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Part of this is due to the increased career-orientation of higher education. A century ago, someone could start in the mailroom and gradually learn how a compa

Part of this is due to the increased career-orientation of higher education. A century ago, someone could start in the mailroom and gradually learn how a company worked; maybe at some point they would take a night course in accounting or some similar business skill, but the vast majority of what senior management needed to know was learned from experience -- and experience at that company in particular. Now business undergraduate students don't just sit in classrooms learning about accounting practices and labour law; they're expected to study existing business, take co-op positions, and otherwise gain "real world" experience. A student graduating from a 4 year Undergraduate business program should know far more about business than someone who started in the mailroom 10 years ago. Meanwhile the other side of business schools -- research -- has also acted to reduce the advantage of gaining experience at any specific business. Researchers study successful businesses, learn what works, publish papers... and eventually teach it to their students. Whereas a century ago, businesses fundamentally did things in different ways, most large businesses follow the same general approaches to things, because those are what the PhDs say are the best ways of running a business. As a side effect, the experience someone gains in one company becomes far more transferable to another; for all that companies talk about getting "fresh ideas" from external hires, external hiring has increased because external hires are now less fresh than they used to be.

lordnacho 5y ago
I think it has to do with what people think university is. It used to be academic training, now it's seen as job training, and I'm not sure it's justified, having done time at a business school. Really, it's so different studying business to doing business there should be some sort of advertising standards label on the course description. So now people think that you need to have gone to university to work in ordinary shops, and it cuts out a huge swathe of people from certain jobs that they'd be totally fine at. Sales type jobs like this centenarian was doing is one of them, you really don't need a degree to do it, but now there's a gate.
411111111111111 5y ago
The biggest reason why promotions are becoming rare is because it actually isn't in the interest of the company to do them. If you're filling an opening by promotion you'll still have to find someone new to fill the position that has been vacated with that promotion: and now you've got 2 new people vs 1 when hiring from outside.
- WesternWind 5y ago
  Or you hire one entry level person, promote internally and have employees who are quick to train and ready to contribute.
  - extr 5y ago
    I used to work at a company like this. Only hired new grads, and promoted mostly from within. It was great in some ways but you would definitely have "blind leading the blind" moments and it was very frustrating. I came to see the value in hiring externally for some roles. If you're in a startup or even a small business, really great to have at least a few people around with deep, external experience in the industry to help build context and point out solved problems.
    - SkyBelow 5y ago
      I think one would want a mix of both. You want to promote internally so you have some people higher up who understand the business deeply in ways that an external hire would not as well as promote retention and reward going above and beyond by having career growth opportunities available, but you also want to hire externally to ensure you are getting an influx of new ideas that have been working at other companies.
    - greedo 5y ago
      We had the same experience when starting to use AWS/Azure. Our in-house team was all experienced with using VMware on-prem, with some mainframe and a few legacy physical servers. So we had a broad depth of knowledge for running our own datacenter. So when we started using AWS, we really made a lot of mistakes by trying to replicate how we did things on-prem. And there was a lot of resistance to using cloud services; some people viewed it as a threat to job security. Others simply had a difficult time adjusting to the change in operations/procedures and philosophy. This held us back quite a bit until we hired a few contractors who helped us better understand where we needed to change, which features worked well in the cloud (and which sucked). We brought the best contractors onboard as FTEs, and it's been a much better experience.
