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Highly skilled technical employees cost time and money to build/train.

People who don't train for highly skilled jobs typically do not have the money or the support infrastructure required for that training.

This gets compounded when a low skilled worker finds themselves between jobs: they now have the same constraints but also need to find money quickly to service debt such as rent or home loan.

When you describe as "mismatch" what is a bona fide shortage, you are completely ignoring the structure of society which leads to this problem: education is a profit industry, at cost to the student. Industry has few apprenticeships or cadet ships available. Industry doesn't want to train the good people ("matches") to become skilled the way industry wants.

Once the inividual has been trained, industry will trip over themselves to hire or poach them.

So industry doesn't want to pay for training even though they can afford it, the individual can't afford training even though they want it.

If only there was a way to provide training for highly skilled roles in such a way that all industry pays for the training and the individual only shoulders the time costs.

> Once the inividual has been trained, industry will trip over themselves to hire or poach them.

Why not simply create employment contracts that bind the respective apprentice/employee to the company, say, for 5 or 7 years (or whatever) if they fear that the employee will be poached?

I suspect such a contract would be unenforceable in most first world countries. It certainly would be in the US, which is not exactly a paragon of worker protections.

why would it be unenforceable? it's not like you can't leave (indentured servitude). it's just that if you choose to leave before your term is up, you have to pay back the training cost pro-rata, and that sound very reasonable.

I signed a contract like that. They were paranoid I was going to jump ship during a critical time, so gave me a bonus under condition that if I leave company before X months, I would be forced to pay back bonus. Not sure if it's enforceable, but I didn't leave.

I've heard Amazon gives out bonuses with those conditions, so I'd guess it's enforceable.

Yes, I'm sure such a system would never be abused. /s

> . it's just that if you choose to leave before your term is up, you have to pay back the training cost pro-rata, and that sound very reasonable.

This is pretty common [edit - in the UK], and there are distinctions made in law to stop this being abused (e.g. "if you leave you owe us a million for the basic training cost")

[context, liquidated damages clauses are OK in an employment contract, penalty clauses are not]

> Case law has clarified that in order for a clause to be a liquidated damages provision rather than a penalty, it must be a genuine reflection of an employer’s pre-estimate of loss that it is likely to suffer if the employee breaches that provision. If an employer is unable to quantify the exact loss that would be suffered, a best guess of the likely loss would be satisfactory. - See more at: http://rosenblatt-law.co.uk/bulletins/are-repayment-provisio...

[snip]

> The key to a repayment sum being regarded as a genuine pre-estimate of loss appears to be that the sum specified must be compensatory and not ‘in terroreum’ or simply a deterrent to breaching the contract - See more at: http://rosenblatt-law.co.uk/bulletins/are-repayment-provisio...

http://rosenblatt-law.co.uk/bulletins/are-repayment-provisio...

Just having to pay for the training is not what the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting (it sounds like indentured servitude was exactly what was being proposed, in fact). That is, as others have mentioned, reasonably common, and apparently not enough to solve the problem if companies still refuse to provide training.

Companies don't want to deal with being debt collectors is what this comes down to.

My last job paid for a good portion of my masters, every time I was reimbursed for tutition there was a set amount of time I had to still be with the company or I had to repay a certain amount.

Ended up leaving before finishing my degree due to really hating the company, I was prepared to hand back 15k, but they never even bothered asking for it. Same thing happened to a coworker of mine, though it was substantially less money in that case.

You don't leave, you simply start doing a lousy job so the employer has to fire you.

I doubt that. There is some sort of program like that in Norway. Im still a bit fuzzy on the actual details, but the employer sends you to appropriate schooling - the dude I knew went 2 days a week, one was a paid workday and the other was on his time. He had to pass the tests and agree to work there for x time, otherwise pay back the training costs. He's left with a valid, transferrable degree to other similar places - the degree would be similar to an associates.

Another solution I've seen was in the US. Some pharmacies will train pharmacy technicians and incur the expenses themselves. The tech license, however, is only good so long as they are employed at that company. (folks can pay for such training on their own dime, which can transfer between employers).

And yet a third solution: I looked into becoming an electrician in the late 90's (in the US, specifically Indiana). The local electricians union provided schooling and training, no cost to you, so long as you stayed with the union employment for something like 4-5 years lest you pay back the schooling costs. I'm pretty sure the local plumber's union did something similar.

Both countries have methods of reclaiming such money - the court systems. Both can withhold money from your paycheck for such things as well, if you don't pay. In the US, that amount is something like 25% of your paycheck, so long as you are left with 30 hours wages at minimum wage. In addition, they can likely take away any professional licenses you obtained until you pay it back.

I agree with you but at the same time, if there was a bona fide shortage of labor then wouldn't industry be training people?

> then wouldn't industry be training people?

Ideally, but there's also a sort of prisoner's-dilemma [0] going on, where if company A trains well and company B doesn't but puts the budget into wages, people will train at A and then leave for B higher pay.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

If there's actually a labor shortage, B will starve for want of labor. Labor isn't just a cost, it's an investment, and the kind of loyalty you'd get by training someone without a lot of prospects in a high demand field for free shouldn't be ignored.

> If there's actually a labor shortage, B will starve for want of labor.

B is able to offer higher salaries.

Yes, employee loyalty is a thing, but it's also hard to justify to MBA-types and is softer when the employees are in demand.

Maybe they don't believe there's enough demand and/or economic growth to justify the investment considering its risks and expenses?

