
Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore - stevejobs
Some economists cite structural factors as to the reason why unemployment has persisted at these elevated levels around 10%.  By structural they basically mean job mismatch: workers who have skills in one area are in surplus even though there are jobs in demand, though they require a different set of skills.  One way to rectify this predicament is to have firms more willing to expand their applicant pool and train those they do hire for those jobs.<p>It has become common wisdom in hiring that firms would rather leave a position unfilled than recruit someone who didn't fit the job requirements.  A new hire must hit the ground running so-to-speak and therefore he should not expect much handholding on the part of the employer.  So, if you are not a perfect match and can't already do everything stated in the job description, don't expect to get a call back.<p>I wonder why this move away from on-the-job training has taken place.  It used to be that firms would accept a wider range of applicants after screening for basic intelligence, competence, and ability.  They would take their new recruits and train them for upwards of several months.  After successfully completing the training, the new employees would be ready to take their place alongside their fellow co-workers.  This training not only produced better employees, it also engendered more loyalty as workers could see the firm invest time and money into them and would reciprocate with their work effort.<p>Now, it seems like most firms give new employees at most a few days to become acclimated with them and most of that time involves processing employment paperwork for the new worker.  Since, the worker cannot expect to be trained by the firm in any meaningful way, one shouldn't expect much loyalty from him should a better opportunity arise.<p>One reason given as to why firms have reduced their training is because they fear that after investing in the worker, he might just bolt to a competitor which may reward him with better pay because it didn't have to budget for training.  However, to take that POV, you must assume that workers are only satisfied by more money, when there are multiple factors that workers take into consideration when deciding on where to work, including how the firm treats them initially.
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thaumaturgy
I'm a more "traditional" type of employer -- I have technicians, they go to
homes and businesses, they set things up and solve problems, and I don't mind
hiring under-experienced techs so long as I think they're willing to learn.

I have a pretty good hunch why a lot of businesses aren't interested in doing
this anymore: there is an extreme amount of external pressure not to do it. If
one of my techs doesn't know how to do a particular thing right away, the
client doesn't want to hear that. Instead, they want to hear that I'll give
them a discount on the tech's time. If the tech makes a mistake, I have to
cover the costs for making up for it. Even if a tech knows how to do
something, but they're just out-of-practice at it, and they take 3 hours to do
something that I could do in 1, I probably won't bill the client for a full 3
hours.

It creates a hardship on the business. The culture around the customer-
business relationship in the U.S. has changed from the stereotypical 50's
ideals to one where the lower price usually wins, and if you're competing on
price, you can't afford to train people.

It doesn't help that there are an awful lot of people out there now that seem
to think that they're worth a lot of money even if they don't know how to do a
job. Go ahead and try telling a potential employee for a technical position,
"Well, you're not familiar with any of this, but we're willing to train you if
you're willing to start at $10/hour". Unless they're in high school, it
probably won't fly.

Or, as another anecdote: one of the things that my business offers its clients
is professionalism. Techs are supposed to show up polite, friendly, clean, and
dressed for business casual. Repeatedly nagging my techs about their
appearance hasn't helped; they still show up with bed hair, with cargo pants,
with t-shirts not tucked in, despite that I pay them better than any of my
competitors. I'm gonna have to get mean about this soon, and that makes me a
little sad.

~~~
rphlx
You're going to make them tuck in their t-shirts? Seriously? Unless you are
getting actual customer complaints, that just seems like a stupid power-
tripping way to ruin morale.

------
prodigal_erik
I think part of it is flatter organizations and cutbacks in middle management.
My manager is a VP who reports directly to the CEO; all his reports are
individual contributors. He's the sharpest I've worked for, but he only hires
a handful of very senior developers (unusually, I think our average age is
around forty) because he wears a lot of hats and doesn't have a lot of spare
time to mold journeymen to deliver well, in return for savings on salary that
isn't going to be that large over time.

In a way I feel bad that we aren't doing our part to ramp up the next
generation, but it would be hard to take the hit for doing so and still
deliver on our current obligations. The alternative would be have his reports
manage apprentices, but none of us is eager to make the compromises needed to
get a stable system out of an army that's still developing good taste. If this
problem is becoming acute, wages for junior devs will drop enough that someone
can probably do that and eat our lunch (like outsourcing but without the
language and timezone barriers).

