Labor shortages in the skilled trades discussion

[rob_s]

FWIW, lumber and other material costs notwithstanding, in our area there seems to be no slowing down multi family (condos and apartments) and even hotels are coming back (nobody was starting construction on a hotel in 2020).

We have several large (25-50 story) multi family jobs starting now. Biggest issue is the labor. And I don’t just mean the guys screwing and nailing shot together, but also the people to manage the projects. We lost a LOT of institutional knowledge about how to run work in the last recession. Lots of old guys, that were teaching and mentoring young guys, left the industry. As such, the young guys came up without a good example of how to do things. Now here we are 10+ years on and those young guys, who never learned the right way to begin with, have been promoted to positions of power (sorry, “leadership” in modern business jargon) and are frankly fucking it all up. Combine that with millenialism and the fact that some of these folks are themselves Millenials who have subscribed to the narrative, and it’s a total shit show.

Even basic concepts like meeting minutes and daily reports are totally ignored, and the less-easily-ignored RFIs and Submittals are still getting mugged daily. Almost every issue I see in the field can be tracked back to a mis-management in the office, out often simply because the guy (or girl, these days) managing the office doesn’t know his ass from his elbow when it comes to process.

[Hambo]

rob_s, I'm hearing similar stories from people in other fields and it's disconcerting.

[rob_s]

rob_s, I'm hearing similar stories from people in other fields and it's disconcerting.

Yeah I wish I could say Construction is alone there. I’ve drafted, and deleted, a coterie thread on this topic a half dozen times. Have t figured out how to get all the concepts from my brain to my fingertips yet.

[Hambo]

Yeah I wish I could say Construction is alone there. I’ve drafted, and deleted, a coterie thread on this topic a half dozen times. Have t figured out how to get all the concepts from my brain to my fingertips yet.

Just let it rip and post it. I'd love to read the discussion that follows. I think it will be a wisdon of crowds thing. Everybody sees pieces, but none of us see the whole picture.

[LittleLebowski]

I’m hearing lots of bad things about skilled labor in the trades right now.

[Caballoflaco]

Just let it rip and post it. I'd love to read the discussion that follows. I think it will be a wisdon of crowds thing. Everybody sees pieces, but none of us see the whole picture.

Looks like that thread just got started if a mod could split it off.

[fixer]

I’m in the middle of a big job right now that is hung up because of manpower shortages and skills shortages.

Literally just got back from the deck coaching an instrument tech how to un wire and disconnect some transmitters.

[Borderland]

Here's a good article on the surveying profession. I've been retired for 7 years and I still get people asking me if I can do a small job. Uh, no.

https://www.proplogix.com/blog/how-a-lack-of-surveyors-may-slow-down-your-closing/

[rob_s]

One good thing about all of this...

The robots are coming.

just like the checkers/self-checkout, once the human becomes more difficult/scarce/expensive, you WILL be replaced. That goes for "pencil pushers" like me too.

There are so many machines for construction right now from layout to laying block, but they lack the funding because people are still cheap. Make them less skilled and more expensive and less available and suddenly folks will get real interested in alternative means.

I'm a little sad that lumber prices seem to be headed down, even if not all the way down. I'm really interested in alternative building materials (I have some samples on my desk made from rice hulls, pretty neat concept) but without funding to get spun up to scale they are still expensive. Make "real wood" more expensive for long enough and people are going to get interested in alternatives.

[Tensaw]

This simply validates my decision to be a hard-head and refuse to hire "skilled" labor as I have remodeled my house from front to back. I may not be a pro, but I care about the work I am doing and give it proper attention. This, as a co-worker is hiring folks to come in and remodel her place and she has had issues with *every single* tradesman she has had in the house. Between youtube, knowledgeable friends, and being willing to spend money on good tools (and material that I screw up), I feel like I have gotten a better outcome all the way around vice hiring work done. And even if something comes out sub-standard, at least I have only myself to blame.

This weekend I will be installing a tanked electric water heater and replacing the associated plumbing (inside the walls) with Pex. I already know this (the plumbing part) is gonna be a PITA, but I'm cool with that.

[Borderland]

Here's a good article on the surveying profession. I've been retired for 7 years and I still get people asking me if I can do a small job. Uh, no.

https://www.proplogix.com/blog/how-a-lack-of-surveyors-may-slow-down-your-closing/

The article is 3 years old but if anything the situation is worse.

[rob_s]

Here's a good article on the surveying profession. I've been retired for 7 years and I still get people asking me if I can do a small job. Uh, no.

https://www.proplogix.com/blog/how-a-lack-of-surveyors-may-slow-down-your-closing/

The article is 3 years old but if anything the situation is worse.

