As a professional coder who also trained as a machinist I think it's worth explaining what CEOs mean when they say that they can't make goods in the US because there aren't enough machinists, engineers, suppliers, etc.
In Seattle, a coder with a few years of experience and a few management skills can easily earn $200k/y. A good machinist with the same years of experience and solid management skills earns maybe $75k/y. Of course there are exceptions on both sides, but this is the trend. /thread
Since the 70s the US has transitioned from treating the trades as a valid career path comparable with knowledge work to treating the trades as the also-ran category for people who couldn't get into or afford college. We defunded many shop classes in high schools and we amplified the message that after high school *all* of the smart kids go to a university to study some sort of knowledge work.
So what CEOs mean when they say that the US doesn't have enough machinists, engineers, automation experts, etc for manufacturing is that for decades they've avoided paying taxes for schools that teach the trades and they've avoided paying salaries competitive with expert knowledge work and they also don't like the direct consequences of their actions.
@trevorflowers That's a really top down authoritarian view of the country that doesn't really reflect reality.
There's not really a the US at all. There are who knows how many different governments, local, state and federal, involved in education making those decisions, and each government is composed of countless bureaucrats and politicians making their own decisions.
Further, you seem to be suggesting that throwing money at the problem would fix it, but that's obviously not true. We spend tremendous amounts of tax dollars on education, and those countless politicians and bureaucrats probably waste a good bit of it.
So it's an unhelpful over simplification to describe the country the way you do, the state of education the way you do. It's neither true nor does it present us with any real solutions.
In the end it really doesn't matter what CEOs say. Here. We keep electing and re-electing bad politicians who keep directing education to be mismanaged.
That's not all CEOs. That's on us.
@volkris @trevorflowers Any CEO who complains that he/she can't hire X but neither partners with trade groups, local schools or runs their own in-house apprenticeship program is an entitled child and should be ignored.
CEOs get to choose their own business model, and they have full control about whether they'll train their own workforce or rely on someone else to do it for them.
@grumble209 I honestly don't know why you're so obsessed with CEOs here.
But no, in general CEOs don't get to choose their own business models. That's just not how corporations operate in the real world.
@volkris @trevorflowers Those poor CEOs. I pity them and their unenviable plight.
@volkris @grumble209 @trevorflowers they have a real hard life! Thats why we must pay them so greatly, only like this can they bear the incredible load of not being responsible for any problem.
@trevorflowers @grumble209 @volkris yes i‘m paying at least one CEO with everything i buy - so actually i pay hundreds of CEOs.
@lazyb0y unless you're buying CEOs... you're not.
These companies are the ones buying CEOs. You're just buying their products when they make things you judge to be worth buying.
@trevorflowers @grumble209
@volkris @grumble209 @trevorflowers
my money is used to pay CEOs.
i pay CEO‘s within one level of indirection.
@lazyb0y but it's not though.
Once you bend over your money to someone else, it's not your money anymore, it's theirs.
That's the whole point.
Anyway, whatever, my point still stands: If you are overpaying CEOs you should stop. That's really up to you.
I would say that you are probably not paying CEOs at all, but again, if you are paying CEOs too much money, stop it.
@trevorflowers @volkris @grumble209
as far as i remember CEOs are the ones with the highest salaries, higher then presidents, and it’s been told that is because of their huge responsibilities and capabilities.
Strange that when it comes to problems that arise, suddenly they are not responsible for anything - but sure they keep being responsible for collecting their bonuses and shares
@lazyb0y yeah, that's the sort of picture special interest groups like to paint, but it's not really how CEOs work given the legal environment they operate in.
It makes for a good narrative that plays on peoples' emotions, but it's basically just manipulation.
Ask yourself, do you think a corporation WANTs to lose money? Probably not, right? So why would a corporation throw money at a CEO if they don't have to?
They'd lose money and give up profits if they did. So it's not a realistic story.
@volkris @grumble209 @trevorflowers
i dont describe „how CEOs work“.
And a corporation isnt a single person with a simple concrete clear will, not even for a concrete question as „do you want to lose money?“
It’s not „the corporation“ who tells me CEOs must get enormous amounts of money because their responsibility, it’s people who think the system must be like that, including economists and, surprisingly, CEO‘s , too.
@volkris
what flavor do does boots come in?
@blogdiva I give up. What flavor do boots come in?
@volkris @trevorflowers I have gas with the notion that it's the government's problem to supply trained labor for industry, that bad politicians are the reason Acme Inc. "can't hire workers".
It wasn't always like this. Somehow the US ramped up manufacturing in the 1940s to meet a world demand for war production: we did it not through government programs to train Rosie to weld and rivet, but from companies training their own workers. By the 1950s, trade associations were doing it, funded from dues that companies paid. See attached.
Reasonable executives know that they need to manage their parts supply chain, and managing their labor supply chain is no different.
Somehow we've ended up with two generations of shitty MBA grads that feel entitled to having someone else train their workers, and get butthurt when those workers cost actual money.
@grumble209 and I would also reject that it's the government's problem to supply trained labor to anybody.
But I can simultaneously say it's not government's problem to supply trained labor and also government is failing in the jobs that it does take on, the programs that it sets up and then charges the population taxes to fund.
In fact, to some extent the two ideas are linked as maybe government is failing at the things it should do because it is distracted trying to do exactly this thing that it shouldn't.
@volkris @trevorflowers executive suites are subject to fads and there was a fad for sending labor away to places where it was much cheaper (and much harder) for many years. The very wealthy don't want to pay anybody else to do anything and if they can't manage that they will at least pay as little as possible.
I wouldn't describe not wanting to waste money as a fad.
Do YOU want to spend money unnecessarily? Do you want to pay twice as much for whatever you might buy today?
No, that's just as natural and part of humanity as any other expression of wanting more stuff.
@trevorflowers
@volkris @trevorflowers miserliness seldom saves money; it often wastes it and is often cruel as well. Often it is more expensive and serves only to justify cruelty.
We are trained to be misers and value miserliness; this is a cultural failing which may yet destroy us.
@ravenonthill I mean if you want to burn your cash, Well it's yours to burn.
@volkris @trevorflowers There is a great deal of money spent to … save money. Often it would be more profitable to be less cheap. (The US health care system is a fine example, managing to spend twice what is spent in other high-income countries, while providing poorer care.)
@ravenonthill so are you saying maybe we should... not spend as much money? :)
@volkris @trevorflowers I'm saying, maybe we should spend it in sensible ways. It's well-known in computer science that greedy algorithms often fail, sometimes producing the literal worst possible solutions. This also applies to finance; sometimes cheap is expensive.
@ravenonthill yep!
And so companies also agree with you, they think they should spend money in sensible ways, and that's why they invest in CEOs sometimes with very large salaries, because they worry that trying to save money when hiring a CEO will leave them worse off in the long run.
So there you go. Pretty good explanation for CEO pay.
@volkris @trevorflowers after the long history of financial failures due to mismanagement one would think this idea would be less than credible. But it just keeps hanging on.
@volkris @trevorflowers I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it. Yes, CEOs are not the government but there’s a lot of influence both through the political process and also through well-intended attempts to have schools prepare students for jobs in the area. I went to 3 different California districts, each one had programs for specific employment fields, and each had canceled some of those as aerospace jobs disappeared with the Cold War cuts. When manufacturing moved away schools got the message.