Its just not as simple as that. Most people wouldn't be willing to go through all that retraining unless they had a compelling reason to do so.

I agree that the environment could be more conducive to encourage people to get education; many companies do have that in place.

A lot of people who got laid off had a compelling reason to through retraining. I see that in my company: One division lays off good people while the other division is looking for people. The laid off people could have been retrained but just doesn't happen. What it really comes down to is that they want new, already trained people that make less money.

I think it would be more clear if you thought of a company in terms of disjoined silos rather than a large single thinking machine. One division (silo) needs to cut from their P&L while another just got the green light to expand. More than likely they don't talk to each other in large companies. At best you have a VP or SVP a layer or two up that controls both. That person just dictates what the silos need to do and doesn't concern themselves with the how (retraining).

And then you have places like Dell, where one friend was actively forced out by his manager and prevented from moving to a different group that desperately wanted him, just so that the bad manager could get the satisfaction of shitting on this guy as much and as hard as possible.

Oh, and also making sure that he was forced to pay for Cobra and go through the whole re-hire contingency process, and screwing up his seniority at the company.

There are some hateful, hateful people out there whose only joy is causing as much pain as possible for other people.

Hmm. I wonder what POTUS gave them that idea.....

And I'm guessing they found them otherwise retraining their old employees would have been more attractive.

No, they had trouble finding people for the price they were willing to pay and the skill they expected.

I wonder what would happen if Amazon/Google gave 6 month (lowly) paid courses to help people with otherwise good experience or degrees pass their interviews. There's a lot of focus on whether people "get it" or not, but I'll bet a ton of people would "get it" had they the actual relevant training.

Google (and Amazon AFAIK) do give people resources to study with before an interview. Facebook sent me an electronic copy of CLRS beforehand.

I think the real question is: would making the interview process more accessible through offering courses increase the average quality of hires? Or allow more hires of the same quality? That's not clear. The actual white-boarding is pretty far divorced from day to day work, even at BigTechCo. An argument could be made that self-driven prepping for an arbitrary filter is the actual thing being tested, since it correlates more with success. Courses, although reducing the noise that comes from differing levels of prior exposure to those types of questions, would simultaneously decrease the self-motivation signal.

You've seen the interview process for Amazon right?

I mean, it's like they're trying to eliminate all human beings from consideration, before they even get started.

I imagine a couple of things work against this; nobody wants to take the pride hit of working for a small sum of money for awhile. Perhaps they imagine they'll have another high-paying job in a month so it's silly to take low pay for 6mo and HOPE the high paying job comes in after that time. Also, what happens if they can't hack it? Suddenly they probably can't even claim unemployment...

It's a good idea, though, it probably just has a few practical barriers.

There's no incentive to do this. Amazon/Google aren't exactly hurting for SWE candidates because of their brand.

That's a good idea. Like a boot camp for experienced people to get up to speed with the latest stuff.

How can government motivate people?

Make it so while you're retraining for a new job, your basic needs are all met.

lower taxes

I continue to hear this argument, but it isn't 1980. The top tax rate is a little of half what it was then and the lowest marginal income tax rate is still 0% for those who make much below the national average. Those who are currently unemployed would not be directly affected by federal income tax rate changes (except perhaps if the "base is widened" as many fiscal conservatives want).

You can look at Kansas for the problems that are caused by policymakers blindly lowering taxes without respect for the likely consequences.

* Converting social program cliffs into gradients would incentivize people to seek alternatives to unemployment insurance.

* Amnesty for those currently on SSDI if they go back to work (going on disability requires filing a federal form stating that you are physically/mentally unable to work, so later going back to work is effectively fraud).

* Convert programs like {Section 8 housing, Food stamps, etc} to a UBI-like cash program without a cliff when you get a job. Don't penalize people for making a minimal amount of income.

Lower taxes for anyone making less than $1M a year. :)

Yes please.

Two questions and one observation:

(1) Why is it the government's job to motivate people? Shouldn't people be motivated by their own self-interest?