    - 5y ago
Aloha 5y ago
Anyone who thinks most companies do things the same ways has never worked more than 1-2 places. The only thing that's the same across companies is some broad generalizations, basically coming down to GAAP and HR. Everything else varies a whole lot. Even with GAAP there is a large degree of variance, like - how does project accounting work, is it paid at the end or percent of completion? Do you capitalize engineering costs, or is it considered an operating expense? Ordering and ERP is another huge source of variation, do you use dummy (sales) part numbers? Is internal listed cost fully burdened - or is that accounted for separately? How are part numbers organized? Expense and reimbursement policy is another source of variation, a wild amount. Just nuts and bolts about how you book, are all different. Do you use a corporate credit card or get reimbursed? Nevermind entertainment policy. Basic stuff like is your org chart people orientated, job oriented or process oriented? IT policy, internal communications styles and policy, how sales works, it's all different.
- vasco 5y ago
  I think you underestimate how different it used to be. You're describing variations within the same frameworks. The frameworks didn't used to exist.
  - Aloha 5y ago
    I've studied business histories, a bunch of them - they're not just frameworks, they're entirely different ways of thinking about the problem. Business have needed to solve mostly the same internal structural, reporting, accountability and accounting issues since the industrial revolution - none of this is really new. The first great change was double entry bookkeeping, then the telegraph and telephone increased the size and scope of businesses, and allowed centralized control, then tabulating machines allowed easier data processing and statistical analysis, computers came and allowed higher complexity, then teleconferencing allowing more distribution, and so on. If you have an example of what you're talking about I'd love to read it.
    - vasco 5y ago
      Maybe a couple that come to mind: > Businesses reporting GAAP vs before GAAP existed. > Businesses working towards ISO / SOC type certifications vs before these existed Just those two things, financial regulations and compliance frameworks have made businesses operate much more similarly in broad strokes than before these existed. The original argument you replied to is that over time, businesses have become more similar, and I think these things have made businesses way more similar. You're a public company you report on the same metrics now. Before there was any regulation or even a stock market, businesses operated way more differently and you would have to learn everything by being there.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I think (and this is not based in reality at all, I'm just guessing) that a lot of the jobs mentioned - like mail room - either no longer exist, or have been outsourced to 3rd party providers where there simply is no upwards mobility beyond supervisor, but only at that 3rd party provider. I'm thinking things like administration, call centers, accountants, etc. A lot of work has been compartmentalized, and it's created additional barriers.
barry-cotter 5y ago
> A student graduating from a 4 year Undergraduate business program should know far more about business than someone who started in the mailroom 10 years ago. When one of my friends did her work placement at a large bank she said the only useful thing from the 2.5 years of business undergraduate study she’d done before that was knowing what Sarbox was. As evidence that business degrees aren’t that useful consider that GS and similar bulge bracket banks have no discernible preference for business undergrads. They assume that by the end of six weeks of analyst training everyone is at the same level.
neves 5y ago
> Part of this is due to the increased career-orientation of higher education. Maybe the main part of this is because companies will fire older and more expensive employees to hire cheaper junior ones. Cost cutting all the time. The quickest way to increase your salary is to change jobs.

