
Employment in America: WTF is going on? - blahedo
http://corcodilos.com/blog/6827/employment-in-america-wtf-is-going-on
======
tokenadult
The point of the blog post is that employers need to learn how to do hiring
and not expect to outsource hiring to companies that get rich off of
productive companies being clueless about hiring. That sounds like good
advice. As a data point, one of my all-time most-liked comments here on HN[1]
is my FAQ about company hiring procedures. Yes, people who run companies that
innovate and make new products and services still have to learn the timeless
facts about how to hire good workers. There is no substitute for the head of
the company having a firm, reality-based idea about how to add workers to the
team.

Successful hiring is an outgrowth of successful management. Know what you are
looking for in new workers--not just what they should be able to do the day
they are hired, but what they will grow into as your company grows. Be clear
about the difference between hiring clones of yourself whom you'd like to have
as friends and a diverse workforce full of smart people who get things done.

As my FAQ says, use work-sample tests for all your hiring. Don't trust
educational credentials, but rather verify. Use legally safe means to find out
who is smart and can learn more on the job. (References and expanded details
on these points are available at the link.)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543)

~~~
malandrew
The saddest thing I've seen in my career is that most managers don't realize
that hiring is a huge part of their job if their team contributes materially
to the bottom line (directly or indirectly) and can grow that contribution by
hiring people.

The people the hire managers and promote people to managers rarely stop to
ask:

(1) Can this person keep the people underneath them happy and productive and
make them happier and more productive? and (2) Can this person actively seek
out other people to work under them that are productive?

Hiring in too many businesses is outsourced to HR. i.e. A department manager
goes to HR and says "give me someone who can do X, Y and Z". HR is then left
with only keywords and has little knowledge of whether or not a candidate with
a differing skill set could also perform the job well or better with a little
training. Only the department manager has enough knowledge to hire correctly
for the needs of their team. Why we ever let them get away with outsourcing
this core responsibility to HR is beyond me.

------
pontifier
I'll tell you what's going on. It's a nightmare to hire someone. All the
reporting requirements, all the paperwork involved, all the taxes and
insurance requirements.

I certainly don't want to actually hire anyone unless I absolutely have to,
and even then I will get "independent contractors" or use temps if i can
first.

~~~
ajross
This sounds like a political statement. Obviously those sorts of requirements
do exist, but they exist for everyone and in most cases scale as O(1) and not
with employee count. They might plausibly be a barrier to hiring a _first_
employee. They certainly aren't causing unemployment. As an existence proof,
virtually none of those factors changed across 2008-2009, when we saw the
biggest swing in employment rate since 1928.

~~~
csense
> in most cases scale as O(1) and not with employee count

I've read in many places that startups and small businesses are a very
important engine of economic growth in the US. Since that O(1) obstacle
disproportionately hurts small businesses, it could serve as a long-term brake
on growth.

~~~
walshemj
But almost all "small" business are hobby ones that dont generate any large
scale employment ie grow to several hundred employees.

In the UK the government pushes people to become "self employed" as it
flatters the unemployment stats before that it was encouraging doctors to sign
people of as disabled and on to a different benefit.

------
rprospero
So much of modern hiring seems like C. S. Lewis's comments about searching for
your keys under the street lamp. There's a talent shortage, since everyone in
the light has been hired. There's massive under underemployment, since
everyone in the shadows can't get hired.

There's a few dozen billions to be made by the person that fixes the problem.
I wish I could comprehend the scale of the problem - it'd be nice to be that
person.

~~~
calibraxis
Unemployment is basically caused by fiscal policy. (Which is to say, it's
political, since economics is political.) Unemployment is actually rather
absurd when you think about it: people can't get jobs, even though by
definition they want to; and there's lots to do. Not only do we have an
economic system which has such a weird wasteful phenomenon, but we also pursue
policies to ensure this phenomenon occurs.

~~~
einhverfr
This is true but I take it in a different direction than you probably do.

Most of the help we give to the unemployed is contingent on two things:

1\. They don't have income and

2\. They are looking for a job.

That seems like a great way to test for unemployment benefits but what it
fundamentally does is ensure that if you are unemployed and need the help you
can't try to supplement through self-employment. Thus our current unemployment
assistance largely works to discourage new businesses from starting.

