Hiring standards are dropping

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Timbeck2 said:
And yet there seems to be an increase of people wandering around in parking lots begging for money.
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Yeah, the US needs to fix the housing problem and that will help with some of the labor problem. Especially at the unskilled/low skilled level. It's hard for homeless people to get work when their life is just a constant struggle to get enough food for the day and somewhere safe-ish to sleep that night. Much less deal with the mental health issues and addiction issues that so many homeless have. For me, it just seems morally justified to help those people and that's enough motivation. But if you add in the fact that there is societal benefit also, even more reason to help people get back on their feet.
 
172andyou said:
Yeah, the US needs to fix the housing problem and that will help with some of the labor problem. Especially at the unskilled/low skilled level. It's hard for homeless people to get work when their life is just a constant struggle to get enough food for the day and somewhere safe-ish to sleep that night. Much less deal with the mental health issues and addiction issues that so many homeless have. For me, it just seems morally justified to help those people and that's enough motivation. But if you add in the fact that there is societal benefit also, even more reason to help people get back on their feet.
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I have a more "don't feed the pigeons" worldview for this problem and prefer sticks to carrots. I think loading them into a deport-o-pult also solves the problem and would cost a mere fraction of building endless free housing for those who can't manage to get it for themselves.

Both solutions seem intractable within our polarized society, so here we are. I don't know a solution that pleases both sides, and we seem to have the worst of it all currently.
 
schmookeeg said:
I have a more "don't feed the pigeons" worldview for this problem and prefer sticks to carrots. I think loading them into a deport-o-pult also solves the problem and would cost a mere fraction of building endless free housing for those who can't manage to get it for themselves.
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Wait, what? Take the half million plus homeless americans and ship them to another country? Am I reading that right?
 
172andyou said:
Wait, what? Take the half million plus homeless americans and ship them to another country? Am I reading that right?
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I think you missed the "Both solutions seem intractable..." in the next paragraph
 
mandm said:
Working full time puts you into a rat race, you don’t have good medical coverage and your paychecks are deducted for mediocre coverage. You barely have any time off, and limited sick leave. You’re sitting in traffic or commuting daily, which is no fun, going to an office to play office politics, in most jobs you get disrespected and usually you don’t have any self fulfillment in what you do. On top of that, you likely don’t have any retirement.
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Man! What sort of hell-hole do you work in? My experience was nothing like that.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Who raised this generation? We did. Sure, a few of us can say “I didn’t raise mine that way”, but we can’t ALL say that.

I can’t remember anyone in the generation before me try to retire early (that was for entrepreneurs who actually just kept working anyway, and for trust fund babies). My generation is a lot about retirement and spending more time with family. That rubs off on the kids.

I’m guilty of raising this generation softer. It’s my fault. It’s some of yours too if you’ll admit it. “Purpose of life” and existentialism - that’s what happens when you’re not starving and have it all.
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I watched my parents age. I watched the frustration my father had when he couldn't help my mom. I watched the frustration and sadness and anger they had when they couldn't do things anymore. I went through two periods of medical leave (3+ months each) when I wasn't able to do much of anything while recovering from surgery (first leave) and a broken collarbone (2nd leave) - that gave me a taste of what it's like to get old.

So, yeah, when I was able to retire early I did. I left money on the table, a considerable amount, but I've been able to enjoy retirement activities.

edit: of course, not being married meant I didn't need to worry about money for the wife and kids.
 
Bob Noel said:
I think you missed the "Both solutions seem intractable..." in the next paragraph
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"within our polarized society"

He seemed to be supporting the position I asked about, while admitting that it wasn't practical because of polarization. I'm just making sure I understood his position.
 
schmookeeg said:
My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template

Every item from that template generally remained, so the CV was like this:

Firstname
212-555-1212
you@email.com

...the person changed the first name to be their own -- no surname, but left the default entries above for email and phone. My sister can literally NOT contact this goon back. It continued as:

Company
City
<an actual run-on description of some tasks>

leaving "Company" and "City" as the descriptors. This person had 3 "Company"s that she worked at.

A rambling custom footnote was included describing how she, if I interpreted it correctly, worked at some sort of seminary camp?

