7 ms·

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new e

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Meanwhile organizations see employees as cost centres and a net drain on their revenue sources. Corporate culture in America is definitely broken. I'm not sure how we can fix it.

nradov 2y ago
Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? It would be foolish for an employee to let someone else handle career growth for them as their interests aren't aligned (or even known). If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager. Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.
- glitchc 2y ago
  > Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent. Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-longer-demonstrate-loyalty-5032 https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...
  - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
    It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.
    - glitchc 2y ago
      Certainly true, my comments are specific to the North American workplace.
  - runako 2y ago
    Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales. (So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)
      - runako 2y ago
        Inventory is part of working capital. Companies generally understand that they want to expand working capital. Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.
        sokoloff 2y ago
        Companies who pay attention to free cash flow will typically try to manage inventory and non-cash/equivalent working capital down, not up.
    - keeda 2y ago
      I find "human capital" better than "human resources", as it has connotations of something valuable to be invested carefully as opposed to something simply to be consumed and discarded. Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.
    - hilux 2y ago
      How do you improve your "return on capital"? That's right - by keeping output constant (e.g. through automation) while reducing capital!
  - owlstuffing 2y ago
    Outside of government, this shift also coincides with the decline of pensions and the rise of the 401k. Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp. Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s. Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building. Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.
    - bcrosby95 2y ago
      It's the same problem in the trades. Apprentices tend to cost the company more than their output so no one wants to hire and train them.
    - thedougd 2y ago
      I would point to the emergence of Milton Friedman’s school of thought that the only thing a company should care for is delivering “shareholder value.”
- MisterTea 2y ago
  > If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager. Your mentors are your peers at work which can include your manager. Career growth is the accumulation of both knowledge and experience which is beneficial to both parties so I dont understand how those are misaligned unless fraud is involved.
  - nradov 2y ago
    No, that's not how it usually works (at least not for professional and managerial employees in the US). Mentors are typically more senior, not peers and not someone in the employee's direct chain of command. They may be in an entirely different organization. I don't know how you could believe that career growth interests are aligned between employees and their managers. For the majority of employees, their optimal career path will involve changing companies at some point. This is generally not in their current manager's best interest.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      As a manager, I disagree. It is entirely within my interest to have a direct do better; this provides me a path in the future to switch orgs when they switch orgs. If I level up or leave, I bring them with. If they level up or leave, they potentially bring me with. Team, self, org in descending order of priority. Companies are temporary, network is what carries you until the end of your career. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 ("The best advice I ever got was from a mentor who told me: Your network is your net worth but only if you give more than you take.")
- specialist 2y ago
  My bestie works in sales and marketing. Events, promotions, audience engagement. Long time experience with national brands, loves helping local businesses (side hustle). A huge part of her job is recruiting and hiring. Part of her pitch is proactive career development. Paraphrasing: I want you to join our team. I also understand that this job is just one stop on your journey. While you're here, what can I do to help you get the skills and experience you want for your next job? Consequently, she has a HUGE network, built over decades. Something comes up and she knows just the right person. She has her pick of new opportunities. Wouldn't you love to have her as your boss? I've had precisely 2 bosses in my career that had any impulse for nurturing, mentoring, career development. Whereas I've tried to be that kind of boss, given the limits of our current system.
- hilux 2y ago
  > How can it be otherwise? It was otherwise. And is IS otherwise in many other rich countries, as well as not-so-rich ones. In these places, the employer-employee relationship is more of a relationship and less of a transaction to be reassessed every morning. If you don't believe it, because you've never seen it, then you are probably American, probably young. And seeing other possibilities is a good reason to study (modern!) history, and to travel.
austin-cheney 2y ago
You fix it the way every other industry has fixed it: broke/agent model.
- Keegs 2y ago
  Can you expand on this? I can't find any references online.
  - austin-cheney 2y ago
