I saw one of these at a job when I graduated undergrad. I had an over the phone interview with a consulting company, Revature specifically. I can't even remember if I applied to them or not (since I applied to so many). After what was a 10 trivia question type interview they decided to "give me an offer!". It was a contract $50k a year, for two years with a $20k "training fee" that was fully repayable if you leave before 2 years. I obviously declined it because that is a ludicrously low salary for a software developer in the US, and also it was an insane "training fee". So I presume, their business model is desperate people for jobs, "train" them, then keep them in indentured servitude. They also tried to hard sell a job which is obviously gross.
I know someone who got several offers like this. And often, it sounded like you had to pay them back even if they are unsatisfied with your work and fire you. There were also a couple offers where they wouldn't pay him for the first few months as they "trained" him, and if they liked him, they would keep him on for a low salary "with lots of opportunities to move up".
This happened to me, too. I could imagine someone without connections, who is desperate, who simply doesn’t know how much software devs could make, who comes from poverty, etc. would be vulnerable.
I didn't go through Revature but I did go through something similar. They hired me after an extended period of travel with no programming experience to speak of after no one else would. 8 years later I'm a "senior" dev making 200k.
Can you argue that I was vulnerable and my original company took advantage of the situation? Perhaps. But nobody else was hiring me so in my eyes they were the company that treated me the best at the time.
That was mostly me at a certain point in my career except I did know how much devs could make. That doesn't make them actually offer you a job at that salary though. I didn't get into anything like this but I took an offer far far below market rate.
When you have no connections, no resources, no work history in the field, dependents to support.... Shit $42k was still more than I was making in the career I came from. I took it then and people are still taking that stuff now. They aren't wrong to do so either, but the ones exploiting them in this way are wrong to do it.
Yeah, the salaries being touted around here aren't typical for a non hyper-inflated job market.
Most of the country, in my research, will pay 40-60k for a junior developer, but won't own you either (giving you time to find/ build a family, friends, hobbies, etc)
How is having connections directly increasing the value I am able to deliver to an employer? I mostly use connections to get the job, so it benefits me, but it doesn't make me any more valuable to an employer.
Connections is another way of saying references, which is a less formal but sometimes more valuable variation of having credentials. If an employer hires 10 unknown people, maybe 4 will work out good and the other 6 will be possibly a net loss. Whereas hiring 10 people with references that you trust, if 9 work out then that is a positive for the employer. That is the value that having connections brings to the employer, it makes you more of a "known" vs "unknown" (not that it increases your specific value, but it is a value to the overall process).
This. Most job seekers misunderstand the hiring process from the hirer's perspective.
Companies aren't paying someone with references more because of luck.
They're paying that person more because that person has less risk and hiring the wrong employee is incredibly expensive.
Effectively, they're amortizing and rebating the dollar value of that person's risk reduction into their salary.
Hint for new/first job seekers: this is why (non-predatory) internships are win/win, the company is able to ascertain your risk (in lieu of references or a track record) and therefore make you and offer and hire you for a higher (de-risked) salary.
I've referred people in my professional network to my employers saving them on recruiter fees and protracted hiring efforts, reducing opportunity cost of the job sitting vacant, reducing risks of a bad hire, and sometimes increasing productivity of those around them as well. It's hard to put exact numbers on the long tail effects but a well connected long term employee could easily be worth double.
A job below market rate isn't a problem, as long as you're able to leave when something better comes along. Underpaying and then having a fee when they leave, is probably worse than nothing.
People have bills (there were all of those threads yesterday about how bad student loan forgiveness was for society, right?) and no one will even date you now if you don’t have job, McDonalds won’t hire you if you have SQL as a skill on your resume, so at a certain point, this is better than nothing.
Life is complicated, and people leave jobs all the time for reasons I expect you'd find valid (take care of an aging family member, move with your spouse to their new tenure-track position, ...).
Analogizing with another crime against a person's freedom to do as they please, consider "kidnapping." It includes forcibly restraining a person or moving them some place they'd like not to go, and in the eyes of the law the duration doesn't matter; people have unsuccessfully defended kidnapping charges for minutes of detainment. If you agree that the fees in question do rise to the level of indentured servitude (which seems plausible at least), then the fact that it's only for 4% of your working life shouldn't be a relevant consideration.
Alternative hot-take: those first two years of experience are often the hardest to get, and junior devs are simply not that productive. 3x minimum wage for some work experience that is going to allow you to be charging 6 figures in short order is probably ... not that bad? Hard to make exact comparisons because of inflation + country differences but my first programming job paid $30k and I didn't feel exploited
I'd have taken such an offer in a heartbeat just to get back in the industry. "Indentured servitude" 2 years being paid... what ridiculous bs, that's normal in many countries.
This is similar to what bodyshops used to do 15+ years ago to the developers they brought in on H1Bs. To prevent them from jumping ship once they are in the country. Curiously, the penalty was also about $15K and typical compensation about $65K. Is it happening to the citizens now too?
Oh you don’t even need to charge anything for H1Bs to work as indentured servitude.
The visa says who you’re allowed to work for. Leave the company (or get fired or laid off) and you have 10 days to leave the country or find another job that will sponsor your visa. As you can imagine few people choose to leave the company under these conditions.
Best part is that companies can also appeal to the employee’s sense of fairness: “We paid $10,000 for your visa. You value that favor from us don’t you? Imagine if you had to pay that yourself”
> Leave the company (or get fired or laid off) and you have 10 days to leave the country or find another job that will sponsor your visa.
I don't think this is correct. There's a 60 day grace period if you leave (voluntarily or otherwise) before the visa expires. Still too tight in my opinion, but not 10 days which is insane.
I don't even get what the incentive is to become an H1B nowadays. Work under some insane visa requirements with often fuck all chance of actually becoming a citizen unless you roll a magic dice roll over and over. Or stay home, contract out remotely for $10 an hour or whatever shit pay contracting gets which works out to be a god damn fortune in rural India or China (most H1B come from one of those two countries).
US salaries are often triple even Western European salaries.
Like at Amazon I earnt about $75k in Western Europe, the same job in the USA would be $165k (you can see the bands).
And that's before even considering the tax differences. The USA is the land of opportunity where you can really work your way up to a great lifestyle whereas Europe pays peanuts and then punishes you with extortionate income tax (but often no property or inheritance taxes).
I believe his point is correct relative to the tech industry and your point is correct relative to the greater US economy. American tech pays really well and you really can start out in low places and go on to make great money. But overall the situation for the lower and lower-middle class in the US is pretty rough because cost of living has outpaced wages.
Both are outcomes of globalization. Tech workers have it so good because the US exports its tech to the whole world, the market for US FAANG is billions of consumers strong and other countries offer limited competition. But other American workers have been replaced/outsourced/offshored in great numbers, entire industries have largely evacuated the US because it's so open to foreign products.
Eh. With the notable exception of Germany, most large developed economies are de-industrialising to some extent (and the UK, for instance, has done so to a much greater extent than the US), but even amongst rapidly de-industrialising countries the US's economic mobility story is not great, these days. As with most things, there is no single easy answer for why this is the case.
overall the US today has notably poor economic mobility as compared to other OECD countries:
This is a nuanced point. To get a complete picture, you have to remember that economic inequality is greater in the US as well.
That means that you can see more gains with less mobility. On the other hand, there are some OECD countries with low inequality but high mobility. This also makes sense as the income difference is smaller between top and bottom earners.
If you take a country like Denmark, the top quintile (20%) take home about 1.8X of the average income. For the US, the top 20% takes home 3.8X the average.
The nordics have a Top to bottom quintile ratio (S80/S20) of <4. The US is >8 [1]
You should also consider that economic mobility is significantly higher for US immigrants that native born Americans.
I'm sorry, but this is one of those articles that shows just enough statistics to support their conclusion.
It misses the fact that the US has a much higher concentration of wealth at the top than most European economies.
So the social mobility might be lacking in terms of quintiles, in absolute terms (income in USD or EUR/standard of living), real social mobility might still be higher.
I chose this one because it highlights the _belief_ gap, but no matter what way you slice it it's difficult to produce figures showing higher mobility in the US than in many other OECD countries.
I think if you were looking at, say, the top 1%, this would be a more interesting argument, but the top quintile household income in the US starts at about 100k, so you’re not talking fabulously wealthy or anything.
I think the point stands. You can look at mobility in terms of percentile, or you can look at it in terms of absolute dollars. Both have different uses.
I personally would prefer to see my dollar income increase, but don't care about my income percentile.
The USA indeed has huge social equity problems. But this isn't really something that ends up harming software engineers. The country is great if you are rich and software engineers very frequently make enough money to be rich.
> The USA is the land of opportunity where you can really work your way up to a great lifestyle
It is, but that's if you don't mind the less fortunate folks starving. Not starving, but ending up as homeless drug addicts. And the large number of working poor.
The US is a land of extremes among developed countries.
> It is, but that's if you don't mind the less fortunate folks starving. Not starving, but ending up as homeless drug addicts.
There are homeless drug addicts and alcoholics everywhere.
> And the large number of working poor.
Yep, the working poor are better off in Europe, esp. in places like Denmark or Norway. They can actually have somewhat non-shitty life, even when working minimum wage jobs.
Perhaps it's just too cold for the homeless villages to form? The homeless would have a hard time surviving winter in tents in Europe. Even the very southern ends don't get nearly as warm winters as Los Angeles, which has a climate of Morocco.
I doubt it. Didn't used to see people living in tents before the pandemic in my Canadian city. Now there's loads and there's plenty of European cities far warmer.
Interesting. Perhaps it's police negligence? All the "defund the police" rethoric must have taken its toll and these guys are probably afraid to do anything remotely controversial now. I can't imagine police in Germany, France, UK or Poland would tolerate homeless encampments on main streets of major cities. In Poland, they usually take them to the shelter, where they get kick out for antisocial behaviour, so that the police can again grab them off the streets and take them to the shelter - and so it goes. They're not left unbothered though.