~~~
frossie
_I think part of it is flatter organizations and cutbacks in middle
management._

I think you're right - you need excess capacity in your senior/middle
management layer that can absorb training. I would also add "cutbacks in
general". Taking in green people means hiring somebody a significant amount of
time _before_ you really need them. This means that if you are in the "don't
spend a dime until you really really have to" mode, you will wait until the
crisis hit and then you will want somebody who can start being productive
TOMORROW.

It's a shame, because taking in inexperienced people means potentially ending
up with a "perfect" person because you don't have to work against any
previously acquired bad habits, you can inculcate him with your own ethic and
so on.

------
trevelyan
As far as I'm aware from the economics blogosphere, arguments about
"structural unemployment" are popular these days mostly in right wing think
tanks. And they only seem popular there because hypothesizing that there are
tons of jobs available for the unemployed permits one to reject
Keynesian/Monetarist prescriptions for further fiscal/monetary stimulus.

I haven't run into any serious economist who believes in the idea, and
certainly haven't read any proponents of the idea who are able to justify why
this rate is allegedly 5-6 percent higher now than two years ago, or at pretty
much any previous point in American history for that matter.

I wouldn't mind talking about this if others are interested. To me, the
simplest evidence that this argument is dishonest is that its proponents don't
seem to be acting consistently with their beliefs. If they really are right
that the natural unemployment rate has risen, any further stimulus or monetary
expansion will result in significant inflation which will need to be headed
off by the Federal Reserve, and which would permit the organization to divest
itself of its fairly risky mortgage-backed securities in the process. And this
would be a zero-risk way to drive a stake through the heart of pretty much
every left-leaning empiricist out there too....

~~~
secret
"As far as I'm aware from the economics blogosphere, arguments about
"structural unemployment" are popular these days mostly in right wing think
tanks."

Actually, I heard Bill Clinton talking about the same thing on the Daily Show
this past week.

~~~
sayrer
All mainstream US politicians are fairly right wing.

~~~
blhack
This is a bit like saying that every city in the US is fairly warm.

Yes, if you compare them to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, they are. Relative
to each other, there are warm cities in the US, and cold cities in the US;
Minneapolis, while not nearly as cold as McMurdo Station, is cold by US
standards.

Similarly, while US politicians may all be "right wing" in comparison to their
European equivalents, there are most certainly politicians who, in the
relevant context, are not.

------
_delirium
I think there's still significant on-the-job training for technical areas
other than programming. Aerospace engineering firms want an engineering major
to have learned the basics of what engineering is, and have a solid grasp of
the relevant mathematics and physics fundamentals, but they don't expect
anyone to come in ready to work on a particular airframe or engine or
whatever. They expect to train people in their particular software packages,
design philosophy, methodologies, huge catalog of existing designs, ongoing
studies, etc.

One recruiter from a big engineering company who I talked to as an undergrad
said that they preferred applicants who _didn't_ have too much specific
experience exactly on target, because then they'd just have to un-learn what
they'd learned in order to get integrated into his company's way of doing
things, since big engineering firms have often accumulated decades of in-house
practices, which vary a lot between companies.

~~~
retroafroman
This is true in my case as a recent engineering graduate. The company that
hired me also hired another recent grad and we haven't really been applying
anything learned in school so much as general skills.

------
ggchappell
> I wonder why this move away from on-the-job training has taken place.

> One reason given as to why firms have reduced their training is because they
> fear that after investing in the worker, he might just bolt to a competitor
> which may reward him with better pay because it didn't have to budget for
> training.

