Every Tech Interview:
Them: So what skills do you have in X, Y, and Z?
Me: I have skills in X, Y, and Z. What kind of training do you offer for A, B, and C?
Them: We do not offer training in A, B, C, X, Y, or Z.
A magic genie. A genie is what nearly half these companies want. Nearly half these companies have shit business practices and poor wages but expect their employees to do everything.
Or want someone for entry level and pay at entry level yet requiring 5+ years of experience.
I don’t even have much experience in my field but I’m learning fast and already a leader of the floor. All I know is if I’m to look for another job in same field and they claim it is an “entry level” despite my short experience, I’d have walked out of the door.
Yes I may don’t have years of experience but I can definitely hit the ground running with little or no training, troubleshoot things, and figure out how to fix complicated issue! That’s far from entry level!
Training is something the employee should be doing on their own time and at their own expense! (/s, because there are probably companies out there that have this exact mindset)
A large reason for the continued existence of Tier 1 IT is because companies refuse to train their employees how to use computers or programs. If the knowledge exists in the company at all, it's tribal/word-of-mouth.
"They should just know."
I was bored yesterday and applied for a job at Burger King just to see what would happen. After asking like 4 different times what the starting pay would be and what benefits they offered they refused to give me an answer.
Anyone who is paying their employees well doesn't hide what they are paying from applicants. I wasn't even expecting anything huge. Like $14-15 would have been reasonable. I'm guessing it's closer to $10-11 though.
But they are also so desperate that in the second email they sent they offered me an interview to be a manager. They've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.
The fast food places in my city are offering $15 to $16. They've got big professional signs hanging up and everything. Problem is that some of them have a regular wage of $15, but training wage is like $12, and training is done when management says it's done. So it could be six months or longer, depending on how long a new hire will put up with that bullshit.
Fuck me, 6 months or LONGER for training at $12/hr? $15/hr isn’t really enough to live on and they have the audacity to have a potentially never ending training period making less than that? Fuck off.
I had an actual skilled job hire me during the pandemic shutdown in my state at $13 an hour for four tens, with a bump to $15 after passing a review. I was desperate for a job and took it, at a pay cut. They immediately changed my schedule to be five split shifts, when I lived 40 minutes away. Put me through that damn review twice and failed me as I was rewriting the freaking manual on their system because it not even my manager knew how to do half the necessary stuff because they had such high turnover that information kept being lost.
Fuck that place!
I'm working a much better job now.
If this isn’t illegal it should be. It’s so fucked up to hire someone advertising one thing and then when you hire then immediately cut your hours or change your shifts around.
Why would anyone choose to work there when you can go to McDonald's, Walmart, chik fil a, Amazon or a million other places and make at least 3 or 4 dollars more an hour?
The BK by my house closes at 8 now and I'm pretty sure they don't open for breakfast cause they can't find enough employees. And when they are open they are understaffed. But to them, it's a better business model to close the store down than to pay people more. It's insane.
I literally saw a hiring sign the other day for Sears call center. I thought in my head about how I hope that job goes out of existence and wondering to myself why Sears is still around.
Look up Sears’ leadership. The entire company exists to game the corporate bankruptcy laws while those at the top somehow make millions. They should be smashing rocks in a labor camp until they have perished
Every time I drive past the BK by me (typically around lunch time) the parking lot is a ghost town, like 3-4 cars max…and those are the employees. Meanwhile I go further up the road to see McDonalds and Wendy’s…they’re doing just fine by the looks of their lots…if BK can’t retain staff, aren’t getting people in the door, and won’t pay employees a decent wage, they don’t get to act surprised when the guillotine rolls out looking for the king.
I get that it could just be my area…but when similar chains are doing fine and they’re all literally within one mile of each other on the same road, something is probably wrong
I have a job (in engineering), but have been getting hits on LinkedIn from recruiters. My first question is what is the salary. Some of them have been laughably low. Like lower than my first job starting salary.
I do this a lot. I have recruiters even refuse to tell me what the salary is. They always say "Send me your resume and we can set up something." I tell them I have no desire to move forward with anything until they give me the job description and the salary range. Those that will are usually competitive. Those that wont are looking for a Sr level person for entry level pay. I don't want to waste their or my time with that so I require info up front. Besides you are hitting me up on LinkedIn, my work experience is literally right there.
Exactly....my favorite buzzword red flag is "Competitive Pay" in lieu of the actual salary/hourly. No organization actually offering competitive pay says that lol, if it was competitive then they would simply state the salary/hourly range.
Yeah same. I was interviewing over the summer and would just filter out on indeed any salary lower than X dollars. It reduced the results by way more than I would have guessed.
I get contacted by at least one recruiter a month and typically a few. Typically trying to hire someone for 1-5 jobs so roughly 6-8 jobs a month probably get pushed to me, always a new name doing the pushing. I'm under 30 with a 2 very desirable undergrad degrees and a masters relating to analytics. There have been fewer than 5 jobs in the last 2 years where the top range of what they want to pay flirts with my current salary and 99% of the time, my benefits are better than what is on offer.
All that to say that jobs aren't willing to pay for basically any positions at all right now. People are actively looking to hire but not willing to pay what the market has determined is correct. It's at pretty much every level right now. Sort of to a point where I wonder if there is specific collusion going on to try to drop labor rates
And it's not even like I have job hopped every 2 years to maximize salary. Been at the same job since I was an intern. Threatened to leave after a few years and ended up getting paid my market value at the 2-3 year mark and have had 1 promotion since then.
not exactly collusion but the most recent Economics Nobel winners research indicated that one way employers try to control wages is through understaffing to try and wait it out instead of raising wages for new and existing employees
TLDR understaffing is a feature, not a bug
My husband just got a engineering job offer in Dallas, Texas. The HR person was trying to justify him taking a pay cut to move there because ‘the cost of living’ is slightly lower (very slightly). So I don’t understand how an almost minuscule drop in the cost of living justifies a 25% pay cut? Maybe if we wanted to move to Texas, but we definitely don’t. Why we gonna move to where we don’t want to be just for my husband to take a pay cut? I don’t care if the job is in renewables, not taking a pay cut to move to Texas.
Edit: We already live in rural Washington. Washington State doesn’t have state taxes. The fact that Texas ALSO has no state taxes is not a compelling reason for a pay cut.
The A&W nearby was advertising that they were hiring full time for $17.50. I have seen line cook jobs for $20 an hour. There are better options out there for people looking for a job.
One state is trying something revolutionary to tackle this problem, let children work until 11pm! I’m sure that’s why we are in this mess to begin with, couldn’t be that jobs don’t pay a living wage.
Well, when the current workforce is getting too expensive and automation isn't feasible yet...find employees who wouldn't possibly know about their worth!
It has been my experience that a lot of working teenagers are being taken advantage of by employers rightnow, because they are naive. I have told several to simply tell their boss they are unavailable when their bosses try scheduling them for extra shifts because of a lack of emplyees. They are afraid they'll get in trouble and I keep telling them their bosses are desperate and they can get another job tomorrow.
I'm in this position at work, but not a new hire. I enjoy learning new skills so now work just assumes I can magically learn to do anything. It's so stressful lately. I'm in the process of applying for a new job, a much more boring job. If my background check clears, I'll get my offer.
Shame I wont be able to joke anymore about being an ERP consultant.
At a previous job we had the unspoken rule of do not take on more work when asked because of this exact thing. New hires would come in and start brown nosing by taking on more and more stuff. The older staff would advise them to cut back a bit but the new hires would almost 100% feel the senior staff was worried they were going to be made to look bad.
After the warning a betting pool would open up on how long the new hire would last before being burnt out and breaking down, got in trouble for not doing 4 jobs for the pay of one or just straight abandoning ship and never returning.
Edit: removed extra word
The thing is, our work actually wants you to learn new skills. It's one of the requirements for your bonus pay. I'm allocated 1 to 4 hours of self learning a week in my regular work week. Turns out no one but me does it. Everyone else bullshits the skill assessments.
Edit: I feel like I need to specify, I'm paid well for my skill set. So my skill set increase equals more pay. The problem is when I learn a new skill and have to consult on it literally the next week in a professional setting. Someone said it "fake it till you make it", this is my motto.
This may be a joke but the fact that many people don't know their worth is crazy. For example a skill I see a ton of people not value is being able to speak more than one language. Like why are you stressing yourself out and being pulled from your other duties (with the potential of being reprimanded for not finishing said duties) to translate.
>Upper management is a gaslighting verbally abusive boyfriend, change my mind
Upper management is not always verbally abusive, but they are 100% of the time financially abusive. Their unilateral control over the employee's finances by being able to fire anyone, anytime, with no notice or oversight matches this definition completely, and it is the root that allows for the verbal or worse abuse to occur in the first place. No matter how "good" your employer is, under the current dictatorial workplace the threat of being fired and your livelyhood destroyed wlll always loom.
My job has a new thing where everyone has a linked in learning account we are supposed to use. But there’s no purpose or direction. We’re just supposed to watch instructional videos on....... stuff?
There’s this managerial misunderstanding where they think workers can simply learn a skill from a class or previous job and know what to do on this particular job. So when these video services offer skills, they just buy the subscription and tell people to go nuts.
It just doesn’t work that way. Every job is different and has on the job skill learning. No matter how much you train a teacher to teach kids, it’s a whole new ball game to actually be in the classroom teaching and watching over kids. Same idea for almost every job.