The police have removed them on multiple occasions. There has been both push back and support for this. It doesn't really have to do with police presence but the high cost of rent and low wages.
Most homeless people (at least around here) don’t literally live outside but in various temporary arrangements. Yes, in colder climates it is a more pressing social problem to get people inside from literal freezing conditions. But that’s definitely not the reason there are fewer homeless in Europe than in the US. Long-term homeless people tend to be either those who refuse help (and cannot be helped against their will) or those that the system has failed due to misguided right-wing policies like "sobriety first" which is totally backwards.
At the bottom of things, the homelessness is just a symptom, while the root cause is mental illness or people living self-destructive lives (addicts, people who just don't care what happens to them and have no care for the future etc.). It's no longer 1930s, where "normal" people could genuinely be homeless because of economic difficulties. Sure, it occasionally happens now as well, but such people generally disappear from the streets within months (as they get a job and get back on their feet), not spend their entire lives on them.
In general, people care about homelessness, because it affects and offends them - so their solutions are to give some place to live to the homeless. It doesn't solve the problem though, as the homeless will still either be mentally ill or will engage in self-destructive behaviour - so they're quite likely to demolish the place, set it on fire, turn it into a crack den etc. But, the society does not ultimately care about that that much, but mostly wants to not have their moods ruined by seeing homeless on the streets - so warehousing them somewhere is seen as a good solution.
Unfortunately, at least around here, in one of the most "welfare" of welfare states, a major cause of homelessness is substance abuse (traditionally alcoholism) caused by insufficient social safety nets (almost always males who have undergone a major crisis in life such as a divorce or a loss of job, exacerbated by various toxic norms associated with masculinity such as the expectation of self-sufficiency).
People who "live self-destructive lives" have not always done so; at some point something has gone wrong in their lives. It is not an identity or (usually) an inborn personality trait, and "othering" people with addictions like that is simply an example of the correspondence bias and a part of the meme complex that maintains the status quo of homelessness.
In a representative democracy, we elect representatives in the hopes that they have a decisionmaking and problem-solving ability more holistic and less short-sighted than just "out of sight, out of mind". At least, that's what the ideal is. The process can be abused by populists good at appealing to people's intuitions and emotions while having few real solutions, but that doesn't mean we should just give up!
> toxic norms associated with masculinity such as the expectation of self-sufficiency
What? It's toxic to expect someone to be self-sufficient? I guess all our civilization was built on toxic grounds - it's amazing what all that toxicity accomplished though.
> People who "live self-destructive lives" have not always done so; at some point something has gone wrong in their lives. It is not an identity or (usually) an inborn personality trait, and "othering" people with addictions like that is simply an example of the correspondence bias and a part of the meme complex that maintains the status quo of homelessness.
I don't think I'm "othering" them (I'm not sure though, because I'm not sure what it means). I'm just describing their current situation. I'm not claiming there were born as petty thieves or alcoholics or will remain petty thieves or alcoholics for the rest of their lives.
The homeless alcoholics I personally know usually took a decade or more of gradually increasing selfish and antisocial behaviour to eventually end up on streets (as they've eventually used up the good will of everyone in their lives and no one was there to support them any more). What made them go down that path while people, who have as shitty lives as them or worse, stood on their feet - who knows? We don't understand human psychology to the degree to be able to answer that question.
BTW, I've recently re-read some Bukowski, and I think he's giving a good description of an inner life of a person with some self-destructive personality traits. In his case they were fairly mild, so he still managed to hold a job and be off the street most of the time. The real homeless I know have even more anger, self-pity, narcissism and/or straight up psychopathy. At least one of them is a straight-up predator, who's homeless because he finally ran out of people to prey upon.
Perhaps self-sufficiency was a word with too positive connotations; what I meant, of course, was destructive learned mental models such as being too proud to ask for help or go to a doctor before it’s too late, and not having formed a safety net of close friends because men are not supposed to need them. Additionally, what is often devastating to men in particular is that in nasty divorces, the custody of children is almost always given to the mother.
> It's no longer 1930s, where "normal" people could genuinely be homeless because of economic difficulties.
We're getting back there. With the added problem of cheap fentanyl easily available. The amount of young people I've seen on the streets has skyrocketed, not to mention refugees on the corners begging. This is Chicago. And lots of young people, especially those not lucky enough to be in the laptop class- are just a few paychecks from homelessness. It will be even worse this winter when cost of living goes up and you can't afford to live while working.
> And that's before even considering the tax differences
But also before you consider healthcare, transportation, higher cost of living in some desirable areas, lack of time off, lack of any employee protections, dismal social safety nets if you fall on bad times. And for people who need that, no maternity leave, expensive childcare, etc.
Any person in tech can work their way up to a great lifestyle in Western Europe, and many places in Eastern Europe too for that matter. The salary you get as a new grad/starter is often around the median for the country, so you get quite a comfortable lifestyle (made extra comfortable by the fact that in most cases you don't have to drive everywhere unless you really want to).
However, there are property and inheritance taxes in all EU countries i know of.
> But also before you consider healthcare, transportation, higher cost of living in some desirable areas, lack of time off, lack of any employee protections, dismal social safety nets if you fall on bad times. And for people who need that, no maternity leave, expensive childcare, etc.
Let me try to add some more concreteness to this. I work for a major US tech company in Western Europe in a "second class" tech hub (i.e., not London or Zurich, but with most of the major tech companies present). Total compensation is low six figures, which is over 1.5x what I was offered by large European companies.
On my payslip, my net is about 55% of the gross. I then pay 25% of the net as my half of the rent, and 20% for childcare (in theory you could get it much cheaper, but in practice there are no available spots). On average I've paid 10% of net out-of-pocket for extra healthcare costs not covered by the mandatory insurance (which costs 15% of gross).
Compared to my previous job, my gross is now 2x but net 1.4x. My lifestyle is not meaningfully different than when I was making half the gross, I just accumulate some modest savings instead of breaking even. I still have no chance to own a home anywhere near the city I live in. I don't know how I could "work my way to a great lifestyle" here. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.
Overall, my peers in the US have a significantly better lifestyle than me. What I do get that my peers in the US don't (AFAIK) is 30 days of paid holidays. Also my wife can get a year of maternity leave with reasonable benefits.
The worker benefits are pretty theoretical, since in practice I have to work well above the tracked hours to be competitive on the career track. I can also still be laid off on reasonably short notice if the company decides to cut costs. I would get 60% of my salary for a year from the state as unemployment, but I would typically not get any severance from the company.
The challenge here is at what point in your life is one making the gamble to live in the US vs Western Europe?
If I had to pick one or the other to be born in, but knew that I would be born randomly within each of these societies, I'd certainly choose Western Europe because the risk of being born very poor in the US is just too high to take.
But! Of course, that isn't a real decision that one can make. The actual decision, for people on HN in particular, is the following: you know that you're a highly qualified person with in-demand skills, you also know whether you have a crippling disability and many other things about your life. Those things being known, the decision is much less of a gamble because you know which of the social categories you will slot into in the US.
It is also true that Western Europeans always retain the option of return to their countries of origin. If they become destitute and unable to work, they are able to access the downside protections they would have had at home at the cost of moving back. In practice their may be some transitional challenge because eligibility depends on both residency and citizenship but fundamentally a citizen of France or The Netherlands who becomes unable to work in the US and has exhausted their US resources and entitlements can hit the panic button and will not be allowed to starve once returned home.
>Any person in tech can work their way up to a great lifestyle in Western Europe
No, not really. In Eastern Europe yeah sure, because that's where the low-tax US remote hiring frenzy went (Poland, Romania, etc), but in most of Western Europe no, take-home tech wages here are depressing, no higher than most other professions unless you work for a rich company in a major tech hub like London, Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc.
I wouldn't say they're depressing unless you compare them to high-end US salaries and those become your expectation.
The salaries may be no higher than for lots of other professionals, but those other professionals also make comfortable buck. Not enough to get into the actually rich category, but upper middle class is also pretty comfortable financially.
The money isn't enough (for most) to escape the treadmill or to otherwise escape reality, so it can be depressing if your life is otherwise depressing or if you compare it to something really lucrative. But IMO the pay level by itself isn't bad.
At least that's my impression of the current market living and working in a locally major city but definitely outside of those major hubs.
I guess housing prices are a bit of an issue. But I think 500k+ for an apartment pretty much suggests either a large city/metro, or a large-ish apartment that you probably wouldn't be paying for alone.
And if the interest doesn't drag you down too much (as it might at the moment of course), that n*100k apartment is going to become your property of multiple hundreds of thousands over the years, so it's not like it's only an expense. I get the interest costs, up front payments and general debt amounts can be overwhelming, though.
> Can I ask which major city?
Helsinki, Finland, so backwater on the European scale, large locally. I'd guess we probably have slightly lower salary levels than some major Western European countries (I'm in the same ballpark as you but senior positions can pay more), and a more or less similar cost of living (except that housing isn't quite as expensive as in major metros).
The subset of employers who actually want to hire their H1Bs for the long term will initiate a Green Card application process for them, and once the worker has that, they can stay indefinitely (and, de facto, apply for citizenship eventually if that's what they want).
The disadvantage of a Green Card from the employer's perspective is that the worker is then free to change employment, so not all companies pursue this this.
The real answer is to make H1Bs transferable between jobs. H1Bs are limited, so what does it matter which company they work for? That would reduce exploitation done under H1Bs and keeping salaries low.
Not everyone moves for economic reason alone. Moving from the third world to the first also brings a certain degree of social and political stability, less crime, and generally fewer risks in life. Consider someone in, say, rural Russia or Ukraine working that way - and then 2022 happens.
(I know that many Americans think that the sky is falling on them, too - and they may even be correct, but they have a very different baseline.)
I reject the notion one is denigrating America or what it has to offer by calling out the insane tight-rope one has to walk through the H1B process. Just because I don't play the lottery doesn't mean I don't think it has a great prize.
