7 ms·

> Bell Labs’ One Year On Campus program, in which they paid new-grad employees to earn a master’s degree on the topic of Bell’s choosing I wonder why companies

by LPisGood 11mo ago

> Bell Labs’ One Year On Campus program, in which they paid new-grad employees to earn a master’s degree on the topic of Bell’s choosing I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore. Is it something to do with the monopoly AT&T held, is it related to corporate tax structures, is it related to how easy it is to find PhD graduates who studied similar topics of interest, or is it something else entirely?

majormajor 11mo ago
>I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore. Is it something to do with the monopoly AT&T held, is it related to corporate tax structures, is it related to how easy it is to find PhD graduates who studied similar topics of interest, or is it something else entirely? Companies do a lot less to retain employees - fewer pensions, fewer accrued benefits and perks - so it's much less attractive to train when you are assuming attrition instead.
- caminante 11mo ago
  No way... Even guys get parental leave, now! I know too many people that've gotten fancy EMBAs paid for by the company as retention/networking tools along with the countless others (read: majority) that don't use the annual tuition reimbursement available to all employees.
  - ghaff 11mo ago
    Even if the company is subsidizing, earning a degree while working is a pretty substantial time commitment even as a part-time thing though some people obviously do it.
    - doubleg72 11mo ago
      I got two degrees in this manner..
orochimaaru 11mo ago
I don't think companies pay for you to go do an MS or a PhD full-time on company dime. At that time AT&T was a monopoly and may have had money to burn on this. There also may not have been expectations of hyper-growth from the stock market that exist today. AT&T still pays for various MS courses (mostly MSCS, MS data science and cybersecurity) you can do on a part-time basis. It's quite easy to get the tuition reimbursement for it.
- jhbadger 11mo ago
  In general, nobody needs to pay someone to do a PhD, at least in a scientific or engineering field -- even in the US, the country where education generally costs the most -- typically PhD students get free tuition as well as a living stipend. Masters students, granted typically don't get this benefit -- but in the US that's typically a terminal degree -- unlike in many countries you don't do a Masters and then a PhD -- you do one or the other.
  - ghaff 11mo ago
    Depending on the program it's not that uncommon to get a Masters as a step on a path to earning a PhD.
    - jhbadger 11mo ago
      True, I think technically I got one when I passed my prelims -- they do that so if people end up dropping out before completing their dissertation they have something at least. But what I mean is in the US dedicated Masters programs are largely set up for people in industry to advance their careers and the schools see the program as a way to raise funds.
      - ghaff 11mo ago
        I don't disagree. When I got my Masters in engineering I had zero plans to continue to a PhD which would have been fairly uncommon where I went to engineering grad school in any case. I did eventually end up with another Masters but, in that case, a PhD would also have been uncommon unless I was on an academia track which I wasn't.
caminante 11mo ago
The answer to your question seems straight-forward: they still do. 1. Companies have tuition reimbursement for general employees, but it's usually nominal at $5k/year and part-time education is implied. 2. Executive MBAs and more selective executive seminars are covered by companies so the focus will be better. These aren't cheap (easily $125k/year) and might come with early exit penalties. I'd be surprised if the Bells lab offer didn't have similar clawbacks. 3. Tuition in 1970 isn't what it is now! Wayyyy cheaper!
- rectalogic 11mo ago
  > I'd be surprised if the Bells lab offer didn't have similar clawbacks. Bellcore inherited the year on campus program from Bell Labs. There were no clawbacks and no requirement to even return to work for Bellcore after graduation.
- ghaff 11mo ago
  Masters programs in engineering certainly have costs for full-time residential programs. But actual tuition isn't necessarily that much. As you say, executive MBA programs are costly and the assumption is almost certainly that a company is paying for it for select senior people being groomed for executive roles. They're often full-time but of relatively limited duration.
silisili 11mo ago
One common theme is that companies used to treat good employees as assets. Now they treat all employees as liabilities. What changed? A lot. The underlying theme across all companies, to both employees and customers, has been "see how much abuse they'll take before they leave", which sadly has had marvelous results because the answer is... a lot. Notice that at least half of the largest companies by market cap have no actual support at all. Add in that tuition has exploded, it became cheaper and quicker just to import people than to train them.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
  But even if companies decided to see how much abuse employees would take, that doesn't explain this. The point of the master's program wasn't to reward the employee; it was to make the employee more valuable for the company. I think the issue is that companies no longer trust their ability to retain their more valuable employees. Why pay to make the employee more valuable for someone else?
  - bottd 11mo ago
    This is somewhat self-fulfilling is it not? I fear my valuable employee may leave, so to protect myself in this situation I withhold resources I could have granted them. Said employees later realize they could get better and leave.
    - ghaff 11mo ago
      It is in many cases. Short tenures often become normalized all the way around so companies tend to expect employees not to stick around too long and employees have a mindset that frequent job hunting is just what you do.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 11mo ago
    It may be an overall increase in economic anxiety, even at the corporate level. At one time, AT&T could probably not imagine their status would ever really change; today, you'd be foolish to be running almost any company in the US economy and think that the company's position in 10 years is likely to be similar to the one it has today. Making longer term investments in employee skills is almost certainly concomittant with the idea of tackling their income needs/desires/wants, and that looks intimidating when you don't have faith that your company will still be growing 5 years from now.
kentlyons 11mo ago
This is very common in Europe. PhDs are sponsored by a given company
NoiseBert69 11mo ago
The company I work pays normal salaries for their PhD students. That pretty much standard in Germany in industrial research departments.
- constantcrying 11mo ago
  >The company I work pays normal salaries for their PhD students. Which is uncommon. BMW used to list their salaries for PhD students, which were fixed at 36.000 a year, which are wages you would expect for working at a grocery store.
constantcrying 11mo ago
This is still very common in Germany. Many companies, especially large ones, offer Master/bachelor thesis, which are supervised by a professor at an university, but the student is employed full time for the duration of the thesis.
jrjeksjd8d 11mo ago
The Overton Window for what is acceptable company behaviour has slid very far to "maximizing near-term profits at all costs". You see this is in a lot of areas: - Employee training and retention. Employers would rather aggressively churn the cheapest employees they can get, rather than cultivating experienced employees. - Just-in-time inventory. Businesses want to have as little inventory as possible, which means any supply chain disruption causes ripples down the line. - Advertising. Everything is stuffed full of ads now, including your smart appliances. The reason companies get away with this is that all big companies have more or less colluded to behave the same way. The managerial class has said "we can have terrible customer service because _everyone_ has terrible customer service". Your product can be full of ads and break every 3 years because _every_ product is like that. You might ask "why doesn't one competitor break the pattern and do a good job to gain market share?". The answer is that they do, and then they get bigger and more financialized. The capital required to do a good job requires them to take investment, and once the growth narrative has ended they're pressured to squeeze profits out of their customers.
- pixl97 11mo ago
  Add in that any new competitors get attacked with patents and IP law making very risky to have a cheaper well made product.
ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
> "I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore." Because we're not in the gargantuan post-WW2 economic boom combined with the electronics-ization / mainframe computerization tech boom anymore. It's easy to treat employees generously when revenue growth just keeps happening almost on its own. And STEM degrees or even possessing any undergraduate degree was much less common than they are today. The article says "Over 130 people signed up for the One Year On Campus program in 1970.", which is a pittance in a corporation with over a million employees at its peak. Unsurprisingly, people who specialties make them more difficult to replace get treated more favorably.
dave333 11mo ago
People used to spend entire careers at one company so investment in them pays off. I spent 10 years working for Bell Labs in the 1980s albeit as a contractor, and the bodyshop that employed me found it worthwhile reimbursing all educational expenses for a grade of C or better.