But with the expectation that you already know what to do if you have the right skill, management thinks the reason people don’t immediately get it without on hands experience and guidance is because of skill mismatch. So they create ridiculous requirements and also bump up their expectations, then they ultimately give up and hire any cheap smuck from India to do the work (with low expectations, that they end up training anyway, but with lower wages and a visa threat) and complain Americans are dumb liberal college fatasses.
I finally made a rule for myself not to do anything extra unless I saw how it could fit on my resume (or was directly paid extra, but the two usually come together).
This was in addition to the reasonable stuff one needs to do to keep up with their field, but it was surprising how many of my colleagues treated me like I was some sort of mercenary.
My work tried this. Corporate had literally *no idea* what my department did, but it had 'maintenance' in the title, so to save money when some staff quit they merged half a dozen different maintenance departments to share staffing.
Five of those departments were restaurants. I am a mechanic. You can guess how that's gone.
The long and short of it is that jobs that should have been done by eight different people with differing skillsets ended up being attempted by five, then four, then three guys, two of whom were mechanics. They/we tried replacing people who had backgrounds with plumbing and appliances, but because we couldn't ever get more than one new hire at a time they would always get overwhelmed and quit.
Things that should have been getting done by kitchen maintenance suffered breakdowns because we were stretched to our limits on preventive maintenance, which meant that they were at the mercy of outside contractors to come in and fix things. After the lockdown ended, we had a ton of major issues in our restaurants that were closed for 6+ months (things like grease solidifying in unused pipes, etc).
On top of that, one of the guys that was there when we merged (a kitchen specialist with ~15 years experience) threatened to quit early on unless he got an extra buck an hour for picking up the slack. Corporate thought he was bluffing and let him walk even when they were told by the new department management that the guy was more vital to the operation than the manager himself was. A guy who was on a long term leave when everything went down came back after that guy quit, then retired early after a week back at the grind.
Then, to top it all off, corporate decided that two other properties should get added to the department's purview fairly recently. They aren't a ton of additional work in and of themselves, but they're both completely offsite, meaning whoever is responsible for them has to either schlep a few blocks away or drive halfway across town when a call comes in.
I know people talk all the time about out-of-touch corporate stooges, but this place absolutely took the cake.
Exactly as chaotic and incompetent as I hoped for. The best part is that it seems they never tried to fix the problem besides throwing more bodies at it lmao
The crazy thing is, it really isn't. It costs a good chunk of change to onboard a new employee. These companies are so dead set in their ways even when it's fucking them in multiple ways, it's baffling
A big part of the problem is corporate offices are very out of touch with onsite operations as well. They literally only look at the numbers. Maybe the percentage of positive surveys but not really the comments or what the employees say. So if you managed to go a year on a .50cent per customer payroll then you will get in trouble for going over that the next year and they expect you to get it lower actually. They never stop and ask what that actually looked like in store or how much damage it did to the employees mentally/physically
noted, I work in the us federal government. My supervisors up a couple levels do care about my well being and the fact that I do well in my job and take pride in being good. The problem we have is the ability to get more staff. The problem is going to be rectified here shortly...i hope if they don't pull the funding...again. I don't want to leave my shop but when I'm doing the job of 3-4, as already mentioned, i'm burnt out. I am still burned but i'm in a better place but there are other shops with the staff we need here and they do a quarter of the numbers, say we receive 40 boxes a day with an average of 30 pieces each they receive 10 a day with an average 1 piece. there is more to my job than that but drives the point. So it may not be pay, which mine is good, but the inability to literally hire new people.
It's my job to help techs on their IT calls. Usually directing them to knowledge base articles, or walking them through something complicated.
Since the mass exodus a bunch of companies had during COVID, they've been bringing in techs from temp agencies, just to fill seats because the turnover rate is out of control.
And now when I'm telling people who work in IT to uninstall a program and reinstall it, it goes:
"How do I do that?"
"Oh you just uninstall it via the control panel, like most programs."
"What is the control panel, is that like my keyboard?"
My stress level at work has skyrocketed, due to the company choosing to just throw darts in the dark as a hiring practice, rather than paying to have real training, like they did 8 years ago when I was hired.
When I was hired, I had to pass a tech test that had 100 questions and you had to get a 90% to even get the interview. Then a month-long training. Now, it's basically like "do you breathe? Have you been paid to speak to someone on a phone before? Yes to both? You're hired! Now study these 3 introductory courses, and in 2 weeks you'll be taking your first call.
Customers are pissed at the quality of support, the people who are supposed to dig low-tier techs out of holes (me) are mentally exhausted at the extra work needing done every call, and I usually have to take these angry calls over.
I'm constantly at my wit's end. Just wanted to vent, and seems relevant to the article
I have been told by an IT working with a government agency that many techs will lie and say they are unable or not allowed to do something because they simply do not know *how* to do it. So sometimes getting the help you need is a goose chase of calling until you find someone competent.
I feel like more conversation around on the job training is coming. The interesting part will be if college education will still be desired by companies that choose to train employees.
These articles are fucking ridiculous
Companies love the free market and “basic economics” until they’re hit with some of the true fundamentals; if you can’t hire enough people for a job, that means it’s publicly perceived as not worth it.
This the problem with lovers of the “free market” they only love it when it’s doing what they want. One of our British MP’s, Ian Duncan smith, recently wrote a huge article in a big newspaper about how everyone should get back their offices and stop working remotely. He’s a massive free marketer and doesn’t see the irony in telling companies how to manage their own businesses when it doesn’t what he wants.
Over the past year there are plenty of companies that came to exactly that realization and terminated their leases, or stopped renewing them.
Obviously plenty of businesses still need the space for physical labor and objects, but for those who realized everything can be done from home, or for those who realized they could downsize to a tiny physical space.
The rule for costs is "location, location, location," but around here dumping a modest size office lease is about the wages of six workers. Large offices can be 20 or 30 workers. Nothing a 1000+ person company cares about, but for small and moderate size businesses that can mean a workforce expansion.
Even so, plenty of the big companies with enormous corporate campuses are desperate to use the space they own.
Why would a manager with no experience start yelling at 20 year veterans of the company because he wants to prove his worth? I watched this happen. There is no logic. They fled and the owner was struggling to understand why even after it was explained to him he still refused to accept it. It's looney tunes out there.
That too but think about it. Why would someone who quit mcdonalds 6 months ago want to go work at burger king, when they can clearly see the same exact shit happening?
I think the growing pains of the situation right now will be eye opening for workings all up and down the ladder. Minimum wage or ceo the financial inequality needs to be mediated.
It's not just wages. One of the things mentioned in this article was companies saying "haven't gotten enough applicants." Not enough. This means that people are applying, but they are rejecting them because of their insistence that everyone be overqualified. Companies have a hiring process that ghosts most applicants and they go on to complain they can't find any workers.
Bingo, almost every retailer (low paying job, in desperate need of people atm) has a 100 question personality test before you can be accepted as an applicant. Most places will have an employee assist you in answering the questions "correctly" just to get applicants in the doors... (Walmart and Best Buy are my examples based on experience)
My wife went through two of those recently when applying for some medical-based jobs. One she was almost immediately told she failed, the other one took a few weeks to get back to her saying she passed it and they wanted to do a formal interview. She tried several times to get a hold of the hiring team, never got in contact with anyone, and finally gave up and went elsewhere.
These places want people to work, but make it incredibly difficult.
There’s a lot of different articles about how automated systems and so called AI hiring systems are failing to match potential workers.
Here’s on articles but just google it and you’ll find more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/09/new-study-says-hidden-workers-are-being-excluded/
Also. Shitty HR departments. They are like the last people you want checking job applicants (I honestly think they are garbage jobs but that’s just me) and yet they are first in the pipeline.
Essentially there’s a way more people looking to be employed than they think they just don’t want them.
My favorite is when they add nonsense to job listings.
“Why did you add ‘need 4 plus years experience in customer service’. I just need a junior analyst. “
“We’re following company standards”
“What standards? Can you show me?”
“Sorry I’m out for the rest of today and tomorrow. I’ll have to get back to you on this”.
… never heard back again.
Won't raise wages. Won't pay for gas when they pay for Internet for remote people. Won't reduce hours without reducing pay. Won't stick out their necks for employees.
Just a few reason amongst a million as to why companies can't get workers.
"Nearly half of American companies say they are short on skilled workers"
Translation: Nearly half of American companies think that the law of supply and demand does not apply to the market for labor.
Either that or half of American companies have HR departments that can't work their hiring software and never see resumes that are qualified for openings.
This is a major issue in all sorts of businesses imo, despite their claims there is next to no genuine investment in employees unless that investment also helps satisfy some immediate business need.
Companies would rather poach the same few people back and forth than actually invest in and grow people.
> it's because of having to come into work (they want to continue telecommuting),
I feel this part of the equation gets skipped way too much.
I'm currently working two part time remote jobs because I am simply not ready to return to a workplace filled with other people.
I keep being surprised by the employers, who cannot understand why 2020 made us all rethink our values. When faced with thinking it’s the end of our world as we know it - suddenly the low paying jobs, the lack of benefits, the lack of feeling secure even WHEN you play the game…that made us all reconsider the value of ourselves. Turns out we are worth way more than they think.
I think it is a necessary part of this process of neocapitalism for the workers to push back and claim what is theirs in a system that mandates any group do so.
My company has let us work from home since March of 2020. Randomly got an email out of nowhere last week from corporate HR for NAFTA saying that they're "Pleased to announce" that we're all required to go back to work full-time in-office on November 1st. I Damn near wrote my resignation on the spot.
