Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lostgame | Hacker News Reader

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What else can you expect in a mass-manufacturing-based economy; where even the act producing or manufacturing locally is worthy of pride?

Margins need to be as razor-thin as possible in order to complete, and payroll is often one of the largest expenses.

As a result there will be a significant group of jobs by which little experience is required and turnover may be high - but since the jobs don’t require a lot of skill, the high turnover rate is not an issue.

For this job group, there is no reason to improve the working conditions, as, from the outset - these workers are never expected to stay for long.

An individual like a Junior Software Developer working on a large codebase that‘s existed for time, gets more valuable to the employer over the years, as their knowledge of that company’s particular codebase grows, and how the workflow of their company functions.

A Junior developer, then, has a career path - as they demonstrate their knowledge in the codebase they move from Junior to Intermediate to Senior and thusly by the time they may reach management they have demonstrated an aptitude in it.

Labor is one of the largest expenses in part because it has to account for the inefficiencies introduced by turnover (including on-ramping, i.e., training). Many of the jobs deemed "unskilled" actually do require skill and experience to perform in a proficient manner.

It's true that anyone can flip a burger or poor a cup of coffee, just as it's true that anyone can hunt-and-peck a command; it's something else to be able to manage a kitchen and dining room with one or two assistants during peak, 6 hours into a shift that was scheduled with only a week's notice, observing food safety practices and producing the correct order from dozens of options in a timely manner and with unflappable hospitality, as many food service jobs now require of their employees. This while people complain about the difficulty of hosting family for dinner once a year.

Class, race, and gender associations have much to do with our perceptions.

The thing about unskilled jobs is that ability of being able to complete a task is a pretty low bar. You can always increase productivity through work experience.

The question then becomes at what "time to task completion" and "size of task repertoire" does a job become economically viable for an employer. I tend to think that the line between unskilled and skilled, barring educational or professional requirements, parallels the line between a dialect and a language: "skilled" work is "unskilled" work with a union.

'Only' a week's notice. Ha!

Right. That's the stated policy, for jobs that pay a few thousand dollars a year short, at full time, of making a bare-bones life affordable. So for those who have to have a second job, or who rely on inadequate public transportation, or who are at the whims of supervisors who don't observe policy, that is a major problem.

Payroll, in fact, is a very small slice of manufacturing costs. Actual components, overhead, utilities, equipment,etc. all are larger pieces of the COGS. More automation, IoT compatibility are the keys to reducing costs. Less real estate, more remote logins for support (the folks on the other end of that call earn, too).

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