majormajor 11mo ago

>I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore. Is it something to do with the monopoly AT&T held, is it related to corporate tax structures, is it related to how easy it is to find PhD graduates who studied similar topics of interest, or is it something else entirely? Companies do a lot less to retain employees - fewer pensions, fewer accrued benefits and perks - so it's much less attractive to train when you are assuming attrition instead.

caminante 11mo ago
No way... Even guys get parental leave, now! I know too many people that've gotten fancy EMBAs paid for by the company as retention/networking tools along with the countless others (read: majority) that don't use the annual tuition reimbursement available to all employees.
- ghaff 11mo ago
  Even if the company is subsidizing, earning a degree while working is a pretty substantial time commitment even as a part-time thing though some people obviously do it.
  - doubleg72 11mo ago
    I got two degrees in this manner..

orochimaaru 11mo ago

I don't think companies pay for you to go do an MS or a PhD full-time on company dime. At that time AT&T was a monopoly and may have had money to burn on this. There also may not have been expectations of hyper-growth from the stock market that exist today. AT&T still pays for various MS courses (mostly MSCS, MS data science and cybersecurity) you can do on a part-time basis. It's quite easy to get the tuition reimbursement for it.

jhbadger 11mo ago
In general, nobody needs to pay someone to do a PhD, at least in a scientific or engineering field -- even in the US, the country where education generally costs the most -- typically PhD students get free tuition as well as a living stipend. Masters students, granted typically don't get this benefit -- but in the US that's typically a terminal degree -- unlike in many countries you don't do a Masters and then a PhD -- you do one or the other.
- ghaff 11mo ago
  Depending on the program it's not that uncommon to get a Masters as a step on a path to earning a PhD.
  - jhbadger 11mo ago
    True, I think technically I got one when I passed my prelims -- they do that so if people end up dropping out before completing their dissertation they have something at least. But what I mean is in the US dedicated Masters programs are largely set up for people in industry to advance their careers and the schools see the program as a way to raise funds.
    - ghaff 11mo ago
      I don't disagree. When I got my Masters in engineering I had zero plans to continue to a PhD which would have been fairly uncommon where I went to engineering grad school in any case. I did eventually end up with another Masters but, in that case, a PhD would also have been uncommon unless I was on an academia track which I wasn't.