A better system would be a mandatory severance system where if you find
yourself unemployed, you get a lump sum. You can look for a job, become self-
employed, try to start a business with it, or any combination of these. But
when it is gone, it is gone.

~~~
capisce
In fact basic income would provide both better incentives for those without a
job and increase liquidity in the employment market since people would no
longer have to suffer a crappy boss or work place out of fear.

------
nbouscal
There is a reason the term is "talent shortage", not "labor shortage". Yes,
there are tons of unemployed people. A vanishingly small proportion of those
people can actually fill the jobs that people are hiring for. Hence: _talent
shortage_.

Yes, hiring unexperienced people and training them is an option, but you can't
do that for _your entire engineering team_. Hiring new grads isn't a problem,
hiring people senior enough to make those new grads productive is.

In short, not only is this post an advertisement, it's not even an accurate
one. The talent gap is a significant problem, and it's only going to get worse
if we don't acknowledge it.

~~~
avenger123
I just wonder how much of this talent gap is real. For example, if I am
looking for Ruby on Rails experience and I have candidates with strong python
and Django experience are they off the list? Or how about someone that has
done PHP for a long time and you are looking for RoR.

Or let's say someone with Java experience is available but you are looking for
Scala. I just use these as the initial comparisons but I'm sure there are
more. Can you not let the python person train up on Ruby on Rails and have a
strong candidate?

I understand its best to match one to one what is being looked for, but I
wonder how many good candidates are being passed by because they don't fit the
perfect stack but are likely able to perfectly adapt.

~~~
a3n
"For example, if I am looking for Ruby on Rails experience and I have
candidates with strong python and Django experience are they off the list?"

I think in most companies yes, they're off the list. Bottom line-ism is king
these days. Companies see bringing someone in and up as a cost, not an
investment. All they want to do is pull from the well, but not put anything
in. They want perfect fits, and they want other companies to make them. It
sounds like a frighteningly random and risky policy.

~~~
EricDeb
Would it be possible to sign employees to a contract then? Flip this on it's
head. i.e. we're happy to take you on board, but you have to work here for 2
years at X rate.

~~~
RogerL
In the US (I know, this is a global community) we are largely 'at will'
employment (a quick google suggests that only Montana is an exception). Such a
contract is not enforceable. To lock people in we use things like vesting -
you get stock grants, bonuses, or what have you, but only vest into them over
time.

------
jerrya
I enjoy Nick's work, but I am not sure how applicable it is to many software
jobs:

    
    
      People must stop begging for jobs
      
      It’s time for people to stop thinking about jobs, and high time
      to start thinking about how — and where — they can create profit.
      
      If I run a company, I’ll hire you to do work that pays off more
      than what I pay you to do it. Today, virtually no employer knows
      whether hiring a person will pay off. That’s why you need to know
      how to walk into a manager’s office and demonstrate, hands down,
      how you will contribute profit to the manager’s business. That’s
      right: Be smarter than the manager about his own business. Stop
      begging for jobs. Start offering profit.
      
      Because if you can’t do that, you have no business applying for
      any job, in any company.
    

I haven't seen too many software development positions in large companies
where you can walk into a manager's office and demonstrate you are smarter
about the manager's own business than he is.

    
    
      I know more about your specialized domain than you?
    
      I know more about design for your specialized domain 
      than you or your designers?
    
      I know more about the algorithms developed in your 
      specialized industry than your engineers?
    
      I know more about database design used in your 
      proprietary application?
    
      I know more about the customers for your specialized 
      domain and their needs than you do?
    

And I'm supposed to be able to claim that for any software development company
I interview with regardless of industry?

I enjoy working in software, and I think I am pretty good at it, but one
aspect I enjoy is that moving from company to company I learn about new
domains, new industries, new algorithms, etc.

~~~
nostrademons
Pretty much every job offer I've gotten has involved walking into a manager or
interviewer's office and pointing out things he can do better with his
business. It's often not core stuff, but I'll frequently point out UI
improvements they could make, or new technologies they may want to take a look
at, or new algorithms & data structures that can solve their interview
questions. And on the flip side, I enjoy learning about new businesses and new
techniques they're using to the greatest extent that they'll share them with
me.