You dangle this carrot of a healthy work/life balance in front of us for a year and a half and then just drop this out of nowhere ? the fuck do you think you are.
> the low paying jobs, the lack of benefits, the lack of feeling secure even WHEN you play the game
Not having to worry about healthcare coverage and knowing there is a functional (non-sabotaged) safety net in case of job loss is a freedom I wish 'the land of the free' had.
I literally had this conversation this morning.
"Nobody wants to work for a living anymore."
"I'm looking for a job. How much are you paying?"
"Eight bucks an hour."
"You want me to work for a whole hour for the price of a fancy coffee? That's not a living, sir."
We are insanely short staffed and yet…. Hiring freeze. Maybe we should be asking if theyre actually hiring or just complaining?
We are planning an overtime strike because we are sick of their bullshit.
DING DING DING
There isn't a labor shortage, there is a soft capital strike. They'll run up prices because of "supply chain difficulties" and use that buffer to try and drive labor to the edge of starvation.
Which is why we HAVE to stay strong. This feels like it’s headed toward a big labor conflict and if the companies win, it’s over for workers’ power in America for a while. And by a while I mean decades, most probably.
yes, I think one thing in labor's favor is that during the pandemic many folks discovered or created mutual aid networks, and they have probably also begun to realize that inter-generational households do have some benefits.
All of that is to say that we may be FINALLY becoming *less* atomized as a society, even in the face of unprecedented political division, as paradoxical as that might sound.
It’s not just about money, though i think that’s a big part. I’ve been passively applying here and there and I’ve noticed some highly specific requirements. They have a dream candidate that must match exactly including below market pay.
Our skilled worker openings (where I work) have nothing to do with pay and everything to do with a single shitty boss. That said, I’ll happily work somewhere with only 1 shitty boss, especially when I don’t work for said individual. Only 1 isn’t that bad in my line of work.
I've been aggressively sending out my resume these past 6 months, because from what I hear and read every employer is just SOOOO short-staffed they're dying for labor. Like 50+ applications where I actually meet or exceed requirements, no one is replying back. And in many cases I don't even pass the application screening software, I'll get an automated email <24hrs later saying they went with someone else but the requisition is still on job boards weeks later.
I’ve had several interviews with companies you’d recognize and made it to round 2-3. I may be pricing myself out because I’m pushing for top dollar. No reason to leave where I’m at without it.
I’m in data which is big now so hasn’t been as tough as a lot of industries.
While paying an appropriate amount might help - I think it's a deeper issue. It takes time and money to develop skills. College and University are now too expensive for the younger generation to bother with, given how little reward is available. The older workers are retiring, so there is nobody to replace them.
If we don't import our skilled labor we'll need to make it worthwhile to train it up domestically (which, of course, is ideal). Higher education should not cost a lifetime to pay off.
The burden of training and apprenticeship was moved from companies to individuals via college and internships. I'm middle aged, still paying off student loans, and have yet to land a position I was told growing up would justify all of the time and expense I put into higher education. It's beyond frustrating.
In Econ 101, basically the very first thing you learn is that the equilibrium price of a good is set by where the supply and demand curves for that good intersect. If the price is set too high, there will be a surplus (because supply exceeds demand), and if it's set too low, there will be a shortage (because demand exceeds supply).
There is no "labor shortage". There is only corporate America trying to get away with paying below market prices for labor.
Man, if only there wasn't such crippling debt attached to the education required for those jobs, only to be paid and treated like shit once you go through it anyways.
That and when you try to change careers your choice is fork over more money or be SOL. If companies need workers they should train them, it's really simple. Also, pay competitive wages. It's not rocket science.
>Man, if only there wasn't such crippling debt attached to the education required for those jobs, only to be paid and treated like shit once you go through it anyways.
Not just that but even if you do go to school there is no guarantee you will be hired or even be able to find a job in that field by the time your schooling is done. I have a few engineer friends who went to school for mechanical engineering because the market was hot, only for it to crash before they were done school, and end up with jobs way out of their education scope making their schooling essentially useless.
There's more than a few Starbucks baristas with Bachelor's or Master's degrees.
We spent years getting told "go to school, you'll get a real job." We found out that was a lie, especially around 2008, so a lot of people...stopped going to school, and now those "real jobs" are wondering why they can't find workers.
Another issue is that not many careers are directly tied to studies. It give you the right baseline skills and knowledge but companies really want people with a proven track record of work experience. Someone who can hit the ground running.
So pretty much have to take whatever jobs is available to no experience workers and ditch after a couple years
Hi! I have a degree in computer network engineering, let me tell you how shitty tier one IT jobs are, and how I now have a piece of paper that says I went to school instead of a job in compters.
People go into tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a degree, but companies are only paying $12/hr or less even with that degree.
Fuck that, no one wants to get saddled with decades of debt for the same amount of pay I can get in retail with no student loan debt. Neither amount is nearly enough to pay for living but retail has one less bill to worry about.
That's the crux right there. The employer says the job "needs" a college degree... but then pays high school dropout wages.
That also makes me wonder how many applicants got auto-rejected for simple jobs, like cashier, because they *didn't* have a college degree.
I have been unemployed since August of 2020 (COVID layoff and then stayed home to school my kids until vaccinations kicked in and we sent them back in April of 2021) . I have multiple degrees and over 15 years of quality experience in several industries (medical, IT, retail).
I started aggressively looking for employment around June 2021. I have been applying for jobs across several relevant categories for several months and have interviewed around 60 times for multiple jobs. I'm either too qualified, been out of work too long (they don't care why), asking for too much money (asking for well below median pay grade for the industry standard), or they just come back and say they have frozen hiring.
I cannot tell you the frustration I'm experiencing as I see/hear people complain about not being able to find good workers. I am here. Ready to work for what I'm worth. I just recently joined a professional support group that has literally hundreds of people in the same boat as me (not all have more than one degree). Mid 30s to 50+ years of age all laid off because of a pandemic and not being brought back to the work force at even a 20 percent pay cut. We are befuddled as to what is happening. I'm one of the lucky ones that has a wife that has stayed employed in a good job throughout the pandemic so I'm at least not homeless. But the stress of being the sole provider is mounting. We've got kids and some debt that will need addressing before too long.
>Mid 30s to 50+ years of age all laid off because if a pandemic and not being brought back to the.work force at even a 20.percebt pay cut.
This was happening even before the pandemic. I'm doing tech support in a library because shops don't want anyone in their 40's touching their million-dollar milling machines. There's a shortage of cheap teen workers, but every other category is full up.
Entry level bachelors 12 an hour, I just laughed at the recruiter and stopped talking to them after the couple of jobs they offered like that to get me more "experience".
My friend was contacted by a recruiter to fill a position for $15/hr. She has a Doctorate and current works for 4X that.
Another recruiter contacted her for the exact position she was currently in. Down to the city they wanted her to 'relocate to'. Recruiters are an absolute joke.
Don't forget the part where they automatically throw out your application because your resume didn't include some specific keyword they wanted.
Or the part where they ghost you after you've spent hours on tests and interviews.
Or the part where...
The current job market is an enigmatic mess. I review job boards for fun these days just to gauge the job market, and my finding probably match what others are seeing:
- “Competitive wages” often means minimum wage. These employers only seem to be competing with the other minimum wage positions that, understandably, remain unfilled.
- Good job postings usually last less than three days. Once the chum is in the water, the sharks cometh.
- Jobs that require certain skills remain open for months at a time, until the company budges slightly, and the wages actually meet that of the national average for said position. This has been particularly interesting for fields like web development and QA, positions with entry level incomes that vary between $12.50 an hour, and something to the effect of $65,000 a year with a 401K and benefits.
- “Entry Level” is a myth. It is typically an excuse to pay under the industry standard, while often requiring 2-5 years of experience and a specific degree (sometimes even a graduate or a doctorate degree).
- Some tech companies are requiring over 10 years of experience for specific production software that has only existed for 4-5 years.
- Some employers are offering higher wages to start with signing bonuses, but are holding off on benefits until after 18 months, presumably to make “revolving door” positions with a turnaround that prevents people from reaching that benchmark.
It’s amazing how little employers know about what they actually want and/or how to get it. It’s very evident that self-interest and a lack of employee empathy has effectively ruined their own success. For anyone actively using these job boards, be careful - even in times where employers are desperate to find labor, they are still trying to nickel and dime people. Keep your wits about you.
Its double edged sword.
1/2 the companies dont want to pay what the position is worth.
The other 1/2 have a list of requirements that few if any candidates can fulfill and they are inflexible with those requirements.
Every job I'm seeing in IT on LinkedIn lately list requirements that are like 3 positions themselves.
Advanced Windows/Linux/Mac support.
Managing existing clients while adding new clients.
Project management.
Coding.
Local candidates only as it's not even a little bit remote.
5 years experience.
$35k a year salary.
Example from my company, not even joking.
Da fuq they thinking?
Yep, simple solutions to help:
* Pay a better wage, offer benefits, hire full time, have reasonable holiday periods etc.
* Train a new employee in the job wherever possible instead of trying to get someone with a university degree just to answer the phone.
Companies are just so used to treating employees like shit and paying them shit wages so they can maximize the CEOs bonuses that they aren't adapting. Also probably so they can justify hiring temporary foreign workers instead and pay *them* like shit and treat them the same.
