Ask HN: Why firms don't train workers anymore

34 pointsby stevejobsover 14 years ago

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

14 comments

thaumaturgyover 14 years ago

I'm a more "traditional" type of employer -- I have technicians, they go to homes and businesses, they set things up and solve problems, and I don't mind hiring under-experienced techs so long as I think they're willing to learn.I have a pretty good hunch why a lot of businesses aren't interested in doing this anymore: there is an extreme amount of external pressure not to do it. If one of my techs doesn't know how to do a particular thing right away, the client doesn't want to hear that. Instead, they want to hear that I'll give them a discount on the tech's time. If the tech makes a mistake, I have to cover the costs for making up for it. Even if a tech knows how to do something, but they're just out-of-practice at it, and they take 3 hours to do something that I could do in 1, I probably won't bill the client for a full 3 hours.It creates a hardship on the business. The culture around the customer-business relationship in the U.S. has changed from the stereotypical 50's ideals to one where the lower price usually wins, and if you're competing on price, you can't afford to train people.It doesn't help that there are an awful lot of people out there now that seem to think that they're worth a lot of money even if they don't know how to do a job. Go ahead and try telling a potential employee for a technical position, "Well, you're not familiar with any of this, but we're willing to train you if you're willing to start at $10/hour". Unless they're in high school, it probably won't fly.Or, as another anecdote: one of the things that my business offers its clients is professionalism. Techs are supposed to show up polite, friendly, clean, and dressed for business casual. Repeatedly nagging my techs about their appearance hasn't helped; they still show up with bed hair, with cargo pants, with t-shirts not tucked in, despite that I pay them better than any of my competitors. I'm gonna have to get mean about this soon, and that makes me a little sad.

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prodigal_erikover 14 years ago

I think part of it is flatter organizations and cutbacks in middle management. My manager is a VP who reports directly to the CEO; all his reports are individual contributors. He's the sharpest I've worked for, but he only hires a handful of very senior developers (unusually, I think our average age is around forty) because he wears a lot of hats and doesn't have a lot of spare time to mold journeymen to deliver well, in return for savings on salary that isn't going to be that large over time.In a way I feel bad that we aren't doing our part to ramp up the next generation, but it would be hard to take the hit for doing so and still deliver on our current obligations. The alternative would be have his reports manage apprentices, but none of us is eager to make the compromises needed to get a stable system out of an army that's still developing good taste. If this problem is becoming acute, wages for junior devs will drop enough that someone can probably do that and eat our lunch (like outsourcing but without the language and timezone barriers).

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trevelyanover 14 years ago

As far as I'm aware from the economics blogosphere, arguments about "structural unemployment" are popular these days mostly in right wing think tanks. And they only seem popular there because hypothesizing that there are tons of jobs available for the unemployed permits one to reject Keynesian/Monetarist prescriptions for further fiscal/monetary stimulus.I haven't run into any serious economist who believes in the idea, and certainly haven't read any proponents of the idea who are able to justify why this rate is allegedly 5-6 percent higher now than two years ago, or at pretty much any previous point in American history for that matter.I wouldn't mind talking about this if others are interested. To me, the simplest evidence that this argument is dishonest is that its proponents don't seem to be acting consistently with their beliefs. If they really are right that the natural unemployment rate has risen, any further stimulus or monetary expansion will result in significant inflation which will need to be headed off by the Federal Reserve, and which would permit the organization to divest itself of its fairly risky mortgage-backed securities in the process. And this would be a zero-risk way to drive a stake through the heart of pretty much every left-leaning empiricist out there too....

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_deliriumover 14 years ago

I think there's still significant on-the-job training for technical areas other than programming. Aerospace engineering firms want an engineering major to have learned the basics of what engineering is, and have a solid grasp of the relevant mathematics and physics fundamentals, but they don't expect anyone to come in ready to work on a particular airframe or engine or whatever. They expect to train people in their particular software packages, design philosophy, methodologies, huge catalog of existing designs, ongoing studies, etc.One recruiter from a big engineering company who I talked to as an undergrad said that they preferred applicants who didn't have too much specific experience exactly on target, because then they'd just have to un-learn what they'd learned in order to get integrated into his company's way of doing things, since big engineering firms have often accumulated decades of in-house practices, which vary a lot between companies.

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ggchappellover 14 years ago

> I wonder why this move away from on-the-job training has taken place.> One reason given as to why firms have reduced their training is because they fear that after investing in the worker, he might just bolt to a competitor which may reward him with better pay because it didn't have to budget for training.The underlying reason for this situation is a good question. While I don't know the answer, it should be noted that, once we have such a situation, it tends to be self-perpetuating. Workers have no incentive to be loyal to companies that won't be loyal to them, and vice-versa. The first one to try being loyal to the other, will often get burned.So dealing with these problems means that we have to fight not only the underlying reasons for the situation, but also the self-perpetuating characteristics of the situation. Not easy.Another note: HN has generally been rather down on the tenure system in American universities. While I agree that tenure has its problems, it does address some of the troubles you point out. Universities and professors (excepting those with temporary appointments) seem to me to be much less afraid to invest in each other than modern businesses and their employees are. Eliminating tenure may very well give significant benefits to universities; however, it also introduces the kind of problem that you are discussing.EDIT: Still another note: A recent post (I think it was on HN) discussed alleged secret agreements among various tech companies to avoid hiring each other's employees. This is yet another unfortunate outgrowth of this situation.

