Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

It will be worse for the employers than anyone else. McDonald's can train anyone to flip a burger, but if they are only getting 2 hours of work from someone they are net negative as the person training could do the job. With just a little experience though the new person can flip burgers on his own leaving the trainer to do some other station.

The same for every other job - you are either hiring someone who already has the experience to do the job right, or you are hiring someone for long enough that the time spent teaching them to do the job is paid off by all the work they do after they learn how to do it.

View on HN

I know flipping burgers is the colloquial term, but Mcdonalds hasn't been flipping burgers for more than 20 years. They cook their burgers in heated clamshells, which cook both sides of the burgers at once. Half the cook time, no flipping required.

If you ever read "Supersize Me", you would know that fast food is designed around very high turnover. Walmart does that as well.

Instead of paying more or providing a better workplace, these companies just figure another sucker will come along.

High Turnover within certain boundaries. 1:1 training to time on job would be disastrous. And it does take training to work at McDonald's.

Right, it is better to say McDonald's is oriented around fast training. If you speak the local language they can turn you into an employee worth having in just a few hours. Then over the next months they will teach you more and more things as you prove you worth.

McDonald's probably can be automated enough to do without any burger flippers.

It wouldn't surprise me if the programming, repairing, and regular maintenance of automated burger flippers cost more than a fleet of humans (that are versatile enough to also be able to take orders and clean tables.)

It's a very common mistake to reach for automation because it makes things locally more efficient but forget all the things it makes less flexible and thus less efficient.

And don't forget that governments will subsidize your low wage employees with things like food stamps and WIC but they won't subsidize the capital cost and ongoing maintenance of your robots.

They can - but robots are expensive, and so probably they can't afford it yet.

In most companies the cost for full time workers is higher per hour, since often you need to pay for additional leave, pension, rights etc

Short term workers usually cost more per minute, but they may be cheaper overall since you can get away with only paying them precisely when they are contributing to your bottom line.

This is where technology comes to the rescue, by de-skilling jobs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com