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Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

I think it will come down to money. People work with hot tar in the blazing sun for money, and toil in Amazon warehouses for money. Make it worth people's while and yeah, they'll work in semiconducting manufacturing.

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It is interesting how often people push back against this solution. We see so many people choose careers based on the projected earnings. It is even a stereotype for immigrants: you can be a doctor, lawyer, (or now) software engineer. Ironically I think the rich would get richer if they chose to pay many of these employees more. We often frame things as zero sum games, but clearly this is a positive sum one. You invent new things and new wealth has entered the world.

heck, Henry ford started this buy increases wages so much his employees where able to buy the product they themselves have build.

It especially comes down to money when you're trying to hire people who don't have a college degree or who can't get a good paying job with their degree.

You basically have to be making enough money to live well before you get to a point where you can genuinely care about things other than the money. Either that or the other factors have to be absolute necessities for you.

Of course the McJobs will have to pay more if somebody hires away too much of their labor pool and they can't find anybody who wants to work for $15 an hour anymore just like they had to start paying more than minimum wage a few years ago when Amazon started paying $15 an hour for warehouse workers. That's why there's so much pushback against this idea.

Offering people time and flexibility is also effective. Some could work '4 on 4 off' schedules, for example.

It is funny how simple it really is. Everyone has a price and every job has a price. If people can get a better paying job under roughly equivalent working conditions they will do that. When I hear people complain that they can’t find good help it makes me laugh. The answer is and always has been the same.

I am interested in what percentage of these jobs will be able to be filled by individuals with a high school diploma or associates degree.

Yes. The same applies to infosec, COBOL, and other niches where jerbs allegedly can't be filled: pay more money to attract better and more people.

Software jobs don't have manufacturing overhead. You can't compare them to other technical fields.

You can in terms of labor supply and demand, just not in terms of capital intensity.

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