Sure, but consider that there are many places in the world other than the US that have much more sane immigration policies, and are also very nice (some might say nicer than the US) to live in.
It's not like the only options are "the US, or a poverty-stricken third-world country".
One non-obvious factor is family immigration. US is often more generous wrt relatives that you may sponsor once you're a citizen yourself, and especially on how many visas are issued in the family category (indeed, there are no caps or quotas on immediate relatives!), while other places tend to strongly favor the skilled worker and investor categories. For example, in Canada, family-based applications account for ~25% of all permanent residence permits issued yearly, while ~50% is economic; in US, family accounts for over 60% of all green cards.
That's a good point, though it's hard to say what the "ideal" ratio is. If people immigrating to Canada using their employment qualifications often have trouble bringing their immediate family with them, then right, that's not a good thing at all. But I don't know enough of the specifics to know if that's the case.
A couple of US governors will be happy to provide free transportation to send migrants to those wonderful countries of yours. Sounds like a win/win proposition?
That's a bit of an uncharitable interpretation of what I said. I have nothing against immigration. The US was built by immigrants, and continues to be built by immigrants. My ancestors have been in the US for only a little over 100 years, and I've benefited greatly from the lack of immigration controls we had a century ago.
My point was simply that the poster I originally replied to seemed to be taking the angle that the US is pretty much the only game in town if you want "social and political stability, less crime, and generally fewer risks in life" (their words). That's demonstrably untrue! Many countries other than the US provide those things, and many of them treat potential immigrants (especially those with in-demand professional qualifications) a lot better than the US government does. I can certainly understand someone wanting to move to the US, specifically, for whatever reason, but if the goal is just to move from somewhere socially/politically unstable, with lots of crime and risks to life, to somewhere that is... not that... then there are many great choices that are not the US.
The reason I bring that up is because I have quite a few close friends who are in various stages of US immigration, some on H-1Bs for over a decade now, and I wouldn't wish that level of life uncertainty on anyone. They've chosen to stick it out over time until they get their green cards, but if someone is considering getting an H-1B today, especially if they are from a country with a huge green card line, I would probably try to dissuade them, as there are many other options with a great quality of life, where they wouldn't have to feel like their held hostage to the US immigration system -- and, by extension, the employer sponsoring their visa.
A good friend of mine is an Indian citizen and is also gay. Being able to live and work in a country that grants them something resembling legal equality is pretty damn valuable.
The US can be the "greatest country of all countries" and have greatest potassium reserves or whatever but that doesn't mean the H1B process isn't a shit-sandwich or makes sense given the immigration landscape. A lot of rational actors are choosing less cumbersome immigration processes in Canada or Australia for instance.
Although I guess hooray for defending what was described above as 'indentured servitude?' Not an H1B myself but if that's really what it's like giving these people citizenship if they're lucky doesn't justify putting such unconscionable restraints upon them.
>You have no clue about why US
Lol I've lived in the US for at least half as long as practically anybody on this board, and also lived and visited multiple 3rd world countries including ones in the middle of a civil war.
US is such great country, every time I enter it I get thrown in a cell and detained for 16+ hours, cavity searched, fraudulent warrants obtained, and border patrol officers taking me to hospitals against my will putting me thousands of dollars into debt over absolutely insane accusations of having drugs up my ass.
Greatest country in world!
I love the American people but the government has gone completely off its rocker post 9/11.
----------------
>The detainee has to pay for hospital scans ?
Yes. [0] I was taken to the same hospital as this woman. Although I refuse the scans (scans require consent) so instead they hold me under involuntary observation until they can search materials from the body. Holy Cross hospital in Nogales AZ. Also St. Mary's Hospital in Tucson. Also Sound Physicians Network under which the doctors work in the hospital. The Arizona nursing board has agreed not to pursue action against medical providers acting in concert with border patrol, even if they have no court order, warrant, or patient consent.
You know all of that is fault of the citizenry of the country... The elected those who decided those things and allow them to continue on. There is nothing great with people there.
Healthcare providers through rural areas (much of the US) do this often. They contract out specialized health professionals because the local economies and regions struggle to attract and retain healthcare professionals and cant produce enough locally either. As a result, many regional healthcare salaries balloon when you normalize cost of living. Healthcare professionals start getting a bigger cut of federal subsidies (Medicare, Medicaid) and risk pools (insurance).
Several bodyshops popped up that specialize in international recruitment, sponsor healthcare workers internationally who expect significantly lower comp, and work out the logistics of getting them licensed, sponsored, and moved where demand exists (note that I say logistics, the person often pays some or all of these fees). They offer a low rate to these international workers (which is high to them) by your typical position advertising gymnastics then rent them out to healthcare providers in set contracts. The worker signs a contract that typically includes a fee for breach of contract. For nurses and physical therapists, I've seen it at $20-$40k which doesn't seem significant until you consider the person likely has nothing of that magnitude in savings because they came from a poorer area.
You then may think, well healthcare workers can make $100+k so with strict savings one could limit their indentured servitude and breach before, then realize they're actually paying closer to $40-60k to their workers, benefiting of economies of scale to manage the logistics (like managing visas) and pocketing the rest of the margins. The workers are often locked into these areas for several years before they're financially stable enough to leave while bodyshops dangle greencard sponsorship over their heads which is a long process in and of itself but is even longer when it's a carrot held for 3-5 years of servitude first.
Once your workers have their greencards they have more leverage in negotiation and typically move on to make truly competitive salaries. Meanwhile, the bodyshops basically pocket high margins, manage a little bit of risk, and just leech off those in desperate situations (hospitals, their patients, and international workers looking to better themselves).
Some may say this is just the cost of admission to immigrate to the US. I think it's more a failure of neoliberal principles. I imagine IT isn't much different. The work visa program is largely used as just a leveraged global labor recruitment position for businesses to exploit. It wasn't designed this way and isn't always used this way, but it is done far far too often.
It just means a company that hires in bulk for low wages and churns people regularly. To them, you're just a body in a seat, no matter the kind of work you do.
Revature is the worst. The only people that sign up for them either don't know any better, lack motivation, or are truly desperate. Its one of the most gross companies I have ever come across.
Another similar company reached out to me last year. I can't remember their name, but it was the exact same business model. They wanted to move me to the other side of the country and train me in a language that I already used all the time.
Revature is well known and generally advised against in r/cscareerquestions as they come up regularly. There are unfortunately a few companies with this model now.
So did your college give you a better deal or did they just charge you for training and pay you nothing? What of people who went to a college less useful than yours, if any, and couldn't get any other job? After two years, maybe they can step up based on having a resume.
The college didn't try to trick them into a job that they'd have to stay in for 2 years to avoid a fee. The person knew - upfront - that it wasn't a job. They knew upfront that they'd need to pay the college for training. They were free to take employment for income while doing schooling.
Seriously, there is a difference between a college and upfront knowledge about fees and someone trying to trick you into an indentured servant "job".
OF COURSE there is a difference between an honest business transaction and being tricked. Plenty of colleges charge unreasonable sums for useless degrees while promising access to upper echelons of society. Wouldn't you rather take practically useful training while getting paid at least some money, provided you know what it will cost and what are your options to get the fee waived? I am not saying these particular cases were so rosy.
I support "useless" degrees because I don't see education as useless, even if others don't see practical use in the degree. I'm very OK with tax money being used for things like art and music and philosophy. An educated populace helps everyone, even if you don't see the direct results of it. An educated populace is slightly more difficult to dupe, too.
I find it offensive that we charge what we do for education, period, and the offer to get some of it paid of by a workplace shouldn't even be something that folks need to do.
I do not ever support someone being beholden to a job because of a financial hit that extends beyond the effects of a missing paycheck, be it "good", discounted insurance or a being charged for training at a workplace for whatever reason.
This is debt peonage. The trouble is, the US law against peonage was not drafted tightly enough.
"The holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage is abolished and forever prohibited in any Territory or State of the United States; and all acts, laws, resolutions, orders, regulations, or usages of any Territory or State, which have heretofore established, maintained, or enforced, or by virtue of which any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish, maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, are declared null and void."[1]
As you can see, the reference is to "the system known as peonage". So, new, innovative means of accomplishing the same result may or may not be covered. So far, cases involving training repayment agreements do not seem to have taken the peonage route.[2]
The PetSmart case in California makes several arguments. One is that PetSmart is illegally operating an unlicensed educational institution. The "California Education Code provides that “a note, instrument, or other evidence of indebtedness relating to payment for an educational program is not enforceable by an institution unless, at the time of execution . . . the institution held an approval to operate.” (Cal. Educ. Code § 94917") There are other specific California labor laws probably being violated here.
This case is just starting in San Mateo County Superior Court. Scheduling hearing in November.
But that won't help in other states with weaker labor laws.
It's no easy feat actually getting on the phone with a lawyer, like making their phone screen, both messages the call would be recorded, the redirect, not easy.
I don't think it should be legal to charge employees for training in any form. Either provide it for free, or don't provide it at all. What possible purpose does putting yourself in the middle as both the lender and beneficiary have other than to fascilitate abuse?
My employer has a tuition reimbursement program. IIRC it has clawback if you leave within like 6 months.
This is obviously different in that it's entirely optional, and relatively sane rates (whatever the real university decides). But because of that clawback I could maybe see it getting caught up in a carelessly written ban.
I was at a fortune 300 company that had that. They would routinely WFR the recent MBA grads who were then free and clear of any obligations. Surprise surprise they are no longer a Fortune 500 company
It would be one thing if the clawback is at least fairly itemized and clearly stated up front. What's appalling about these stories is that the dollar amount is completely arbitrary and determined after the employee signs on.
I passed on a job opportunity early on in my career because there was a clawback provision in my employment agreement that was very transparent and yet very brutal. I couldn't imagine taking that job and being entrapped by that clawback provision after I'd started.
I think this sort of clawback can indeed be acceptable as long as it's completely clear what you're getting involved in, is properly itemized in a way that represents the real costs, and it only hold for a limited period that's proportional to the actual costs.
