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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

We might consider the rather strange concept of industries that want to hire skilled workers but which aren't ready to train them... instead, they expect workers who are already trained and experienced (and that's particularly interesting where you have major companies (not looking at you, HP and IBM!) who seem to have policies tailored around 'inviting older[1] workers to leave'...)

Too many MBAs in the food chain; too much concentration on three-monthly returns and nobody apparently looking further than the next budget.

Neil

[1] = experienced, but expensive.

Companies created the problem for themselves by viewing people as "resources" (i.e., something to be consumed and discarded) instead of what they truly are: assets. They compounded their stupidity by not handling employee problems on a singular, case-by-case basis instead of blanketing all employees with ever-more-asinine restrictions.

It's the difference between the Personnel Department and Human Resources. At least the former pretends to care about people.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

I know it's a shocking concept, but (particularly) the US vision of a company is that it exists purely and only to generate return for shareholders. Nothing else. If painting stripes on the sides of herrings produces a better return than what they're doing now, they should immediately retool with herring-painting-brushes.

I would argue that there is a serious social responsibility which is missing in the US model (and increasingly so in the UK; I can't comment on DE as while I live here I'm not part of the local workforce). A company not only has responsibilities to its shareholders, but also to its _stake_holders: its employees and their families, the local schools and shops and universities... it's not a fashionable view.

Neil

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Hell, it doesn't even prioritize a healthy, stable business model, in practice. My employer got acquired a few years back by just exactly the kind of "sixty MBAs and a dozen actual workers" outfits that've already been discussed, and our local head honcho has had to spend the better part of the last six months talking them down from adopting rapacious price hikes that would - guaranteed - drive our entire customer base to competitors, which management does not consider a valid concern because they don't seem to believe that we have competitors o_O

We've absolutely ended up in a world where the majority of decisions at any business of meaningful size are made by people who have zero connection to even the actual line of business, let alone any questions of humane, ethical personnel management - and yes, the incredibly short shrift given to training and skillset development that yields the kind of workers we're talking about here is entirely of a piece with that. I worked at another job once where they hired on a rank newbie, had me show him the basics, and then abruptly laid me off; of course, they did that before I'd had the chance to show him any more than the basics. I wonder now and again what happened to that guy; I'm sure management was Very Piqued that the reports they weren't getting as fast as they wanted were somehow not magically any faster with a guy who only barely knew the process in charge of delivering them...

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

I worked for a tax-funded but otherwise independent company for over thirty years. It had been established fifty or sixty years before I joined, and it had defined not only the best industry practices but also developed most - if not all - of the techniques and technologies that enabled that industry. Not having shareholders, it is beholden to its charter and it has done its best, I think, to maintain that position in spite of opposition from more recent competitors and indeed government.

There have been a number of advantages for it: in particular, it has maintained its own training establishment and curriculum since it was founded. Initially it was founded by enthusiastic amateurs, but was informed by employees from similar industries; the key aspect of the training was that both the teaching and the curriculum were very closely aligned with the needs of the company - and that most of the teachers had already done the tasks they were teaching about for many years. So they could take school leavers with university-entry-level qualifications and give them a university level education but focused specifically to their needs.

Neil

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!