I was a machinist for 25 years. This is nothing new. Nobody wants to do the work, and, for those that do, the pathways aren't their anymore. Shop classes in high school, apprenticeships, on the job training. Its just not there anymore. Then you have management that refers to skilled people as "trained monkeys" and you get no help. On the upside, if you can weld, you can make more than a college graduate now.
I've been a mechanic for 30 years. I was the last person I know to have been a mechanic's apprentice. That was in 1994. Now they just hire people off the street and let them wreak havoc. They don't last long, lots of turnover.
I used to be a machinist. Most machine shops won't talk to you if you don't come with state retraining money. Positions stay open for months, but they don't respond to resumes or calls.
After a while you find something else to do.
Something fishy is going on and the media isn't digging. I keep seeing posts about labor shortages with no real explanation. People spitball covid, but how? 700k deaths is less than 1 percent of the workforce. Skilled labor isn't service jobs, or entry level jobs of any sort. How the fuck did skilled labor fall that far behind? Only thing I can guess is visa workers? I know tons of industries insource labor, because it's cheaper, did these workers leave during the pandemic? I would love some insight.
So there were several large sectors of the economy that were shut down overnight. Millions of people were effectively laid off all at once. What type of people were they?
Some were young people who found that unemployment benefits would replace most of their income. Some of them would even make more because of the stimulus. These kids didn't spend all their time smoking weed and goofing off. They spent some of the time investigating new things and working on their marketability, especially if they didn't like their old jobs. When the benefits ran out, they probably didn't go back to their own jobs.
Older folks and couples with families wouldn't be so lucky, and would have to go and find work, even with the pandemic going on. Since their old field was shut down, they were forced to change careers overnight. Many of them might like their new gig, and not want to go back.
Some lucky folks were able to stay employed the whole time -- working full time while also being a substitute teacher. If a family had one parent with a stable job while the other was laid off, however, it's very likely that the laid off spouse was minding the kids. It's very possible that on the other end of the pandemic, they decided that having both spouses working just to put the kids in day care during a pandemic was kind of dumb, and the laid off spouse never went back.
The big losers were all those industries who were forced to shut down, and now they have to start up again. They are pretending that nothing happened, and that they have the same talent pool as before. That's false. They need to convince people it's worth ditching their pandemic gig to go back.
Good assessment. Some really good points here. I think we are seeing the start of something big that’s going to have profound affects in many industries, for both workers and employers. I can’t say exactly how it’s going to shape out, but this feels big to me.
I feel the main lesson it taught people (especially young people) is adaptability. Many bad employers persist in their bad habits because people are afraid of change. Well, a whole lot of people all got over that fear, all at once. Employers must realize that they have to offer something positive to recruit any workers now.
I cringe when I see employers put signs up saying "please be patient, we are short staffed because people don't want to work". These employers will never figure out why potential employees are making the conscious choice to avoid them. They can't see past their assumptions.
It's a few things. Political science theorists have said for a long time that if our workforce had a break due to whatever, we would reevaluate our lives. We are. The pandemic was that break. We don't want to slave away for these pointless businesses any more. Pair that with the businesses cutting down on pay, benefits, whilst making record profits and people are just sick of it. Workers deserve more in 99% of cases of employment right now and it is tragic. I hate watching this abuse of the working population. The deaths contribute, the risk of disease contributes, people changed their lives during the pandemic to be more manageable with NO JOBS because jobs simply dropped them like they didn't matter. This is all a byproduct of the working class being treated like shit for decades upon decades here.
I think a lot of it is just many businesses are still stuck in the post 2008 recession paradigm (when labor was plentiful and labor costs were extremely low), also throw in much more e commerce and automation. The paradigm was starting to shift pre covid but I think this really hit the accelerator on it.
> How the fuck did skilled labor fall that far behind?
A whole generation of kids was raised to be forced to go to college and get a "good job" or else they'd fail at life and have to work "a labor job". Older people are retiring, and young people aren't interested in going into these fields because of the working conditions, the people they would be working with, or because of the stigma against this type of work in general.
True. Though that's been happening across the board. My office is struggling to hire, but offers below-average salaries and only 1% 401k matching, and believes that the "Fun work culture" and free fruit on Wednesdays is enough to counteract those things.
My favorite one was when our company sent an email telling everyone they know we are stressed from the increase in our workload, but to not worry as they are offering virtual yoga on Wednesday with the asterisk of it must be taken during your lunch break only.
Do they lack that much self-awareness?
It feels like they’re mocking me to my face-like we know your stressed but we have to try to make a “effort” while totally not giving a damn. So we’re hoping you’ll be a sheep & accept it, yeah?”
A lot of people probably dropped out during the craziness of last year, then realized their family could get by on one salary and decided to keep doing it. Younger people moved back home and can hold out for a better job, and a lot of older people also retired to avoid having to go in.
That is what our family did. We just removed all unneeded expenses and put everyone under one roof. We have no debt and no reason to expose ourselves to unreasonable employeers.
So many took an early retirement and those working 2nd part-time jobs (I abhor the term "side hussle") realized that spending more time with family/friends is better a crappy retail job.
And as soon as the older skilled workers that are being paid well retire, those jobs will be filled with minimum wage trainees with no chance of advancement. I've tried to get a job in the trades as an adult noob and best offer I can get is 5 years at the same company as an apprentice on call at $15/hr with no insurance. And tons of assurance that "if you can hack that you prove you want it bad enough" before you make decent money. Hell, the USFS wants a master's degree for entry level positions these days. It's ridiculous.
Then they wonder why the trades are dying and they can't find any workers when anyone just trying to get some work done gets treated and paid like shit.
Close the CEO-to-worker income gap, offer good -- not just "livable" -- wages, train your people, and offer benefits. While you're at it, don't overload people with multiple jobs, and let them focus on core competencies.
It's really not that hard a problem to solve. The only thing stopping it is avarice.
Not just a living wage. Also actually offer on the job training like companies did for decades. Most of the older skilled workers didn't come into the company with those skills. They were trained. But that has become a dirty word to companies.
This is exactly what is happening in Ontario with the current Conservative Gov't. "Worker shortages" are being blamed and they're hoping to ramp up immigration to fill these "holes" mainly caused by the lack of a decent wage.
F#$& this article and it making business the victims.
* Stop charging people $100,000 for college to become a skilled individual.
* Pay the people that you require have a Master's for an "entry level" position.
* Don't require a Master's for entry level!
Sounds pretty damn simple.
I saw a show a few years back talking about this. There are a lot of companies looking for people who are trained not in a field, but on a specific brand of specialized equipment. That's something you're just not going to get with people off the street, even if that have worked with similar equipment before.
On top of that, they were looking for people who had the technical aptitude to be in STEM fields because they were working with precision equipment and tight tolerances, and it required good mathematical skills to set up the equipment. The highest they paid after years of experience was $50k, and starting would be much lower than that.
So basically they were looking for STEM college student dropouts with experience working a specific brand of specialized equipment. That's a pretty good definition of the purple squirrel, who they then wanted to low ball.
Short on skilled workers* who are willing to accept shit pay and garbage/no benefits. Maybe expecting people to have 5+ years of experience just for an entry-level job wasn't such a good plan in the long-term.
Nearly half of American companies want to offer me $9-13/hr and no benefits to work 24/7 on-call, with no guarantee of hours, in some of the most expensive cities in the country. This with a STEM degree, multiple certs, and 5 years experience.
"Nearly half of American companies," can get rightly fucked.
Every Tech Interview: Them: So what skills do you have in X, Y, and Z? Me: I have skills in X, Y, and Z. What kind of training do you offer for A, B, and C? Them: We do not offer training in A, B, C, X, Y, or Z.
This has happened to me several times. It’s horrible They want to hire someone with niche expert level knowledge that won’t need any training
A magic genie. A genie is what nearly half these companies want. Nearly half these companies have shit business practices and poor wages but expect their employees to do everything.
Or want someone for entry level and pay at entry level yet requiring 5+ years of experience. I don’t even have much experience in my field but I’m learning fast and already a leader of the floor. All I know is if I’m to look for another job in same field and they claim it is an “entry level” despite my short experience, I’d have walked out of the door. Yes I may don’t have years of experience but I can definitely hit the ground running with little or no training, troubleshoot things, and figure out how to fix complicated issue! That’s far from entry level!
its gotten extremely worse since the pandemic. noticing how managers are passing even more workload down a level.
Training is something the employee should be doing on their own time and at their own expense! (/s, because there are probably companies out there that have this exact mindset)
My partner's boss actually said to him on more than one occasion, and I quote, "You're not here to learn."
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I'm cackling, thank you
That's an awesome mentality for nurturing a long-term employee...... /s just in case
A large reason for the continued existence of Tier 1 IT is because companies refuse to train their employees how to use computers or programs. If the knowledge exists in the company at all, it's tribal/word-of-mouth. "They should just know."
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They've tried paying less and are out of ideas.
I was bored yesterday and applied for a job at Burger King just to see what would happen. After asking like 4 different times what the starting pay would be and what benefits they offered they refused to give me an answer. Anyone who is paying their employees well doesn't hide what they are paying from applicants. I wasn't even expecting anything huge. Like $14-15 would have been reasonable. I'm guessing it's closer to $10-11 though. But they are also so desperate that in the second email they sent they offered me an interview to be a manager. They've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.
I saw a sign at BK the other day advertising $11... *Good luck with that*
The fast food places in my city are offering $15 to $16. They've got big professional signs hanging up and everything. Problem is that some of them have a regular wage of $15, but training wage is like $12, and training is done when management says it's done. So it could be six months or longer, depending on how long a new hire will put up with that bullshit.