My first employer told me how they once paid a very expensive (6 figure) training for someone who immediately left after finishing that training, so they introduced a clawback to prevent that in the future. I think that's reasonable, but there needs to be a balance. You shouldn't be able to lock people into shitty jobs for years just because they got some shitty training when they joined.
I once failed a job interview because they said that they thought I'd take the extensive training and then leave for a better paid job. TBF they were completely correct, but it was a bit of a surprise.
And you get an actual certificate or qualification from the institution, which adheres to you personally and has value beyond your current employment. The PetSmart dog grooming academy appears to have been the required training to do a job at PetSmart but have no value whatsoever outside the context of that job.
Pilot training is quite expensive. Getting the 1500 hours of flight experience required to hold an Airline Transport Pilot certificate is even more expensive.
It seems like situations like this are ones where "we'll agree to pay $25K for your training and you agree to work for us for two years" is reasonable, particularly since the training costs are generally deductible for the employer, but are often not for the employee.
- Pilot training comes with a certification for the person that applies to any pilot job.
- Pilot training is usually provided by a certified training organization and follows an industry-established curriculum.
- The price of the training is discoverable in advance and there is a competitive market for providing the training.
Whereas the PetSmart program comes with no certification, doesn't follow a published industry curriculum, and the price is fixed directly by PetSmart with no ability to obtain the training elsewhere.
The pilot training situation may not be ideal, but it's clear to me the PetSmart program exists primarily to lock employees into jobs at PetSmart.
I think it could make sense to lower barriers to entry for some highly specialized vocations, like ones that require third party certifications. Especially in times when the job market is not as hot as it is now. In this market, the only explanation for TRAPs seems to be exploitation.
Stuff like truck driving school is expensive. If only people who could pay up front could get a license to drive a truck there would be a lot less truck drivers and stuff wouldn’t get moved around so you can have next day delivery on non-essential goods.
Sure, they could change the requirements to make it easier for someone to drive around in a 80,000lbs death machine but is that in anyone’s best interest?
What the companies do is put you through enough training to get your license, more training on top of that and stay with them for a year or you have to pay whatever they say it costs[0] for the training. All in all it’s a working system.
[0] as spelled out in a contract but really has nothing to do with what it costs to train a person. The company I currently work for has this racket where owner/operators pay the trainees’ wages (along with every other expense to operate the truck) during on the job training for the most part and are pretty aggressive trying to get people to train the new drivers. Annoyingly aggressive.
The system would work if we simply provided low-cost schooling (taxpayer funded). It would keep folks from winding up with a predatory company who may or may not train you well, merely enough. You don't need to make the requirements easier - just lower the barrier to entry in a different way.
Not to mention that having enough well-rested folks with a CDL means that everyone is a little more secure, and we are more likely to have enough people to drive busses and transport goods in emergencies. (Yes, I know it'll take more than lowering the schooling costs to fix all this, but it is a start)
Ok, what about a compromise? I'll help pay for the roads that go to your house if you help pay for the roads that go to my house.
I know your house is further away from city center than mine, so we'll end up spending more of our pooled resources to get the road to your house finished. But, if we refuse to work together, NEITHER of us get roads. So honestly, this still feels like a good deal for me, even though you're objectively benefitting "more" (in some ways, by some cherry-picked measures) than I am.
I'd rather you get more road than me if the alternative is that NEITHER of us get roads.
If this works out, maybe we can figure out some way to work together on other things that are too big for either of us to solve as individuals. That's kind of an exciting idea, like maybe we could actually make the world suck a little bit less.
Ok. So? You benefit from other people's education every day. Are you willing to give those things up?
No computers. No internet. No modern medicine.
No roads, no electricity.
No locks on your house.
No modern clothing materials, no modern tents with polyester or nylon.
No cars.
Heck, at this point you couldn't even buy a horse without benefiting from other people's education.
Or maybe you mean impractical degrees? So... no professional art or music.
Or maybe you mean degrees that don't make money? Ok. No preschool teachers, no regular teachers either. They get paid poorly, after all.
Maybe you just don't want others to be educated, but I don't know how you intend to get along if fewer folks know how to read and good luck teaching your own children everything they need to know. A lot of places use tax money to educate children, after all.
That's probably far enough: not wanting to pay for others education is just someone wanting to benefit from said education without contributing to it. Education of others helps you, and there really isn't much you can do about that.
How about the company provides a good enough working environment so people want to stay working for them? I mean they want truck drivers if they can't get enough qualified drivers they either have to pay higher salaries or pay for the training. If the employee leaves, tough luck.
Society keeps rejecting this simple solution.
I understand it isn't as simple as just "make the job easier," but in every one of these cases the problem could be fixed by pushing wages up, or improving working conditions or both.
If it were that simple they’d have done it years ago.
Companies will only pay so much to ship their products (which caps wages) and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done to improve working conditions without retraining every single person in the country on how to drive around big trucks because that’s 99% of the job. And weather, nothing to be done about weather. Everything else is just trivial bullshit, really.
Doesn’t matter either way since Silicon Valley is promising to obsolete the job “any day now” so who cares about making improvements.
Yes, but you can still loan people money to train to become truck drivers.
You can even enter into agreements with them, that if they pass you must employ them.
There's no need for an agreement tying someone to an employer. Such things are very dangerous, since it has the potential to give the employer very great power.
This is essentially what they do, loan you the money to pay for training and if you stick around you don’t have to pay it back.
Nothing says you have to stay with that company, once you get your CDL you’re free to do whatever you want with it. You can also get a CDL other ways or just tell anyone who will listen that driving a truck is the worst job ever.
Most of the training is just driving around with a more experienced driver for a couple months to learn the job and it isn’t like they chain people to the steering wheel, they get a decent salary (not based on mileage) during training and once you get your own truck you make whatever you make based on mileage. Or you can drive team with someone and make more than a solo driver.
The only part you have to pay for is getting a CDL but that on its own is relatively worthless.
So you don't feel that doctors should pay for their education? What about jobs which require paid certifications? But in general I agree. Keep paid education separate from employment. No good can come from conflating the two.
That is such a misrepresentation of what I said I think you might have just misread it or something. They should pay for their education with money. If they can't afford medical school, they can take out a loan. That loan shouldn't be a condition of employment payable to your employer. Like I said, either you should get the training yourself or the employer should provide it.
What's interesting is that medical residencies in the US have involved similar controversies as highlighted by the piece that's the focus of this thread. Residents are not allowed to leave their residencies, under threat of being banned from the matching process that's required to enter one. The criticism is this leads to all sorts of abuse from programs, because unhappy residents can't transfer. This is despite the fact residencies are often federally funded, and the residents have already taken out large educational loans for medical school.
No, they shouldn't. Higher education should be accessible to all.
If the "higher taxes" argument is what's implied, the return on an educated populace would show in GDP, likely reflect in lower crime rates, improvements in quality of life, among other things.
Then what do people mean when they say "HIGH school"? Does that mean they're above others? Joking but what're you getting at? I'm not about playing semantics out of pettiness.
My point is that if "post high school" education (aka university) is accessible to/an option for everyone, then everyone benefits, from the individual, to their community, all the way up to GDP/tax dollars.
It's not a bullshit blue vs white collar "culture war" talking point, it's a matter of everyone having the same shot at furthering their education via university regardless of whatever their income is/their living situation/what family they were born into.
Education and job training are not the same thing. Education in a field is general knowledge needed to perform in the field regardless of employer. Job training is learning the specific knowledge needed to perform a specific position for a specific employer, including their SOPs, policies, etc.
And when it isn't, everyone suffers. When it is low-cost to free, you get folks that want to be doctors and qualify. When it costs more than a nominal fee, you take those folks and sort them by whoever can afford it, which may not be the best candidates. It also makes it more of an "elite" profession since poor folks are priced out of it.
By free, I do mean low-cost to free for the student and funded by taxpayers. Educated people benefit society at large, and especially so when folks are doing public service of different sorts (like doctors).
Ryanair is pretty famous for pulling this stuff on mainly young women from poorer parts of Europe, like Romania for working as cabin crew.
Essentially they lure them with comparatively high salaries but they have to pay some training fee. The salary doesn't end up that high, because they have to relocate to more expensive areas, they also only get paid for the actual time on the plane, disregarding the prep and checking times and they have to buy the horribly overpriced plane food. So they end up not being able to pay back their training fee. This really should be cracked down on hard.
The absurdity of the name aside, this is unconscionable on the part of the employers, and it's likely that most employees in this kind of circumstance can tell their employers to stuff it without any adverse consequence.
One thing worth keeping in mind for prospective entrants to the workplace: if any employer says you owe them money (for acts other than intentional or gross negligence, which for the most part employees are nevertheless legally not liable, but may feel ethically responsible), then it is no longer an employee-employer relationship. Put another way: if you're not an equity partner in a business or a strictly independent contractor who signed an agreement saying otherwise, you should never have to pay an employer for anything.
Also if you aren't a citizen and your immigration status is dependent on your employment (or you are
an illegal immigrant), you can be deported.
But also, given the rest of the post I suspect it was a typo and prottog meant to say "it's likely that most employees in this kind of circumstance can't tell their employers to stuff it without any adverse consequence"
> you can be put on a blacklist and become unhirable
Are these legal?
Does anyone have experiences with blacklists from the hiring side? I have never seen such a thing. How are they shared? How does one know if someone is on the list for a good reason? How does it scale?
Not legal for sure. But there are things that are done informally that are similar. Like at one company where I was a hiring manager we used head hunters heavily. Most head hunter companies are bad (in my experience) but the better ones try to match good candidates with good companies. They have extensive networks with other head hunters and often see the same candidates repeatedly. When they see red flags they cull those candidates or maybe present them to the "bad" companies (the ones they aren't concerned about damaging their relationship with).
