Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobThreeThree | Hacker News Reader

>unable to hire for senior and middle positions

As usual with these claims, chances are it's due to the fact that these positions don't pay enough to be competitive.

Maybe, but UK universities don't have much headroom. They can't raise their student fees past the government set level; the government funding per student has decreased; only the oldest institutions have massive endowments; and they don't spend crazy amounts on sport, admin or pampering students.

Some of them can try to squeeze their student base a bit more (increase accommodation prices, reduce subsidies in the food halls, etc) but the students don't have access to private loans so they can't afford much.

Honestly, I don't think this would be such a problem if the job wasn't getting so grim. It's HR 101 that salaries help with recruitment but are less important for retention and that a cash raise can't substitute for a poor working environment. Even with the 20% salary cuts of the last decade I don't think they'd have much trouble obtaining enough staff (outside London) if people felt respected.

I mean... If the voters won't pay more taxes to fund their own educational institutions, then that's that yeah? The people are letting their centers of learning rot because they don't value them.

I fear this is the problem. You see the same for example with underfunding of NHS dentistry, but at least in that case there is the option to work in private practice.

Yep - more taxes, that's the ticket. Universities and the NHS - in need of a tax increase for the last 60 years.

And yet they require a PhD.

I’m back in school and my programming professors have been awful. Really high failure rates even in intro to programming. I already have the knowledge but not the degree and I felt bad for the students so I was wondering if I could teach COP1000 part time. They had a similar opening for an intro to IT class and I started laughing as soon as I saw the requirements and the pay.

They were asking for a PhD and they were paying 40k a year. I’m pretty sure you can make more than that working at Costco, Apple retail, administrative paper pusher or as a server, which require no degree at all.

It’s ridiculous.

And the surrealist list of artificial obstacles and requisites unrelated with the job, (but copy-pasted since middle ages by inertia in each job offer) will alienate your desired target

Reply on news.ycombinator.com