The underlying reason for this situation is a good question. While I don't
know the answer, it should be noted that, once we have such a situation, it
tends to be self-perpetuating. Workers have no incentive to be loyal to
companies that won't be loyal to them, and vice-versa. The first one to try
being loyal to the other, will often get burned.

So dealing with these problems means that we have to fight not only the
underlying reasons for the situation, but also the self-perpetuating
characteristics of the situation. Not easy.

Another note: HN has generally been rather down on the tenure system in
American universities. While I agree that tenure has its problems, it does
address some of the troubles you point out. Universities and professors
(excepting those with temporary appointments) seem to me to be much less
afraid to invest in each other than modern businesses and their employees are.
Eliminating tenure may very well give significant benefits to universities;
however, it also introduces the kind of problem that you are discussing.

EDIT: Still another note: A recent post (I _think_ it was on HN) discussed
alleged secret agreements among various tech companies to avoid hiring each
other's employees. This is yet another unfortunate outgrowth of this
situation.

~~~
ataggart
Of course the solution to the predicament is simple: contracts. Alas, as with
so many things, a well-armed third-party is getting in the way.

------
CallMeV
Firms haven't started to realise it yet, but by excluding the trainable
people, by insisting on this glass ceiling of "two years' experience," they
aren't doing themselves any favours.

The lucky handful of geeks with "two years' experience" already under their
belt are not going to sit back and let the employer dictate how much, or how
little, they are going to get paid. The employer wants to pay them as little
as possible - but the candidate can ask whatever the market allows, as much as
possible, and if his name's that good, he will be able to gouge the employer
for as much as he can get. And if the employer listens long enough, he'll find
that all of the others will all seem to be adopting the same gouging tactic,
for exactly the same amount - like a cartel structure.

Basically, you're going to end up with a small clique of experienced coders
circulating between firms, raking in the money and coming up with the same
tired code they've been peddling to the same firms from day one. The incentive
to come up with original solutions isn't there - they're not after hiring
newbies who might have something new that could knock them off their perch.

In the meantime, businesses find themselves financially in a hole paying for
these bloated whales, they're just as much in the dark as they've always been,
their programs are just as rubbish, nothing new seems to work - why should it?
Working code costs more money, so you might as well just issue new patches -
and folding left and right.

There's more money to be made running a cartel of consultants than by opening
the jobs market to newcomers, offering them training and keeping the market
fresh, competitive, adaptive and, most of all, viable.

------
makmanalp
The form of training has changed. At my old shop, there'd sometimes be a guest
expert who did a talk on an interesting subject. If you wanted a tech book,
you could buy it on the company's Amazon account and read it as much as you
liked. Some companies do a sort of buddy system were you're helped along by a
mentor while starting out or learning something new.

I think this change came with the realisation that you're worth more to the
company building something than sitting on your ass training for something you
_may_ come across with in the future. Therefore, if it's directly relevant
you'll get training but otherwise you'll probably have to do it in your own
time.

------
wccrawford
Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the
existing employees and rarely turn into good workers.

Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why:

1) Has experience, resume and portfolio.

2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and
has a nice portfolio.

3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a
personal portfolio that's pretty basic.

4) Has no experience at all. Has education.

5) Has no experience of eduction.

1 has shown ability to do the work in the past. Will hit the ground running
and is generally a good hire.

2 and 3 have shown not only that they know how to program, but they are self-
driven and don't need someone to tell them to what to work on. Will also hit
the ground running and are often a good hire. 3's sometimes disappoint as they
get in over their heads pretty quickly.

4 and 5 have shown no ability or drive. They haven't even attempted to program
anything they were specifically told to. There is no chance they will hit the
ground running, and it's unlikely that they will have any innate ability.

Why on earth WOULD people hire 4s and 5s?

In short, non-technical professions hire people and train them all the time.
Nobody is born knowing how to flip burgers and fry fries at the same time. But
technical professions rarely get anywhere hiring anyone that doesn't have
experience of some kind.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
What would a programmers portfolio look like?

