Arthur posted a piece by John W. Schoen:
> Why some jobs go begging in tough economy
>
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43465034/ns/business-eye_on_the_economy/
>From the article:
Darlene Miller, CEO of Permac Industries in South Burnsville,
Minn., said the days are long gone when a new hire could learn how
to operate machinery on the job. Miller said she would add another
half-dozen workers to her payroll of 38 workers - if she could
find people skilled at operating the high-tech equipment she
recently purchased to boost productivity.
"We just can't afford to take the time and the money to hire and
someone to just shadow someone else and learn hands-on," she
said. "The equipment is just too high-tech to do that."
There's a science fiction story published decades ago that captured this.
In a moderately distant future, all the brightest kids go to
university where, if they do well, they will be assured of
prestigious, highly paid jobs with corporate-financed colonies on
newly discovered planets.
Only what a university education consists of is learning everything
there is to know about some piece of incredibly complex, high-tech
piece of industrial equipment. The kids are all exultant when they
pass the trials -- being able, say, to repair a huge piece of
automated mining equipment, in the dark while (literally) up to their
waists in a swamp filled with alien monsters, in 30 minutes flat.
The curve ball is that, in a few years, this gear will be obsolete,
replaced by newer and even more high-tech stuff. The only place to
learn the new gear is at the manufacturer-sponsored uni -- certainly
not in some remote mining colony. So as soon as the second wave of
settlers arrives with the newest gear on board, this cohort of hotshot,
highly technical guys will be totally "surplus to needs."
The focus of the story, though, is this one kid who isn't doing so
great because, well, because he keeps wasting his time getting what
we'd call an education. Reads books instead of drilling on diagnosis
of a malfunctioning Digital MegaBlivet(tm).
The happy ending is that he is noticed by Those Who Are There to
Notice and, after failing the corporate trials, is quietly led aside
and told that his real education is just beginning, that he has an
assured, even more prestigious, career as a real scientist, engineer,
analyst, synthesist or whatever.
Great for him but all his high-achieving school chums are destined for
obsolescence in the predictable future. Age 37, light years from home
and redundant.
Of *course* our (non-fictional) companies don't want to spend two or
three years training someone to use the high-tech gear. In two or
three years, the boss will be looking at replacing it with newer, more
competitive stuff.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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