Another method is that hiring managers at different companies may have good relationships with each other. Not competitor companies, but adjacent. They may call around and ask about a candidate. You can never say anything negative about a candidate; that's just asking to be sued. I think many (most?) companies have a strict policy that you can only say if a candidate is eligible for rehire or not, nothing else. So you talk in vague generalities, never about the candidate, only about the general hiring process. Something like "Company policy prevents me from giving any recommendation whatsoever, so my advice is that you should always be very careful in your hiring process" versus "Company policy prevents me from giving any recommendation whatsoever, but an effective hiring process can yield great employees." You might argue that a judge would see right through that and say it is obvious which candidate you are recommending and which you are panning. But it's so nonspecific that your lawyer can strongly push back, should it come to that.
Would that change anything ? Of course those lists wouldn't be broadcasted publicly.
> Does anyone have experiences with blacklists from the hiring side?
There's that "over 40" list I have seen once when I was on the hiring side. There's also that "good gender" list which benefited me when I was on the hired side once.
Yeah, in my experience with bad workers managers just want to be rid of them. The last thing they want is to be saddled with making sure he is punished after leaving the job. Maybe I just have not experienced the true psychopathic boss yet.
Well you read about them in the Great Depression, the workers who lead the rest to strike would in fact end up on blacklists. Get blackballed, never get a job anywhere no matter how small a wage they were willing to work for (before minimum wage, well irrelevant), they were known by face (photographs, happened to me) but in the employment situation in America today, it's not to that point of there being blacklists, and besides strikes and unions are not the answer they were then.
How hard would it be for a random person to fight back successfully though? If it requires hiring a lawyer that might be enough barrier itself. All they have to do is ensure they don’t pay the worker enough to hire a lawyer.
Not enough of them to put off many employers from doing the things that they could be sued for, it would seem given how many companies behave.
If the cost of being successfully sued is significant but survivable, and the chance of someone bothering and succeeding is small, then they often feel that they can go right ahead and do what they want relatively safely. Note that “and succeeding” includes not being intimidated into backing down, or conned/cajoled/intimidated into taking a small hush payment instead – once someone sets out to sue the employer still have options to try significantly minimise the potential damage.
> Not enough of them to put off many employers from doing the things that they could be sued for, it would seem given how many companies behave.
I've talked to corporate lawyers about this. Larger companies have teams of lawyers dealing with an incessant stream of lawsuits by employees. A large percentage of them are completely without merit, and both parties know this. But it's cheaper to settle than go to court, which is why employees sue for the cash grab. It really doesn't matter how well a larger corp treats its employees, they'll get sued again and again anyway.
A larger corp is just a bigger, fatter, juicier target for lawsuits.
If some scumbag company is trying to squeeze employees for training costs, you really think they'll pay tens of thousands for a lawyer to sue over this?
" Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.” "
Additionally, it does not cost tend of thousands of dollars to have a law firm draft demand letters for debt. Even if the debt is contestable, theoretically, it remains a huge problem and not something that can be ignored.
I've been in a similar situation before. Employers who put this sort of stuff in their contracts are like landlords who say "you have to repaint the place on your own dime after 10 years of living there". They think they are being cleaver.
These employers don't want to go to court, they don't want to collect the debt, they just like scary language.
My employer threatened me with similar language, so I shrugged my shoulders and said "ok?".
Never heard of it again. They won't spend $20 to buy pizza for their employees, you think they'll spend money on lawyers?
You’re rolling the dice there on corporate attitude. If they’ve got lawyers on their payroll already it will just be standard cost of business to sue yet another employee. Or just straight up vindictiveness.
You can't get blood from a stone, and there's no law that says you can't deliberately set up your finances to be maximally stone-like. IMO you should be doing this anyways so that the medical billing system can't decide to steal your life savings.
What example? How can they get any money out of someone that doesn't have anything? Eventually, the debt will go to collections and someone might get 10% of the money collected.
An entity doesn't need 'legal enforcement' for a supposed debt when they can threaten to or send someone to collections and ruin their credit/drain their time to fighting it, though.
See what? An irrelevant comment that doesn't address the fact that one doesn't get to magically wish away a corporation's claim (unjust or not) of debt against an individual? Because that's not how debt works ("just ignore it") and directly ignores the article:
"Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”"
So, I don't get where you or the other person in this thread are getting the idea that this is a non issue because you can just ignore the contract terms. I too wish this was a non issue for those involved and ignorable, because it's despicable. It's obviously unconscionable and a problem that these companies are attempting to extort money from disadvantaged populations (not the supposedly previously narrower, highly paid technical applications of the agreements) even if said agreements existed in a counterfactual universe in which a corporation pursuing you for debt was a non issue. Debt is not expensive to draft continuous demand letters against or to transfer to a collections agency. Plus, you know, the above paragraph in the article.
If you're at all the target audience for this website, you and your entire social circle are soft targets for debt collectors. You have a high credit score and care about it, you have bank accounts and non-retirement investment accounts, you may have home equity in a state that doesn't protect the hell out of it like Texas, etc. If you get sued for $20k and a judgement gets entered, odds are your creditor ends up getting the full $20k. If this isn't you then I apologize for stereotyping, but this does describe a majority of the commentariat here.
A lot of the subjects of these articles are from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and will have a very different experience. Their bank account either doesn't exist or has like a week's pay in it. If they have investments, they're in an untouchable 401(k). They may live in a state that forbids wage garnishment, and even if you get that their wages may already be garnished and immune to further action. You might be able to grab their tax refunds, but those might already be spoken for by other creditors. And to top it all off, bankruptcy court can at any time issue a stay of proceedings and follow it up with a discharge of debts.
In short, there's a reason why most consumer debts are sold on for pennies on the dollar. That's what you actually get from it - maybe you talk some poor sod into paying $20/mo on a $20k debt that you bought for $200. Especially against an intransigent target that rightfully believes the debt to be morally invalid, you can find it extremely difficult to actually collect on a debt.
Anyhow, my point is that attempting to enforce these contract provisions invites PR/legal/political blowback that far outweighs maybe getting a thousand dollars out of the small cohort that actually calls the bluff and makes them make them pay.
> Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage.
> In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”
The general picture seems to be: this situation is mostly compatible with how the rule makers want it to be, is in no way accidental, and will be upheld upon challenge in most cases.
Some people will have the decency to not go with the grain, but they are few, and represent the exception more than the rule.
I think these things make sense where intended. My last employer will pay for a graduate education - you’d get a decent MBA or other degree and pay nothing. They’d even give you time off for certain things.
In exchange, they wanted a 30 month commitment post graduation. I think that’s fair and very much employee driven.
The problem is when you apply this to unskilled labor. “Training” someone at Petsmart in how to wash and trim a Labrador retriever is a basic task and nobody should be on the hook for that.
Pursuing a graduate degree is optional (outside of select professionals - lawyers, doctors, prof engineers). You can attend graduate school outside the scope of employment (on your own dime). The market for graduate programs is competitive. And the degree retains its value beyond the immediate job placement.
PetSmart should be required to prove that its training program provides actual, long-term value to the employee if they want to claw back the money spent on training. In my mind, the program would need to result in a legitimate industry certification for that to be true...
As is the case for some skilled trades, where you complete an apprenticeship or other training and earn membership in the trade union. Or trucking, railway engineering, or commercial pilots.
I was a carpenter in my early 20s and the owner of a company said he was going to sue me for the cost of some very specific training since I quit after only working for him for 9 months. It was pretty valuable training and I definitely used it to get my next job.
I said I'd sue him for wages he owed from when he paid everyone non-union rates on a union job site. Also not requiring use of personal vehicles and not reimbursing for mileage.
That was the end of it. He was sued for that reason a couple of years later by the local union itself. He just folded the entity and made a new one. I'm sure he is still treating people the same way.
You know, I am pretty vocal about worker rights and I have been saddled with debt of over 7K$ for in the job training but I see absolutley no problem with this. Unless there are debtors prisons it just means your credit score is messed for like 7 years (I can function just fine without using credit at all), which means you can't buy a house or a new car when it comes to the essentials but you can live in an apartment and get a used car.
I mean, I was told the training cost and that I will have to pay for that cost either by working for them a certain amount of time or if I fail to do that, out of pocket. I knew what I was getting into, as an adult I am responsible for my actions so as much as I want that debt gone and improvey credit score in case I ever need it, it is all my fault, I signed on the dotted line and I was clearly made aware of the consequences.
What am I missing here? Honestly asking. I don't care how profitable a company is or if they invented a random number out of thin air, everything costs what people are willing to pay for it. I don't care what people's situation is, adults get treated like one. If that same person was let's say a genral contractor remodelling your bathroom for $5k and abandoned it mid way, he pays for the cost to complete or restor it right? Why would that be different if instead he was employed by the house owner?
I just can't reason around this. At the end of the day, there was an agreement and I gave my word on something. I can and probably will avoid the consequences of my going back on my word but isn't it plain dishonesty to claim the deal was unfair?
It is even harder to reason around this if I can pay my basic expenses and on top of that earn the equivalent of the training cost (if I bailed out) and if the pay back period has a reasonable (less than two years) limit.
> I have been saddled with debt of over 7K$ for in the job training but I see absolutley no problem with this.
Had a friend in a similar situation at start of his career.
He saw no problem until he found out he was making 50% what peers from other companies did
He couldn't leave without paying out the 'trainings' or waiting for them to expire after 2 years (which were unnecessary, very poor quality and extremely overpriced - 5000-10000$ for a 3-5 day java course done by people within the company at no cost to company...)
He wouldn't get any raises if he didn't accept further expensive trainings.
Doing any new trainings renewed existing debt too... because why not.
Eventually, after 3-4 years, he manned up, told them to pound salt, got a lawyer and ended up convincing a huge chunk of his team to also leave.
Did he know about lack of promotions dependent on more trainings when he first signed the agreement? If not, I can see how that is deceptive and fraudulent on the company's behalf.
