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Comment by hollywood_court | Hacker News Reader

I imagine we’d have that skilled workforce if companies paid enough.

I’m a former construction contractor who reinvented myself as a software developer.

Each time I run into one of my former peers in the construction industry I hear the same complaints from them. “We can’t hire any good help.” Yet they are still paying the same non living wages that they have for 30 years.

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I don't think that dynamic is the same in construction and in semiconductor manufacturing. Certain parts of the chip-building supply chain just plain don't exist in the USA, and so no one in the USA currently has those skills. It's not like there are lots of folks with the skills in the USA but they're all leaving the industry for higher paying jobs.

The reason there are not a lot of folks with the skills in the USA is because 30 years ago, the US labor market did not appropriately reward those parts of the chip building supply chain. Same dynamic as not paying construction workers enough, just with a greater time lag.

I think the distinction is still important, in that the time lag is large enough to have changed the current dynamics, even if they still match on longer timescales. Raising salaries a bit could stem the outflow of construction workers, and raising salaries sufficiently could bring folks like the prior commenter back into the industry. But as more time passes this gets less and less effective, because there's no one left in the industry to retain and no one with recent enough knowledge to pull back in.

What skills are they, specifically? I'd like to see companies like Intel make a resource describing them, at least, and at most, offer to pay training costs and offer a job at the end of it.

The type of work does matter. If I had the choice between a low-pay office job and a low-pay physical labor job, many would pick the office.

That depends. When I was young and the weather was nice the physical labor job sounded really nice. However physical labor also means when it is -1C and raining, or 40C with no clouds. Now that I'm older my body isn't willing to do that and the office job is a lot nicer (but my doctor keeps telling me to stay active)

You, sure.

Half the dudes in my high school class couldn’t manage to write a coherent 5 paragraph essay, so low pay office work is not really an option for them.

To be clear, I'm not saying we can't have this skilled workforce. Merely that we don't have it today. So the pipeline to employ Americans for these jobs is going to require increasing the funnel of people who learn the skills, become junior engineers, learn more on the job, then become senior engineers. That's a long pipeline to beef up the numbers.

I'm waiting for those job postings of "Junior Engineer with 5 years of experience minimum" in companies with zero pipeline of in-house training.

Not saying this with snark, but how many of those former peers work for companies with a clear pipeline to train people? Usually when I hear complaints like "We can't hire or keep good help" it's correlated with a company who isn't willing to invest in developing their workforce.

Not sure where in construction he was, but I've worked framing crews before, and the boss would hire anybody (not disabled) who said they were willing to work hard. It isn't hard to teach someone the basic tasks and most people could catch on in just an hour. Most people though realized it was physically hard work and quit in a week (even though this should be obvious).

Plumbers and electricians have a good start from nothing apprentice program. They are sometimes hard to get into, but I know a few people who have gotten in over the years.

If you are training people and they aren’t staying, isn’t the implication that you aren’t paying them enough? Those union apprenticeships are often hard to come by because 1) they pay quite well compared to other viable options and 2) people don't want to leave because of #1. If the job is demanding, the pay should be commensurate. The exception is if it’s rewarding on some other axis (e.g., socially).

Hope you’ll excuse the somewhat off-topic nature of my comment: I’d be curious in hearing your story how you transitioned into software development from construction - would you mind passing along contact information or reaching out to me? I’m in a similar boat and thinking long and hard about my options!

Yes and:

Record corporate profits while wages stagnated. Coincidence?

Is American labor really more expensive? Really?

Or do American workers simply have the unforgivable expectation of some kind of profit sharing?

(Yes, yes, yes. CoL in the economically important parts of America is higher. Again, the root cause being windfall profits for the elite.)

Intel pays its employees very well. They also have generous vacation allotments, and paid sabbaticals every 4 years.

For the record I am not an Intel rep lol this is just based on my opinion & expedrience

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