Have you heard that, I think in NC or SC, the surveyors are suing the state to require them to only allow licensed surveyors to fly drones?

the surveyors are finding that people don't need them as much with drone-generated orthomosaics of the site to document existing conditions. Which isn't to say that surveyors aren't needed, but there's a good example of tech stepping in and causing lower demand for labor.

[Borderland]

Have you heard that, I think in NC or SC, the surveyors are suing the state to require them to only allow licensed surveyors to fly drones?

the surveyors are finding that people don't need them as much with drone-generated orthomosaics of the site to document existing conditions. Which isn't to say that surveyors aren't needed, but there's a good example of tech stepping in and causing lower demand for labor.

It wouldn't surprise me if they aren't angling to make some new tech their domain. They tried to get a law passed here to require all photogrammetry to be managed by a licensed surveyor. Photogrammetry was developed during WW2 for photo recon and has been in use since. GPS enhanced the accuracy to the point that many boot-on-the-ground surveys for site engineering were no longer needed. Then came GPS controlled Lidar which is an aircraft to ground laser measuring technology. Mapping from the air is state of the art now and traditional methods are now only used where the canopy is too thick for penetration. I'm not up to speed on drones but they probably use the same technology.

The fact is many jobs that were being done by surveyors can now be done without them. About the only thing saving the profession now is the state statutes that require a professional surveyors stamp on legal documents like plats and subdivisions. In some states you can't transfer title without an ALTA survey. That was the doing of the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors who lobbied state legislators.

I worked mostly in bridge and road construction but I had a license for boundary work. It's GD hard to get one of those these days with the experience and educational requirements that states are mandating.

[rob_s]

It wouldn't surprise me if they aren't angling to make some new tech their domain. They tried to get a law passed here to require all photogrammetry to be managed by a licensed surveyor. Photogrammetry was developed during WW2 for photo recon and has been in use since. GPS enhanced the accuracy to the point that many boot-on-the-ground surveys for site engineering were no longer needed. Then came GPS controlled Lidar which is an aircraft to ground laser measuring technology. Mapping from the air is state of the art now and traditional methods are now only used where the canopy is too thick for penetration. I'm not up to speed on drones but they probably use the same technology.

The fact is many jobs that were being done by surveyors can now be done without them. About the only thing saving the profession now is the state statutes that require a professional surveyors stamp on legal documents like plats and subdivisions. In some states you can't transfer title without an ALTA survey. That was the doing of the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors who lobbied state legislators.

I worked mostly in bridge and road construction but I had a license for boundary work. It's GD hard to get one of those these days with the experience and educational requirements that states are mandating.

Maybe 10 years ago one of the local surveyor/civil-engineering firms we used bought a laser scanner. They were one of the first companies I knew directly that had one. Today I believe laser scanning, and sometimes scan-to-as-built-model, is a big part of their business.

It strikes me that if you have to legislate your stake, you're probably (a) no longer the best person to do the job and (b) on your way out anyway.

I'm trying to get a Total Station and a "layout guy" added to my team to go out and do field checks for us on our projects. Hopefully we don't get sued by any surveyors :p

[hickrev]

I worked mostly in bridge and road construction but I had a license for boundary work. It's GD hard to get one of those these days with the experience and educational requirements that states are mandating.

Even that is getting cut back significantly. We run “survey” crews out of our engineering offices (state-side) that do both roadway and boundary work, all of whom are “supervised” by one licensed surveyor in a completely different development office. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t seen 95% of the plats we’ve sent him for approval, but hey, apparently that’s what the licensing board is fine with.

[Totem Polar]

I simply cannot comment on “skilled trade” labor. What I can comment on is the service industry. As I type this, I am sitting out side a coffeeshop (imagine that, me and coffee, but I digress). I just had a conversation with the manager on this topic. They are opening a second location, and the bottleneck is the interviewing and training. It has become cliché for new hires to fail to show on the second day of training. They simply can’t hire enough people to staff the upcoming opening. Another friend of mine is the GM for a local chain of restaurants—he called this “the worst labor market in 20 years,” and “a total shit show.”

One of the venues I book pulled half of the weekly concerts on the summer series, because they can’t keep enough staff to stay open into the evening to run the mid-week concert night. Totally an employee thing: they will hire people and train them for a week, then they ghost. Over and over again, like Sisyphus and that damn rock, only it’s apps/interviews/orientations repeat… all summer.

Every grocery I’ve been in (a whopping 3, but still) has a “now hiring sign” up. All the McDonalds have “15/hr text to apply” lettering on their outside reader boards all over town.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Supposedly, WA’s enhanced unemployment lapses this month, so things may change, but right now, it’s a spectacle to see, for sure.

At any rate, carry on…

[Borderland]

Maybe 10 years ago one of the local surveyor/civil-engineering firms we used bought a laser scanner. They were one of the first companies I knew directly that had one. Today I believe laser scanning, and sometimes scan-to-as-built-model, is a big part of their business.