The issue with debt for training is the same issue as the one with all exploitative working conditions: The choice of whether or not to work somewhere is often illusory. Real people inhabit a specific area with a specific set of employers. If the only job openings that:
1. You're qualified for
2. Will hire you specifically
3. Will pay you enough to survive
4. Are within a reasonable distance from you
5. Don't have some other, even worse catch than training debt
are ones that saddle you with a life-changing amount of debt if you quit before x years, people are coerced by the fact that they need money for basic to enter this kind of working arrangement, even if they technically had a choice.
Then the people in that area can pass laws to regulate this I guess? That's the government's duty after all. But short of violating an explicit law, why are employers obligated to care about how many good jobs are in an area? It is also an economic function, if it is for high demand jobs with low supply of employees you won't see this.
What you're missing is that unlike e.g. a university degree, the job training is usually non-transferrable. You're not paying to earn a qualification you can re-use later or to find a better paying job once you earned some experience. You're paying to become a Brand™ certified professional corporate drone on the designated Brand, Inc. career track. If you want to apply at OtherCo later, you'll have to become an OtherCo™ certified professional corporate drone and pay for that training too.
This is functionally no different from the difference between a salesperson and an MLM drone: instead of selling the company's stock on behalf of the company, you buy products at a discount and then resell them but are also required to cycle out your stock periodically and eat the cost of any unsold goods. The perpetual excess stock creates lock-in and the sunk cost locks makes you want to keep trying to make back your losses.
There's nothing wrong with paid job training programmes in a country where a significant amount of higher education is provided by for-profit organizations. There is however a perverse incentive when these job training programmes are provided by same the companies making participation in these programmes a requirement for applying to them. Even if the qualifications are "real" (i.e. transferrable), it represents a clear conflict of interest.
Consider IT certs, cooking skills, professional licenses,etc... for those it makes sense.
Look at GIAC certs for example, with training it costs close to 10k. Most people can't afford that without employers paying for it and it is transferable.
Well so it's sad but colleges with big endowments invest "growth industries" (obviously prefer growth) some of which grow as college becomes more expensive. Very synergistic. Stanford does this but in like classy opportunities, then the rest, hey there's big endowments in lots of colleges nowadays tons of them are unicorns now, they invested wisely! And say those tuitions room and boards are huge! Glad I got the dropout discount, beyond financial aid (whatever I did or didn't get) it cut down the price of the education dramatically. Just stop paying stop going, simple as that.
And let me address dropping out of Stanford in other ways: first that's what I always wanted was to drop out of Stanford; I was never ever going to graduate in a million years barely kept up; then I don't get asked for a GPA ("F as in fuck you", no clue what the GPA is); then further, I front-loaded my classes so put the cool classes first and the required classes never; then at any rate it was more of an impasse than a true act of dropping out, I was told I could enroll after paying a third successive fee, each fee immediately replaced by a new fee, well couldn't enroll fine, done, had to do it before 4 full years too. And most of all--if I did graduate Stanford would rescind my degree, which they have the legal right to do for any reason they see fit. Then not only would I not have a degree after all that sacrifice and submission the whole fifth year saying fifth year student being excluded from everything, like everything asks what year you are that's the reason, it's weird. No word for them, fifth year, not freshman sophomore junior senior, don't even get mentioned. But they can never take away my dropping out. Stanford dropout.
And get this, this is difficult to plagiarize so I'm going to share: I was in a club and was asked where I had gone to school, just blurted "Oh, I dropped out of Stanford!" It has to be real though, you actually have to drop out of Stanford for this line to work. That's what I mean difficult to plagiarize. But if you did great! Name a single other Stanford dropout. Can you? Sam Altman? Honorary degree from Waterloo. Evan Spiegel? Went back and graduated for his son's sake. Tiger Woods I would say yes, dropped out of undergrad plus in golf it's critical to drop out, Michelle Wie of my year did the same thing for the same reasons. Athlete. There's actresses--also makes perfect sense to drop out then, there's actresses who graduate and it kills their career, in one case she was too old especially to get her career started, Hollywood formally preferred that she drop out.
Elizabeth Holmes did it for real, like yes she's dealing with criminal charges but she's paying the price after all, and she played her cards right in so many ways, put a company together and could possibly have come up with the tech after the fact. Allowing for like crazy lies fine a bullshit artist but unrivaled bullshit artist, like Adam Neumann also. Master bullshitters. But masters all the same. So right morally legally strategically bad move, Holmes was first doing the company-building, like the sales the dealing with investors (some say that's the hardest part in business) the valuation, the image, the persona, the bravado, the connections, pulling it off without a female precedent solo founder, having no precedent is rough. Like yeah she lied and needed to stretch, and then keep stretching, but it was conceivable the company she formed could actually make the tech properly. And dude I in fact vouch that Stanford CS majors practically or literally all cheat. It wasn't pure bullshit, there were experiments carried out that actually worked, there was some merit, and in fact good that the Stanford profs said it couldn't be done dude ask me all about that, there's impossible problems it's legitimate to attempt them. It's a very good sign that it be considered impossible for reasons that can't be conveyed trivially. But it was still a full-time job (probably around the clock), and on top of all that--she actually remained a dropout to this day. An actual undergraduate techie dropout. It's not a failure by any means to be a dropout. Except from--in many cases--the first person point-of-view, feeling incomplete without a degree.
But dropouts are critical to the American economy, the majority of FAANG founders and co-founders were dropouts. The majority.
> the majority of FAANG founders and co-founders were dropouts
The majority of successful tech founders and co-founders were also born into generational wealth. They don't go to Stanford or Harvard or MIT or whatever for the degree, they go there to build business connections and enter into those networks.
They are dropouts because the degree was never the point. Sure, depending on the direction they want to take the education can come in handy, but it's nothing compared to the support network their wealth and status buys them. They aren't successful because they dropped out, they dropped out because finishing didn't matter to their success.
To jump to the root of the issue, what you're missing is that you're valuing the rights of the contract over the outcomes for these employees.
Myself, I would like the lives of these affected employees to be better rather than worse, and I'll trade away the enforcement of these agreements in order to get that.
Also, the problem with slavery and indentured servitude wasn't that they were illegal.
And, you could invoke voluntaryism but, like, look how pervasive forced arbitration and IP assignment clauses are - you can't realistically "volunteer" your way out of them nowadays.
Why are the outcomes relevant if you agreed to them knowing them beforehand and without coercion?
About being illegal, I am not talking about that either, legal or not if you agree to something having all the facts clearly portrayed to you, you are responsible for what happens if you agree to it.
I think the real root cause is you and others seem to think lack of alternate opportunities equates coercion, which I disagree with. I also disagree that improvement of people's lives can be more important than basic fairness,equality, accountability and justice. You are only formalizing fraud and corruption that way.
You make a good point about forced arbitration, but with that it isn't specific but general to cover all disputes which you don't know when you sign that agreement. It also circumvents legal procedure where even if you think it is in your best interest and agree to it, it isn't in the interest of justice. Oh and how is that not enforced but plea agreements are?? (Is there anything more slavery like than prison???)
> Why are the outcomes relevant if you agreed to them knowing them beforehand and without coercion?
See my statement of my values vs yours. You're just on the other side. There's nothing left to understand.
I'll skip the coercion point because that requires mind-reading, plus it requires me to believe that literally anyone reads a contract ever, and people will choose poverty if they can't find an employment agreement they like and understand. If you want to define coercion to the point that it's useless, that's fine, but let's pick a new word and move on if it makes you happy. "Pressure"?
> Is there anything more slavery like than prison???
You seem to think lack of opportunities equates to coercion.
Also, the bit about being generally in favor of worker's rights makes your post a concern troll. I wasn't born yesterday, I know what right to work, at-will employment, and reason.com are.
> I'll skip the coercion point because that requires mind-reading, plus it requires me to believe that literally anyone reads a contract ever, and people will choose poverty if they can't find an employment agreement they like and understand...
You don't need mind reading, in the US what a "reasonable" person would consider the situation is all that matters. As for reading contracts, if the conditions were not made clear to you verbally and if it was hidden in a contract somewhere I see no problem in arguing that contract is void. Ok, pressure is a nice word but you can choose poverty you just don't want to. If poverty means no food and shelter then I would agree that it is indeed coercion not just "pressure". When these contracts are so widespread that it affects people's ability to find food and shelter then it is coordinated coercion, a conspiracy if you will.
> You seem to think lack of opportunities equates to coercion.
No, I was talking about plea bargains and actual prison. Either you risk 30yrs or you falsely admit you are guilty so you can get 5years. Extortion in any other context.
Thanks for the explanation and I agree with all that. In my case, it was required training I could take with me elsewhere or pay upfront without having to commit to a specific employer.
My employer has paid for my IT certs stipulating a hefty debt if I leave in less than a year.
Assuming you are getting paid a living wage and the obligation is for a year or less I see no problem at all.
Sounds like we agree. I have no problem with optional certification/degree programs paid for by employers, with a reasonable payback period. The PetSmart program doesn't sound like it provides any value to the employee and serves only to force the employee to stay at PetSmart under less-than-ideal circumstances.
It seems similar to me to non-compete agreements, which are unenforceable in California, but enforceable in many other states.
>At the end of the day, there was an agreement and I gave my word on something.
Sure, but the anti-TRAPers would say the ideal situation isn't that you can break the agreement, the ideal situation is that the company doesn't require the agreement in the first place.
I agree. And I have been in a position where I had to accept exploitation. But I also think that workers often have some agency, and to the extent they do they should use it to protect those who don’t. Examples would be saving enough money to quit in protest of poor treatment, or becoming particularly valuable to the company for the same reason.
Similar to non-competes we all lose if companies broadly adopt provisions like this into their hiring schemes. And just because something is in a contract doesn't make it morally right. You could waive your rights to your kidneys when you sign up for a job and your argument would equally apply but I would say most people would agree that a company shouldn't be able to harvest kidneys as a condition of employment.
I tend to agree. If you go into it with your eyes open then it’s just a transaction. Its a real investment on behalf of the company, and you are even getting something valuable.
I think there are more important things in the workers rights sphere to get angry about.