I had never seen anything like it before. Amazing. This is a 40k/yr school. I do not think this person got their buck twenty worth. And if we subsidized that tuition, then we the people got scammed hard to educate this cro-magnon.
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I spend at least a week in my Intro to Computer Science class on the topic How to Get a Job or Internship.

#1 - do not use Microsoft Word resume templates
#2 - don't do stupid on social media, employers are looking
#3 - the university has an entire department (career center) to help you with resumes, interviews, etc. Your student fees are paying for it, use it!
#4 - the school has 2 events every semester (one is STEM, the other is open to all) where more than 50+ local (and a few out of state) companies are recruiting. I require my students to attend at least one to get an idea who is hiring and what the companies are looking for.
#5 - I invite someone from the career center to class for a Q&A session.

Too many students only list their first name when they are forced to turn in something handwritten, like an exam. It's an automatic zero until they tell me who they are. In fact I require my beginning CS students to write short reports every other week. Again, with the student fees, we're in the building next to the Writing Center. I "strongly suggest" many students to take advantage of it.
 
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Bob Noel said:
So, yeah, when I was able to retire early I did. I left money on the table, a considerable amount, but I've been able to enjoy retirement activities.
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Yeah, I don't know any people who retired early on their own terms that regret their decision. People who are forced to retire early (injury, career disappeared, etc) are a different thing. But people who had the option to continue working and opted out. I don't know one person who regrets it.
 
JOhnH said:
Not sure how old you are, but that could be an issue.
Or perhaps the people where you apply are on POA.
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In aerospace, it used to be if you were over 45 and looking, forget it, unless another company got the new contract and everyone jumped ship along with the contract. I keep getting emails and calls from various aerospace companies asking if I'm available & interested, and I'm over 45. Way over. In fact I was over 60 when I was hired for each of my last 3 full-time jobs.

As I describe it, my retirement job is teaching college. Pay is considerably less (by more than half), I actually spend more time when you consider office hours and the non-stop homework grading, but on the other hand...my earliest class is at noon, and I'm on campus only 4 days a week.

It's always fun when a students asks what I've done in the "real world". Well, my software is on Mars, orbiting Mars, and lost somewhere between here and Mars and we're never going to find it. More recently...the recent launch that tanked? The ULA Vulcan rocket worked, it was the other stuff that didn't. I spent 3 months on the team to develop the launch software. Worked perfectly.

Why yes, I am a rocket scientist. (*chortle*)
 
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SixPapaCharlie said:
In my world something has changed.
I don't think I've ever spent more than about 6 weeks looking for a job before.
My current job was offered to me 15 minutes after I submitted my resume on CareerBuilder and I've been there for 6 years.

My company has been slowly circling the drain for a while now. I have been looking for a job for almost a year now and I've gotten zero responses.

Not sure exactly what has changed in IT but I'm no longer a valuable resource I suppose.
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The big tech firms were hiring like crazy because their goal was market share above all else, which is common at the outset of an industry. They've moved past that phase and are now focusing on profitability, and are laying off staff who have been working on unprofitable projects.
 
murphey said:
I spend at least a week in my Intro to Computer Science class on the topic How to Get a Job or Internship.

#1 - do not use Microsoft Word resume templates
#2 - don't do stupid on social media, employers are looking
#3 - the university has an entire department (career center) to help you with resumes, interview, etc. You're student fees are paying for it, use it!
#4 - the school has 2 events every semester (one is STEM, the other is open to all) where more than 50+ local (and a few out of state) companies are recruiting. I require my students to attend at least one to get an idea who is hiring and what the companies are looking for.
#5 - I invite someone from the career center to class for a Q&A session.

Too many students only list their first name when they are forced to turn in something handwritten, like an exam. It's an automatic zero until they tell me who they are. In fact I require my beginning CS students to write short reports every other week. Again, with the student fees, we're in the building next to the Writing Center. I "strongly suggest" many students to take advantage of it.
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If you want to help them, please please PLEASE add interview training, with a mock interview or two. If you can get some volunteers from local businesses to conduct the mock interviews, so much the better.
 
murphey said:
In aerospace, it used to be if you were over 45 and looking, forget it, unless another company got the new contract and everyone jumped ship along with the contract. I keep getting emails and calls from various aerospace companies asking if I'm available & interested, and I'm over 45. Way over. In fact I was over 60 when I was hired for each of my last 3 full-time jobs.

