They likely meant that onboarding takes three days. As there is no meaningful metric for competence beyond that (or at least no metric that is measured and used) "good" doesn't apply.

There are of course tons of ways a good, seasoned barista distinguishes themselves from a trainee with 3 days of onboarding but those are externalities. The difference between skilled and unskilled labor is not whether competence and experience can make a difference but whether that difference is measured as performance or only affects externalities.

I.e. "unskilled labor" is not about the worker but about the company. Notably these often do involve skill that directly contributes to performance but because the job is considered unskilled, it's instead treated as some nebulous a priori form of intelligence and personal aptitude. What's more, beyond a certain point skill is often actively punished (e.g. by raising quotas to take advantage of higher productivity, resulting in more work for the same pay).

> They likely meant that onboarding takes three days.

You can onboard welding in less than 30 days too.

> As there is no meaningful metric for competence beyond that (or at least no metric that is measured and used) "good" doesn't apply.

Barista quality isn't much harder to measure than weld quality. "and used" is a cop-out.

> You can onboard welding in less than 30 days too.

You can be doing useful work as part of a welding group in 30 days, but you will not be a master. Grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't and all that.

I know.

But you won't be a master barista right away either.

Starbucks coffee tastes the same whether it's the barista there for year or the 3-day newbie.

Lots of coffees won't.

And speed matters too.

I couldn't reliably tell you the difference between a $30 bottle of wine and a $300 bottle of wine but that's why I don't claim to be an expert on wine.

Also, there are other coffee places than Starbucks. Saying barista is an unskilled job because Starbucks coffee is particularly bad is like saying programmer is an unskilled job because all Squarespace websites are equally bad.

Knowing professional welders myself, and trying my hand at welding, it takes a lot more than 30 days to get good at it. A welder also needs to learn some chemistry, all kinds of techniques, the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of welds, how to prep the weld, etc.

A good weld is a thing of beauty.

Welding is also pretty dangerous. It takes a good welder to do it safely, and do it without ruining very expensive parts.

There's good reason that competent welders get paid a lot of money.

In 30 days, the new welder probably has learned how not to set himself on fire, blind himself, fill his lungs with poisonous gasses, etc.

I don't think any of this makes what I said less true.

There's a lot you can learn in many basic service jobs, and become much more effective than if you don't learn it.

But if the standard is "onboarding", then both are quick.

> In 30 days, the new welder probably has learned how not to set himself on fire, blind himself, fill his lungs with poisonous gasses, etc.

I am not a welder, but I've had some welding safety training. It doesn't take a month.

You both are talking around each other I feel.

In any job there is a spectrum from bare minimum to a master. This goes for welding and baristas. Is someone who pushes a button on a Nespresso a barista? If I go get a soldering iron am I a welder?

You overlay the normal distribution of all baristas and welders and look at the difficulty in learning various skills. I'm sure they are not exactly equal.

That sounds like a fun idea in theory, but in practice that distribution would require hours of research per job, or more, and I'm not aware of any source that publishes that sort of information. So it doesn't give me a way to sort jobs into "skilled" and "unskilled". Or to give them a reliable 1-10 rank on how skilled they are.

I can be pretty sure welder beats barista, but by how much, how it relates to other jobs, how we set various bars, that's all a lot more difficult.

I actually doubt there's a neat defineable ceiling for the skill of a welder nor a barista so it also comes down to where you make the cut-off because any improvements beyond that become negligible in terms of ROI. But that would also require being able to actually quantify that vague notion of "skill" which in turn would require an honest assessment of the actual real-world exhaustive job description of both jobs including all implicit, unstated and culturally expected parts (e.g. barista is a service job so customer service can be as big a factor as the actual coffee-making but we don't think of social skills as actual skills or emotional labor even if it's obvious when they're inadequate or badly performed).

So in other words, we could have an objective, empirical look at whether welders or baristas actually need "more skill" and which skillset is easier to master for the average person (which is its own rest nest of considerations again) but if we did the necessary (if not impossible) prep work to even get started on that, we'd have to already agree that "unskilled" is a descriptor for jobs that has very little to do with the actual skill requirements and more with attitudes towards those skills or the people doing those jobs.

Sure but unless you're Tesla, welding quality is more relevant to your bottom line than coffee making quality (yes, I'm aware there's more to being a good barista than just making the coffee).

>> I.e. "unskilled labor" is not about the worker but about the company

That part really stood out to me.

While a lot of us can agree that barista is an unskilled job, I heard people call barmen labor a skilled labor. Which is crazy, because it's essentially the same job (mix stuff up and serve in a cup). But it makes sense if "unskilled labor" is a function of an employer not an employee

To be fair, Starbucks purchases machines that are automated to a much higher degree than your standard high end espresso machine you'd find in a local shop. It's a lot more button pushing in the correct sequence, a lot less art. This is standard procedure for a multinational fast food service company: they want things automated and streamlined not only for speed of service and easy training, but consistency of the product.

From what I heard from a former Starbucks barista, the biggest challenge was to not scald the milk during steaming (which is not very difficult, basically just requires holding it at the correct angle to induce a whirlpool effect and keep things moving).

The skilled aspect is dealing with customers efficiently and pleasantly, and all the nuance/craziness that can entail.

You can do the basic job after 3 days and after a month rush hour won't be a problem either. I've done similar jobs, the skill cap is not that high. My labour won't be fairly compensated which is why i don't do jobs like that anymore, but they're not hard to learn.

> How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista?

Because I have gone to the same Starbucks every day for many years, and see many new hires as the staff turns over. It takes about 3 days to go from "cannot operate the cash register" to "efficiently fulfills customer orders".