It strikes me that if you have to legislate your stake, you're probably (a) no longer the best person to do the job and (b) on your way out anyway.

I'm trying to get a Total Station and a "layout guy" added to my team to go out and do field checks for us on our projects. Hopefully we don't get sued by any surveyors :p

:D

I don't think you'll get sued. A friend of mine used to moonlight doing layout for a small contractor. He wasn't licensed at the time but he knew his way around construction. All you need is a good construction surveyor and generally construction isn't mentioned on any requirements to hold a professional license. As a matter of fact it's rejected in some states. That's ironic because good construction surveyors can make more money in a building boom than licensed surveyors doing boundary work. Usually the large civil/surveying companies grab those guys and bill them out at 3x overhead. No boundary work evolved, just a contract for construction surveying services.

Laser scanners. Whoa baby can those things measure. We had one. We used it to monitor walls and abutments. The problem was we had no CAD staff that could manage the data and produce a 3 dimensional finished product. We sort of got ahead of ourselves technologically speaking.

[UNK]

Ive always been been a proponent of people learning a trade or two or three trades. The work is there if you are willing to work and it pays damn good. Look at carpentry one of the cheapest trades to get into. Its difficult to make good money in that trade. But there is no licensing or formal testing for skills base at least in my area. The areas that pay are electrical, hvac, controls, auto mechanic. The trades that have strict experience and training requirements are where Id point someone if they are interested in that kind of work.

[MVS]

It has been this way on Tool and Die for a while now and has only gotten worse with recent events. The shops in my area are always looking for employees. From entry level to master Toolmakers such as myself. There aren't enough skilled guys to go around, and none of the young people want to get into the trade because you have to actually work and may get dirty. We have had a number of people last less than a day.

The owners have brought a lot of this on themselves by trying to hold wages down and by changing the way they run apprenticeships and even Toolmakers. Most of the shops have went to specialization so they don't have to pay as much for a guy like me who can do it all. This has bit them in the ass because now they don't have enough people to see a project through from beginning to end.

By us at least welders, plumbers, HVAC are all on similar situations. Everyone thinks they are owed college and an easy job. Well I went to college twice and didn't have to pay for it either time. I just had to work my butt off, both as a tool and die maker and as a cop.

[Cory]

I work in the trades for a municipality. I'm pretty new to the trades.

A big problem I see on this side is unrealistic expectations from my employer. They want an experienced 20 year plus journeyman electrician or carpenter for $16 and hour, and there is no room to promote later. Once your in there might be a small yearly pay bump but there is no where to go. The pay and benefits dont rival alot of the private sector jobs, and the amount of experience they want means those they do get age out every few years. Guys like me who are in apprentice type positions are in short supply too, but whats really needed is skilled labor. And you just can't get that for cheap.

With FL's minimum wage growing over the next few years until it hits $15/hr something has to give. Every guy in our shop will quit and go be a walmart greeter before they bust there ass in the trades for the same money. It's going to sting for people who were $x an hour over minimum and are now far less over it. That's the loss of a lot of buying power.

I sympathize with small business that are hurting for workers. But it wouldn't hurt some bigger employers to remember they need employees as much as employees need a job. The handouts need to stop, the unemployment needs to get reeled back in too. But alot of places need to value good workers. Ditch shitbags and actively retain/keep people who put out results.

This stuff is all probably scatterbrained, and doesnt make sense. It's mostly related to my employer and some changes happening here.

[Snapshot]

One good thing about all of this...

The robots are coming.

just like the checkers/self-checkout, once the human becomes more difficult/scarce/expensive, you WILL be replaced. That goes for "pencil pushers" like me too.

There are so many machines for construction right now from layout to laying block, but they lack the funding because people are still cheap. Make them less skilled and more expensive and less available and suddenly folks will get real interested in alternative means.

I'm a little sad that lumber prices seem to be headed down, even if not all the way down. I'm really interested in alternative building materials (I have some samples on my desk made from rice hulls, pretty neat concept) but without funding to get spun up to scale they are still expensive. Make "real wood" more expensive for long enough and people are going to get interested in alternatives.

I was at Home Depot today, of course the item I was looking for (and shown "3 in stock" on their web site) was nowhere to be seen. Normally I just give up and move on, but I wanted this for some work I planned to do today, so I waited to ask somebody. "Mike" was duplicating some keys for a guy who seemed to be making two copies of everything on his key ring. What I noticed, and had not seen before, was that Mike was not doing the old-style trying to find the right blank, aligning the blank and the original in clamps, then guiding the original while the blank was cut. Instead he stuck the original in one slot of a much bigger machine, waited a second or two until a screen told him which blank number to select from a rack on top of the housing. He pulls a blank from the corresponding slot in the rack, scans the bar code, sticks the blank into another slot, and presses "Copy". Ten or fifteen seconds later the screen shows "Finished" and he pulls the copy out, sticks it in another slot which wipes off any debris, pulls it out and gives it a quick swipe with a brass brush.