A-players are not threatened by this. B-players are. I've found that it is
generally good for your career to try to work with A-players whenever possible
and avoid B/C/D/F-players.

~~~
derekp7
I've had a similar experience. I've found out, though, it isn't really what
you say, it is how you say it. Be assertive without sounding arrogant and
pushy. If you go in to an interview and pretend you are a consultant selling
your services, and not someone who is desperate for a job, then chances are
better you will get an offer. Now part of this is reading body language, to
see if what you are saying is triggering a happy emotion in the person
interviewing you. For example, in my current position, it was apparent that
things were in chaos. I started mentioning some automation tricks, and that
lead into a strong emphasis on repeatable processes. Turns out, that was the
key phrase that got me hired -- I found a dozen ways of giving the same
message of automation, repeatability, and trackability. In a previous
position, I had sold the hiring manager on a design for a web based user
account automation system (kind of accidentally). Turns out that was their
biggest pain point at the moment, handling a huge stack of account request
forms. So either I was very insightful during the interview process, or
extremely lucky. Or, I happened to take my vitamins that morning.

------
keithwarren
Is it just me or did I just read 8 paragraphs or blather pretending not to be
an advertisement for some book?

I think he said that HR departments suck at hiring because they outsource to
tech companies who use keyword searches.

I could be wrong, but I think the problem is a bit more complex than that.

~~~
twistedpair
I'd seen that before. Leads to the embarrassment of interviewing "Javascript
Engineers" for a Java position and having to inform the applicant that your HR
department is full of fools.

~~~
ArtDev
That is hilarious. Really though, most people in our industry are constantly
being recruited for jobs we don't want or aren't vaguely qualified for. But,
hey, it keeps LinkedIn in business!

------
codegeek
"Employers don’t do their own hiring, and that’s the #1 problem. Employers
have outsourced their competitive edge — recruiting and hiring — to third
parties whose heads are so far up The Database Butt that this little
consortium should be investigated by Congress."

This. Personally, I completely and absolutely blame the employers for this
mess that they have "talent shortage". I am amazed with the whole recruiting
ecosystem if there is such thing here. People _are_ the most important assets
of a company and giving this responsibility to a third party (read
vendors/recruiters/agencies) just does not work. But again, most companies do
not really bother about this. Until we stop calling people as "resources" and
"head counts", this broken recruiting model will never change.

These "vendor databases" that he is talking about is a major irritation. I
still get emails from some random recruiting firm where I might have sent my
Resume as a fresh desperate undergrad 10+ years ago. This needs to stop.

------
maerF0x0
IMO many companies do not hire "underqualified" people (ie people who do not
exactly match the job description) because they're afraid to hire, train and
lose employees. They fail to account for the opportunity cost of lost profits
due to "waiting longer" for the right hire. I'd rather have a profitable
employee after 1-3 months of training than to search for 6 months .

~~~
nikatwork
But what if we train them up then they quit? We can't afford to do that. It's
Too Risky (tm). Plus training is expensive.

...12 months later...

Why do none of our employees have industry standard skills? Lawd, it's so hard
to find good people!

~~~
malandrew
You pay them lower but fair salary while you are training them and then pay
them a fair salary when they are trained. If you train them, you've increased
their value and you're expected to pay for that additional value even if you
are the one that did the training. Training an employee is a capital
investment with a much greater cost of maintenance, you just need to factor
that in when hiring.

Just because you paid for the training, does not entitle you to keep paying
someone in perpetuity at their salary before being trained.

~~~
maerF0x0
Basically the thinking is this: Cost of training * expected return on equity =
Amount I should be able to extract out of the trained employee forever.

Selecting arbitrary numbers to keep things simple, if it costs $1000 to train
the employee, and you want a 10% ROE then you expect to earn $100 per year
more on that employee, forever. If the employee leaves they take that $100 per
month potential away.

This leaves a few paths for employers: 1) Pay less until you have a return of
capital, 2) Dont up the salary after the "asset" is upgraded, allowing you to
get a much ROE as possible. 3) Dont hire untrained people, so you can capture
ROI from others' training.

All of the above ignores the opportunity cost of not hiring. I presume for
most profitable and busy companies, the lost opportunity is greater than the
cost of training.

