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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

I'm at a loss for how trimming budget can ever really lead to increased performance. "Do better" is not a plan. And if you are behind, as in most areas of life, things are more expensive to catch up. I'm not aware of any case where this is not the way of things.

Such that, in large, I would expect areas that have poor families to, in fact, be more expensive to educate than areas with well off families. Many of the kids are literally having to catch up. Not just learn the curriculum, but catch up on a lot of learning they never had access to.

"Do better, or perish" is the way of small businesses. Where most of them fall into the perish scenario.

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Our high school scores for English and math were 30.1% and 25.9%.

We had Iowa towns that were in the 90%s.

No, I cannot compare them, you are right, these people were exactly where they should have been.

Is this sentiment perhaps a bit biased, especially for what I am paying.

(Yes, I live in one of the most affordable places in the U.S.)

I'm not even sure what you are suggesting, to be honest. My point was that if you want scores to improve, you will have to pay more. Pretty much period. You don't get improvement, at any level, for free. Certainly not by cutting funding.

Keeping the same level of funding will at best tread water. Likely, the area will fall, though. And I certainly wouldn't be comfortable pushing that outcome.

Management talent makes more happen for less.

That's what we expect, as industrial management moved our industry offshore.

Education has no right of excusal. Perform.

Management talent, I would push, is largely a myth. I'm sure it matters more than I'd give it credit, but so does a lot of capital cost in infrastructure and support that are invisible in your numbers.

And again, industry largely fails and goes bankrupt. Education and townships are not things I would feel comfortable pushing that outcome for.

Also... Offshore movements were pushed not by shrewd management, but by shopping around for cheaper labor. Not sure how that is relevant here?

My understanding is that industrial management only works for certain employments, mainly non-knowledge employment. Learning/education is 100% knowledge, which has performed poorly when offshored for cheaper, at least in my knowledge-based field. You get into knowledge debt, which then needs to be paid down, which costs more than actually having bought good talent in the first place...

So, same thing- if you need to catch up you need to pay more...

This makes about as much logic to me as saying you can hire a junior engineer and expect the quality of a senior engineer if you have a senior manager.

The best management hires the right people for the job to be done, and retains them.

More importantly it fosters them, and gives them the spaces that they need for this to happen.

The best management overlooks the things that do not infringe on the job to be done.

The best management negotiates rather than imposes terms, on all subjects outside of the task.

I agree that capital allocation and management are real and valuable skills, but it doesn't require any significant amount of talent to move industry offshore. It's simply shopping around for the cheapest price that meets requirements and writing up a contract.

Ignoring any potential ethical concerns, offshoring only tends to work financially for short-term tasks that don't require long-term understanding of past work. You mentioned in your previous comment that your department is struggling to find engineers that are willing to stick around long-term to work on your legacy systems. How do you square those two ideas?

Are you suggesting that education should be shifted offshore? Or that lower budgets would attract more talented managers?

Why would anyone who has the talent to "make more happen for less" stay in education considering the abysmal pay?

What I would say to your assertion is this.

I am the last person, hired in 2000, that has stayed with our division/site within our company, who enjoys what they do (Oracle DBA).

Everyone hired since has been gone within 3 years.

We are hiring the wrong people, and I'm starting to quietly state that fact. We need to hire people with an appreciation of computing history, specifically with a desire to learn VMS and OS2200.

In the same way, education needs to hire the "dedicated long-haulers."

These people are probably not in their 20s. Maybe, but likely not.

They need to proselytize, and they need to be efficient.

I acknowledge that such people do not come cheap, but they are the point of the infrastructure.

I'm not sure how this is the same, honestly. I'm assuming most of the folks that left went to more expensive places, but got higher salaries, too? Many probably left to go where they feel they have a better chance at building a family?

Such that, I'm not sure how this works. They should count their luck that they have you happy to be there. But luck only goes so far. Or are my above assertions wrong and you think the people that left made a wrong choice for them?

And my assertion on the cost of education is a bit more nuanced. Specifically, I posit that if you transplanted the teachers from the good schools straight into your school, grades probably would not change. It takes more than just the teachers. Even transplanting the administration would likely not do much. The low performing school doesn't need the same level of skill as the well performing one. It needs better. And more.

If you're going to maintain ancient legacy systems and refuse to modernise, then really your inability to attract talent is your company's own fault. I love computing history, but a career in computing is a learning pathway too.

If your staff are only learning skills they can't apply elsewhere, they're going to feel trapped. I left my last position as a systems integrator because I wasn't learning anything other than how to slap together off-the-shelf solutions and bullshit clients.

If you want new people to stay and you can't teach them skills that are valuable elsewhere, then you need to pay exceptionally well and reassure your staff that their jobs are stable. Ideally including contractually obligated recurring pay increases.

For someone with a 40 year career ahead of them, anything less will always feel like a risky dead-end.

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