In Ontario, these types of employee contracts are not enforceable[1]. And at least in the case of Canada, I doubt they would actually try to enforce these contracts lest the same conclusion be formally reached in other provinces, destroying these companies' business models.
Just a heads up for anyone in Canada that thinks they are trapped under one of these companies. Just leave if you want.
I was coding remotely where the sun always shines
rebased my co'mmits and I pushed to CI
I closed 16 bugs in the comp'ny repo
And the scrum master said, "Well, bless my soul"
Well, actually they did - the commonly used name does not include the P, I’ve never seen it that way elsewhere. The author appears to have added that solely to make for a catchy acronym.
Well of course you're going to find it if you search for it, since we already know it's in this article. Take out the fourth word and not only do you get 3x as many results, they're less clickbaity and google seems to have a much better understanding in its related and suggested searches.
The point is that it's not a term invented by the author as the comment I replied to implied (and further, went on to accuse the author of doing it for sensationalism.)
I didn't think I actually had to explain that, but I guess I should have expected as much when I got involved in the token "attack the piece's author over terminology and motives instead o of the actual points of the article" thread.
Attacking something because it's "clickbait" or for its terminology instead of actually addressing its core positions is intellectual sloth.
Aren't student loans from the Navients and such predators of young adults who get fleeced by universities binging on their wallets the macro economic distributed version of debt peonage? Why can't college be cheaper by like 2-3 orders of magnitude and reign in overspending on buildings and vast bureaucracies of excessive expenditure. I know of a university who has billions in endowment who leveled a $30 million USD donated office complex less than 8 years old to spend another $75 million on parking and another office building. The same university that spent $150 million on software that was never delivered.
A close relative of mine who was unemployed was offered a job but they had to sign one of these agreements as a condition of employment and asked for my advice.
I advised against taking the job because the salary wasn't great and it's risky to commit an entire year to a job where you have zero idea about the working conditions yet! I was also thinking the employer might have added this clause because they are having retention issues, which is an indication of poor working conditions. The training also kinda sounded like BS and the cost seemed very arbitrary.
They decided against that job. They said they'd take the job without the training payback requirement but it was mandatory.
The family member was in a position to not take the job because their spouse was making enough money to support their entire family, but not everyone has that luxury. It seems like only the people who are most desperate will take these jobs.
It's bananas these "training payback agreements" are becoming common!!!
They didn’t mention state laws. I find employment laws vary a lot state to state.
Are there places this might be prohibited by state law?
I ask because I once took a job that involved 6 months of paid, benefits and all, training before you even started work.
One guy did up and quit after 6 months, but generally this is how this company did business. It worked… I always wondered why they didn’t have some sort of restriction or rules or something to avoid being taken advantage of. I assumed they didn’t because of some state law.
The main idea is that after investing six months you’re not likely to quit, and if you are the type to quit the company would rather learn that than have you tough it out.
I see this as a way to give companies an incentive to train workers. Without these kind of provisions, the risk that the employee would leave would eliminate much of the incentive to invest in training.
As for the criticisms of indentured servitude - which if we're going to call this that, is a very watered down version - I think they're reflexive and not thoughtful.
Today we have something much more coercive than indentured servitude and that's involuntary servitude in the form of income tax law. At least with indentured servitude you choose the servitude and it expires after the ordained time.
The danger of indentured servitude is that it is offered by private companies with a profit motive who would be more likely to seek to abuse the very dangerous relationship they enter into with the the counter party, to exploit that party. A government imposing an income tax has no such perverse incentives. So the rejection of indentured servitude in favor of government imposed taxes has some reasonableness behind it, but I think it's ultimately a crude and hasty substitution.
Funny, you'd think a low supply of qualified workers would be sufficient motivation for big companies to train workers or fund external training programs (giving them ample opportunities to advertise themselves as the obvious choice as a future employer in that career). This is how most civilised countries handle it.
> I see this as a way to give companies an incentive to train workers.
They don't need this abusive system to do that. They can reimburse college credits and require a certain amount of time. The difference is that they aren't charging $20k for training that is worth $500.
> Today we have something much more coercive than indentured servitude and that's involuntary servitude in the form of income tax law. At least with indentured servitude you choose the servitude and it expires after the ordained time.
That's not indentured servitude. As soon as you quit making money, you owe no tax. How are you handcuffed into servitude when income is taxed and not wealth?
>That's not indentured servitude. As soon as you quit making money, you owe no tax.
In practice, the vast majority of people need to work. Whatever the income tax rate is, is the proportion of the labor that is being involuntarily done for the government.
Typically speaking if you're worried about employees leaving the way it's 'supposed' to work in a capitalist society is that said employer pays more, offers more benefits, or improves the work culture.
The fact that you pivot immediately into an irrelevant argument against income tax has no bearing on the companies using debt as a way to force employee retention.
Yes, but competing employers can do exactly what you do, and offer applicants more pay. By foregoing on training, they can free ride off of the training the subject employer paid for.
>>The fact that you pivot immediately into an irrelevant argument against income tax has no bearing on the companies using debt as a way to force employee retention.
Taxation is in fact how we solve the problem of trading liberty for security in the absence of indentured servitude. To elaborate: people need economic security, and many are willing to submit to tax obligations, or in the past, to indentured servitude, to get it.
So it's entirely relevant to the question of whether this kind of training for debt arrangement is consistent with accepted social mores, no matter how much you may want to over-simplify and wrap up the discussion.
> By foregoing on training, they can free ride off of the training the subject employer paid for.
Boo-hoo. Companies benefit from things they don't pay for all the time. Not to mention pushing their externalities (like pollution) on the rest of society. Trying to capture all the benefits of money you invest while dumping your costs/externalities on others is the definition of greed. If you had a friend like this, they wouldn't be your friend for very long. But we seem to tolerate it from our "corporate citizens".
>>Boo-hoo. Companies benefit from things they don't pay for all the time.
Your derision is not going to change the financial logic that incentivizes companies to free ride on other companies' expenditures on training, and disincentivizes companies from making such expenditures.
You have to adjust policy to how the world works, because the world will not adjust to make your policy work.
I worked for a company that did this in a white collar capacity - FDM. I basically regard them as the scum of the Earth.
However, unlike the article, they usually rent out their trainees as consultants to big companies with broken hiring practices. Myself and a lot of other people I know got an impressive name to put on our resumes and spun that into decent careers. So maybe I shouldn't be so harsh.
Should be prison time for business owners who do this.
Of course there won't be, because our society is controlled by self-serving, ignorant Malthusians, but in my mind it's very similar to slavery, and there are few crimes that are worse.
They should totally allow this. But... Since this debt is a form of specialized investment, turning the relationship into a business deal, it should be available only to employees that are accredited investors. Gotcha!
This isn't new. I worked at GM when they bought EDS. Chatting with some of the folks who were moved over to EDS (they took over all IT functions as I understood it), they mentioned having to attend "training" every year and if you left within 2 years of that particular training, you were required to repay that training (which was several thousand dollars per year - in the mid 80s). I was outraged, but the guys I talked with seemed to be OK with it.
It was described as mandatory, although you had a choice of which courses you wanted to take. The impression I was left with was that they believed that the company would never fire them (this would have been true for GM, but not for EDS, for whom they now worked).
The culture at GM was such that a lot of people were "lifers". The book "The Organization Man" [0] seemed to describe how many people lived/acted. EDS was founded by Ross Perot, who was a very charismatic person [1]. He was also a "love him or hate him - there's no in between" person. I admired his ability to stir up GM and I remember many of his antics that annoyed the pants off of the board at GM [2]. According to Perot, the culture at IBM was also full of "lifers" which led to his founding EDS.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot
> Perot joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after 13 months in the program.
After 2 years as a scout, I was still a tenderfoot. :)
2 - He annoyed the board so much that they ended up paying him over $100M to go away (his shares were promised to be between $X & $Y, so they payed the difference between market and $X). I thought that he had a chance to make changes at GM and turn the company around. The execs were terribly insulated from reality, but they chose to live in their bubble rather than do the (painful) things that GM needed to do to survive.
First, they are called Training Repayment Agreements. Not sure where 'Provision' was added.
Then, there are certain attributes that need to be adhered to before these agreements will hold up.
1. Must be Voluntary. Typically, the training is within the context of a job the employee already has. They are are undergoing training to expand their skills and thereby earn more.
2. Must be portable. Means that once the training is completed, the employee could take the skill and go work somewhere else.
3. The details must be clearly spelled out.
4. Must be legal in the jurisdiction the employee will be working. Training Repayment Agreements are not legal in all locales. [0]
"voluntary" doesn't mean much when the employer to worker power differential is so heavily weighted towards the employer. This is or was a thing with H1B visa holders.
That’s a really bad example if you’re trying to show one that’s not portable - there are literally thousands of jobs at hundreds of companies for people trained in AWS.
portable means you can take the stuff you learned and use it in another job. AWS is portable from job to job, as would be kybernetes or some other specialized but widely used software.
non-portable is a training on an inhouse application that no other company uses, like googles customised databases or what else they use there.
This has been a long standing practice for pilots. Operators would have the pilot sign a training contract requiring either repayment or some number of years of service. The reasoning is most operators will spend $20-30k+ getting a pilot fully certified for their aircraft and operation.
I successfully avoided any of those situations but the common knowledge was that you could walk away and tell the prior employer to stuff it. It’s not worth their time and effort to pursue it beyond some threatening phone calls. I’m not a lawyer obviously.
There's a difference if someone is trained in real difficult skills over a long period of time, vs. given standard training to do a minimum wage-tier job for 10 hours by their minimum wage co-workers, and then told it's worth $7,500+ of debt.
Companies will do /anything/ nowadays to keep people from being an employee. Can we please simply take the whole idea of benefits away from employers? The life and health of people shouldn’t be in the hands of some capitalists trying to squeeze every last legal drop of blood from workers while hiding behind the protection of an inaccessible legal system.