------
dubfan
> Taleo, Kenexa, LinkedIn, Monster.com, CareerBuilder, and their diaspora

That's not what "diaspora" means.

~~~
richardfontana
I found that jarring too. I assume he meant something like 'progeny'?

------
jacques_chester
A lot of this rhymes with online dating, and for similar reasons. Asymmetric
information, skewed ratios, the paradox of choice ... very similar dynamics.

------
Matt_Mickiewicz
Some great quotes in there...

"Job descriptions heavily larded with keywords make it virtually impossible to
find good candidates. But every day that an impossible job requisition remains
unfilled, the employment system vendors make more money while companies keep
advertising for the perfect hires."

... I'm a big believer that the market will shift to "pay for results", not
"pay for subscription access to an aggregated database that you have to hire 4
people full-time just to sift through".

"...employers believe they save money when they leave jobs vacant, because
their accounting systems track the cost of having workers on the payroll — but
cannot track the cost of leaving work undone."

------
salemh
_There is no business plan in any applicant tracking system, no profit in a
job posting, no future in federal employment metrics, no solution in HR
departments, and no answers in databases or algorithms._

Meh, not really the problem. Every company realizes there is a buyers market
(sans Technical) for every position, and can interview 20+ people for a help
desk role.

No training is available because, what is the ROI? I know several companies
(this is SLC) who don't train even for automated testing. After the testing,
the employees find a better job.

Symptom or syndrome? Symptom is employee skills > company re: new job, vs
higher position in company (or, in better English, training leads to employees
finding better companies, vs staying with a current company and building that
company.)

There is no loyalty amongst most companies for training or career development,
as the ROI is not there (under utilization, a fallacy of implementation).

Should your company be based on ROI metrics per-project, and per-resource? Do
you call your employees resources?

Utah (which has a large influx of Silicon companies trying to find cheap labor
(typically they do) at lower cost of living thus for salary (typically they
do) can look at 20+ candidates with marginal requirements met
(experience/projects), but, it is a buyers market. Its not panacea like
Silicon Valley, and SLC is rated very high for business, tangentially, you
should be able to find top talent for top dollar.

Talent shortage, there is not, but training / development there is, and no
company wants to take that on, because companies realize loyalty exists at a
quarter-quarter statement (worse with a PE firm), so how do employee's
progress? Change jobs every 2-3 years for a 10k+ raise.

I realize I am ranting, but skill matching to a position is broken, and no
automated ATS system will fix a resume/pubic facing publication.

/end: The "problem" at a symptom level is companies holding out for "best of
best" when they probably do not need such candidates, and could train for
such. Given, a SharePoint admin at $20 / hr (case study), they found it, after
I placed them, and they left after six months when they realized their skill
set warranted a $20k raise.

Companies can under pay undergrads and mid-level candidates (who are not
ivy/target/"rock star guru beer whatever") and do so, only to find a high
turn-over rate.

Fix turn-over rate? Or just keep filing the desperate mid-esque level folks
who just need work and would fulfill Senior level demands of work fulfillment?

/ranting

~~~
cpprototypes
There is an easy solution and I don't know why so many companies can't
understand this. It's simple, pay a fair amount and there will be lower turn
over. Every employee should be evaluated every two years so that their salary
is at least the market median. And a raise doesn't even have to match what an
employee would get from switching jobs. For example, if an employee could get
10k raise by changing jobs, many would stay if given a raise half of that. The
reason is, switching jobs is risky. Next job could have a bad boss, bad
coworkers, etc. If offered, it would often make sense to stay at a good job
and take the 5k instead of going for the 10k with unknown risks.

But instead they just give no raises, or even insult their high performers
with a "generous" 3% and cause resentment and lower morale.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Every single survey done on employee satisfaction shows salary coming much
further down the scale than other factors, like engaging work, good
management, leadership, a feeling of contribution, training and growth, etc.
The best, easiest, most profitable way of reducing turnover is to improve
their management and leadership. Once you've reduced turnover the benefits of
good training far exceed the costs and you get less turnover and more
productive staff as a result. Then you can give them a raise so they
appreciate the benefits of being more productive.

~~~
walshemj
Employees lie on surveys like that - sorry to be brutal but its the truth in
95% of cases.

