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The entire market is a game and sham according to my experience: When employers actually need labor they hire who comes along and train them to fit the needed

by _wire_ 2y ago

The entire market is a game and sham according to my experience: When employers actually need labor they hire who comes along and train them to fit the needed roles while managing attrition. But what I'm seeing is all about arbitrage. When an employer prefers to leave positions unfilled without facing the costs of constructing skilled labor, they're just scalping. Employees are expected to self fund training in branded products to be "competitive". "Growth" / "innovation" become PR terms for automated scalp removal. What's weird is that internally at fat corps they don't know what to do with the skilled staff they have. For example Intel has a perpetual purgatory they literally call "the pool" where they send skilled staff to tread water before being laid off. They've had the pool for 35 years but have no internal equivalent of LinkedIn. They don't even bother to curate the staff they already have while endlessly seeking greenwood. The training is more than half outsourced to the community while the firm enjoys humongous tax breaks because it's "employer of choice". But weirder still, they'll help arrange for a PhD then dump the staff member a few years later. It's this incredible selfishness to process absent of purpose that leads to a community corroding pathos which explains why the Bay Area is one of the most stratified and regressive regions in the world. It produces churn where the only feature of the landscape that represents stability is in "Defense" contracts and a culture that produces policy like this: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/R...

rockemsockem 2y ago
I'm sorry that's been your experience. I have the good fortune to be able to say that it is not like that at many, many places. I also suspect that the state of affairs at Intel that you described is largely due to incompetence as opposed to selfishness.
- _wire_ 2y ago
  There's no need for condolences, it's not personal. Business is churn and crisis. If you've never seen it yourself, it's only that it hasn't occurred to you -yet-. It's in the news every day with reports like Tesla lays off thousands to cut costs while board gives CEO $50 billion payout. I do not see this as explainable through any idea of incompetence. It's about some wiley edge of control over profits. It's not contradictory that firms depend on skilled labor but are incapable of producing the conditions for constructing the needed labor force. Business has a long track record of enslaving labor and prefers to wreck labor as a force. Even at business's very best, it's widely understood that business / community partnerships are required to meet needs, where the community funds the training from which business cherry picks "talent" and while negotiating tax breaks that get passed on to investors executives. This can't be explained as incompetence, it's explained through organized contention between specific vested corporate interests and the broader community who bears the costs of cultivating the labor force. It's a story of business competency that led to Michael Moore to write about his stories about Flint Michigan, which became emblematic of US corporate culture. Within corporate enclaves you can always find a small population who have never endured the ongoing existential crisis which is business churn: People for whom the crisis of labor hasn't occurred... yet. For the special few who get to the grave in business having never seen any pathos... Is this good luck or a curse? There's no shortage of evidence! Look around your community and the commons, do you see decay? Is it explainable through "competence" or "incompetence?" It seems some other language is needed to explain what we see.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    I feel like your analysis is painting with way too broad a brush. Not all businesses are aligned, not even all large businesses are aligned. Also, I admit I was specifically looking at tech with my statement about not having seen it, given the platform and your comment about Intel. I think there are many, many, many truly great places to work in tech where there is not this petty short-sightedness. However, zooming back out, my opinion in general is that scenarios like the one you described at Intel is pure incompetence. Much corporate decay and malfeasance is due to incompetence.
sublimefire 2y ago
Underrated comment, especially the part about companies not knowing what to do with the skilled employees. A lot of what I observe is about a lack of ideas from the management which in turn puts breaks on the existing velocity and morale.

by _wire_ 2y ago

rockemsockem 2y ago

I'm sorry that's been your experience. I have the good fortune to be able to say that it is not like that at many, many places. I also suspect that the state of affairs at Intel that you described is largely due to incompetence as opposed to selfishness.

_wire_ 2y ago
There's no need for condolences, it's not personal. Business is churn and crisis. If you've never seen it yourself, it's only that it hasn't occurred to you -yet-. It's in the news every day with reports like Tesla lays off thousands to cut costs while board gives CEO $50 billion payout. I do not see this as explainable through any idea of incompetence. It's about some wiley edge of control over profits. It's not contradictory that firms depend on skilled labor but are incapable of producing the conditions for constructing the needed labor force. Business has a long track record of enslaving labor and prefers to wreck labor as a force. Even at business's very best, it's widely understood that business / community partnerships are required to meet needs, where the community funds the training from which business cherry picks "talent" and while negotiating tax breaks that get passed on to investors executives. This can't be explained as incompetence, it's explained through organized contention between specific vested corporate interests and the broader community who bears the costs of cultivating the labor force. It's a story of business competency that led to Michael Moore to write about his stories about Flint Michigan, which became emblematic of US corporate culture. Within corporate enclaves you can always find a small population who have never endured the ongoing existential crisis which is business churn: People for whom the crisis of labor hasn't occurred... yet. For the special few who get to the grave in business having never seen any pathos... Is this good luck or a curse? There's no shortage of evidence! Look around your community and the commons, do you see decay? Is it explainable through "competence" or "incompetence?" It seems some other language is needed to explain what we see.
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  I feel like your analysis is painting with way too broad a brush. Not all businesses are aligned, not even all large businesses are aligned. Also, I admit I was specifically looking at tech with my statement about not having seen it, given the platform and your comment about Intel. I think there are many, many, many truly great places to work in tech where there is not this petty short-sightedness. However, zooming back out, my opinion in general is that scenarios like the one you described at Intel is pure incompetence. Much corporate decay and malfeasance is due to incompetence.

sublimefire 2y ago

Underrated comment, especially the part about companies not knowing what to do with the skilled employees. A lot of what I observe is about a lack of ideas from the management which in turn puts breaks on the existing velocity and morale.