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The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small compa

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training.

crdoconnor 11y ago
>The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it Yes, and since the financial crisis their share of profits as GDP has never been higher yet they still refuse to invest in training themselves. Instead they demand that the immigration floodgates be opened. They don't want to do it because they just don't see employees as people any more. They're resources, to be tapped until they run dry, at which point, they are discarded. This is a marked cultural corporate change from the 50s-70s when the 'job for life' was still a thing, people got defined benefit pensions and CEOs would choose to make long term investments rather than engage in share repurchase shell games that boost next quarter's share price. >Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. This used to be much less of a problem when companies actually demonstrated loyalty to their employees. A natural side effect of lobbying hard to make it trivial to fire people and doing layoffs as a matter of course is that your employees won't be loyal. Tough shit.
Eridrus 11y ago
> Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. Yes, once you train a person you need to pay them more. You might feel like they owe you, but unless there is a real understanding between the two of you that you are investing in them and expect to pay them less for some period of time to recoup the cost (eg in the form of a contract you both signed stipulating a minimum term after training, with claw back provisions), this is what you should expect. Depending on how much it costs you (besides their salary) to train them, it can still be cheaper to hire and train than getting someone experienced, since everyone needs some time before they're really effective and you're paying them at a lower rate while you train them. There is something to be said for small startups just not being able to support that kind of load, but I feel like once you hit about 20 engineers it's just people being lazy and not wanting to do things any differently, rather than any true constraints. The fetishization of the 10x developer leads us to ignore the fact that lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  > lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired. Then why the fuck isn't work automated away? We're developers, for God's sake! We develop things!
  - Eridrus 11y ago
    Because automation isn't magic. The fact that something is repetitive and intellectually unchallenging doesn't mean it is mechanical and doesn't require human involvement and/or judgement.
supercanuck 11y ago
I work at a Fortune 5 Company and our director sent us some YouTube links because there isn't any training budget.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cgearhart 11y ago
>...quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. This shows up a lot, and it's worth debunking. Salary is not the only reason that people take a job, and it's not the only reason that people switch jobs. There can be huge costs (for all parties) to casually switching jobs, and most employees stay put longer than the training period. Additionally, there are standard contract terms that enforce retention periods in exchange for certain types of training (e.g., advanced degrees, etc.). Finally, "salary for engineers" and "training for engineers" are not the only headings in the ledger for running a company - and the value of a company is not a zero sum game; a well-trained technical workforce is more valuable than the alternative, but it has lately been more cost effective and lower risk to transfer that responsibility to (prospective) employees.
wpietri 11y ago
> Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. I think this depends a lot on how you do the training. Sure, if you think of training as something very separate from the work, then doing lots of it could be expensive. But the last team I put together was very collaborative, with pair programming being the norm. In that environment, a lot of training comes essentially for free. In a rapidly growing startup, I think building your processes with a strong bias toward staff development is the best way to scale. No matter how much experience a new person has, they still have very low knowledge of the product, the audience, local process choices, and the local code base. So startups always need to be educating their staff. Adding some technical education on top of that doesn't seem hard. Personally, I've never quit a place where I'm still learning a lot. But I've hired plenty of people because they felt like they were stagnating in their current jobs.
mtviewdave 11y ago
>The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. "Training" is far too broad a term for this to be accurate. Training can mean anything from training someone how to use git to training a non-programmer to be a data scientist. We can't expect a company to spend multiple years on the latter, but even the smallest, leanest startup can afford the former. Where do we draw the line?

crdoconnor 11y ago

>The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it Yes, and since the financial crisis their share of profits as GDP has never been higher yet they still refuse to invest in training themselves. Instead they demand that the immigration floodgates be opened. They don't want to do it because they just don't see employees as people any more. They're resources, to be tapped until they run dry, at which point, they are discarded. This is a marked cultural corporate change from the 50s-70s when the 'job for life' was still a thing, people got defined benefit pensions and CEOs would choose to make long term investments rather than engage in share repurchase shell games that boost next quarter's share price. >Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. This used to be much less of a problem when companies actually demonstrated loyalty to their employees. A natural side effect of lobbying hard to make it trivial to fire people and doing layoffs as a matter of course is that your employees won't be loyal. Tough shit.

Eridrus 11y ago

> Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. Yes, once you train a person you need to pay them more. You might feel like they owe you, but unless there is a real understanding between the two of you that you are investing in them and expect to pay them less for some period of time to recoup the cost (eg in the form of a contract you both signed stipulating a minimum term after training, with claw back provisions), this is what you should expect. Depending on how much it costs you (besides their salary) to train them, it can still be cheaper to hire and train than getting someone experienced, since everyone needs some time before they're really effective and you're paying them at a lower rate while you train them. There is something to be said for small startups just not being able to support that kind of load, but I feel like once you hit about 20 engineers it's just people being lazy and not wanting to do things any differently, rather than any true constraints. The fetishization of the 10x developer leads us to ignore the fact that lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

rewqfdsa 11y ago
> lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired. Then why the fuck isn't work automated away? We're developers, for God's sake! We develop things!
- Eridrus 11y ago
  Because automation isn't magic. The fact that something is repetitive and intellectually unchallenging doesn't mean it is mechanical and doesn't require human involvement and/or judgement.

supercanuck 11y ago

I work at a Fortune 5 Company and our director sent us some YouTube links because there isn't any training budget.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

cgearhart 11y ago

>...quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training. This shows up a lot, and it's worth debunking. Salary is not the only reason that people take a job, and it's not the only reason that people switch jobs. There can be huge costs (for all parties) to casually switching jobs, and most employees stay put longer than the training period. Additionally, there are standard contract terms that enforce retention periods in exchange for certain types of training (e.g., advanced degrees, etc.). Finally, "salary for engineers" and "training for engineers" are not the only headings in the ledger for running a company - and the value of a company is not a zero sum game; a well-trained technical workforce is more valuable than the alternative, but it has lately been more cost effective and lower risk to transfer that responsibility to (prospective) employees.

wpietri 11y ago

> Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. I think this depends a lot on how you do the training. Sure, if you think of training as something very separate from the work, then doing lots of it could be expensive. But the last team I put together was very collaborative, with pair programming being the norm. In that environment, a lot of training comes essentially for free. In a rapidly growing startup, I think building your processes with a strong bias toward staff development is the best way to scale. No matter how much experience a new person has, they still have very low knowledge of the product, the audience, local process choices, and the local code base. So startups always need to be educating their staff. Adding some technical education on top of that doesn't seem hard. Personally, I've never quit a place where I'm still learning a lot. But I've hired plenty of people because they felt like they were stagnating in their current jobs.

mtviewdave 11y ago

>The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. "Training" is far too broad a term for this to be accurate. Training can mean anything from training someone how to use git to training a non-programmer to be a data scientist. We can't expect a company to spend multiple years on the latter, but even the smallest, leanest startup can afford the former. Where do we draw the line?