There was an old style duplicator beside the new one, he said "we don't really use that any more".

So the robots are making keys, not a huge thing but a step on the road to replacing people. However, the robot key copier still needed Mike to stick the keys in the slots, so not totally replaced yet. A bit faster than typical hardware store key copiers and probably more consistent, perfect for places like Home Depot where many (most?) of the people working there don't have a lot of technical or trade experience or training.

And, best of all: when Mike finished the ring of keys he actually looked around for the item I wanted, including going to check in the receiving area, and actually brought it out for me! Probably not going to find a robot to do that.

[MickAK]

Unemployment benefits are a big issue of course but a lot of this is reaping what you sow.

Work ethics aren't created out of thin air. People hired immigrant labor because it was cheaper primarily, but also better and more reliable. Now they bemoan the lack of workers in fields where you have to start out by doing those types of jobs.

The $600 a week unemployment boost was the biggest failure of Trump's presidency but it just hastened what was coming.

[MVS]

I work in the trades for a municipality. I'm pretty new to the trades.

A big problem I see on this side is unrealistic expectations from my employer. They want an experienced 20 year plus journeyman electrician or carpenter for $16 and hour, and there is no room to promote later. Once your in there might be a small yearly pay bump but there is no where to go. The pay and benefits dont rival alot of the private sector jobs, and the amount of experience they want means those they do get age out every few years. Guys like me who are in apprentice type positions are in short supply too, but whats really needed is skilled labor. And you just can't get that for cheap.

With FL's minimum wage growing over the next few years until it hits $15/hr something has to give. Every guy in our shop will quit and go be a walmart greeter before they bust there ass in the trades for the same money. It's going to sting for people who were $x an hour over minimum and are now far less over it. That's the loss of a lot of buying power.

I sympathize with small business that are hurting for workers. But it wouldn't hurt some bigger employers to remember they need employees as much as employees need a job. The handouts need to stop, the unemployment needs to get reeled back in too. But alot of places need to value good workers. Ditch shitbags and actively retain/keep people who put out results.

This stuff is all probably scatterbrained, and doesnt make sense. It's mostly related to my employer and some changes happening here.

I wouldn't put my boots on for that money. We have assembly line workers in the RV industry near here making $30 hr and they can't find enough slackers to fill those spots

[Darth_Uno]

- They want an experienced 20 year plus journeyman electrician or carpenter for $16 and hour,-

With FL's minimum wage growing over the next few years until it hits $15/hr something has to give. Every guy in our shop will quit and go be a walmart greeter before they bust there ass in the trades for the same money. It's going to sting for people who were $x an hour over minimum and are now far less over it. -

Ditch shitbags and actively retain/keep people who put out results.

In the last three years our starting pay has slowly gone from $10 to $15/hr. That's just for someone who can show up on time and sober 4 out of 5 days a week.

My top guys get $30 (plus health, vision and dental). What you're going to see is as entry-level (non-construction) jobs pay more, the scale for skilled workers will increase. Like you said, who wants to bust their ass out here for $15/hr when you can sell phones at the mall for the same pay.

[Welder]

One day I want to be a skilled tradesman. :p

I spent today cutting the floor out of a dumpster, then beating it apart with a small sledge and a large cold chisel. It was probably 115 degrees inside that thing and I sweated like 2 gallons of water. Then I got stormed on before I could get my tools up. I can't figure out why I can't find anybody else who wants to do this. :p

[Cory]

I wouldn't put my boots on for that money. We have assembly line workers in the RV industry near here making $30 hr and they can't find enough slackers to fill those spots

I'm more or less an apprentice. The positions over me make about $16.50 an hour. Several of these people are flat our phenomenal at what they do, and did it in the private sector for 20 years before they came to work at the municipality. 10ish years ago jobs took a hit and they moved to the steady paycheck. I'm here for the schedule, and if I stay long enough the retirement - but that's apparently not what it once was. It's often hard for people to remember what the median household income is, and how many people are below it.


In the last three years our starting pay has slowly gone from $10 to $15/hr. That's just for someone who can show up on time and sober 4 out of 5 days a week.

My top guys get $30 (plus health, vision and dental). What you're going to see is as entry-level (non-construction) jobs pay more, the scale for skilled workers will increase. Like you said, who wants to bust their ass out here for $15/hr when you can sell phones at the mall for the same pay.

That is a topic of frequent conversation in the parking lot. Our employer has to come to grips with the fact they won't retain people with pretty big pay increases. And that pretty much means taxes are going to jump... the whole thing is a lose/lose.

[Casual Friday]

I'm more or less an apprentice. The positions over me make about $16.50 an hour.

