"I think we have a skill shortage. "
To be more precise we have a lack of will to train people. The big companies sit on piles of cash, complain about worker shortage but they are not willing to invest in their workers.
To be more precise we have a lack of will to train people. The big companies sit on piles of cash, complain about worker shortage but they are not willing to invest in their workers.
I agree that the environment could be more conducive to encourage people to get education; many companies do have that in place.
(1) Why is it the government's job to motivate people? Shouldn't people be motivated by their own self-interest?
(2) The rise of bigger government and a welfare state might even be contributing to the problem, but debasing the impetus to train. Some carefully considered welfare can provide relief to an acute problem, but long term welfare is counterproductive.
Why should our government and workers subsidize company training with student loans?
> Shouldn't people be motivated by their own self-interest?
It should also be in the company's self-interest to train its workers, it's just because of a bad worker-employer leverage balance that they don't take advantage of that.
I mean most companies can't even interview well and it's a lot easier to just do it the old way that they've been doing it forever rather than stick your neck out and try something new and barely quantifiable if at all. Especially when HR has the final say.
You can look at Kansas for the problems that are caused by policymakers blindly lowering taxes without respect for the likely consequences.
* Converting social program cliffs into gradients would incentivize people to seek alternatives to unemployment insurance.
* Amnesty for those currently on SSDI if they go back to work (going on disability requires filing a federal form stating that you are physically/mentally unable to work, so later going back to work is effectively fraud).
* Convert programs like {Section 8 housing, Food stamps, etc} to a UBI-like cash program without a cliff when you get a job. Don't penalize people for making a minimal amount of income.
They (government) also could spend the unemployment benefit towards training people instead of just giving them the money.
Oh, and also making sure that he was forced to pay for Cobra and go through the whole re-hire contingency process, and screwing up his seniority at the company.
There are some hateful, hateful people out there whose only joy is causing as much pain as possible for other people.
Hmm. I wonder what POTUS gave them that idea.....
I think the real question is: would making the interview process more accessible through offering courses increase the average quality of hires? Or allow more hires of the same quality? That's not clear. The actual white-boarding is pretty far divorced from day to day work, even at BigTechCo. An argument could be made that self-driven prepping for an arbitrary filter is the actual thing being tested, since it correlates more with success. Courses, although reducing the noise that comes from differing levels of prior exposure to those types of questions, would simultaneously decrease the self-motivation signal.
I mean, it's like they're trying to eliminate all human beings from consideration, before they even get started.
It's a good idea, though, it probably just has a few practical barriers.
the problem is, aptitude for technical skills is, to say the least, not uniformly distributed in the population. it's not like factory work. in addition to programming and sysadmin/devops, this includes stuff like CNC and auto technician/mechanics and electricians and plumbers.
if they were to take un-degreed un-proven people and try to train them in tech work, probably 99% of them would drop out.
have you ever seen a college CS weeder course? it's not pretty. imagine that, except with not even the luxury of a college acceptance filter. so why in the world do that, when there's a perfectly good feeder system of experienced proven workers and proven college grads?
And, quite frankly, just because you were able to do it, does not mean that it's not an incredibly shitty thing to expect of everyone else, or that those who aren't able to do it aren't somehow less deserving.
I'd go so far as to argue that the foundations of a successful technical career need the groundwork laid out for them way before someone turns 18. It requires a supportive, nuclear household where science and knowledge are held in high regard. Having at least one parent being technically apt is a big plus also.