    In a broker/agent model agents are people doing most of the client-facing work, but they defer an offset of both liabilities and earnings to a broker. This is how real estate agents, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and many others enter their professions, at least in the US. Because the broker carries civil, and possibly criminal, liable for the violations of their represented agents they have a vested interest in the quality of product/service those agents deliver. In the medical industry the agent phase is described as residency and internship. Its a matter of who actually holds the license that allows a person to perform professionally. In criminal enterprise drug mules and prostitutes often subscribe to this business model. Drug mules will transport drugs as part of an illegal enterprise and are paid by criminal organizations that have vested interest in the successful completion of the logistical services provided by the drug mules. Likewise, in some geographies prostitutes will voluntarily pay pimps a percentage of their earnings in exchange for physical security and those pimps stake the value of their services on the success and reputation of the services they provide to their prostitute agents. You also have to understand most of the software industry loves to bitch and cry about all these problems they see in hiring and practicing and yet don't really want any of these problems to be solved.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that. A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.
- Retric 2y ago
  Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service. 50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Why not? > 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk. "Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?
    - Retric 2y ago
      > is more expensive than Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care. Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.
pengaru 2y ago
> Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Could you please inform my managers who keep pestering me about career growth of this shift so I could just focus on the work? ktnx
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  If you don't upskill for free with no additional comp, how will they continue to cram down labor costs to make their quarterly numbers? You are, broadly speaking, treated as an asset to be sweat until you can be replaced.
  - pengaru 2y ago
    Well, tbf, it's not like there's no carrot in this case. (I'm at a FAANG) But I'm sure what you're describing is common in the general case.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Certainly, at FAANG outlier comp, it is likely worth your while vs the median.
imglorp 2y ago
It's also fundamental tech and a research pipeline supporting new ones. There are numerous examples of whole competencies were transferred to a foreign partner, leaving only sales and marketing in the US. TV's for example, gone by 2000, leaving only a swirl of patent walls to further prevent them from coming back. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/americans-make-tvs/17680951/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/america... And research? DEC WRL, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc ... Which corp has the gumption to fund any of that again? They'd rather pad the current quarter than invest in the next.
- SR2Z 2y ago
  Corporate research spending is nearly $1T/yr. Yes, corporations have a lower risk tolerance than the government, but that's not always a bad thing.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    I kind of wonder how much of that money being reported is really research vs gamed numbers? eg for taxation claim purposes and things along those lines.
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      Especially interested in data from Alphabet (e.g., from ongoing legal battles?) (I'd assume Amazon & Microsoft are too clever, too well-run for their own good/our eptification)
  - perrylaj 2y ago
    Not just risk tolerance - they also have different (generally much more short-sighted) incentives.
giancarlostoro 2y ago
> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. I think R&D for tax reasons needs to be changed, we had so many tech advancements used to this day from Bell Labs. Now only Microsoft, Google, Apple etc can afford to do R&D and so all the innovation is essentially only worth while to them if they can profit from it. Granted I do think if you build something innovative you should be able to monetize it, but it takes investing a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more. When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.
- gsf_emergency 2y ago
  It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute.. However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!? Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible: ("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time) Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html >Have to be an asshole or something [2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanese-startups-dont-apply-to-yc/ https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else.. Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.
UltraSane 2y ago
In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.
- rlpb 2y ago
  That’s sounds like a functioning free market. Either they find the quality of labor they require at that rate, or they don’t. Either you take such a job at that rate because you have the required skills and knowledge and that’s your best offer, or you don’t.
  - smegger001 2y ago
    Exsept usually adding extraneous requirements and low pay offer is cover for wanting h1b1 wage slaves that have a visa bound to the employer so they can't demand market rate or risk being sent home so a new artificially low market rate is created. So much for it being a free market.
apercu 2y ago
> Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Maybe only tangentially related to your post, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. After many years of doing all kinds of tech and business consulting gigs, I decided to somewhat specialize over the last 3 years and have been spending some time on LinkedIn this year. What I can't figure out is how (arbitrary percentage) 30% of the people I follow do any work when they are on LinkedIn posting/commenting on posts _all_ day.
- hattmall 2y ago
  The layers of work arbitrage are incredibly deep. It's all about connections, I do a lot of Shopify freelancing and I'm typically the 3rd or 4th layer away from the actual business. It's typically something like the business hires a marketing agency, the agency hires a development company. The development company then hires a freelancer. Now I actually do the work myself, but it seems like a ton of those freelancers simply rehire another freelancer in a cheaper country. Then it seems in many cases that foreign freelancer isn't even a developer but just someone who speaks English well enough and then hires the actual non-english speaking coders locally. It's not much different in other industries though, so many layers of subcontracting to finally get to a potentially illegal immigrant that does the actual work.