Dang. I don't mean this as an insult, but that's depressing. You're worth more than that. I would be looking for employment elsewhere no matter how good the retirement plan is.

[JodyH]

Try skilled oil/gas refinery/fractionation plant operations labor.
Starting rate for relatively inexperienced (still need a few years of OJT in a related sector of O&G) is around $150k/yr. and goes way up from there, 14 days on 14 days off shift work has you actually working less than half the year.
We're still very shorthanded at the facility I'm currently at.

It's a good situation to be in for job security and compensation package negotiation though...
:cool:

[Cory]

Dang. I don't mean this as an insult, but that's depressing. You're worth more than that. I would be looking for employment elsewhere no matter how good the retirement plan is.

No offense taken. I don't mean to throw a pity party, but I'm definitely on the low end of PF incomes/socioeconomics. The retirement plan is kinda "meh" too. If I give em 30 years, apparently they'll give me money to stop working? Or something like that.

Seems like a win.

[AKDoug]

One day I want to be a skilled tradesman. :p

I spent today cutting the floor out of a dumpster, then beating it apart with a small sledge and a large cold chisel. It was probably 115 degrees inside that thing and I sweated like 2 gallons of water. Then I got stormed on before I could get my tools up. I can't figure out why I can't find anybody else who wants to do this. :p

Oh how I can relate. I have a giant offspring that does that dirty work for me now. Every time he bitches and moans, I just point out all the things I've built around the business. It gives me pleasure to see him add to those things now. He's got what it takes and he works extremely hard.

I'd rather sweat doing concrete or welding on a big project than deal with insurance, taxes, and gov't regulation. Too bad I have too do both.

[Borderland]

One day I want to be a skilled tradesman. :p

I spent today cutting the floor out of a dumpster, then beating it apart with a small sledge and a large cold chisel. It was probably 115 degrees inside that thing and I sweated like 2 gallons of water. Then I got stormed on before I could get my tools up. I can't figure out why I can't find anybody else who wants to do this. :p

That only works in a non-right-to-work state. By the time you're a journeyman you will have provided a union official a comfortable living and paid for his kids to go to college.

[Borderland]

Even that is getting cut back significantly. We run “survey” crews out of our engineering offices (state-side) that do both roadway and boundary work, all of whom are “supervised” by one licensed surveyor in a completely different development office. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t seen 95% of the plats we’ve sent him for approval, but hey, apparently that’s what the licensing board is fine with.

Some states allow that. As long as your company has a physical office and staff in the state where the work is being done. More or less a corporate license to do business in that state.

Personally, I wouldn't stamp a survey that I didn't do myself. That includes the research, calculations and being on site at least once. But then I was never in the bidness. I was employed by the gov't to build roads and bridges.

[Joe in PNG]

Call it College Cargo Cultism- the cult belief that if you get your degree, then you are exempt from hard work forever.

And like a lot of superstitions, it's hard to pin down where someone has said as much, but the belief is there, not to mention the subtle pressure to get a degree, or be one of those toiling losers.

It's funny how the old Aristocratic belief that labor and toil somehow soils and degrades those who participate has come back into fashion.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

There's pretty decent money in the trades here but we keep circumventing the shortage by allowing temporary foreign workers at minimum wage, which holds the wages well below what they should be. You go to lots of big construction sites and entire trades are imported.

I miss trades work though, that's for sure. I really thought I'd be happier designing stuff but man, I am bored to death and can almost feel my brain atrophy as I no longer have to solve problems on the fly the same way.

[UNK]

Try skilled oil/gas refinery/fractionation plant operations labor.
Starting rate for relatively inexperienced (still need a few years of OJT in a related sector of O&G) is around $150k/yr. and goes way up from there, 14 days on 14 days off shift work has you actually working less than half the year.
We're still very shorthanded at the facility I'm currently at.

It's a good situation to be in for job security and compensation package negotiation though...
:cool:

Thats some damn good money. Im assuming 24/7 operation. Do they rotate days night or its straight shift?

[Jared]

Someday I’m gonna post a hell of a story. Today isn’t that day, but someday. I’ve witnessed a level of incompetence, failure of leadership, and complete failure to grasp the realities of the current situation that probably won’t be believed. The amazing thing is that when I do post it, every single word will be true.

I’ll offer this for a teaser/trailer: I work at a place that is 99% managed by ostriches that reached their current positions thanks to the Peter Principle. There is one exception, I report to him, but he is fighting a losing battle and he knows it.


Edited to fix grammar.

[AKDoug]

Thats some damn good money. Im assuming 24/7 operation. Do they rotate days night or its straight shift?

Obviously not Jody, but my brother works 12's for fourteen days, then goes home. His job doesn't have a night component in the oil field. My buddy that monitors pipelines within the oilfield also works 12's but there are two shifts so they have 24 hr. coverage.

