Hacker News Reader

Comment by aspensmonster | Hacker News Reader

>Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company recently decided to open a new factory in Poland...

This was the solution? Seriously? Going through the hassle of opening up a factory on the other side of the planet across language and legal barriers all because the local population in Oklahoma didn't come shrink-wrapped precisely as ordered? Seems to me that a far more simple solution would be to train your work force, rather than externalize that responsibility. If the problems are really so systemic as they are claimed, then demonstrate some civic responsibility and see to it that your community gets its act together.

View on HN

I fail to see how that is a more simple solution. Teaching people how to think is both an educational and cultural challenge which far exceeds the trivial challenge of outsourcing work.

People have a wide range of different responsibilities (self, family, local community, humankind etc). I don't see why Polish people are morally any less deserving of jobs than Oklahomans. This company clearly thinks the Polish are more capable of doing the job. Who are we to say otherwise?

But don't you see, the Poles sit on the other side of the fence!

(Yes, this kind of nationalism bothers me no end.)

This comment is so naive that it hurts. So the company is supposed to push through an educational reform and wait 10-15 years for their future employees to go through the system before it can hire them?

Or spend two weeks training them to work on a biscuit making assembly line or babysit machinery that they'll have to be trained on anyway.

But I have a feeling this is less about having a basic skillset and more about that few Americans wanted to spend their time doing that kind of work for what they were willing to pay.

The point of public education is that all of us contribute to it (through taxes) for the common good and all of us reap the rewards of an educated workforce and electorate. If public education has failed, then you can't expect a business to make up for that singlehandedly when it's more profitable to get what they need elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com