As I describe it, my retirement job is teaching college. Pay is considerably less (by more than half), I actually spend more time when you consider office hours and the non-stop homework grading, but on the other hand...my earliest class is at noon, and I'm on campus only 4 days a week.

It's always fun when a students asks what I've done in the "real world". Well, my software is on Mars, orbiting Mars, and lost somewhere between here and Mars and we're never going to find it. More recently...the recent launch that tanked? The ULA Vulcan rocket worked, it was the other stuff that didn't. I spent 3 months on the team to develop the launch software. Worked perfectly.

Why yes, I am a rocket scientist. (*chortle*)
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We hired people over 45 (and over 55!) at Lockheed, but in my experience most of the older professionals weren't looking for direct employment; they wanted to work as consultants. And we used MANY of those. I knew a few who were over 70. My philosophy, in hiring and in managing engineers, was that we can't afford to waste good. And many of those people, with 40+ years of experience, were damn good. If they wanted to work, I'd use 'em in a heartbeat.

Part of the difficulty, though, is that senior people naturally want senior positions. With a tiny number of exceptions, most of our senior positions were staffed internally, for a variety of reasons. I never once saw a chief engineer hired from outside the company. If a high-level engineer was hired from outside, it was because he was skilled in a rare specialty that we absolutely could not staff from within (even then, part of the new person's job was to train up another expert from internal staff).

I've considered teaching (I enjoyed teaching analog design classes at LockMart, as well as other training courses), but frankly I don't want to be tied down to a schedule and I don't need to work and I'm not inclined to put up with any level of BS these days. I do some pro bono practice instead, and I can do that on my own terms and take on what projects I choose. There's no political crap at all, there's no money pressure, etc. Just have to do good engineering design for people who need some help and actually appreciate it.
 
Half Fast said:
If you want to help them, please please PLEASE add interview training, with a mock interview or two. If you can get some volunteers from local businesses to conduct the mock interviews, so much the better.
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" an entire department (career center) to help you with resumes, interviews, "
 
Half Fast said:
We hired people over 45 (and over 55!) at Lockheed, but in my experience most of the older professionals weren't looking for direct employment; they wanted to work as consultants. And we used MANY of those. I knew a few who were over 70. My philosophy, in hiring and in managing engineers, was that we can't afford to waste good. And many of those people, with 40+ years of experience, were damn good. If they wanted to work, I'd use 'em in a heartbeat.

Part of the difficulty, though, is that senior people naturally want senior positions. With a tiny number of exceptions, most of our senior positions were staffed internally, for a variety of reasons. I never once saw a chief engineer hired from outside the company. If a high-level engineer was hired from outside, it was because he was skilled in a rare specialty that we absolutely could not staff from within (even then, part of the new person's job was to train up another expert from internal staff).

I've considered teaching (I enjoyed teaching analog design classes at LockMart, as well as other training courses), but frankly I don't want to be tied down to a schedule and I don't need to work and I'm not inclined to put up with any level of BS these days. I do some pro bono practice instead, and I can do that on my own terms and take on what projects I choose. There's no political crap at all, there's no money pressure, etc. Just have to do good engineering design for people who need some help and actually appreciate it.
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"We hired people over 45 (and over 55!) at Lockheed,"

Ah, but were you at Martin when the age discrimination suit hit? Martin lost, changed policies. But 15 years later, same thing. As for political crap - that's the job of the dept chair - he/she protects us from the crap. My only responsibilities are teach, office hours and grade (because our TAs are not allowed to grade). I could never tolerate K-12 teaching.
 
murphey said:
"We hired people over 45 (and over 55!) at Lockheed,"

Ah, but were you at Martin when the age discrimination suit hit? Martin lost, changed policies. But 15 years later, same thing. As for political crap - that's the job of the dept chair - he/she protects us from the crap. My only responsibilities are teach, office hours and grade (because our TAs are not allowed to grade). I could never tolerate K-12 teaching.
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Yep, I was there. That suit was related to a layoff when defense spending dropped in the late 80s, and many of the 55+ people were voluntary layoffs. But the courts don't distinguish between voluntary and involuntary layoff, so everyone got swept into the class action suit.

