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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> "Who's gonna go teach a high school class for $50,000 a year when they can make $85 to $100,000 a year... in the trades?"

Support for woodshop and metal classes offered in high school disappeared in the early 2000s to make way for computer labs, Ray said.

We don’t pay enough and then complain there is a labor shortage.

Same for teachers.

At the same time I was watching as a local office building was built. On Sunday they would roll in a bus full of what looked like immigrant workers, with a few supervisors. Then in the evening they’d gather them all and drive them away. I hope I am wrong, but it seemed shady and abusive. Can’t imagine they were all compensated properly and had good health insurance.

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A long time ago, there was a McDonald's in the Darien, CT area that found it was cheaper to bus in workers from NYC because the local kids refused to work for minimum wage. Other similar area businesses would only hire retirees because the local teenagers either didn't want to work for low wages or wouldn't show up consistently.

The (technology) company I worked for at the time ran into this problem. We had a high-schooler who did some product photography and other miscellaneous tasks. He took the job to pay for gas for his motorcycle (dad agreed to buy it for him, but made him get a job to pay for the rest). He'd show up for a few days until he had made enough money, then would disappear until payday.

IIRC, at the time Darien had the second-highest per-capita income in the country, so its problems were a bit unusual. Unusual problems require unusual solutions.

> they would roll in a bus full of what looked like immigrant workers, with a few supervisors. Then in the evening they’d gather them all and drive them away. I hope I am wrong, but it seemed shady and abusive.

This is just modern immigrant labor procurement.

You get nasty fines for hiring illegals directly. Instead you hire a fly-by-night company with a bus to recruit them and attest to having checked all the paperwork.

When INS shows up, your hands are clean.

No more abusive than the old way, just more middlemen involved.

> Support for woodshop and metal classes offered in high school disappeared in the early 2000s to make way for computer labs, Ray said.

I graduated in the 90's and my high school had (and still does have) amazing facilities, since it also hosted the regional technical career center which had a broad range of offerings ranging from culinary arts, trades, homebuilding (they'd literally build a house every so often), finance/accounting, digital media & arts. Wood shops, metal shops, a restaurant, computer labs, etc. were all part of the facilities.

Kids on college-track course plans didn't really have an opportunity to take advantage of this stuff, but for those not on the college-track, it gave them a great jump start into trade careers.

Shop classes (and "Home Ec") vanished decades before computer classes showed up. At least in my part of the US.

> We don’t pay enough and then complain there is a labor shortage

Definitely this - there should be no such thing as a labor shortage under capitalism, you can always pay more to get workers, and if the business can't afford that then it's a fault in the business model. At that point the ideal outcome is for the business to go under and sell off their assets at a low market value to recoup losses - which frees up those resources for new businesses to form

>>> "Who's gonna go teach a high school class for $50,000 a year when they can make $85 to $100,000 a year... in the trades?"

I don't have the last 10 year data, but from ~2000-2014 the pupil-teacher ratio was flat and at all time recorded lows. This works against the thesis there is a shortage relative to post WW-II history.

It appears whatever teachers is paid, the feeling they get from helping kids vs building cogs for evilCo must be enough additional incentive to keep us near record low pupil-teacher ratio.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_208.20.a...

That's the thing though. Working for some highly bureaucratic and political organization (i.e. any given school district) where you're micromanaged by management but thrown under the bus by them when convenient, where you see waste all around you, you see bad teachers who play the game well rewarded, where you see all sorts of dumb stuff going on that is counterproductive to the mission of actually educating children feels a hell of a lot like working at evilCo. And if you're gonna work for evil, you had better get compensated accordingly. You either pay them in dollars or you pay them in intangibles (i.e. a job that's so good people will do it for cheap). School districts are incapable of providing the latter and the demoralizing work environment creates the kind of demoralized, jaded and poorly performing employees that taxpayers will not agree to pay more to creating a self-reinforcing local minimum.

The latest info I'm able to find indicates we're still close to record low pupil-teacher ratios. So teachers are working, and even meeting students in ratio basically as close as ever (post WW-II at least).

> demoralized, jaded and poorly performing employee

Ah this is a teacher bashing session to disparage the ones we currently have. Personally I highly value the efforts of our teachers and can't imagine making such a statement.

>Working for some highly bureaucratic and political organization (i.e. any given school district)

I think we're on the same page here. If you want to argue the idea of the institution of public schooling sucks, I won't disagree with you. That's why my jurisdiction has voted to allow you to use your tax money to bypass the public school district institution.

>Ah this is a teacher bashing session to disparage the ones we currently have. Personally I highly value the efforts of our teachers and can't imagine making such a statement.

Have you ever actually worked for government or highly bureaucratic government adjacent industries?

There's a reason the phrase "going postal" exists. The conditions at these sort of highly bureaucratic and regulated to the hilt employers with broken incentive systems really wears on the average person. Working for these shitty organizations (which most are, although there are occasional pockets of goodness) wears on you. Most people become jaded and you just phone it in and do the minimum because even if you hit your KPIs the pay is almost all based on seniority anyway.

Tons of people go on to be good performing employees once they leave this environment. Many who stay start a side business and continue to be jaded at their 9-5 work but pour all their real effort into the side business which at least prevents them from burning out too hard.

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