~~~
voberoi
Any publicly accessible repository containing code you've written (e.g. your
Github repos), products or websites you've built and exposed to users,
technical papers you've published, and technical talks you've given.

~~~
edanm
Interestingly, these are things I suspect the majority of programmers don't
have.

------
fierarul
Well, you assume that training actually produces results. It might well be
that after spending considerable time and money on the new employee he's still
not a very good match for the original tasks. Then you are stuck with a loss
and an employee you can't fire (since, for example, the 'testing' period is
something like 2-4 weeks -- this might depend on the country/state, etc.).

Or, training does work but the investment is usually so big (not just on the
trainer but the lost productivity of the team members involved) that the
employee would need to stay employed a number of months/years at least, to
recuperate costs. So if the employee resigns before that (since he gets a
better offer) you are still in the red.

I've personally had people work for me that didn't actually fit the task, but
only because they were quite smart and I was certain they could pick up the
domain (any domain) quite fast.

But right now, for example, I'm looking at CVs of student candidates and I'm
reluctant to invest in their training because I have a small company and the
risk of them leaving after they are trained is high.

~~~
stevejobs
Why do you fear an employee would leave you after you invested in training
him? Unless you are particularly abrasive, most employees would look favorably
at an employer who helps them advance in their job than one who doesn't invest
anything at all.

~~~
fierarul
From what I've seen students here like "big brands". So most would pick
working at BigCorp "in the first years" (or so they say). They seem to value
the stability BigCorp provides and they also assume they'll learn a whole lot
at the job. Being a small company means I don't "look" as stable nor as
impressive in the CV.

This means that generally students see the 1st job as something transitional.
It also means that a big chunk of the CVs I get are from people that
didn't/couldn't make it into BigCorp, ie. people I also don't need.

Changing jobs is also a traditional way of getting a raise and I wouldn't want
to get into the counter-offer game too early.

But this time I think the problem is the CVs I've been receiving aren't that
great, so I am reluctant to invest in training because I'm reluctant to pick
any candidate.

------
tsotha
At one time there was a stigma to changing jobs too often. Well, that's still
true, but whereas people look at you funny for changing jobs every few months
in 2010, in 1970 people who changed jobs every four or five years were
regarded with suspicion.

As a result, your employer was much more confident he could see a return on
his training efforts. In 2010 we expect people to jump ship when they find a
better situation - why would would I invest money in someone's career when
they may be working for my competitor next week?

------
SkyMarshal
I find it interesting that firms choose to not hire anyone at all over hiring
and training someone. That means it's either a luxury hire uncritical to the
business's survival, or they equate hiring and training with a negative ROI.
Or both.

To those here who run a business, is that how it is?

~~~
Kaizyn
While I don't have a business, your question assumes that those doing the
hiring are acting rationally. Whereas most business trends are caused by
people uncritically following what others are doing.

------
bugsy
If this is about factory work, yes, training is necessary.

If this is about software development it's not clear to me what sort of
training we are talking about. I've had to train myself at every job, that's
part of what I do. I can't imagine how training would work. Classes in some
programming language perhaps? It's much faster for me just to pick up the
syntax of a language over the weekend and then fill in the blanks on toy
projects or while doing maintenance.

------
ojbyrne
There's plenty of training available once you're in a company, because most
companies understand that there's a large cost to losing an employee who's
proven that they are intelligent, have a good work ethic, and are easy to work
with.

There's very little appetite for training new workers until they've proven
those same things.

In essence, on the job training might be in short supply, but on the job
retraining is not.

------
mkramlich
this doesn't seem like an Ask HN. you basically made a blog post conveying
your position on something. except you did it here under the guise of Ask-ing
HN something. ;)

~~~
xentronium
Is it a no-no thing on HN? (kinda newb here)