I was an EE dept manager when we went through more layoffs after the Comanche program was cancelled, and we were extremely careful about excessive impacts to protected classes, including >55, and we did not accept volunteers at all. It's reached the point, though, where there are so many protected classes that the only people who can be laid off are white males aged 30 to 45.

BTW, the hardest, most gut-wrenching, most sleep-depriving thing I've done in my life was to select people for layoff, and then have to break the news to them. We all sweated blood and grew ulcers to save every job we could, and then to be absolutely sure we had the right people chosen to separate. It is not an easy task, and it's not all about seniority.
 
Interview skills are extremely important. I've been on both sides of the table.

Last interview for employement for me was nineteen years ago. It was a three on one session. I learned they had interviewed four applicants that day with me being first. I also knew that I would receive a call from them with an offer.

I later learned that they knew when I walked out, before any others were interviewed, that I was the one they wanted ...
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
a few of us can say “I didn’t raise mine that way”
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Yes, a few probably can say that, but mostly this generation was taught to be that way. I blame public schools.

A few years ago a friend of mine was substitute teaching a FFA class. Partly because so one else wanted to teach FFA. These are kids, aged 14-18 whose parents work, own their own businesses and work hard every day at it.

One day he asked the kids, ''Who here thinks they are owed something.'' He didn't ask who owed them, just if they were owed something. Every last student raised their hand.
 
There’s a reason for that, I’m not sure what exactly, but that wasn’t made up.
 
schmookeeg said:
My sister just got a CV from a college junior for an intern program she runs at the same college.

It was based on the MS Word Template

Every item from that template generally remained, so the CV was like this:

Firstname
212-555-1212
you@email.com

...the person changed the first name to be their own -- no surname, but left the default entries above for email and phone. My sister can literally NOT contact this goon back. It continued as:

Company
City
<an actual run-on description of some tasks>

leaving "Company" and "City" as the descriptors. This person had 3 "Company"s that she worked at.

A rambling custom footnote was included describing how she, if I interpreted it correctly, worked at some sort of seminary camp?

I had never seen anything like it before. Amazing. This is a 40k/yr school. I do not think this person got their buck twenty worth. And if we subsidized that tuition, then we the people got scammed hard to educate this cro-magnon.
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CV ???
 
MacFlier said:
I see the opposite, at least in IT. You have to be a god in all areas/services for all cloud providers and have 20 years of experience doing so... Sometimes I LOL when reading these ads
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Compensation $42,356 - $68,497

Minimum phd and 15 + years of relevant industry experience
In-depth understanding of 5G and 4G 3GPP physical layer and protocol stack procedures and configurations
Experience with firmware test case planning, design, and development for the 4G/5G functional and performance scenarios
Strong understanding of automation tools and scripting languages such as Python, C/C++, Java (a plus)
Strong validated understanding of multiple 4G/5G signaling and physical layer test equipment along with their automation interfaces
Strong analysis and debugging capabilities to be able to define issues and work with firmware development and systems design teams to close these issues
Deep understanding of software engineering principles, and core computer science fundamentals
Versatile to learn new architecture and frameworks
Experience with network emulators, silicon prototyping, emulation systems, and virtual platforms a plus
 
Half Fast said:
"Curriculum vitae"

It's academia's version of a resume, and is more commonly used in education or research settings. It often includes a listing of published research.
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And the Brits use that term exclusively.
 
Bob Noel said:
I watched my parents age. I watched the frustration my father had when he couldn't help my mom. I watched the frustration and sadness and anger they had when they couldn't do things anymore. I went through two periods of medical leave (3+ months each) when I wasn't able to do much of anything while recovering from surgery (first leave) and a broken collarbone (2nd leave) - that gave me a taste of what it's like to get old.

So, yeah, when I was able to retire early I did. I left money on the table, a considerable amount, but I've been able to enjoy retirement activities.

edit: of course, not being married meant I didn't need to worry about money for the wife and kids.
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I relate a lot to this angle. It actually informs the lion's share of my motivation behind making mid 50s my desired retirement age. My aging parents are entering that stage now (late 70s/early 80s effectively the last decade of their lives if family history is to be taken, that fact chokes me up to even write).