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CallMeVover 14 years ago

Firms haven't started to realise it yet, but by excluding the trainable people, by insisting on this glass ceiling of "two years' experience," they aren't doing themselves any favours.The lucky handful of geeks with "two years' experience" already under their belt are not going to sit back and let the employer dictate how much, or how little, they are going to get paid. The employer wants to pay them as little as possible - but the candidate can ask whatever the market allows, as much as possible, and if his name's that good, he will be able to gouge the employer for as much as he can get. And if the employer listens long enough, he'll find that all of the others will all seem to be adopting the same gouging tactic, for exactly the same amount - like a cartel structure.Basically, you're going to end up with a small clique of experienced coders circulating between firms, raking in the money and coming up with the same tired code they've been peddling to the same firms from day one. The incentive to come up with original solutions isn't there - they're not after hiring newbies who might have something new that could knock them off their perch.In the meantime, businesses find themselves financially in a hole paying for these bloated whales, they're just as much in the dark as they've always been, their programs are just as rubbish, nothing new seems to work - why should it? Working code costs more money, so you might as well just issue new patches - and folding left and right.There's more money to be made running a cartel of consultants than by opening the jobs market to newcomers, offering them training and keeping the market fresh, competitive, adaptive and, most of all, viable.

makmanalpover 14 years ago

The form of training has changed. At my old shop, there'd sometimes be a guest expert who did a talk on an interesting subject. If you wanted a tech book, you could buy it on the company's Amazon account and read it as much as you liked. Some companies do a sort of buddy system were you're helped along by a mentor while starting out or learning something new.I think this change came with the realisation that you're worth more to the company building something than sitting on your ass training for something you may come across with in the future. Therefore, if it's directly relevant you'll get training but otherwise you'll probably have to do it in your own time.

wccrawfordover 14 years ago

Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers.Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why:1) Has experience, resume and portfolio.2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio.3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio that's pretty basic.4) Has no experience at all. Has education.5) Has no experience of eduction.1 has shown ability to do the work in the past. Will hit the ground running and is generally a good hire.2 and 3 have shown not only that they know how to program, but they are self-driven and don't need someone to tell them to what to work on. Will also hit the ground running and are often a good hire. 3's sometimes disappoint as they get in over their heads pretty quickly.4 and 5 have shown no ability or drive. They haven't even attempted to program anything they were specifically told to. There is no chance they will hit the ground running, and it's unlikely that they will have any innate ability.Why on earth WOULD people hire 4s and 5s?In short, non-technical professions hire people and train them all the time. Nobody is born knowing how to flip burgers and fry fries at the same time. But technical professions rarely get anywhere hiring anyone that doesn't have experience of some kind.

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fierarulover 14 years ago

Well, you assume that training actually produces results. It might well be that after spending considerable time and money on the new employee he's still not a very good match for the original tasks. Then you are stuck with a loss and an employee you can't fire (since, for example, the 'testing' period is something like 2-4 weeks -- this might depend on the country/state, etc.).Or, training does work but the investment is usually so big (not just on the trainer but the lost productivity of the team members involved) that the employee would need to stay employed a number of months/years at least, to recuperate costs. So if the employee resigns before that (since he gets a better offer) you are still in the red.I've personally had people work for me that didn't actually fit the task, but only because they were quite smart and I was certain they could pick up the domain (any domain) quite fast.But right now, for example, I'm looking at CVs of student candidates and I'm reluctant to invest in their training because I have a small company and the risk of them leaving after they are trained is high.

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tsothaover 14 years ago

At one time there was a stigma to changing jobs too often. Well, that's still true, but whereas people look at you funny for changing jobs every few months in 2010, in 1970 people who changed jobs every four or five years were regarded with suspicion.As a result, your employer was much more confident he could see a return on his training efforts. In 2010 we expect people to jump ship when they find a better situation - why would would I invest money in someone's career when they may be working for my competitor next week?

SkyMarshalover 14 years ago

I find it interesting that firms choose to not hire anyone at all over hiring and training someone. That means it's either a luxury hire uncritical to the business's survival, or they equate hiring and training with a negative ROI. Or both.To those here who run a business, is that how it is?

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bugsyover 14 years ago

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

ojbyrneover 14 years ago

There's plenty of training available once you're in a company, because most companies understand that there's a large cost to losing an employee who's proven that they are intelligent, have a good work ethic, and are easy to work with.There's very little appetite for training new workers until they've proven those same things.In essence, on the job training might be in short supply, but on the job retraining is not.

mkramlichover 14 years ago

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

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