lordnacho 5y ago

I think it has to do with what people think university is. It used to be academic training, now it's seen as job training, and I'm not sure it's justified, having done time at a business school. Really, it's so different studying business to doing business there should be some sort of advertising standards label on the course description. So now people think that you need to have gone to university to work in ordinary shops, and it cuts out a huge swathe of people from certain jobs that they'd be totally fine at. Sales type jobs like this centenarian was doing is one of them, you really don't need a degree to do it, but now there's a gate.

411111111111111 5y ago

The biggest reason why promotions are becoming rare is because it actually isn't in the interest of the company to do them. If you're filling an opening by promotion you'll still have to find someone new to fill the position that has been vacated with that promotion: and now you've got 2 new people vs 1 when hiring from outside.

WesternWind 5y ago
Or you hire one entry level person, promote internally and have employees who are quick to train and ready to contribute.
- extr 5y ago
  I used to work at a company like this. Only hired new grads, and promoted mostly from within. It was great in some ways but you would definitely have "blind leading the blind" moments and it was very frustrating. I came to see the value in hiring externally for some roles. If you're in a startup or even a small business, really great to have at least a few people around with deep, external experience in the industry to help build context and point out solved problems.
  - SkyBelow 5y ago
    I think one would want a mix of both. You want to promote internally so you have some people higher up who understand the business deeply in ways that an external hire would not as well as promote retention and reward going above and beyond by having career growth opportunities available, but you also want to hire externally to ensure you are getting an influx of new ideas that have been working at other companies.
  - greedo 5y ago
    We had the same experience when starting to use AWS/Azure. Our in-house team was all experienced with using VMware on-prem, with some mainframe and a few legacy physical servers. So we had a broad depth of knowledge for running our own datacenter. So when we started using AWS, we really made a lot of mistakes by trying to replicate how we did things on-prem. And there was a lot of resistance to using cloud services; some people viewed it as a threat to job security. Others simply had a difficult time adjusting to the change in operations/procedures and philosophy. This held us back quite a bit until we hired a few contractors who helped us better understand where we needed to change, which features worked well in the cloud (and which sucked). We brought the best contractors onboard as FTEs, and it's been a much better experience.
  - 5y ago

Aloha 5y ago

Anyone who thinks most companies do things the same ways has never worked more than 1-2 places. The only thing that's the same across companies is some broad generalizations, basically coming down to GAAP and HR. Everything else varies a whole lot. Even with GAAP there is a large degree of variance, like - how does project accounting work, is it paid at the end or percent of completion? Do you capitalize engineering costs, or is it considered an operating expense? Ordering and ERP is another huge source of variation, do you use dummy (sales) part numbers? Is internal listed cost fully burdened - or is that accounted for separately? How are part numbers organized? Expense and reimbursement policy is another source of variation, a wild amount. Just nuts and bolts about how you book, are all different. Do you use a corporate credit card or get reimbursed? Nevermind entertainment policy. Basic stuff like is your org chart people orientated, job oriented or process oriented? IT policy, internal communications styles and policy, how sales works, it's all different.

vasco 5y ago
I think you underestimate how different it used to be. You're describing variations within the same frameworks. The frameworks didn't used to exist.
- Aloha 5y ago
  I've studied business histories, a bunch of them - they're not just frameworks, they're entirely different ways of thinking about the problem. Business have needed to solve mostly the same internal structural, reporting, accountability and accounting issues since the industrial revolution - none of this is really new. The first great change was double entry bookkeeping, then the telegraph and telephone increased the size and scope of businesses, and allowed centralized control, then tabulating machines allowed easier data processing and statistical analysis, computers came and allowed higher complexity, then teleconferencing allowing more distribution, and so on. If you have an example of what you're talking about I'd love to read it.
  - vasco 5y ago
    Maybe a couple that come to mind: > Businesses reporting GAAP vs before GAAP existed. > Businesses working towards ISO / SOC type certifications vs before these existed Just those two things, financial regulations and compliance frameworks have made businesses operate much more similarly in broad strokes than before these existed. The original argument you replied to is that over time, businesses have become more similar, and I think these things have made businesses way more similar. You're a public company you report on the same metrics now. Before there was any regulation or even a stock market, businesses operated way more differently and you would have to learn everything by being there.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I think (and this is not based in reality at all, I'm just guessing) that a lot of the jobs mentioned - like mail room - either no longer exist, or have been outsourced to 3rd party providers where there simply is no upwards mobility beyond supervisor, but only at that 3rd party provider. I'm thinking things like administration, call centers, accountants, etc. A lot of work has been compartmentalized, and it's created additional barriers.

barry-cotter 5y ago

> A student graduating from a 4 year Undergraduate business program should know far more about business than someone who started in the mailroom 10 years ago. When one of my friends did her work placement at a large bank she said the only useful thing from the 2.5 years of business undergraduate study she’d done before that was knowing what Sarbox was. As evidence that business degrees aren’t that useful consider that GS and similar bulge bracket banks have no discernible preference for business undergrads. They assume that by the end of six weeks of analyst training everyone is at the same level.

neves 5y ago

> Part of this is due to the increased career-orientation of higher education. Maybe the main part of this is because companies will fire older and more expensive employees to hire cheaper junior ones. Cost cutting all the time. The quickest way to increase your salary is to change jobs.