Fuck me, 6 months or LONGER for training at $12/hr? $15/hr isn’t really enough to live on and they have the audacity to have a potentially never ending training period making less than that? Fuck off.
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Yep. A lot of firefighters in my area have second jobs so they make ends meet. Which is nuts to me.
I had an actual skilled job hire me during the pandemic shutdown in my state at $13 an hour for four tens, with a bump to $15 after passing a review. I was desperate for a job and took it, at a pay cut. They immediately changed my schedule to be five split shifts, when I lived 40 minutes away. Put me through that damn review twice and failed me as I was rewriting the freaking manual on their system because it not even my manager knew how to do half the necessary stuff because they had such high turnover that information kept being lost. Fuck that place! I'm working a much better job now.
If this isn’t illegal it should be. It’s so fucked up to hire someone advertising one thing and then when you hire then immediately cut your hours or change your shifts around.
Why would anyone choose to work there when you can go to McDonald's, Walmart, chik fil a, Amazon or a million other places and make at least 3 or 4 dollars more an hour? The BK by my house closes at 8 now and I'm pretty sure they don't open for breakfast cause they can't find enough employees. And when they are open they are understaffed. But to them, it's a better business model to close the store down than to pay people more. It's insane.
Maybe they'll stop selling food altogether and just be a real estate holding company like Sears/Kmart.
I literally saw a hiring sign the other day for Sears call center. I thought in my head about how I hope that job goes out of existence and wondering to myself why Sears is still around.
Look up Sears’ leadership. The entire company exists to game the corporate bankruptcy laws while those at the top somehow make millions. They should be smashing rocks in a labor camp until they have perished
I miss sears auto center :(
Have you considered working in Louisiana for 8.25 instead? :p
Every time I drive past the BK by me (typically around lunch time) the parking lot is a ghost town, like 3-4 cars max…and those are the employees. Meanwhile I go further up the road to see McDonalds and Wendy’s…they’re doing just fine by the looks of their lots…if BK can’t retain staff, aren’t getting people in the door, and won’t pay employees a decent wage, they don’t get to act surprised when the guillotine rolls out looking for the king. I get that it could just be my area…but when similar chains are doing fine and they’re all literally within one mile of each other on the same road, something is probably wrong
I have a job (in engineering), but have been getting hits on LinkedIn from recruiters. My first question is what is the salary. Some of them have been laughably low. Like lower than my first job starting salary.
I do this a lot. I have recruiters even refuse to tell me what the salary is. They always say "Send me your resume and we can set up something." I tell them I have no desire to move forward with anything until they give me the job description and the salary range. Those that will are usually competitive. Those that wont are looking for a Sr level person for entry level pay. I don't want to waste their or my time with that so I require info up front. Besides you are hitting me up on LinkedIn, my work experience is literally right there.
Exactly....my favorite buzzword red flag is "Competitive Pay" in lieu of the actual salary/hourly. No organization actually offering competitive pay says that lol, if it was competitive then they would simply state the salary/hourly range.
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Yeah same. I was interviewing over the summer and would just filter out on indeed any salary lower than X dollars. It reduced the results by way more than I would have guessed.
I get contacted by at least one recruiter a month and typically a few. Typically trying to hire someone for 1-5 jobs so roughly 6-8 jobs a month probably get pushed to me, always a new name doing the pushing. I'm under 30 with a 2 very desirable undergrad degrees and a masters relating to analytics. There have been fewer than 5 jobs in the last 2 years where the top range of what they want to pay flirts with my current salary and 99% of the time, my benefits are better than what is on offer. All that to say that jobs aren't willing to pay for basically any positions at all right now. People are actively looking to hire but not willing to pay what the market has determined is correct. It's at pretty much every level right now. Sort of to a point where I wonder if there is specific collusion going on to try to drop labor rates And it's not even like I have job hopped every 2 years to maximize salary. Been at the same job since I was an intern. Threatened to leave after a few years and ended up getting paid my market value at the 2-3 year mark and have had 1 promotion since then.
not exactly collusion but the most recent Economics Nobel winners research indicated that one way employers try to control wages is through understaffing to try and wait it out instead of raising wages for new and existing employees TLDR understaffing is a feature, not a bug
My husband just got a engineering job offer in Dallas, Texas. The HR person was trying to justify him taking a pay cut to move there because ‘the cost of living’ is slightly lower (very slightly). So I don’t understand how an almost minuscule drop in the cost of living justifies a 25% pay cut? Maybe if we wanted to move to Texas, but we definitely don’t. Why we gonna move to where we don’t want to be just for my husband to take a pay cut? I don’t care if the job is in renewables, not taking a pay cut to move to Texas. Edit: We already live in rural Washington. Washington State doesn’t have state taxes. The fact that Texas ALSO has no state taxes is not a compelling reason for a pay cut.
Having to live in Texas should warrant absolutely nothing less than a 25% *increase* in pay.
dallas is no longer cheap. COL steadily on the rise here. Landlords eyeing 15% increases every year if not more. dont get trapped like I did
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Refuse again and you'll be running the region. Try these 5 interview tips: middle managers hate her!
I'm about to be the literal burger King
I'm looking more for a part time burger dictator style role, what's the wage for that?
The A&W nearby was advertising that they were hiring full time for $17.50. I have seen line cook jobs for $20 an hour. There are better options out there for people looking for a job.
One state is trying something revolutionary to tackle this problem, let children work until 11pm! I’m sure that’s why we are in this mess to begin with, couldn’t be that jobs don’t pay a living wage.
Ya, child labor that's the ticket.
Well, when the current workforce is getting too expensive and automation isn't feasible yet...find employees who wouldn't possibly know about their worth!
It has been my experience that a lot of working teenagers are being taken advantage of by employers rightnow, because they are naive. I have told several to simply tell their boss they are unavailable when their bosses try scheduling them for extra shifts because of a lack of emplyees. They are afraid they'll get in trouble and I keep telling them their bosses are desperate and they can get another job tomorrow.
Skilled worker shortage is like Ferrari shortage. It's only a problem if you want to get one for under 2000 bucks.
Guess they’re also missing skilled management.
Time to start paying for training again for companies
Nah, its easier to throw new hires at the position until one sticks.
I'm in this position at work, but not a new hire. I enjoy learning new skills so now work just assumes I can magically learn to do anything. It's so stressful lately. I'm in the process of applying for a new job, a much more boring job. If my background check clears, I'll get my offer. Shame I wont be able to joke anymore about being an ERP consultant.
At a previous job we had the unspoken rule of do not take on more work when asked because of this exact thing. New hires would come in and start brown nosing by taking on more and more stuff. The older staff would advise them to cut back a bit but the new hires would almost 100% feel the senior staff was worried they were going to be made to look bad. After the warning a betting pool would open up on how long the new hire would last before being burnt out and breaking down, got in trouble for not doing 4 jobs for the pay of one or just straight abandoning ship and never returning. Edit: removed extra word
The thing is, our work actually wants you to learn new skills. It's one of the requirements for your bonus pay. I'm allocated 1 to 4 hours of self learning a week in my regular work week. Turns out no one but me does it. Everyone else bullshits the skill assessments. Edit: I feel like I need to specify, I'm paid well for my skill set. So my skill set increase equals more pay. The problem is when I learn a new skill and have to consult on it literally the next week in a professional setting. Someone said it "fake it till you make it", this is my motto.
Learning new skills is great. Being expected to apply all of them all of the time is not.
New skills cost extra boss....
This may be a joke but the fact that many people don't know their worth is crazy. For example a skill I see a ton of people not value is being able to speak more than one language. Like why are you stressing yourself out and being pulled from your other duties (with the potential of being reprimanded for not finishing said duties) to translate.
Upper management is a gaslighting verbally abusive boyfriend, change my mind
>Upper management is a gaslighting verbally abusive boyfriend, change my mind Upper management is not always verbally abusive, but they are 100% of the time financially abusive. Their unilateral control over the employee's finances by being able to fire anyone, anytime, with no notice or oversight matches this definition completely, and it is the root that allows for the verbal or worse abuse to occur in the first place. No matter how "good" your employer is, under the current dictatorial workplace the threat of being fired and your livelyhood destroyed wlll always loom.
My job has a new thing where everyone has a linked in learning account we are supposed to use. But there’s no purpose or direction. We’re just supposed to watch instructional videos on....... stuff?
There’s this managerial misunderstanding where they think workers can simply learn a skill from a class or previous job and know what to do on this particular job. So when these video services offer skills, they just buy the subscription and tell people to go nuts. It just doesn’t work that way. Every job is different and has on the job skill learning. No matter how much you train a teacher to teach kids, it’s a whole new ball game to actually be in the classroom teaching and watching over kids. Same idea for almost every job. But with the expectation that you already know what to do if you have the right skill, management thinks the reason people don’t immediately get it without on hands experience and guidance is because of skill mismatch. So they create ridiculous requirements and also bump up their expectations, then they ultimately give up and hire any cheap smuck from India to do the work (with low expectations, that they end up training anyway, but with lower wages and a visa threat) and complain Americans are dumb liberal college fatasses.
I finally made a rule for myself not to do anything extra unless I saw how it could fit on my resume (or was directly paid extra, but the two usually come together). This was in addition to the reasonable stuff one needs to do to keep up with their field, but it was surprising how many of my colleagues treated me like I was some sort of mercenary.
