# Why Aren't People Working? (Personal anecdotes only) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 5, 2024, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662 "2024-01-05T17:34:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 25
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/481 "2024-01-22T18:21:45Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Carpenters are safe. Field engineers are safe. Office managers, not so much. Okay, that makes sense. I’ve never worked in a place with an office manager, but have only seen them on TV. The Times is full of op eds from humanities professors with statistics showing that humanities graduates do better in the job market than the stereotyped view. And I suspect that the junior CS grads - if good - will transition to learning how to “program” the AIs so that what comes out is decent, correct, and does what is wanted and nothing else. I’m sure that you’ll agree that a good programmer not only thinks about the goal, but also thinks about the corner cases and how to deal with unexpected inputs. I found that even hot shot hardware engineers didn’t think this way. I usually had to ask what they wanted to do when cases arose they never thought of. That’s going to be important in defining a problem fed into AI, as will figuring out what it really did. Even when the AI companies add stuff to explain why the AI produced what it did, it is going to take a lot of skill to figure it out. Reading a hex dump is going to look simple in comparison. As a present time example, there are a lot of great statistics packages out there, which do stuff that would have required a lot of programming 40 years ago. But using them well is not easy, and requires the same level of skill as coding from scratch. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/482 "2024-01-22T18:36:01Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Probably because they already had a full-time job and a family to take care of. When you factor in commute time, there just aren’t enough hours in a week. I took 2 night classes at a time while working full-time at a desk job, with no kids and a short commute, and it was all I could manage. If I’d had kids at that point, I couldn’t have done it. Not with a spouse with a full-time job and a very long commute. Some people can manage it. Not most. This. When I was at Bell Labs we offered this benefit, and quite a few of the people we hired with Associates Degrees used it to get Bachelors and Masters degrees. I respected them - they had it much harder than I did in grad school. One guy who had a Masters got a PhD. I’m not sure how much they really learned, but advancement was very limited in the tech area unless you had the right degree. As far as I knew all managers supported these people 100%. BTW my daughter teaches a class of MBA students who are all working and subsidized. I don’t know what happens if they are laid off, but I do know that if someone flunks from being caught cheatng they have to pay the tuition themselves. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/483 "2024-01-22T18:52:54Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#): > > You need to combine these thoughts. People are telling you that your method doesn’t work any more. You can’t start in the mailroom and work your way up. Because the mailroom is outsourced, if it even exists. The mailroom and the other employees work for different companies. > > So those jobs are absolutely dead ends and are not going to be valuable for learning. Arguably they should even be avoided for stigma reasons. At least not put on the resume. If you need the money to get through school, go ahead, but it’s not going to be something you take to the next job. > > I think that sort of thing is a vicious cycle certainly, where these environments become more dead end and it’s harder for someone just doing them temporarily to get any value from the environment other than to get the hell out. The longer you stay, the worse it is for you. I think that we are saying the same thing. Even for professional jobs, I feel like they have become more compartmentalized and transactional. And I believe this has a negative consequence for society in that it creates a sort of “rat race to the middle” that seems to be starting earlier and earlier in life. It prevents people from exploring options or even just taking jobs because they might be fun or interesting. That is, unless the job is so interesting that it enhances your application to an Ivy League school or something. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/484 "2024-01-22T19:17:10Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > > [@msmith537](#): > > > > Even the skill of looking for a new job and quickly getting up to speed when I land one is valuable in and of itself. > > I recall a conversation I had when I was CIO of a small software company and I was hiring a dev lead. We were both 40-something and he’d been in IT since college while I had gone in other directions after school and had landed back in IT only recently. > > During the interview I commented that I’d only been in the hot seat on 4 job interviews in my life. He goggled and said he’d had that many this month and indeed most months. > > Both our careers were strong outliers, but still it was eye-opening to both of us just how far an outlier could get. > > We did end up hiring him, which proved to be a mistake. He was great at interviewing, but actually delivering anything was not in his skillset. Talking about delivering was his skillset. Sounds like an ideal candidate for a career at Accenture. Maybe even partner! But that’s part of the problem if companies constantly want outsource work. You get a lot of people who are really good at looking like they know what they are talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Al128](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/al128/32/16541_2.png) [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/485 "2024-01-22T19:24:59Z")