~~~
PeterisP
You don't get such numbers by asking people 'what would you prefer' \- that
would give wrong answers even w/o lying, since many of those things are such
where sociologists know that the believed preference (what you think you'd
choose) differs from the true preference (what you do choose in reality).

But you get useful results if you (a) ask people how happy they are (even if
they exaggerate and understate, the ranking is generally accurate), and (b)
ask people if they're getting X in the company, and then measure the
correlations (and do a bunch of tricky adjustments for factors that are
interrelated).

I.e., you don't ask "is a fair boss important for you? are office conditions
important for you?" \- but, if for example, on average the people who think
they have a fair boss are feeling happier than those who think they have an
unfair boss; but those who think that the office conditions really suck are
just as [un]happy that those who feel that the office is okay - now, that's
useful signal.

------
a3n
"3.9 million jobs are vacant, thanks to the empty promises of algorithms. If
the U.S. Congress wants a solution, it should launch an investigation into the
workings of America’s employment system infrastructure, which is controlled by
a handful of companies."

Oh please, no. Anything Congress touches risks dying like a baby between two
pit bulls.

~~~
zrail
OT: pitbulls don't harm their humans. They're only a threat to humans who are
obviously a threat to them or their humans.

~~~
jussij
I don’t buy that. The Pitbulls of Australia seem to have a habit of mauling
and killing small children on a regular basis, more so than any other dog
breed.

Maybe the Pitbulls in Australia are different but I doubt it.

~~~
ledge
Pitbulls are often trained to be mean. They are supremely athletic and strong,
so they are the logical choice for fighting dogs, guard dogs, etc.

I can't say whether or not there is a genetic component to incidents of
mauling involving pitbulls, but people are a large part of the problem too.

------
Zigurd
There are too many perverse incentives to trust job descriptions and
supposedly open positions. H1-B visas, political advantages from complaining
about a "training gap," etc.

Maybe job postings should be bonded. Put up $20k per position and forfeit it
if you have not filled the position in X months.

~~~
maerF0x0
Thats a good point, I have known a number of startup companies that have many
"open positions" listed not because they're hiring but because of how it
appeared to potential VCs . They want to appear to be a growing, valid,
healthy company ...

~~~
Zigurd
I could see a two-track system: Bonded postings that get counted in official
statistics, and "informal" postings that amount to wishes. horses, etc.

Bonding agents would drive down the cost of binding to a pretty small amount
and/or enable bonding requirements to rise so that it is prohibitive to lie
about open positions.

~~~
smm2000
I would not be surprised if higher percenrage of bonded postings will be fake
because all postings required for visa/greencard will be bonded and useless.

~~~
Zigurd
The idea behind bonding is to make it very expensive to post fake
requirements. The natural result of forfeiting a bond is for your bonding
costs to go way up. An H-1B is for jobs that can't be filled. If they go
unfilled, the bond is lost.

Losing a bond of some tens of thousands of dollars is only justifiable for
truly high-value positions, and that's what H1-B is supposed to be for, not
phalaxes of warm bodies for contract shops.

------
Symmetry
Is any of the stuff he mentions different from how it was pre-2008?

In one sense the reason we still have unemployment is simple - we never had a
classical recovery from the recession, we just had a return to normal growth.
If you look at almost any historical recession you'll see a spike in
unemployment, a dive into negative GDP growth, and a dive in inflation. Then,
during the recovery you'll see a spike in GDP growth, a spike in inflation,
and the employment level recovering to what it was pre-crash. This recession
didn't have peaks in growth and inflation, just a return to normal. If you
just looked at the GDP and inflation charts (or a combined NGDP chart) you'd
expect that we'd still be having high but falling unemployment right now.

And I could get into a big, long discussion of why this happened involving
IOR, and the Fed relying on indicators that are always months out of date, and
zero bounds, and certain _coughdallascough_ Fed regional bank presidents being
idiots. But whether or not there are supply side problems contributing to high
unemployment in the US now, the demand side indicators show we should be
having high unemployment now so there's no need to go "WTF".