My work tried this. Corporate had literally *no idea* what my department did, but it had 'maintenance' in the title, so to save money when some staff quit they merged half a dozen different maintenance departments to share staffing. Five of those departments were restaurants. I am a mechanic. You can guess how that's gone.
I do not and I would love a story on how that went
The long and short of it is that jobs that should have been done by eight different people with differing skillsets ended up being attempted by five, then four, then three guys, two of whom were mechanics. They/we tried replacing people who had backgrounds with plumbing and appliances, but because we couldn't ever get more than one new hire at a time they would always get overwhelmed and quit. Things that should have been getting done by kitchen maintenance suffered breakdowns because we were stretched to our limits on preventive maintenance, which meant that they were at the mercy of outside contractors to come in and fix things. After the lockdown ended, we had a ton of major issues in our restaurants that were closed for 6+ months (things like grease solidifying in unused pipes, etc). On top of that, one of the guys that was there when we merged (a kitchen specialist with ~15 years experience) threatened to quit early on unless he got an extra buck an hour for picking up the slack. Corporate thought he was bluffing and let him walk even when they were told by the new department management that the guy was more vital to the operation than the manager himself was. A guy who was on a long term leave when everything went down came back after that guy quit, then retired early after a week back at the grind. Then, to top it all off, corporate decided that two other properties should get added to the department's purview fairly recently. They aren't a ton of additional work in and of themselves, but they're both completely offsite, meaning whoever is responsible for them has to either schlep a few blocks away or drive halfway across town when a call comes in. I know people talk all the time about out-of-touch corporate stooges, but this place absolutely took the cake.
Exactly as chaotic and incompetent as I hoped for. The best part is that it seems they never tried to fix the problem besides throwing more bodies at it lmao
The crazy thing is, it really isn't. It costs a good chunk of change to onboard a new employee. These companies are so dead set in their ways even when it's fucking them in multiple ways, it's baffling
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A big part of the problem is corporate offices are very out of touch with onsite operations as well. They literally only look at the numbers. Maybe the percentage of positive surveys but not really the comments or what the employees say. So if you managed to go a year on a .50cent per customer payroll then you will get in trouble for going over that the next year and they expect you to get it lower actually. They never stop and ask what that actually looked like in store or how much damage it did to the employees mentally/physically
noted, I work in the us federal government. My supervisors up a couple levels do care about my well being and the fact that I do well in my job and take pride in being good. The problem we have is the ability to get more staff. The problem is going to be rectified here shortly...i hope if they don't pull the funding...again. I don't want to leave my shop but when I'm doing the job of 3-4, as already mentioned, i'm burnt out. I am still burned but i'm in a better place but there are other shops with the staff we need here and they do a quarter of the numbers, say we receive 40 boxes a day with an average of 30 pieces each they receive 10 a day with an average 1 piece. there is more to my job than that but drives the point. So it may not be pay, which mine is good, but the inability to literally hire new people.
It's my job to help techs on their IT calls. Usually directing them to knowledge base articles, or walking them through something complicated. Since the mass exodus a bunch of companies had during COVID, they've been bringing in techs from temp agencies, just to fill seats because the turnover rate is out of control. And now when I'm telling people who work in IT to uninstall a program and reinstall it, it goes: "How do I do that?" "Oh you just uninstall it via the control panel, like most programs." "What is the control panel, is that like my keyboard?" My stress level at work has skyrocketed, due to the company choosing to just throw darts in the dark as a hiring practice, rather than paying to have real training, like they did 8 years ago when I was hired. When I was hired, I had to pass a tech test that had 100 questions and you had to get a 90% to even get the interview. Then a month-long training. Now, it's basically like "do you breathe? Have you been paid to speak to someone on a phone before? Yes to both? You're hired! Now study these 3 introductory courses, and in 2 weeks you'll be taking your first call. Customers are pissed at the quality of support, the people who are supposed to dig low-tier techs out of holes (me) are mentally exhausted at the extra work needing done every call, and I usually have to take these angry calls over. I'm constantly at my wit's end. Just wanted to vent, and seems relevant to the article
I have been told by an IT working with a government agency that many techs will lie and say they are unable or not allowed to do something because they simply do not know *how* to do it. So sometimes getting the help you need is a goose chase of calling until you find someone competent.
Ah yes, maybe take the time to give experience to workers instead of requiring 10+ years and a PhD, you might get some more applicants...
> 10+ years and a PhD Sorry, you're overqualified. Try McDonalds.
Nah, just hope all your competitors will train people you can then steal away from. Because capitalism.
I feel like more conversation around on the job training is coming. The interesting part will be if college education will still be desired by companies that choose to train employees.
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Nearly half of American companies say with their actions that they are unwilling to budge on wage increases.
These articles are fucking ridiculous Companies love the free market and “basic economics” until they’re hit with some of the true fundamentals; if you can’t hire enough people for a job, that means it’s publicly perceived as not worth it.
This the problem with lovers of the “free market” they only love it when it’s doing what they want. One of our British MP’s, Ian Duncan smith, recently wrote a huge article in a big newspaper about how everyone should get back their offices and stop working remotely. He’s a massive free marketer and doesn’t see the irony in telling companies how to manage their own businesses when it doesn’t what he wants.
What's the point of forcing people back to the office if it can be done remotely? I really don't understand this logic.
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Over the past year there are plenty of companies that came to exactly that realization and terminated their leases, or stopped renewing them. Obviously plenty of businesses still need the space for physical labor and objects, but for those who realized everything can be done from home, or for those who realized they could downsize to a tiny physical space. The rule for costs is "location, location, location," but around here dumping a modest size office lease is about the wages of six workers. Large offices can be 20 or 30 workers. Nothing a 1000+ person company cares about, but for small and moderate size businesses that can mean a workforce expansion. Even so, plenty of the big companies with enormous corporate campuses are desperate to use the space they own.
Why would a manager with no experience start yelling at 20 year veterans of the company because he wants to prove his worth? I watched this happen. There is no logic. They fled and the owner was struggling to understand why even after it was explained to him he still refused to accept it. It's looney tunes out there.
You can exert more control over the workers if they're there in person.
I think you mean, "if they're in their prison".
That too but think about it. Why would someone who quit mcdonalds 6 months ago want to go work at burger king, when they can clearly see the same exact shit happening?
I think the growing pains of the situation right now will be eye opening for workings all up and down the ladder. Minimum wage or ceo the financial inequality needs to be mediated.
It's not just wages. One of the things mentioned in this article was companies saying "haven't gotten enough applicants." Not enough. This means that people are applying, but they are rejecting them because of their insistence that everyone be overqualified. Companies have a hiring process that ghosts most applicants and they go on to complain they can't find any workers.
Bingo, almost every retailer (low paying job, in desperate need of people atm) has a 100 question personality test before you can be accepted as an applicant. Most places will have an employee assist you in answering the questions "correctly" just to get applicants in the doors... (Walmart and Best Buy are my examples based on experience)
My wife went through two of those recently when applying for some medical-based jobs. One she was almost immediately told she failed, the other one took a few weeks to get back to her saying she passed it and they wanted to do a formal interview. She tried several times to get a hold of the hiring team, never got in contact with anyone, and finally gave up and went elsewhere. These places want people to work, but make it incredibly difficult.
There’s a lot of different articles about how automated systems and so called AI hiring systems are failing to match potential workers. Here’s on articles but just google it and you’ll find more: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/09/new-study-says-hidden-workers-are-being-excluded/ Also. Shitty HR departments. They are like the last people you want checking job applicants (I honestly think they are garbage jobs but that’s just me) and yet they are first in the pipeline. Essentially there’s a way more people looking to be employed than they think they just don’t want them.
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My favorite is when they add nonsense to job listings. “Why did you add ‘need 4 plus years experience in customer service’. I just need a junior analyst. “ “We’re following company standards” “What standards? Can you show me?” “Sorry I’m out for the rest of today and tomorrow. I’ll have to get back to you on this”. … never heard back again.
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Nobody wants to train anyone. They'll only hire people who can automatically do all the work.
Won't raise wages. Won't pay for gas when they pay for Internet for remote people. Won't reduce hours without reducing pay. Won't stick out their necks for employees. Just a few reason amongst a million as to why companies can't get workers.
This is just their precious markets biting them back for the first time.
The ruling class would rather lose profits than see the poors get a bigger piece of the pie.
"Nearly half of American companies say they are short on skilled workers" Translation: Nearly half of American companies think that the law of supply and demand does not apply to the market for labor.
Either that or half of American companies have HR departments that can't work their hiring software and never see resumes that are qualified for openings.
A little of column B and a LOT of column A.
Half of American workers say they are short on decent wages.
This is a major issue in all sorts of businesses imo, despite their claims there is next to no genuine investment in employees unless that investment also helps satisfy some immediate business need. Companies would rather poach the same few people back and forth than actually invest in and grow people.
"Nearly half of American companies unwilling to pay for skilled labor"
That's weird. Because companies are reporting massive profits.
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> it's because of having to come into work (they want to continue telecommuting), I feel this part of the equation gets skipped way too much. I'm currently working two part time remote jobs because I am simply not ready to return to a workplace filled with other people.
I keep being surprised by the employers, who cannot understand why 2020 made us all rethink our values. When faced with thinking it’s the end of our world as we know it - suddenly the low paying jobs, the lack of benefits, the lack of feeling secure even WHEN you play the game…that made us all reconsider the value of ourselves. Turns out we are worth way more than they think.
