hire people at a higher rate. Companies aren't going to say "I guess we're inefficient and should just die." They're going to fight to survive and thrive, which is what you're seeing. Then again, some companies ARE just cheap. You never know.

phkahler 6y ago
I was at a hotel with crappy service and asked about the problems with house keeping. The manager told me everyone in town (Traverse City MI) was trying to bring in foreigners to do housekeeping because they couldn't get local labor. They said the standard is 30 minutes per room per day. I figure at a very generous $50 per hour (100k / year) it should run $25 to have my room taken care of. Now that doesnt cover the shared costs - doing laundry, cleaning the pool, front desk, etc... but my room was something like $150 per night. How the fuck can they not find people to clean rooms? Answer: they're too cheap to pay a decent wage. But why? My suspicion is that all these places are actually leveraged far too much and paying rent/interest/dividends so much they can barely operate. I suspect low interest rates and other incentives to "stimulate" economies are actually causing these problems.
- thitcanh 6y ago
  You make no sense. No one will pay $25 to clean a single room in a hotel. Just because your room is $150 it doesn’t mean that “there’s plenty to pay everyone 100k/year.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I assume the cost of a room cleaning (including costs other than direct labor) is closer to $5. That's about what hotels will often give you in some sort of funny money to skip a cleaning.
- zebnyc 6y ago
  The service industry might be labor intensive but is hardly the only cost for the owner(s). What about mortgage payments, marketing, integrating with third parties (expedia), gas & electricity, general maintenance / accounting / security etc. I am sure there are hundreds of other costs that I have no visibility into

Verdex 6y ago

At college I had a professor who I worked for who grew up in Romania. Apparently the song that kids had back in the day was: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."

vbezhenar 6y ago

https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q sorry for pun. But that's not always a solution. Sometimes employer is greedy. Sometimes his business just does not allow to pay enough salary.

k3oni 6y ago

Ha, I know this all too well(2000-2006) and it's strange to see/hear it's still happening now.

908B64B197 6y ago

Don't forget the whining from bureaucrats when American tech takes over the local market, and ships profits back to it's headquarter where... they employ Romanians expats!