Long story short, the poor economic prospects of my formative home, combined with the impositions of a military career, took me away from my family for longer than I bargained for. I can't keep devoting this much life to effin' work in middle age. So yeah, count me in on the 55/57 and out crowd.
 
Timbeck2 said:
And yet there seems to be an increase of people wandering around in parking lots begging for money.
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Years ago they would hold a sign saying,"will work for food" but now they ask for folding money ...
 
SoonerAviator said:
pretty much "don't do drugs and have a pulse".
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My son asked me one day… “should we drug test?”

Uh, we already know the answer. Are you prepared to try and replace ALL of them!

Didn’t care about a drivers license. Owning a car and being willing to get to work illegally. Geesh…
 
Tools said:
My son asked me one day… “should we drug test?”

Uh, we already know the answer. Are you prepared to try and replace ALL of them!

Didn’t care about a drivers license. Owning a car and being willing to get to work illegally. Geesh…
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Man, that's certainly more truth than fiction. We do random testing with full time employees, and all contract employees are tested prior to starting. We lose somewhere around 25% of candidates to drug test failures. Working with big forklifts, spinning machinery, and heat presses at temps over 400-degrees is an environment not conducive to cognitive impairment. Doing large drug test screenings on current employees comes with the knowledge that you're likely going to lose several employees who were otherwise acceptable.
 
hindsight2020 said:
I can't keep devoting this much life to effin' work in middle age. So yeah, count me in on the 55/57 and out crowd.
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I'm all for people retiring young. It's a great goal and a great life once you get here.

But they MUST work, save and prepare for it and not expect the next younger generation to pay for it.
I often got frustrated when I was working and saw that chunk of change going into my IRA every month and having to forego many pleasures at the time. But now I'm really glad I did that.

I feel sorry for young people today that are paying for my SS, but know that it is going to a good cause. I buy a lot of 100ll with it.
 
mandm said:
Working full time puts you into a rat race, you don’t have good medical coverage and your paychecks are deducted for mediocre coverage. You barely have any time off, and limited sick leave. You’re sitting in traffic or commuting daily, which is no fun, going to an office to play office politics, in most jobs you get disrespected and usually you don’t have any self fulfillment in what you do. On top of that, you likely don’t have any retirement.
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It depends. I guess I'm lucky, but I work 5 miles from home on back roads, have great medical coverage 100% paid by my employer, and pretty good retirement savings from the company profit sharing fund. There's some BS due to it being a family owned company but they treat their employees pretty well. But I know that's the exception today.

When I retire in a year or two, I expect I'll come back as a part time consultant. I like the work I do, I just want more free time. If I didn't want to keep my plane and mountain cabin I'd already be retired.

They're going to need me to come back... we can't find qualified engineers. I'll be the last of 4 engineers in my group to retire. Two of the other retirees have come back part time, but it's not enough. We just hired a couple of recent graduates and they're coming along, but what we really need is a few mid career mechanical engineers; the kids aren't ready for the kind of large projects us older guys can. But guys in their 40s just aren't looking for a career change, it seems.
 
Tantalum said:
Compensation $42,356 - $68,497

Minimum phd and 15 + years of relevant industry experience
In-depth understanding of 5G and 4G 3GPP physical layer and protocol stack procedures and configurations
Experience with firmware test case planning, design, and development for the 4G/5G functional and performance scenarios
Strong understanding of automation tools and scripting languages such as Python, C/C++, Java (a plus)
Strong validated understanding of multiple 4G/5G signaling and physical layer test equipment along with their automation interfaces
Strong analysis and debugging capabilities to be able to define issues and work with firmware development and systems design teams to close these issues
Deep understanding of software engineering principles, and core computer science fundamentals
Versatile to learn new architecture and frameworks
Experience with network emulators, silicon prototyping, emulation systems, and virtual platforms a plus
Click to expand...
Exactly this. I see all the time "this new generation" blah, blah, blah, but no mention of how the hirers are unrealistic in their expectations. They post a job ad with super high qualifications that are unneeded for the job opening, with lower-than-standard pay, and complain that all the people they get CVs from are "underqualified."

Here's a Tweet (an X?) from the developer of FastAPI about a job posting that he couldn't apply for.
1704977630949.png

So, maybe lets say that both sides of the hiring table are out to lunch.
 
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