[AKDoug]

Some states allow that. As long as your company has a physical office and staff in the state where the work is being done. More or less a corporate license to do business in that state.

Personally, I wouldn't stamp a survey that I didn't do myself. That includes the research, calculations and being on site at least once. But then I was never in the bidness. I was employed by the gov't to build roads and bridges. As we've discussed before, I was in the boundary/cadastral surveying world. It was common place in our state to have one licensed guy and several crews of qualified guys (most of which were pursuing their own license). I was a party chief for a couple of these outfits and if you were doing an uncomplicated boundary survey, it either closed or it didn't. You knew within a few minutes of turning the last angle and shot the last distance. Those type of surveys went right to the drafting department and were produced into plats. I know for a fact that once AutoCad came around the "stamps" were stored in the computer and applied digitally. If it was a good crew doing the work, it was rarely reviewed by the licensed surveyor of record. The licensed guy really came into the picture on legality questions and complicated geodetic computations. In all honesty, the licensed guys spent more time booking work, going to planning meetings, and managing the help than anything.

In Alaska, construction surveying isn't a licensed profession. They only called us boundary guys to establish the rights of ways on highway projects, and run topo work. Once that was done and the design was completed the union construction surveying guys rolled in.

[Borderland]

There's pretty decent money in the trades here but we keep circumventing the shortage by allowing temporary foreign workers at minimum wage, which holds the wages well below what they should be. You go to lots of big construction sites and entire trades are imported.

I miss trades work though, that's for sure. I really thought I'd be happier designing stuff but man, I am bored to death and can almost feel my brain atrophy as I no longer have to solve problems on the fly the same way.

Roger that.

I miss those 20 million dollar construction projects. It's like a Normandy beach invasion without the people actually being killed. Just hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on your performance every week. We used to have a meeting every Monday morning and the contractor would lay out the weeks work schedule. Critical path was a thing and everyone needs to be committed to schedules. You didn't want to that guy in a contractor claim for a completion date penalty. A little different than an unemployment check that didn't arrive on time.

[luckyman]

Call it College Cargo Cultism- the cult belief that if you get your degree, then you are exempt from hard work forever.

And like a lot of superstitions, it's hard to pin down where someone has said as much, but the belief is there, not to mention the subtle pressure to get a degree, or be one of those toiling losers.

It's funny how the old Aristocratic belief that labor and toil somehow soils and degrades those who participate has come back into fashion.

I’m wondering if this depends on if you are a stem graduate staying in a stem field or not…
I have 11 direct reports; all with at least a BS. 9 of them bust their ass consistently delivering more than I have a right to ask. The other 2 do ok, and just have different priorities it is hard to argue with.

[AKDoug]

Roger that.

I miss those 20 million dollar construction projects. It's like a Normandy beach invasion without the people actually being killed. Just hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on your performance every week. We used to have a meeting every Monday morning and the contractor would lay out the weeks work schedule. Critical path was a thing and everyone needs to be committed to schedules. You didn't want to that guy in a contractor claim for a completion date penalty. A little different than an unemployment check that didn't arrive on time.
That's about the only thing I miss about the surveying world. The big projects with hundreds of 40 acre lots scattered across the Alaska wilderness. Or big giant helicopter jobs where we established township boundaries and broke them down into sections. The pressure of the boss telling you that if you didn't perform they were sending you home.. and loosing 10's of thousands of dollars.

I oddly miss the 12 hour days for 5 to 6 months with no days off and my HP41CV running a program I wrote that calculated how much money I was making by the second.

[Borderland]

Once that was done and the design was completed the union construction surveying guys rolled in.


Here in WA they all belong to the operators union and they work out of the union hall like heavy equipment operators. $44/hr. for a party chief.

I never made that much but my job was a guaranteed income with benefits and pension. There were a few times where I almost lost my head, bought a trailer and followed the big money. I had some decent offers. :D

Your ability to run the numbers paid off in your business, no doubt.

[Joe in PNG]

I’m wondering if this depends on if you are a stem graduate staying in a stem field or not…
I have 11 direct reports; all with at least a BS. 9 of them bust their ass consistently delivering more than I have a right to ask. The other 2 do ok, and just have different priorities it is hard to argue with.

It's not so much those rare few who graduate HS knowing what they want to do, realistically know how to get there, and have the drive to get it done- not just in college, but when they get to where they're going.
STEM people, future doctors, and so on can fit this category easily- if they do the work needed.

The College Cargo Cult is more about the average kid (with the average youthful congenital rectal-cranial inversion) who's rather vague on what they want to do, have no clue on how to get there, and really don't have any drive at all. But, they just graduated from 12 mandatory years of having people yap at them, and figure they got to go on to college as if it was an inevitable step like they had to move up from elementary school to middle school. Underneath this is the unspoken assumption that by going to Highschool Pt II (now with drinking!), they can exempt themselves form actually working for a living, that they will be instantly given a corner office & six figure salary.