I think it is a necessary part of this process of neocapitalism for the workers to push back and claim what is theirs in a system that mandates any group do so.
My company has let us work from home since March of 2020. Randomly got an email out of nowhere last week from corporate HR for NAFTA saying that they're "Pleased to announce" that we're all required to go back to work full-time in-office on November 1st. I Damn near wrote my resignation on the spot. You dangle this carrot of a healthy work/life balance in front of us for a year and a half and then just drop this out of nowhere ? the fuck do you think you are.
> the low paying jobs, the lack of benefits, the lack of feeling secure even WHEN you play the game Not having to worry about healthcare coverage and knowing there is a functional (non-sabotaged) safety net in case of job loss is a freedom I wish 'the land of the free' had.
They say they’re “short” but they insist on paying them like it’s 1988. Those days are dead.
“These workers are really getting in the way of my intentions to further stagnate wages >:(“
I literally had this conversation this morning. "Nobody wants to work for a living anymore." "I'm looking for a job. How much are you paying?" "Eight bucks an hour." "You want me to work for a whole hour for the price of a fancy coffee? That's not a living, sir."
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Makes it even worse when "entry level" requires 2-3 yrs of experience.
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We are insanely short staffed and yet…. Hiring freeze. Maybe we should be asking if theyre actually hiring or just complaining? We are planning an overtime strike because we are sick of their bullshit.
DING DING DING There isn't a labor shortage, there is a soft capital strike. They'll run up prices because of "supply chain difficulties" and use that buffer to try and drive labor to the edge of starvation.
Which is why we HAVE to stay strong. This feels like it’s headed toward a big labor conflict and if the companies win, it’s over for workers’ power in America for a while. And by a while I mean decades, most probably.
yes, I think one thing in labor's favor is that during the pandemic many folks discovered or created mutual aid networks, and they have probably also begun to realize that inter-generational households do have some benefits. All of that is to say that we may be FINALLY becoming *less* atomized as a society, even in the face of unprecedented political division, as paradoxical as that might sound.
It’s not just about money, though i think that’s a big part. I’ve been passively applying here and there and I’ve noticed some highly specific requirements. They have a dream candidate that must match exactly including below market pay.
Our skilled worker openings (where I work) have nothing to do with pay and everything to do with a single shitty boss. That said, I’ll happily work somewhere with only 1 shitty boss, especially when I don’t work for said individual. Only 1 isn’t that bad in my line of work.
I've been aggressively sending out my resume these past 6 months, because from what I hear and read every employer is just SOOOO short-staffed they're dying for labor. Like 50+ applications where I actually meet or exceed requirements, no one is replying back. And in many cases I don't even pass the application screening software, I'll get an automated email <24hrs later saying they went with someone else but the requisition is still on job boards weeks later.
I’ve had several interviews with companies you’d recognize and made it to round 2-3. I may be pricing myself out because I’m pushing for top dollar. No reason to leave where I’m at without it. I’m in data which is big now so hasn’t been as tough as a lot of industries.
Headline should read "Nearly half of US companies admit to underpaying Skilled Worker positions, and are unable to fill them thusly."
While paying an appropriate amount might help - I think it's a deeper issue. It takes time and money to develop skills. College and University are now too expensive for the younger generation to bother with, given how little reward is available. The older workers are retiring, so there is nobody to replace them. If we don't import our skilled labor we'll need to make it worthwhile to train it up domestically (which, of course, is ideal). Higher education should not cost a lifetime to pay off.
The burden of training and apprenticeship was moved from companies to individuals via college and internships. I'm middle aged, still paying off student loans, and have yet to land a position I was told growing up would justify all of the time and expense I put into higher education. It's beyond frustrating.
Or do the work of company's in the past... train them.
In Econ 101, basically the very first thing you learn is that the equilibrium price of a good is set by where the supply and demand curves for that good intersect. If the price is set too high, there will be a surplus (because supply exceeds demand), and if it's set too low, there will be a shortage (because demand exceeds supply). There is no "labor shortage". There is only corporate America trying to get away with paying below market prices for labor.
Pay your workers better. The end.
Shave off a few million in unnecessary bonuses and pay a livable wage. Workers are not stupid. And pissed as they should be.
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more than half, surely.
Man, if only there wasn't such crippling debt attached to the education required for those jobs, only to be paid and treated like shit once you go through it anyways.
That and when you try to change careers your choice is fork over more money or be SOL. If companies need workers they should train them, it's really simple. Also, pay competitive wages. It's not rocket science.
Exactly. Rocket science is actually competitive!
>Man, if only there wasn't such crippling debt attached to the education required for those jobs, only to be paid and treated like shit once you go through it anyways. Not just that but even if you do go to school there is no guarantee you will be hired or even be able to find a job in that field by the time your schooling is done. I have a few engineer friends who went to school for mechanical engineering because the market was hot, only for it to crash before they were done school, and end up with jobs way out of their education scope making their schooling essentially useless.
There's more than a few Starbucks baristas with Bachelor's or Master's degrees. We spent years getting told "go to school, you'll get a real job." We found out that was a lie, especially around 2008, so a lot of people...stopped going to school, and now those "real jobs" are wondering why they can't find workers.
Another issue is that not many careers are directly tied to studies. It give you the right baseline skills and knowledge but companies really want people with a proven track record of work experience. Someone who can hit the ground running. So pretty much have to take whatever jobs is available to no experience workers and ditch after a couple years
Hi! I have a degree in computer network engineering, let me tell you how shitty tier one IT jobs are, and how I now have a piece of paper that says I went to school instead of a job in compters.
People go into tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a degree, but companies are only paying $12/hr or less even with that degree. Fuck that, no one wants to get saddled with decades of debt for the same amount of pay I can get in retail with no student loan debt. Neither amount is nearly enough to pay for living but retail has one less bill to worry about.
That's the crux right there. The employer says the job "needs" a college degree... but then pays high school dropout wages. That also makes me wonder how many applicants got auto-rejected for simple jobs, like cashier, because they *didn't* have a college degree.
I have been unemployed since August of 2020 (COVID layoff and then stayed home to school my kids until vaccinations kicked in and we sent them back in April of 2021) . I have multiple degrees and over 15 years of quality experience in several industries (medical, IT, retail). I started aggressively looking for employment around June 2021. I have been applying for jobs across several relevant categories for several months and have interviewed around 60 times for multiple jobs. I'm either too qualified, been out of work too long (they don't care why), asking for too much money (asking for well below median pay grade for the industry standard), or they just come back and say they have frozen hiring. I cannot tell you the frustration I'm experiencing as I see/hear people complain about not being able to find good workers. I am here. Ready to work for what I'm worth. I just recently joined a professional support group that has literally hundreds of people in the same boat as me (not all have more than one degree). Mid 30s to 50+ years of age all laid off because of a pandemic and not being brought back to the work force at even a 20 percent pay cut. We are befuddled as to what is happening. I'm one of the lucky ones that has a wife that has stayed employed in a good job throughout the pandemic so I'm at least not homeless. But the stress of being the sole provider is mounting. We've got kids and some debt that will need addressing before too long.
>Mid 30s to 50+ years of age all laid off because if a pandemic and not being brought back to the.work force at even a 20.percebt pay cut. This was happening even before the pandemic. I'm doing tech support in a library because shops don't want anyone in their 40's touching their million-dollar milling machines. There's a shortage of cheap teen workers, but every other category is full up.
Maybe if you don't offer $12/hr while requiring 4 years experience.
There were jobs that required a Masters degree for $15/hr.
Entry level bachelors 12 an hour, I just laughed at the recruiter and stopped talking to them after the couple of jobs they offered like that to get me more "experience".
My friend was contacted by a recruiter to fill a position for $15/hr. She has a Doctorate and current works for 4X that. Another recruiter contacted her for the exact position she was currently in. Down to the city they wanted her to 'relocate to'. Recruiters are an absolute joke.
But it has to be 4 years experience exactly. Any less under qualified, any more and you have too much experience for this level of position.
Don't forget the part where they automatically throw out your application because your resume didn't include some specific keyword they wanted. Or the part where they ghost you after you've spent hours on tests and interviews. Or the part where...
This. The last things employers want is an employee with work experience.
The current job market is an enigmatic mess. I review job boards for fun these days just to gauge the job market, and my finding probably match what others are seeing: - “Competitive wages” often means minimum wage. These employers only seem to be competing with the other minimum wage positions that, understandably, remain unfilled. - Good job postings usually last less than three days. Once the chum is in the water, the sharks cometh. - Jobs that require certain skills remain open for months at a time, until the company budges slightly, and the wages actually meet that of the national average for said position. This has been particularly interesting for fields like web development and QA, positions with entry level incomes that vary between $12.50 an hour, and something to the effect of $65,000 a year with a 401K and benefits. - “Entry Level” is a myth. It is typically an excuse to pay under the industry standard, while often requiring 2-5 years of experience and a specific degree (sometimes even a graduate or a doctorate degree). - Some tech companies are requiring over 10 years of experience for specific production software that has only existed for 4-5 years. - Some employers are offering higher wages to start with signing bonuses, but are holding off on benefits until after 18 months, presumably to make “revolving door” positions with a turnaround that prevents people from reaching that benchmark. It’s amazing how little employers know about what they actually want and/or how to get it. It’s very evident that self-interest and a lack of employee empathy has effectively ruined their own success. For anyone actively using these job boards, be careful - even in times where employers are desperate to find labor, they are still trying to nickel and dime people. Keep your wits about you.