~~~
dynode
Not to mention quantitative easing..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing)

------
batemanesque
"Stop begging for jobs" is an approach that requires a level of privilege most
people don't possess

------
Aloisius
Many places with large numbers of job openings also have very low local
unemployment (the Bay Area for instance). We like to report on numbers at the
national level, but worker mobility is at a 40 year low [1]. That certainly
isn't helping anything.

[1] -
[http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p20-567.pdf)

------
lumens
The hiring system we live with today–resumes, jobs descriptions, recruiters,
HR interviews, and the rest–is massively antiquated. In the past 50 years only
distribution has improved.

A communications gap exists: resumes don't speak to candidates' wants and
desires, and job descriptions don't accurately depict a day in the life on the
job. Today, recruiters, both internal and external, work to overcome this
communications deficit. However, their presence and business models introduce
agency problems.

My company, Mighty Spring, is an effort to bridge this communication gap in a
scalable way, putting candidates and employers in direct contact. We provide
candidates a platform to be transparent about their interests and needs
without risk (utilizing anonymity), and help employers communicate the finer
points of their jobs better than the walls of text they produce today.

This is Mighty Spring
([https://www.mightyspring.com](https://www.mightyspring.com)) — the easiest
way to find new opportunities with startups.

------
memracom
There was a time when a company would hire you if you showed that you were
smart, able to solve problems, and had some years of experience working in
some other companies. They did NOT expect you to already know the job.
Employers were willing to work with employees, to guide them, train them,
build them into what was needed.

------
natmaster
More like people are not learning the right skills to be useful. Economic
restructuring used to happen much more slowly but with the advancement in
technology these days it happens significantly more rapidly.

------
programminggeek
Just spitballin' here, but it seems to be that a lot of it comes down to the
terrible incentive programs in place at the most successful companies. First
of all, the shareholder is not always right and short term self interest does
not make for long term good decision making.

So, if the people at each level are basically just angling for their own short
term self interest, be it a promotion or a raise/bonus/performance incentive,
they will do what they must to hit whatever those incentives are, even if they
harm the long term health of the business.

In short, instead of investing profits, companies are scaling back to look
good and hit their profitability or stock price targets. It's short sighted
and will end up hurting a lot of companies in the middle to long term because
they are inevitably cutting plenty of good people along with those who are
less good at what they do.

I really don't think that the goal of business should be to hire a ton of
people for the sake of hiring people. A business exists to make a profit, but
sustaining profitability requires great people, great operations, great
products, great sales/marketing, and great service. When a company stops
investing in those things, they get worse. When entire industries/countries do
this, it doesn't take long for some upstart to take the lead.

------
Aloha
The automatic matching BS is why my resume is chock full of bullshit with a
skills matrix. I would rather they look at my overall experience and try to
match me to a relevant job.

------
gnu8
This is an ad.

------
wil421
Does this post not concern tech jobs. I recently graduated from a smaller
local college and had no problem getting interviews or offers. In fact almost
every job I applied for called me back within a day to do an interview. None
of them outsourced their hiring either.

------
jheriko
"Recent phenomenon is cause of ancient problem"

Give me a break. there are a lot of interesting points and valuable insights.
I won't say there isn't a real problem there, but the core message is wrong
IMO.

Comfortable people make far too little effort to find work. Talk to job
seekers about how far they will go for a job... this is why I will always have
one. People seem to think they are somehow entitled to a convenient job on
their doorstep.

~~~
luckycharms810
I think the issue is that there are million unfilled jobs out there, and there
are qualified people who are ready to fill them. By putting a giant recruiting
company between the two, you are filtering a lot of good people out of the
equation. I've lost out on a lot of interviews by not having a github account.
But if you think about it, thats a lot like asking a doctor to give a public
record of lives that he has saved while off duty.

------
auctiontheory
Nick's (first) book is hands down the best resource on job-hunting and
interviewing I have ever found.

------
dawidw
Not everyone is complaining...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_em...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UREepszk7I&feature=player_embedded)

------
AsymetricCom
Sorry, employment data is classified for national security reasons.

------
craigyk
AMEN

------
ffrryuu
LinkedIn is great :)

~~~
InclinedPlane
LinkedIn is terrible, but if you get a job through a linkedin connection
you're likely to think it's fantastic.

If every employer was using myspace for the same purpose many people would
probably think it was great too.