A lot of millenial kevtching I've seen is disappointment that their degree didn't give them that. In a way, it's their fault for getting into massive debt for a useless degree- then working minimum wage at Starbucks after all that. But, in some ways, they do have a right to complain. Their trusted teachers and others are pushing them in that direction. Who's telling kids to maybe take a couple of years off first... maybe enlist, or get a job doing scut work in a field you think might be interesting- or dump the idea of college all together and get into trades? Take a few years to grow up a bit, shed the harmful work midset foisted by the public education system, and really 'find yourself' without the debt?
Plus, there's nothing like hard work at a bad job to provide true motivation to buckle down and study for a degree.

[hickrev]

Roger that.

I miss those 20 million dollar construction projects. It's like a Normandy beach invasion without the people actually being killed. Just hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on your performance every week. We used to have a meeting every Monday morning and the contractor would lay out the weeks work schedule. Critical path was a thing and everyone needs to be committed to schedules. You didn't want to that guy in a contractor claim for a completion date penalty. A little different than an unemployment check that didn't arrive on time.

This goes back to the original complaint of “loss of knowledge”, but the prime contractors on half of my construction projects this year have submitted schedules without a critical path identified. The common denominator is contractor PMs that have fewer years in the field than certain pairs of boots that I own (and I’m on the younger side myself), and the typical excuse is that quirks in contractual holidays or suspension times make it impossible to get Project or P6 to spit out a critical path.

Strangely enough, the problem goes away once they need to show a critical path to request additional working days. Still, I worry about what will happen when the older generation of PMs retires and is no longer available to troubleshoot.

As far as skilled labor goes, I have found it nearly impossible to hire entry-level engineering technicians, mostly due to a lack of qualified candidates. The local community college used to have a Civil Eng Tech 2-year program that was an excellent feeder to our agency, but they canned it a few years back, and now our applicant pool is mostly 4-year Civil Eng graduates that weren’t able to lock down a traditional engineering gig. That’s great and all, but they’ll typically leave the technician track at the first opportunity, and I foresee us having problems finding qualified lab foremen and supervisors 5-10 years down the road.

[JodyH]

Thats some damn good money. Im assuming 24/7 operation. Do they rotate days night or its straight shift?
standard schedule is:
14 x 12hr days
14 days off
14 x 12hr nights
14 days off
repeat

I'm currently 4 nights into a 22 night hitch covering a shorthanded shift.
I'm basically working the entire month of July (mostly nights, which is awesome temperature wise).
Not much spare time right now, but the retirement fund is getting better every day.
:cool:

[farscott]

The interesting thing about the labor market now is that almost every job type has unfilled openings. I cannot watch the local news without seeing commercials asking for manufacturing workers, warehouse workers, and STEM people. I cannot even get my regular general contractor, who has done multiple projects for me, to commit to a schedule for my next project due to labor issues. He just does not know who is not going to show up on a job site on any given day except for Friday which is pay day.

For motivated people, there are great opportunities to increase income and wealth. For the last decade plus, I have worked a full-time salaried job and ran my engineering consulting business on the side. In early 2020, most of my customers for my business cancelled my contracts. My customer base from 2016 to 2020 was heavily aerospace with a fair amount of the rest being ground transport customers, so that was no surprise. The business income dropped by more than 90% when 2020 was compared to 2019. For the first time, the business reported a loss.

This year I am having to pick and choose which projects the business can do as I have more applicants than time. There is not a day that I do not get approached with another opportunity. I am looking to expand, but that means I need to hire qualified people. And right now, that is not easy as everyone decent already has a decent job. Added to that, I see this bubble popping, making me reluctant to go all-in on the business and give up my salaried job. Right now, I am moving money to get ready for the Great Recession II. I have sold assets into the bubble to free up cash (sell when everyone else is buying) and delayed some other capital equipment expenses due to lack of inventory, crazy pricing, and quality concerns. I figure I will buy when everyone else is selling.

[rob_s]

And right now, that is not easy as everyone decent already has a decent job.

We have been on a hiring spree, and every time I get the new hire email, or here about this “stud” that we just landed, I think of the above.

We had a new hire/promote a few years ago (hiring as a project manager, when their current position with their current employer is assistant project manager. Always a bad idea IMO and has basically never played out) who was whining in his interview that his current employer just didn’t give him any opportunity. Most of the people in the room thought the guy was great. One of the principals in the form, after listening to everyone praises the kid, says “what do you know about him that we don’t? They’ve known him for 6 years. We’ve known him for two hours.”

