4 ms·

One of the puzzling parts of the current working situation is that the people who are working seem to be putting in way more hours and effort than they used to.

• Tichy 14y ago
  Maybe you are just too nice to say "no" to more hours?
• greenyoda 14y ago
  To your employer, there's no situation that needs alleviation. They're very happy that they can get you to work more hours for the same pay, and even happier that they don't have to pay increasingly costly health benefits for an additional employee when one employee can be made to do the work of two. They obviously don't care that you're suffering. And "no qualified people to hire" is a euphemism for "no qualified people willing to work for the low salaries that we're willing to pay them for the long hours we expect them to work." Double that salary and they'd probably have qualified candidates flying in from across the country and pounding down their doors.
  • philwelch 14y ago
    At least in software, salaries are high enough and there's even enough competition on culture that this can't really be the case. Furthermore, it's not actually possible for one employee to do the work of two. There actually is a shortage of qualified people in the world. The fact is, business has become increasingly more sophisticated and, consequently, difficult over the past several decades. Operations have become increasingly driven by increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques and modeling and much of the drone work has been replaced by computers. In the early days of digital electronics, actual engineers were paid to minimize logical expressions using Boolean algebra or Karnaugh maps. These days we use algorithms and engineers have to solve more difficult problems. If you had the chops to be a white-collar worker at Sears Roebuck corporate in 1960, you don't have nearly the chops required to be a white-collar worker at Amazon corporate in 2012, because there's been half a century of innovation in operations by dozens of firms trying to beat Sears Roebuck. The end result is that more jobs require numeracy and specialized skills, but if anything there are fewer people with these skills because mathematics requirements were dumbed down to get more people into universities and out with degrees. The stereotypical unemployed Gen-Yner is a liberal arts graduate, and for good reason. The engineers are fine.
    • HarryHirsch 14y ago
      > The engineers are fine. Says who? Consider the state of the physical sciences. Employment in physics has been problematic since a long time back, chemistry has suffered from outsourcing to East Asia for ten years, and in biology the pharmco bubble is bursting as we speak. That leaves computing. It's not that hard to become qualified to B.S., in this very place we see encouragements to drop out of college and "just start a startup". That's not a sustainable model.
      • philwelch 14y ago
        You're right that science is problematic, but I said engineering. Engineering tends to be paid for by the market, science tends to be paid for by academia and government, which means employment trends in science are slightly more arbitrary.
        • HarryHirsch 14y ago
          You are forgetting the chemical and pharmaceutical companies, which always had R&D departments that employed chemists and biologists. Employment in discovery has shrunk, both because it has become too expensive to bring a new drug to market, and the process end was offshored to China, starting about ten years back. No need to invoke the government here.
          • philwelch 14y ago
            As you're pointing out, the private sector has relatively little interest in employing scientists. That's fine--I was mainly talking about business and engineering.
            • HarryHirsch 14y ago
              > As you're pointing out, the private sector has relatively little interest in employing scientists. Boston, San Diego and New Jersey might disagree with you. That's where the pharmcos are.