> [@Jay\_Z](#): > > You need to combine these thoughts. People are telling you that your method doesn’t work any more. You can’t start in the mailroom and work your way up. Because the mailroom is outsourced, if it even exists. The mailroom and the other employees work for different companies. > > So those jobs are absolutely dead ends and are not going to be valuable for learning. I work in that industry and about 20% of all temp workers end up being hired by the main company. … and 60% of the temp workers come from unemployment or informal work. So temp work IS a valid entrance door into the “good” job market for less than stellar candidates with decent work ethics. IOW: your only chance for a “not top” talent to work for Coca-Cola/Nestlé/BHP/Santander/etc… is clawing your way up by means of temp work ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/486 "2024-01-22T20:17:14Z")
That’s the thing. No, working in the mail room at Goldman Sachs is not a good pathway to becoming an investment banker. But I assume the company that maintains the mail room has its own career tracks in the broader “building facilities management” industry. Outsourced jobs are still jobs for someone. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/487 "2024-01-22T21:00:43Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > That’s the thing. No, working in the mail room at Goldman Sachs is not a good pathway to becoming an investment banker. I mean, sure, of course not. But Sandy Weill did start as a runner for Bear Stearns… ---
**Author:** ![InsomniaMama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ad7895/32.png) [@InsomniaMama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InsomniaMama)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2024, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/488 "2024-01-22T22:35:38Z")
And of course, Better Call Saul is an excellent example… ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/489 "2024-01-23T00:05:00Z")
The employers I had that had this benefit did have a major stipulation, and it was that the class would be related to their job in some way. That may be why so few people pursued it. I could definitely see it being used by, for instance, a certificate RN who has 3 classes to go to get their BSN. My brother is something like 15 credits short of a bachelor’s degree, and about 10 years ago, he looked into his own employer’s tuition reimbursement program. He was approved for it, and even started the sign-up process for online classes, and beyond that, the red tape wasn’t worth it to him so he didn’t pursue it any further. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/490 "2024-01-23T00:10:00Z")
Pay the tuition themselves, on top of being kicked out of the class, I hope? I should add that the tuition reimbursement programs I’m familiar with required the employee to pay upfront, and then they could be reimbursed if they finished the class with a C or better. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/491 "2024-01-23T00:49:54Z")
> [@InsomniaMama](#): > > And of course, Better Call Saul is an excellent example… Not to mention The Hudsucker Proxy. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/492 "2024-01-23T02:46:36Z")
@Jay_Z - Just to clarify, I never "worked my way up from the mailroom. I worked temp jobs to make some extra money but as I advanced in my college degree I found new and different jobs that were more in line with my education. > [@Al128](#): > > > [@Jay\_Z](#): > > > > You need to combine these thoughts. People are telling you that your method doesn’t work any more. You can’t start in the mailroom and work your way up. Because the mailroom is outsourced, if it even exists. The mailroom and the other employees work for different companies. > > > > So those jobs are absolutely dead ends and are not going to be valuable for learning. > > I work in that industry and about 20% of all temp workers end up being hired by the main company. > > … and 60% of the temp workers come from unemployment or informal work. So temp work IS a valid entrance door into the “good” job market for less than stellar candidates with decent work ethics. > > IOW: your only chance for a “not top” talent to work for Coca-Cola/Nestlé/BHP/Santander/etc… is clawing your way up by means of temp work Are you considering contractors and people who work for consulting firms as “temps”? When I think of a “temp” I think of a low-level office worker hired to fill in for Janice the Receptionist who is on extended leave. I haven’t really seen those sort of workers around offices since the 90s. OTOH, I see a lot of contractors and consultants. Particularly in IT for technical jobs, project managers, business analysts, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/493 "2024-01-23T09:33:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Are you considering contractors and people who work for consulting firms as “temps”? When I think of a “temp” I think of a low-level office worker hired to fill in for Janice the Receptionist who is on extended leave. I haven’t really seen those sort of workers around offices since the 90s. Yep. I used to be one of those office temp workers. Did it _full time_, meaning for 40 hours a week I was a substitute worker for one or another business. Sometimes it was just for a day, sometimes a longer term. Shortest gig was 4 hours. Longest was 18 months. Some weeks I worked five different places, others just one. Worked in a lot of different places and types of businesses. Really enjoyed it, especially when I had been at it long enough to earn paid vacation time. This was when computers were just entering offices in a big way. If I had a day I wasn’t on assignment I’d show up at the local office and use their training machines/programs to learn new software packages, especially the ones other temps didn’t like (often for good reason - some were terribly awkward) and get qualified on them so I would have more opportunities to work. Got to the point that when one gig ended the office would put two or three new choices in front of me and I’d pick the one I wanted. Except for the lack of medical benefits and retirement package it was a great job. Then I started getting hired away. Why not? I was trained on a lot of different office things, could handle a lot of situations, not easily flustered, adaptable… got several long-term permanent jobs out temping. Tried to go back to that after getting laid off in 2007. Alas, it was no longer the '90’s and the industry had changed. Also, everyone was trying to do the exact same thing. Through in interesting series of events and social contacts that’s when I wound up working in construction for a few years because office temping was no longer viable for me. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2024, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/494 "2024-01-23T21:26:24Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > We did end up hiring him, which proved to be a mistake. He was great at interviewing, but actually delivering anything was not in his skillset. Talking about delivering was his skillset. Damn, ain’t it the truth? The company I retired from hired a guy as a Systems Programmer (the title back 40 years ago), but it turned out he was a better interview-talker than systems programmer, so he got shuffled down a level. This continued for another three or so shuffles, and last I heard, he was in charge of the IT department’s charitable contributions campaign. > [@Voyager](#): > > Reading a hex dump is going to look simple in comparison. Oh, man, you just made me have a flashback to the IBM green card. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2024, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/495 "2024-01-24T02:11:48Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Pay the tuition themselves, on top of being kicked out of the class, I hope? Absolutely. They fear my daughter, because she takes cheating seriously. To the credit of the school, they’ve backed her up. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2024, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/496 "2024-01-24T16:30:59Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > > [@LSLGuy](#): > > > > We did end up hiring him, which proved to be a mistake. He was great at interviewing, but actually delivering anything was not in his skillset. Talking about delivering was his skillset. > > Damn, ain’t it the truth? The company I retired from hired a guy as a Systems Programmer (the title back 40 years ago), but it turned out he was a better interview-talker than systems programmer, so he got shuffled down a level. This continued for another three or so shuffles, and last I heard, he was in charge of the IT department’s charitable contributions campaign. That’s a job? Did they not fire useless people back in the 80s? I feel like 40 years ago big companies used to hire all these people and if any of them didn’t perform for one reason or another they shuffled them to some backwater to spend the rest of their career sitting in some cubicle doing nothing like Milton from Office Space. People are all worried about AI taking their jobs, but I feel like a lot of people’s jobs can just be eliminated, period. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2024, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/497 "2024-01-24T20:01:18Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I still remain dubious that many unskilled jobs have such benefits. My job has me regularly work with vocational experts who keep up on employment trends. I’ll next meet one on Wed, and will ask her for her opinion on this. Spoke w/ a “vocational expert” today w/ 40 yrs experience in vocat rehab/job placement. She said approx 50% of US jobs were unskilled - requiring less than 30 days to learn. She said educational benefits were far more common in larger firms with more than 100 employees. I asked her about “dead end” jobs with little realistic chance of advancement. She said that was quite common in unskilled work and gave the example of Amazon - which she has done a lot of work with. She said many college grads join Amazon, working on the lines, thinking they will be able to advance into management, but that only happens exceedingly rarely. Sorry not more specific, and only one person’s opinions, but I thought it was minimally relevant to this thread. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2024, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/498 "2024-01-24T20:41:56Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > That’s a job? Did they not fire useless people back in the 80s? I feel like 40 years ago big companies used to hire all these people and if any of them didn’t perform for one reason or another they shuffled them to some backwater to spend the rest of their career sitting in some cubicle doing nothing like Milton from Office Space. LOL. Yeah, at that company the word was that the only way to get fired was to mutilate a secretary. The downward shuffle could go on almost forever. Oh, and the charitable contributions boss job was basically created for him. It used to be a temporary job for brown nosers. ---
**Author:** ![Cityyewtree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cityyewtree/32/15992_2.png) [@Cityyewtree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cityyewtree)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2024, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/499 "2024-01-24T22:35:11Z")
Mutual loyalty seems almost extinct in many given environments and it’s deeply unfortunate just how many people are blind to this stark fact or if they are aware, too readily admit defeat in trying to change it, rather than climb that mountain that’s the challenge of establishing genuine mutual loyalty. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2024, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662/500 "2024-01-25T01:35:20Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > She said that was quite common in unskilled work and gave the example of Amazon - which she has done a lot of work with. She said many college grads join Amazon, working on the lines, thinking they will be able to advance into management, but that only happens exceedingly rarely. My experience in an Amazon warehouse was very different. They had pretty clearly defined path to management and many people took advantage of it. Many people didn’t use it since it was expected that you to transfer to other warehouses across the country regularly. It was well known that one of the management team had pretty much stopped his career advancement by refusing to transfer since he had school-age kids. In seven years there, I had a revolving door of 20-something age bosses that spent about 6 months at our site between transfers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662.md?page=24) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-people-working-personal-anecdotes-only/995662.md?page=26)