nradov 2y ago

Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? It would be foolish for an employee to let someone else handle career growth for them as their interests aren't aligned (or even known). If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager. Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.

glitchc 2y ago
> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent. Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-longer-demonstrate-loyalty-5032 https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...
- RoyalHenOil 2y ago
  It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.
  - glitchc 2y ago
    Certainly true, my comments are specific to the North American workplace.
- runako 2y ago
  Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales. (So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)
    - runako 2y ago
      Inventory is part of working capital. Companies generally understand that they want to expand working capital. Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.
      - sokoloff 2y ago
        Companies who pay attention to free cash flow will typically try to manage inventory and non-cash/equivalent working capital down, not up.
  - keeda 2y ago
    I find "human capital" better than "human resources", as it has connotations of something valuable to be invested carefully as opposed to something simply to be consumed and discarded. Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.
  - hilux 2y ago
    How do you improve your "return on capital"? That's right - by keeping output constant (e.g. through automation) while reducing capital!
- owlstuffing 2y ago
  Outside of government, this shift also coincides with the decline of pensions and the rise of the 401k. Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp. Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s. Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building. Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.
  - bcrosby95 2y ago
    It's the same problem in the trades. Apprentices tend to cost the company more than their output so no one wants to hire and train them.
  - thedougd 2y ago
    I would point to the emergence of Milton Friedman’s school of thought that the only thing a company should care for is delivering “shareholder value.”
MisterTea 2y ago
> If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager. Your mentors are your peers at work which can include your manager. Career growth is the accumulation of both knowledge and experience which is beneficial to both parties so I dont understand how those are misaligned unless fraud is involved.
- nradov 2y ago
  No, that's not how it usually works (at least not for professional and managerial employees in the US). Mentors are typically more senior, not peers and not someone in the employee's direct chain of command. They may be in an entirely different organization. I don't know how you could believe that career growth interests are aligned between employees and their managers. For the majority of employees, their optimal career path will involve changing companies at some point. This is generally not in their current manager's best interest.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    As a manager, I disagree. It is entirely within my interest to have a direct do better; this provides me a path in the future to switch orgs when they switch orgs. If I level up or leave, I bring them with. If they level up or leave, they potentially bring me with. Team, self, org in descending order of priority. Companies are temporary, network is what carries you until the end of your career. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 ("The best advice I ever got was from a mentor who told me: Your network is your net worth but only if you give more than you take.")
specialist 2y ago
My bestie works in sales and marketing. Events, promotions, audience engagement. Long time experience with national brands, loves helping local businesses (side hustle). A huge part of her job is recruiting and hiring. Part of her pitch is proactive career development. Paraphrasing: I want you to join our team. I also understand that this job is just one stop on your journey. While you're here, what can I do to help you get the skills and experience you want for your next job? Consequently, she has a HUGE network, built over decades. Something comes up and she knows just the right person. She has her pick of new opportunities. Wouldn't you love to have her as your boss? I've had precisely 2 bosses in my career that had any impulse for nurturing, mentoring, career development. Whereas I've tried to be that kind of boss, given the limits of our current system.
hilux 2y ago
> How can it be otherwise? It was otherwise. And is IS otherwise in many other rich countries, as well as not-so-rich ones. In these places, the employer-employee relationship is more of a relationship and less of a transaction to be reassessed every morning. If you don't believe it, because you've never seen it, then you are probably American, probably young. And seeing other possibilities is a good reason to study (modern!) history, and to travel.

austin-cheney 2y ago

You fix it the way every other industry has fixed it: broke/agent model.

Keegs 2y ago
Can you expand on this? I can't find any references online.
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  In a broker/agent model agents are people doing most of the client-facing work, but they defer an offset of both liabilities and earnings to a broker. This is how real estate agents, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and many others enter their professions, at least in the US. Because the broker carries civil, and possibly criminal, liable for the violations of their represented agents they have a vested interest in the quality of product/service those agents deliver. In the medical industry the agent phase is described as residency and internship. Its a matter of who actually holds the license that allows a person to perform professionally. In criminal enterprise drug mules and prostitutes often subscribe to this business model. Drug mules will transport drugs as part of an illegal enterprise and are paid by criminal organizations that have vested interest in the successful completion of the logistical services provided by the drug mules. Likewise, in some geographies prostitutes will voluntarily pay pimps a percentage of their earnings in exchange for physical security and those pimps stake the value of their services on the success and reputation of the services they provide to their prostitute agents. You also have to understand most of the software industry loves to bitch and cry about all these problems they see in hiring and practicing and yet don't really want any of these problems to be solved.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that. A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.