I have many many friends who are trapped in a cycle of needing to take on contract work for want of a full time position, and they have to juggle their health insurance every time their contract ends. This make seeing day the same doctor or same therapist for even 3 months nearly impossible. Wonder how many people die yearly due to lack of ability to access healthcare while on a legally “not an employee” position - it’s gotta be in the thousands. The worst part is society says this is acceptable loss. It’s ludicrous.
I work for a Fortune 50 company, more than one software programmer consultant who worked for us had one of these agreements. Of course, they never got any real training. All the ones I knew didn't have their contracts with us re-upped as they were eager but didn't know anything and had been presented as senior programmers when they weren't even associate/junior level programmers.
That's a pretty weak comparison. From the article:
> BreAnn Scally, the lead plaintiff in the class action against PetSmart, told lawmakers about how she was left owing $5,500 to the company for a dog “Grooming Academy” that was initially advertised as free. Registered nurse Cassie Pennings testified about being stuck with $7,500, “more than six months’ rent,” after leaving one hospital job because she was appalled by staffing ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t want to be complicit in neglecting patients.
College doesn't initially advertise itself to be free and then tack on thousands in fees when you try to leave. Is it overpriced and antiquated in the modern workforce? Sure. Do they create arbitrary fees out of thin air to scare you into continuing to work in an unhealthy environment? Not that I know of.
Ok, so is the issue is false advertisement rather than paid training per se? Sure, let the courts sort that out! But all things being equal, I would rather get paid while being trained and have an option to have its cost waived if I stay on for some time. Of course if training is a scam, again false advertisement. Sadly, plenty of college degrees are also a scam.
While I'm completely against these TRAP provisions, playing devil's advocate here, most colleges aren't exactly training useful skills these days, so I kind of get why employers would want to charge for actual training.
Long ago, I remember a fellow engineer who bitterly complained his employer had placed him in bondage. I asked him, why don't you quit and get a better job? He replied, you don't understand. I have bills to pay. I have no savings. My finances would collapse if I missed even one paycheck.
I pointed out that he was wearing expensive clothes, he and his wife drove new cars, they owned a McMansion with expensive furniture in it. I tactlessly concluded he had placed himself in bondage, the company had nothing to do with it, and was likely completely unaware of his debt situation.
He became very angry with me. Oh well, tactless Walter strikes again.
People have agency but one anecdote of a co-worker with bad judgment does not suddenly make everyone stuck in a miserable situation through no fault of their own, suddenly better.
It's much easier for people to take responsibility for their situation if they're at least middle class.
Personal responsibility helps, but it's not a society wide solution.
That's why our cars are made of metal and have a million systems to prevent and alleviate crashes. Our planes have checklists 10 feet long before they take off.
People have agency and that agency should be helped. Look at Sweden, where there are a ton of what the US would call "handouts", and Sweden, as a result, has one of the highest per capita rates of entrepreneurship. Turns out, yeah, some people just sit on their butts all day long if you give them money, but statistically, most people want to be productive. And at the end of the day, you're better off.
Everything has a cost, especially time. They may have agency to improve their situation, but the time scale to do so (due to lack of savings, location, or whatever) may be ridiculous. People also have incomplete information; they could burn their resources to change your situation over the course of a decade and ultimately end up in a far worse situation. It only takes a few cycles of this for someone's time to actually run out. Agency is necessary but insufficient.
"Free" is not a boolean. There are myriad constraints in life that prevent a person from being fully responsible for his or her situation (while of course I concede that "everything is outside my control" is also an untenable position to have). Obviously improving your life (materially/financially speaking) requires many things: at the very least abilities and luck, and often: education, pre-existing wealth, being clear from physical disabilities and mental disorders, a stable family situation with no significant dependents, etc.
Pinning everything on the individual, and furthermore on reasons for which the individual bears sole responsibility, is a major fallacy of our society.
Start from the premise that you do have agency, and you'll find there's a heluva lot you can do.
Remember,"lucky" people make their own luck, and are good at putting themselves in a position where luck can find them. "Luck" also often appears disguised as work.
> Remember,"lucky" people make their own luck, and are good at putting themselves in a position where luck can find them. "Luck" also often appears disguised as work.
This is obviously not true. I don't even know how to even begin to argue this point, it is patently obvious that luck plays a major factor in everything you do, whether you recognize it or not.
Unfortunately, nobody does likes to recognize that the status they have is because of (wholly or partially) luck :) That's why rulers invented the divine right of kings (or the Mandate of Heaven or the deification of Roman Emperors or what have you), and that's why modern capitalists insist on the "self-made man" mythos.
PS: Before anybody calls me a lazy bum waiting for handouts or some similar variation, I am pretty successful. I also recognize that while I did work hard and made sacrifices, a large part of it is down to luck: I was in the right places at the right times, met the right people, made decisions on impulse that turned out to work out great. Nevermind the overarching stuff: I was born in a middle-class family in a peaceful and stable country, I could go to school and have reasonably good teachers, I was never hungry or cold or sick or unloved, my parents supported me financially until I was 25 and started to make my own money.
By the way, your ancestors chose to come to America. They chose to work their way into the middle class. Your parents chose to raise you as best they could. You chose to take advantage of the schools. US citizens chose to create a peaceful and stable country (America was a pretty violent place before the US.)
> This is obviously not true. I don't even know how to even begin to argue this point, it is patently obvious that luck plays a major factor in everything you do, whether you recognize it or not.
The details of one's life are luck. But the overall arch is not luck - you get to pick it. For example, who you meet and marry is luck. However, enabling luck to find you means 1) making yourself attractive to a potential 2) making efforts to go out and meet others. Sitting in your basement crying about loneliness is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
> modern capitalists insist on the "self-made man" mythos.
Because it's true. People don't start businesses because they're lucky. They make a plan and follow it. That isn't luck.
Where you are in life right now is the sum of a mountain of choices you made.
> I was in the right places at the right times
I.e. you weren't hiding in your basement crying about how unlucky you were.
> nobody does likes to recognize that the status they have is because of (wholly or partially) luck
It's very popular these days to let everyone know about how lucky one is. It's the modern expression of virtuousness. The oddballs are those who dare to say "I did that". You're not a pinball in a pinball machine. You chose your trajectory.
> Where you are in life right now is the sum of a mountain of choices you made.
This is as trivially false as the assertion that the sky is pink (and I've given you concrete examples, which you have not addressed in your reply!). This leads me to believe that this conversation can serve no further productive purpose.
Hard to see how that's the case with most of the business owners I know. They are small companies with < 10 employees making a living.
When you're talking about Fortune companies with 10s of thousands of employees, maybe you're right. But "all businesses in America" is painting with a massive roller instead of a brush.
I've had worse experiences at small businesses than at medium-sized or large ones. Larger businesses get scrutinized. At small businesses, the owner looks you in the eye every day and thinks of your salary as coming directly out of his pocket.
Small companies generally aren’t subject to many labor laws, somewhere below 15 people or something? I personally get leery around the potential for working for a smaller company because you literally have less labor rights doing so.
Small companies tend to have stronger empathetic bonds between people. Larger companies are much more prone to treating people like cogs to be replaced when worn out. More than that, larger companies might be able to shuffle problematic employees around rather than having to outright fire them.
It's a double edged blade to be sure- I've heard horror stories of bad small businesses as well- but my experience at both leaves me with a very strong preference for working for small companies.
I think it reflects more the high degree of desperation employers are feeling with staffing -- especially in cases where they can't (or won't) raise wages.
All those boomers abruptly quitting en mass during the pandemic really screwed things up for "the plan". It's time to rethink things, and this TRAP approach is rubbish.
The relative recency of TRAPs isn't explained by "[a]ll businesses in America ultimately end up with rent-seeking and bondage." You still need a theory to understand why they weren't prevalent before. And within such a theory is where one might begin searching for a remedy, presuming one isn't so cynical that they believe achieving a remedy impossible.
Ross Perot's Electronic Data Systems was doing this to programmers, etc., back in the 1970's, IIRC. The required repayment if you quit too soon was quite high, less than a year's wages, around the price of a new car, for the people I talked to who were working there.
Not what I'm saying at all. I'd be happy to string 'em up, they're repeatedly proving to be scum to the human beings who's care and well-being said employers have been entrusted with.
When the government hinders competition through unjust regulations and by controlling the money supply to benefit incumbents, what we get is indentured servitude and slavery. The key elements of slavery are poor working conditions, a lack of opportunities and a government which treats one class of people favorably other another class of people (in the modern case, those people who are closely connected to the government receive better treatment over those who are not connected to government due to access to lucrative contracts and favorable regulations).
This is also one of the things driving inflation right now. Since there is so little competition in so many industries, firms can set their prices (and on the other side, set their wages) to whatever they want and consumers have little choice on the matter. We're already past Gilded Age levels of inequality, and the assholes don't see any reason to stop turning the screws. They actually still claim that they're going to control inflation by raising interest rates!
As described in the article one employee upsold $6k in extra products, but when she quit she was charged the full amount of the training bill.
This would seem to indicate these financial punishments/ threats don’t reflect anything the employer is actually losing, and the employee actions potentially have no impact on the cost.
Hard to really be informed as to what you are agreeing to when it seems to be an entirely arbitrary outcome.
I have seem people, on this very website, unironically claim that Roman slavery was non-exploitative for that reason (this was a major source of slaves at certain points in Rome's history).
Yeah the past couple days have been pretty shocking. In another thread someone effectively evinced support for child labor (i.e., four year olds shouldn’t be prevented from sweeping chimneys).
CEOs tend to be compensated in ways that make them more than mere wage laborers so our intersection of agreement is likely much higher, yes. We can also acknowledge that stock-based compensation[RSUs], ESPP, and even 401k's(in certain, yet extremely prevalent configurations) also hybridize a fair share of workers who at the same time are income-funded through wage labor.
While this makes some workers not neatly classifiable into one or the other bucket, I don't believe it necessarily invalidates the argument. We can, without even drawing a line, agree that such a line exist somewhere between the two extremes and proceed from there.