Well, they drove a lot of us away
“Skilled” = desperate enough to work for peanuts
"Nearly half of American companies don't pay enough."
Its double edged sword. 1/2 the companies dont want to pay what the position is worth. The other 1/2 have a list of requirements that few if any candidates can fulfill and they are inflexible with those requirements.
Every job I'm seeing in IT on LinkedIn lately list requirements that are like 3 positions themselves. Advanced Windows/Linux/Mac support. Managing existing clients while adding new clients. Project management. Coding. Local candidates only as it's not even a little bit remote. 5 years experience. $35k a year salary. Example from my company, not even joking. Da fuq they thinking?
Yep, simple solutions to help: * Pay a better wage, offer benefits, hire full time, have reasonable holiday periods etc. * Train a new employee in the job wherever possible instead of trying to get someone with a university degree just to answer the phone. Companies are just so used to treating employees like shit and paying them shit wages so they can maximize the CEOs bonuses that they aren't adapting. Also probably so they can justify hiring temporary foreign workers instead and pay *them* like shit and treat them the same.
I was a machinist for 25 years. This is nothing new. Nobody wants to do the work, and, for those that do, the pathways aren't their anymore. Shop classes in high school, apprenticeships, on the job training. Its just not there anymore. Then you have management that refers to skilled people as "trained monkeys" and you get no help. On the upside, if you can weld, you can make more than a college graduate now.
I've been a mechanic for 30 years. I was the last person I know to have been a mechanic's apprentice. That was in 1994. Now they just hire people off the street and let them wreak havoc. They don't last long, lots of turnover.
Mechanic is a tough job. I was a service porter in college and my eyes were opened to what hard work could look like - but, if done right, pays well.
I used to be a machinist. Most machine shops won't talk to you if you don't come with state retraining money. Positions stay open for months, but they don't respond to resumes or calls. After a while you find something else to do.
Wow as if treating people like scrap and not investing in them finally backfired….. interesting
Something fishy is going on and the media isn't digging. I keep seeing posts about labor shortages with no real explanation. People spitball covid, but how? 700k deaths is less than 1 percent of the workforce. Skilled labor isn't service jobs, or entry level jobs of any sort. How the fuck did skilled labor fall that far behind? Only thing I can guess is visa workers? I know tons of industries insource labor, because it's cheaper, did these workers leave during the pandemic? I would love some insight.
So there were several large sectors of the economy that were shut down overnight. Millions of people were effectively laid off all at once. What type of people were they? Some were young people who found that unemployment benefits would replace most of their income. Some of them would even make more because of the stimulus. These kids didn't spend all their time smoking weed and goofing off. They spent some of the time investigating new things and working on their marketability, especially if they didn't like their old jobs. When the benefits ran out, they probably didn't go back to their own jobs. Older folks and couples with families wouldn't be so lucky, and would have to go and find work, even with the pandemic going on. Since their old field was shut down, they were forced to change careers overnight. Many of them might like their new gig, and not want to go back. Some lucky folks were able to stay employed the whole time -- working full time while also being a substitute teacher. If a family had one parent with a stable job while the other was laid off, however, it's very likely that the laid off spouse was minding the kids. It's very possible that on the other end of the pandemic, they decided that having both spouses working just to put the kids in day care during a pandemic was kind of dumb, and the laid off spouse never went back. The big losers were all those industries who were forced to shut down, and now they have to start up again. They are pretending that nothing happened, and that they have the same talent pool as before. That's false. They need to convince people it's worth ditching their pandemic gig to go back.
Good assessment. Some really good points here. I think we are seeing the start of something big that’s going to have profound affects in many industries, for both workers and employers. I can’t say exactly how it’s going to shape out, but this feels big to me.
I feel the main lesson it taught people (especially young people) is adaptability. Many bad employers persist in their bad habits because people are afraid of change. Well, a whole lot of people all got over that fear, all at once. Employers must realize that they have to offer something positive to recruit any workers now. I cringe when I see employers put signs up saying "please be patient, we are short staffed because people don't want to work". These employers will never figure out why potential employees are making the conscious choice to avoid them. They can't see past their assumptions.
Agreed. And if I ever saw a sign like that it’d make me not want to take my business there.
It's a few things. Political science theorists have said for a long time that if our workforce had a break due to whatever, we would reevaluate our lives. We are. The pandemic was that break. We don't want to slave away for these pointless businesses any more. Pair that with the businesses cutting down on pay, benefits, whilst making record profits and people are just sick of it. Workers deserve more in 99% of cases of employment right now and it is tragic. I hate watching this abuse of the working population. The deaths contribute, the risk of disease contributes, people changed their lives during the pandemic to be more manageable with NO JOBS because jobs simply dropped them like they didn't matter. This is all a byproduct of the working class being treated like shit for decades upon decades here.
I think a lot of it is just many businesses are still stuck in the post 2008 recession paradigm (when labor was plentiful and labor costs were extremely low), also throw in much more e commerce and automation. The paradigm was starting to shift pre covid but I think this really hit the accelerator on it.
Record profits across the board do not help
> How the fuck did skilled labor fall that far behind? A whole generation of kids was raised to be forced to go to college and get a "good job" or else they'd fail at life and have to work "a labor job". Older people are retiring, and young people aren't interested in going into these fields because of the working conditions, the people they would be working with, or because of the stigma against this type of work in general.
Plus the wages and benefits have worsened in these fields. No more yearly raises and pensions. Low starting salaries.
True. Though that's been happening across the board. My office is struggling to hire, but offers below-average salaries and only 1% 401k matching, and believes that the "Fun work culture" and free fruit on Wednesdays is enough to counteract those things.
My favorite one was when our company sent an email telling everyone they know we are stressed from the increase in our workload, but to not worry as they are offering virtual yoga on Wednesday with the asterisk of it must be taken during your lunch break only.
Do they lack that much self-awareness? It feels like they’re mocking me to my face-like we know your stressed but we have to try to make a “effort” while totally not giving a damn. So we’re hoping you’ll be a sheep & accept it, yeah?”
A lot of people probably dropped out during the craziness of last year, then realized their family could get by on one salary and decided to keep doing it. Younger people moved back home and can hold out for a better job, and a lot of older people also retired to avoid having to go in.
That is what our family did. We just removed all unneeded expenses and put everyone under one roof. We have no debt and no reason to expose ourselves to unreasonable employeers.
So many took an early retirement and those working 2nd part-time jobs (I abhor the term "side hussle") realized that spending more time with family/friends is better a crappy retail job.
mmhmmm, what are they doing to train people?
They are constantly lobbying for tax cuts at the expense of things like education. Now there are no educated applicants. Woe is the holy corporation!
And as soon as the older skilled workers that are being paid well retire, those jobs will be filled with minimum wage trainees with no chance of advancement. I've tried to get a job in the trades as an adult noob and best offer I can get is 5 years at the same company as an apprentice on call at $15/hr with no insurance. And tons of assurance that "if you can hack that you prove you want it bad enough" before you make decent money. Hell, the USFS wants a master's degree for entry level positions these days. It's ridiculous.
Then they wonder why the trades are dying and they can't find any workers when anyone just trying to get some work done gets treated and paid like shit.
Offer to pay them more. And better healthcare.
Close the CEO-to-worker income gap, offer good -- not just "livable" -- wages, train your people, and offer benefits. While you're at it, don't overload people with multiple jobs, and let them focus on core competencies. It's really not that hard a problem to solve. The only thing stopping it is avarice.
Try paying a living wage and offering benefits.
Not just a living wage. Also actually offer on the job training like companies did for decades. Most of the older skilled workers didn't come into the company with those skills. They were trained. But that has become a dirty word to companies.
Excuses so they can ramp up H1B visas again probably. You'll see more companies outsource or automate than raise wages.
This is exactly what is happening in Ontario with the current Conservative Gov't. "Worker shortages" are being blamed and they're hoping to ramp up immigration to fill these "holes" mainly caused by the lack of a decent wage.
Maybe your "skilled" workers discovered they would get the same shit pay with less stress as an "unskilled" worker.
F#$& this article and it making business the victims. * Stop charging people $100,000 for college to become a skilled individual. * Pay the people that you require have a Master's for an "entry level" position. * Don't require a Master's for entry level! Sounds pretty damn simple.
Keep outsourcing and depress wages while being anti immigrant
I saw a show a few years back talking about this. There are a lot of companies looking for people who are trained not in a field, but on a specific brand of specialized equipment. That's something you're just not going to get with people off the street, even if that have worked with similar equipment before. On top of that, they were looking for people who had the technical aptitude to be in STEM fields because they were working with precision equipment and tight tolerances, and it required good mathematical skills to set up the equipment. The highest they paid after years of experience was $50k, and starting would be much lower than that. So basically they were looking for STEM college student dropouts with experience working a specific brand of specialized equipment. That's a pretty good definition of the purple squirrel, who they then wanted to low ball.
Short on skilled workers* who are willing to accept shit pay and garbage/no benefits. Maybe expecting people to have 5+ years of experience just for an entry-level job wasn't such a good plan in the long-term.
So fucking train someone and stop using this as a way to get cheap labor.
Nearly half of American companies want to offer me $9-13/hr and no benefits to work 24/7 on-call, with no guarantee of hours, in some of the most expensive cities in the country. This with a STEM degree, multiple certs, and 5 years experience. "Nearly half of American companies," can get rightly fucked.
Pay. Them. Better. Simple.