Note to be cynical or anything, but it sounds like subsidizing part of a non-managerial employee’s MBA degree is a great way for a company to attract, retain, and upskill hard-working, highly motivated admin workers for a guaranteed period of at least several years.
All for a price much less than what it would cost to promote them to management, or to handle the higher turnover rates if their dissatisfaction with their lack of advancement prospects inspires them to jump ship.
Not to belabor the point - By Arthur Andersen “blow up” I assumed you meant the Enron scandal that caused them to go out of business in 2002. But yes, you are correct that they were forced to change their name sometime after the split.
If hard work was so great the rich would have kept it to themselves.
No, it really isn’t.
Oh, you’ll get a brief bump in morale, but once they find out they’ve been lied to you’ll have resentful, simmering, pissed off non-mangerial employees who while they might remain the number of years required to avoid having to pay back tuition money are likely to jump ship the very next day after that time is up. And also just phone it in because why bother giving it your all when doing so doesn’t get you anything? Best to only give the minimum to that job and save your energy for finding a place that will let you climb. And they’ll let their network of people know it’s a shell game so over time you might have a harder time attracting those hard-working, motivated admin types.
Somehow, management never considers that the people under them can have brains and also have friends and a network as well.
Look, no one is saying that a new graduate should step into running a major division of a company but it’s just plain classism to say they could never step up to a low-level management job, gain experience, and work their way up the ladder. I even mentioned one such person who went elsewhere, got actual management experience, came back and was told that none of that matters, because he had at one point worked as an admin there were no circumstances ever where he’d even be considered for a management job, no matter his qualifications, experience, and recommendations. That’s just stupid. It’s a company kicking talent and ambition to the curb for reasons that have nothing to do with doing a job and everything to do with prejudice.
Contrast that with where I currently work, where we regularly have people stepping into initial management roles without a fancy degree. My current company identifies people with talent and ambition, gives them a bump, then tells them what training and education will let them climb the ladder higher, along with subsidizing their education. Funny how they also have people who have worked for the company 20 or 30 years even in these times. The current store director started as a part-time cashier and worked her way up. The one before her jumped ship from a company that refused to promote her and is now a regional manager.
Hell, they’ve even talked me into stepping up to the next rung on the ladder and I’ve never been very ambitious and only have about 10 years left before I plan to retire.
One more time - it’s stupid to rule out promoting someone because of where they started in a company. It’s even more stupid to spend thousands of dollars on educating them if the company will never ever use that education for the company’s benefit.
I’d say that sort of false promise is also unethical but I long ago gave up on expecting ethics or morals from corporations.
Speaking from experience, promoting from within creates greater buy-in, loyalty and effort from employees. I have seen myself absolutely transform as well as other employees in my agency who were promoted to leadership roles when the shit hit the fan. We were all just waiting for our chance, we got our chance, and now you couldn’t drag me away from this place.
To me this is the most off-putting, and most telling, aspect of corporate speak, PR-speak, and HR-speak.
It’s the deep-seated assumption that every worker but them is a drooling moron who will readily fall for obvious double-talk, obvious double standards, and total BS.
In may ways IMO corps would do better to say the quiet part up front: “We think you are almost too stupid to breath. That’s why we’re doing things the hard way ‘for your conveneince’, or refusing to promote low-level staffers to low level management, or whatever.”
The current CEO of Costco started as a forklift driver at its predecessor, Price Club.
I saw a video where Jim Cramer, interviewing Vachris, was shocked that a company like Costco can make a good profit while not screwing its workers. Maybe his origin explains why he gets it.
Cramer is weirdly out of touch. During the UAW strike I saw some clips of him where he was genuinely puzzled to see polls showed people supported the workers over management.
When you’re an investor, everything looks like an investment. Even your kids.
I get that everyone hates work but I’m wondering how people manage to not work.
The typical tracks I’ve seen are:
Wife says “fuck this” and decides to be a SAHM. Or maybe takes some side job teaching children’s dance or some sort of “make your own hours” “fully remote” job while the husband works the high-powered full-time corporate job.
They just sponge off friends and relatives for as long as it is tolerated. Which could be forever if they have a wealthy parent who is content to just funnel them cash.
Well, that’s why I started this thread. I wanted personal anecdotes of how people we know of are managing not to work. Not speculation or finger pointing, just real-life examples.
I’ve learned a lot reading this thread, thank you for starting it.
By your tone here it suggests you don’t see the wife as working. SAHM is a job all by itself - if she’s doing more on top of that, she’s going above and beyond - what’s the problem?
We have an uncle who has lived off of his parents for 60+ years and I see no sign of this changing. I don’t think he has ever worked a day in his life. The “how” is his parents were/are filthy rich so it’s trivially easy for them to support his lifestyle. He is so much “not working” that I only just thought of him now.
37.5% of adults don’t. The percentages are old (BLS only checks this occasionally), but here are the major reasons why they aren’t:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/reasons-people-give-for-not-being-in-the-labor-force-2004-and-2014.htm
As to how, they’re either going into debt, living off savings/investments, living off someone else’s paid work or savings/investments, or living off government programs. I probably missed a few.
They listed retired as #1, then school, then disability, then stay at home parent. Retired- you are living off retirement, such as pensions, SocSec, savings etc. We dont really expect the elderly to be working, do we?
I don’t think anyone has expressed that expectation but I may very well have missed it in this long thread.
Where I lived until recently there are a bunch of 40- through 60-something yo ladies who don’t work.
They did very well out of the divorce(s) and don’t need no steenkin’ work.
They may or may not have earned it; I’ve never met their ex’s.
Depends on their circumstances to some extent, but in general, yeah, I believe the OP excluded retirees from the requested anecdata. Elderly people retiring from work is normal and expected; AFAICT the OP is looking for less predictable examples of workforce abstention.
If I may push that envelope a bit, though, my own anecdata suggests that there may have been a slight COVID-generated shaving of the usual retirement age that was widespread enough to have a significant effect. I know maybe a half dozen people who were nearing retirement when COVID hit and decided to quit a year or three before they had planned to.
If enough near-retirees accelerate their schedule like that, it will create a statistically significant gap in the workforce that will take a few years to close.
Apparently, racking up credit card debt is a commom strategy:
We are in uncharted territory with credit card debt, to go along with the uncharted territory in most of our other debt (corporate, civic, personal, federal gov). We have been pretending the party is still going by borrowing like mad. That will come to an end soon.