(2) The rise of bigger government and a welfare state might even be contributing to the problem, but debasing the impetus to train. Some carefully considered welfare can provide relief to an acute problem, but long term welfare is counterproductive.

If it's the company that benefits from the training, shouldn't it be the company's job to train people?

Why should our government and workers subsidize company training with student loans?

Your tone suggests you're arguing against me, but we're both in agreement that this isn't the responsibility of government.

My tone was a partial response to the phrase below, and a partial catchy soundbite to agree with your point that the government shouldn't step in.

> Shouldn't people be motivated by their own self-interest?

It should also be in the company's self-interest to train its workers, it's just because of a bad worker-employer leverage balance that they don't take advantage of that.

They're all run by spreadsheets more so than intuition. Training is difficult to quantify. How to you quantify into dollars the difference between time, cost and results of training versus time, cost and result of putting out headhunters to fill the position with someone already trained?

I mean most companies can't even interview well and it's a lot easier to just do it the old way that they've been doing it forever rather than stick your neck out and try something new and barely quantifiable if at all. Especially when HR has the final say.

Government should enforce career caps nationwide, i.e. a max number of students allowed on positions where labor is abundant.

They (government) also could spend the unemployment benefit towards training people instead of just giving them the money.

I'm not sure I agree with caps. I do however agree with not providing any federal financial aid in such circumstances. I'm also in favor of the government funding industry-led studies to forecast demand for labor in those industries. The government shouldn't performing such forecasting, but they can provide minimal financial support to make sure every industry forecasts its labor needs.

Education can take a generation capping things today will led to shortages in the unknown future.

judging by the uptake of new CS grads, they are willing to put in the time and money to train people who are already proven to be in the upper 10% of intelligence.

the problem is, aptitude for technical skills is, to say the least, not uniformly distributed in the population. it's not like factory work. in addition to programming and sysadmin/devops, this includes stuff like CNC and auto technician/mechanics and electricians and plumbers.

if they were to take un-degreed un-proven people and try to train them in tech work, probably 99% of them would drop out.

have you ever seen a college CS weeder course? it's not pretty. imagine that, except with not even the luxury of a college acceptance filter. so why in the world do that, when there's a perfectly good feeder system of experienced proven workers and proven college grads?

Another side to "I think we have a skill shortage. " is either "over qualification" or "it just isn't worth it". When manufacturers say they can't fill jobs, most of the time it's not a skill shortage, it's a shortage of people willing stand and get dirty welding or pressing a button for 8 hours for $10 an hour. If people stayed in these jobs for a while, manufacturers could work them up the learning curve.

It's the $10 per hour part is the killer. No one wants to do dirty work for that much. I did plenty of construction, landscaping, painting, and other dirty jobs. Hours were long, often 10 - 12 hours per day. I remember the day I started making $12 per hour and I felt like a king. I taught myself to code and got out of that game as soon as I could manage.

For blue collar jobs, we need the return to an apprenticeship model for many trade skills. For many white collar jobs, most learning can be done on the internet in your free time.

The problem with the "in your free time" stance is that you're assuming these people have free time.

Spot on. "Free time" becomes exponentially more expensive as soon as your parents aren't obligated to take care of everything you need.

I'd go so far as to argue that the foundations of a successful technical career need the groundwork laid out for them way before someone turns 18. It requires a supportive, nuclear household where science and knowledge are held in high regard. Having at least one parent being technically apt is a big plus also.

I did dirty blue collar jobs for years. Then I would sit on my couch with a laptop and learn Python every night, from 6 or 7PM until I couldn't stay awake any longer. It was no picnic but it can be done.

You had a laptop. And it sounds like you only had one job, not multiple, and you didn't have a family to support.

And, quite frankly, just because you were able to do it, does not mean that it's not an incredibly shitty thing to expect of everyone else, or that those who aren't able to do it aren't somehow less deserving.

I did have a family to support, and a crummy old computer. And I never implied that someone who couldn't do it is less deserving, just that it can be done. Computers are ubiquitous and while not everyone has one, a great many people do.

It is also more difficult if you have kids (I don't), but I agree, in most cases it is possible to make some time.