If given a choice between paying for 6 months of training, or 6 months of waiting for the perfect candidate, waiting is much cheaper. In fact, the longer training takes and the more valuable the trainee at the end (the more demand for the trainee from competitors, essentially), I would guess the less likely businesses are to want to foot the bill. Likewise, training means you have to pay/contract so as to insure that there's not a high risk of a trainee being sniped.

On the demand/economic growth angle, witness all the large corporations hoarding record amounts of cash. It seems like many businesses recognize that disposable income is fairly well soaked - I think a general perception is that there's not enough disposable income to risk much investment in new products/industries unless they somehow clearly cannibalize from an existing market segment or specifically target upper incomes (and it takes a lot for something targeting upper incomes to be viable enough to not be boutique).

Anyway, this is mostly speculation on my part.

"If given a choice between paying for 6 months of training, or 6 months of waiting for the perfect candidate, waiting is much cheaper."

Fair enough, but then this is not a labor shortage. An employee makes their boss money. In a labor shortage, waiting for the perfect candidate is choosing to lose money.

it is also likely at the end of the training the employee is more valuable to the company than to the competitors (since they know the culture and technology), so in order to keep them from moving to a competitor they should pay more than a competitor would.

80k is not a lot of money if you are talking about any of the major metro areas in the US. In fact is it definitely entry level as far as engineering salaries go. if you are in SF or NY it's laughably low. You haven't said the exact details of the job you are advertising but you probably aren't paying enough that is why you are getting bad candidates.

Median household income in the US is $52k. In San Fran, $78k.

Sure, but the op isn't trying to hire a janitor. He is looking for someone with technical experience and social acumen. Those people aren't available for median salaries.

Median != janitor

In SF and NYC that 80k is laughably low because it's expensive to live but also because companies there are abusing young engineers and getting 60+ hrs per week in many cases. I have a senior engineer I pay 130k for 40 hours of work. He tries to bring me salaries of some of his friends that get paid more and I ask him how many hours do they do? 130k@40 hrs is 162k@50 hrs if you value your time. I always negotiate based on desired work load. Tech jobs should really be more clear about hourly expectations for the given salary.

Hey if that argument works for you more power to you. I'm not talking about jobs with inflated work hour expectations though. You just happen to have lucked out and found an engineer who both has the skills you want and hasn't figured out the salary game yet. I'm guessing you would react differently if they brought you an actual offer from another company instead of anecdotes about what their friends make.

No - he has figured out the salary game. He values his time and doesn't want to do crazy hours but when he hears or reads salary data it's never transparent. I've had him for about 4 years and he has 9 yrs experience as a full-stack dev.

I understand what you're saying and I agree if it's not entry level and in a major market, but you don't have enough data to suggest that the parent didn't find anyone they want because of a low salary. All I'm saying is that if you are offering 80k and only expect 40 hrs, he should probably be clear about that because that could help him attract better candidates who value their time. Otherwise, I agree it could look low depending on where he is.

Eh, it depends. Odds are you're right IMHO, but it's quite possible exclusiv is honest and really does run a shop that has an unusually good work-life balance.

OTOH my experience is that pay and hours expectations are orthogonal in the software/IT industry! Like, meaning you can find jobs that pay low and expect low hours, jobs that pay low and expect high hours, jobs that pay high and expect low hours, and jobs that pay high and expect high hours, and all points in between. If only it were easy to tell at the interview stage, you know which one I'd try to get, but it's hard to really know what a company is like till you're there -- and different teams/depts at the same company can have wildly different situations.

I wouldn't have high retention if I didn't have the approach I outlined. The market is frothy. I ask all candidates what they prefer regarding hours so we're all on the same page from the get go. If you want to put in 60 and get compensated for it then I'll negotiate based on that. Most employees stick to 40 and Fridays are super light. Most work from home at least 2 days per week too. I'm exploring doing 32 hrs for new roles.

When I interviewed personally I always asked what the hours expectation was because I knew the game as I had been abused before. So I'd try to ask employees at a prospective company to get the real scoop if possible. It's dishonest to demand crazy hours and not compensate. It also leads to high attrition and I'm not in business to spend time replacing people and risking losing clients over it.

$80k is a substantial amount of money in, say, Houston (4th most populous city in the US) or Phoenix (6th most populous city in the US).

SF's COL is 51% higher than Houston (ie, $80k in Houston ~ $121k in SF), and 73% higher than Phoenix ($80k in Phoenix ~ $138k in SF).

Factor in additional earnings potential for multi-earner households and $80k for a single earner can be quite a lot in the right "major metro area".

It depends on the lens you're looking thru: $80k isn't substantial compared to other Software Engineer salaries. It might be substantial compared to other job classes.

Why don't you pay more than 80k then and get someone to leave their other job? Employers responding to a skills shortage by complaining rather than raising wages is one major cause of the market failure.

>The word "shortage" pops up often in these types of conversations, but the word I'd prefer is "mismatch". Me and the people I know are hiring aggressively, all the time, for people who know about engineering, product design, data analysis, etc. There are lots of jobs. Most of the people you walk past on the street just don't know how to do them.

Even if they knew they'd still be a shortage, because while you might have this kind of high-end jobs, the people on the street are much more than what's needed for those open positions.

This ignores the fact that the shortage exists for reasons beyond training. IQ/specific aptitude is incredibly important in tech.

Being nice to everyone and pretending that aptitude doesn't matter is a recipe for disaster, and makes it harder to think hard about real solutions.

I'm not fully on board with UBI, but I think it's a step in a better direction than dumping resources into "training."