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Comment by erik_seaberg | Hacker News Reader

It’s a free-rider problem. How can you compete with me when only you bear training costs while only I benefit from the worker’s skill?

A key question is whether the training is actually worth what’s being charged for it.

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is it though? you’re training people so they can be competent at the job they’ve been hired for and then they what take their skills and go do the same thing at a different company? Why would they do that when they already have a job at your company? There must be a reason for them to be leaving in sufficient numbers to cause you problems…

maybe if i don't suffer the cost of training juniors then i can offer a higher salary?

Or maybe I have all the customers because I can afford to sell at lower margins.

sure, but if i don't pay a higher salary then i won't be able to poach the employees you just trained.

So you pay them a little more but less than the cost of training. Win-win (previous employer loses).

The same issue comes up any time a company makes an "investment" in their staff. The bigger the investment, the bigger the incentive to jump ship.

then maybe you should stop training people; or think for a second that if you are the one training everybody you can take a little less profit in exchange for starving your competitors of trained employees. Besides it works itself out anyway if they stay on longer even though it takes you longer to recoup your training costs. tldr this training argument is full of contradictions

it works itself out anyway if they stay on longer

but they don't stay longer. and unfortunately a pleasant work environment doesn't help because juniors don't know yet that other companies are different. it takes working for a few companies before someone learns to value work culture over a higher salary.

finding the right balance is not easy.

Enjoy living in a country with poorly-trained workers then, I guess.

that's the challenge, especially for foreign companies trying to hire locals. in china big companies pay good salaries but they also often don't have a good work culture. i got better results hiring juniors who have not yet experienced that work culture. at least in china students do learn programming so they are not poorly trained. a friend of mine tried that in another country and could not make it work.

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