caminante 11mo ago

The answer to your question seems straight-forward: they still do. 1. Companies have tuition reimbursement for general employees, but it's usually nominal at $5k/year and part-time education is implied. 2. Executive MBAs and more selective executive seminars are covered by companies so the focus will be better. These aren't cheap (easily $125k/year) and might come with early exit penalties. I'd be surprised if the Bells lab offer didn't have similar clawbacks. 3. Tuition in 1970 isn't what it is now! Wayyyy cheaper!

rectalogic 11mo ago
> I'd be surprised if the Bells lab offer didn't have similar clawbacks. Bellcore inherited the year on campus program from Bell Labs. There were no clawbacks and no requirement to even return to work for Bellcore after graduation.
ghaff 11mo ago
Masters programs in engineering certainly have costs for full-time residential programs. But actual tuition isn't necessarily that much. As you say, executive MBA programs are costly and the assumption is almost certainly that a company is paying for it for select senior people being groomed for executive roles. They're often full-time but of relatively limited duration.

silisili 11mo ago

One common theme is that companies used to treat good employees as assets. Now they treat all employees as liabilities. What changed? A lot. The underlying theme across all companies, to both employees and customers, has been "see how much abuse they'll take before they leave", which sadly has had marvelous results because the answer is... a lot. Notice that at least half of the largest companies by market cap have no actual support at all. Add in that tuition has exploded, it became cheaper and quicker just to import people than to train them.

AnimalMuppet 11mo ago
But even if companies decided to see how much abuse employees would take, that doesn't explain this. The point of the master's program wasn't to reward the employee; it was to make the employee more valuable for the company. I think the issue is that companies no longer trust their ability to retain their more valuable employees. Why pay to make the employee more valuable for someone else?
- bottd 11mo ago
  This is somewhat self-fulfilling is it not? I fear my valuable employee may leave, so to protect myself in this situation I withhold resources I could have granted them. Said employees later realize they could get better and leave.
  - ghaff 11mo ago
    It is in many cases. Short tenures often become normalized all the way around so companies tend to expect employees not to stick around too long and employees have a mindset that frequent job hunting is just what you do.
- PaulDavisThe1st 11mo ago
  It may be an overall increase in economic anxiety, even at the corporate level. At one time, AT&T could probably not imagine their status would ever really change; today, you'd be foolish to be running almost any company in the US economy and think that the company's position in 10 years is likely to be similar to the one it has today. Making longer term investments in employee skills is almost certainly concomittant with the idea of tackling their income needs/desires/wants, and that looks intimidating when you don't have faith that your company will still be growing 5 years from now.

kentlyons 11mo ago

This is very common in Europe. PhDs are sponsored by a given company

NoiseBert69 11mo ago

The company I work pays normal salaries for their PhD students. That pretty much standard in Germany in industrial research departments.

constantcrying 11mo ago
>The company I work pays normal salaries for their PhD students. Which is uncommon. BMW used to list their salaries for PhD students, which were fixed at 36.000 a year, which are wages you would expect for working at a grocery store.

constantcrying 11mo ago

This is still very common in Germany. Many companies, especially large ones, offer Master/bachelor thesis, which are supervised by a professor at an university, but the student is employed full time for the duration of the thesis.

jrjeksjd8d 11mo ago

The Overton Window for what is acceptable company behaviour has slid very far to "maximizing near-term profits at all costs". You see this is in a lot of areas: - Employee training and retention. Employers would rather aggressively churn the cheapest employees they can get, rather than cultivating experienced employees. - Just-in-time inventory. Businesses want to have as little inventory as possible, which means any supply chain disruption causes ripples down the line. - Advertising. Everything is stuffed full of ads now, including your smart appliances. The reason companies get away with this is that all big companies have more or less colluded to behave the same way. The managerial class has said "we can have terrible customer service because _everyone_ has terrible customer service". Your product can be full of ads and break every 3 years because _every_ product is like that. You might ask "why doesn't one competitor break the pattern and do a good job to gain market share?". The answer is that they do, and then they get bigger and more financialized. The capital required to do a good job requires them to take investment, and once the growth narrative has ended they're pressured to squeeze profits out of their customers.

pixl97 11mo ago
Add in that any new competitors get attacked with patents and IP law making very risky to have a cheaper well made product.

ThrowawayR2 11mo ago

> "I wonder why companies don’t do this anymore." Because we're not in the gargantuan post-WW2 economic boom combined with the electronics-ization / mainframe computerization tech boom anymore. It's easy to treat employees generously when revenue growth just keeps happening almost on its own. And STEM degrees or even possessing any undergraduate degree was much less common than they are today. The article says "Over 130 people signed up for the One Year On Campus program in 1970.", which is a pittance in a corporation with over a million employees at its peak. Unsurprisingly, people who specialties make them more difficult to replace get treated more favorably.

dave333 11mo ago

People used to spend entire careers at one company so investment in them pays off. I spent 10 years working for Bell Labs in the 1980s albeit as a contractor, and the bodyshop that employed me found it worthwhile reimbursing all educational expenses for a grade of C or better.