Retric 2y ago
Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Individual 1-8 week training courses don’t actually cost that much to operate internally and generally allow someone to do something very specific and useful. There’s plenty of ways to boost short term retention like a bonus after 1 year of service. 50+k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but the first set of training should have paid for itself before you’re offering the next.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Nobody is talking about handing out 200k of training upfront. Why not? > 50k of training over a 40 year career requires salary bumps for retention, but is hardly a major risk. "Pay 50k for training and then pay a salary bump" is more expensive than "just pay a salary bump to the person the competitor was a sucker enough to pay 50k to train", so how does that work?
  - Retric 2y ago
    > is more expensive than Nope. Keeping the same person for 40 years saves far more than 50k of onboarding costs over that timeframe. Employee churn is really expensive but if it’s not coming out of your budget middle management doesn’t care. Companies do all kinds of objectively dumb things due to poor incentives.

pengaru 2y ago

> Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Could you please inform my managers who keep pestering me about career growth of this shift so I could just focus on the work? ktnx

toomuchtodo 2y ago
If you don't upskill for free with no additional comp, how will they continue to cram down labor costs to make their quarterly numbers? You are, broadly speaking, treated as an asset to be sweat until you can be replaced.
- pengaru 2y ago
  Well, tbf, it's not like there's no carrot in this case. (I'm at a FAANG) But I'm sure what you're describing is common in the general case.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Certainly, at FAANG outlier comp, it is likely worth your while vs the median.

imglorp 2y ago

It's also fundamental tech and a research pipeline supporting new ones. There are numerous examples of whole competencies were transferred to a foreign partner, leaving only sales and marketing in the US. TV's for example, gone by 2000, leaving only a swirl of patent walls to further prevent them from coming back. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/americans-make-tvs/17680951/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/america... And research? DEC WRL, Bell Labs, Xerox Parc ... Which corp has the gumption to fund any of that again? They'd rather pad the current quarter than invest in the next.

SR2Z 2y ago
Corporate research spending is nearly $1T/yr. Yes, corporations have a lower risk tolerance than the government, but that's not always a bad thing.
- justinclift 2y ago
  I kind of wonder how much of that money being reported is really research vs gamed numbers? eg for taxation claim purposes and things along those lines.
  - gsf_emergency 2y ago
    Especially interested in data from Alphabet (e.g., from ongoing legal battles?) (I'd assume Amazon & Microsoft are too clever, too well-run for their own good/our eptification)
- perrylaj 2y ago
  Not just risk tolerance - they also have different (generally much more short-sighted) incentives.

giancarlostoro 2y ago

> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. I think R&D for tax reasons needs to be changed, we had so many tech advancements used to this day from Bell Labs. Now only Microsoft, Google, Apple etc can afford to do R&D and so all the innovation is essentially only worth while to them if they can profit from it. Granted I do think if you build something innovative you should be able to monetize it, but it takes investing a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money.

Terr_ 2y ago
> I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more. When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.
gsf_emergency 2y ago
It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute.. However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!? Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible: ("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time) Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy. [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html >Have to be an asshole or something [2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanese-startups-dont-apply-to-yc/ https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
But then the ip-poachers wait for you at the gates. Investing into the new thing, in a world order where copying the new thing is the best game approach, makes R&D a looser strategy. You need temporary punishment tariffs on products that steal IPs to recuperate the investments and make it a bad strategy - or else.. Patents do not work - because the rule of law does not exists without the international order and goverments have a tendency to trade away such cases for protection of big players.

UltraSane 2y ago

In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.

rlpb 2y ago
That’s sounds like a functioning free market. Either they find the quality of labor they require at that rate, or they don’t. Either you take such a job at that rate because you have the required skills and knowledge and that’s your best offer, or you don’t.
- smegger001 2y ago
  Exsept usually adding extraneous requirements and low pay offer is cover for wanting h1b1 wage slaves that have a visa bound to the employer so they can't demand market rate or risk being sent home so a new artificially low market rate is created. So much for it being a free market.

apercu 2y ago

> Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Maybe only tangentially related to your post, but this has been on my mind a lot lately. After many years of doing all kinds of tech and business consulting gigs, I decided to somewhat specialize over the last 3 years and have been spending some time on LinkedIn this year. What I can't figure out is how (arbitrary percentage) 30% of the people I follow do any work when they are on LinkedIn posting/commenting on posts _all_ day.

hattmall 2y ago
The layers of work arbitrage are incredibly deep. It's all about connections, I do a lot of Shopify freelancing and I'm typically the 3rd or 4th layer away from the actual business. It's typically something like the business hires a marketing agency, the agency hires a development company. The development company then hires a freelancer. Now I actually do the work myself, but it seems like a ton of those freelancers simply rehire another freelancer in a cheaper country. Then it seems in many cases that foreign freelancer isn't even a developer but just someone who speaks English well enough and then hires the actual non-english speaking coders locally. It's not much different in other industries though, so many layers of subcontracting to finally get to a potentially illegal immigrant that does the actual work.