Within two months his boss, who wasn’t part of the hiring, wanted to kill him. First, he didn’t have the basic skills he represented. Second, he had communicated certain blank spots in his skill set to the hiring group but said group didn’t communicate those gaps to the new boss (presumably because they didn’t want to admit they had hired bad). Third, even when told “do this, then that, then the other thing” the kid would come back having done half of the other thing, without bothering to do this or that, because he thought he had grasped the task but missed all of the nuance. For example, “take this electrical subcontract, review it against your project, edit it, and then get with me to review it” resulted in him taking the old contract, changing the names on it, and then asking for a meeting to review. There were items in there that had zero to do with the new project, showing that he hadn’t read the plans, or the contract, or both.

BTW, when the new boss tried to fire him, the hiring committee, presumably because firing him would mean they’d have to admit he was a turd, transferred him to another project… in assistant project manager capacity (while remaining at project manager pay!), under a guy that himself just got promoted to PM who couldn’t find his ass with two hands and a map. Great for mentoring!

[Welder]

Right now, I am moving money to get ready for the Great Recession II. I have sold assets into the bubble to free up cash (sell when everyone else is buying) and delayed some other capital equipment expenses due to lack of inventory, crazy pricing, and quality concerns. I figure I will buy when everyone else is selling.

This is how I am approaching these current times as well. Slimming and trimming while others are spending. Once you've seen the cycle repeat a few times, you realize that it's a *cycle*. The main thing, actually, is trusting that it will come back after it hits the bottom. Otherwise you don't invest during the times that you need to.

I've tried to anchor my business to types of customers who are virtually recession-proof, which has ended up with me working on inglorious crap like dumpsters for my county public works dept. But public works will be one of the last places in the world to run out of $$$$....

[Bio]

It's not so much those rare few who graduate HS knowing what they want to do, realistically know how to get there, and have the drive to get it done- not just in college, but when they get to where they're going.
STEM people, future doctors, and so on can fit this category easily- if they do the work needed.

The College Cargo Cult is more about the average kid (with the average youthful congenital rectal-cranial inversion) who's rather vague on what they want to do, have no clue on how to get there, and really don't have any drive at all. But, they just graduated from 12 mandatory years of having people yap at them, and figure they got to go on to college as if it was an inevitable step like they had to move up from elementary school to middle school. Underneath this is the unspoken assumption that by going to Highschool Pt II (now with drinking!), they can exempt themselves form actually working for a living, that they will be instantly given a corner office & six figure salary.

A lot of millenial kevtching I've seen is disappointment that their degree didn't give them that. In a way, it's their fault for getting into massive debt for a useless degree- then working minimum wage at Starbucks after all that. But, in some ways, they do have a right to complain. Their trusted teachers and others are pushing them in that direction. Who's telling kids to maybe take a couple of years off first... maybe enlist, or get a job doing scut work in a field you think might be interesting- or dump the idea of college all together and get into trades? Take a few years to grow up a bit, shed the harmful work midset foisted by the public education system, and really 'find yourself' without the debt?
Plus, there's nothing like hard work at a bad job to provide true motivation to buckle down and study for a degree.

It's weird, I'm someone with borderline excessive quantities of schooling, but I often council youths to only go to college if they know what they want to do. I've taught too many classes where the students are there only because their parents and/or school councilors told them they needed to go to college. It is too expensive and takes too much time to do casually.

[Kanye Wyoming]

I spoke at the annual conference of an industry group a few years ago. This is a niche, somewhat sophisticated manufacturing industry that pays very well, with top tier benefits.

In the morning, the head of each subgroup gave a report on developments, challenges, opportunities, etc. There were about seven of them. What struck me was that every single one said the most pressing challenge was finding and keeping semi-skilled and skilled employees. To summarize:

If they pass the math test they fail the drug test. If they pass the drug test they fail the math test. If they pass both, it becomes apparent rather quickly that they view working on Fridays and Mondays as optional.

[okie john]

A big problem I see on this side is unrealistic expectations from my employer. They want an experienced 20 year plus journeyman electrician or carpenter for $16 and hour, and there is no room to promote later.

I see this in marketing and in technology as well. An entire layer of hiring managers and recruiters came of age during the gig economy when they could basically abuse workers ​and they haven't adjusted to the fact that it's now a seller's market. Those firms are starving for talent because the people they need are earning market-driven wages somewhere else.


Another friend of mine is the GM for a local chain of restaurants—he called this “the worst labor market in 20 years,” and “a total shit show.”

Restauranteurs will really suffer. Restaurant work is incredibly hard and the pay is horrible. A lot of restaurant workers realized how much they hated it once they were forced to find other work and now they're not going back. The demand side is also suffering. People learned to cook (or became better cooks) last year and will no longer pay to eat a badly-prepared meal served by a lackadaisical waiter. Prices are also higher and more than a few places have quietly inserted mandatory service fees and tips into the bill. In once case, it was a 5% service fee AND a 15% tip. These were listed on the bill but by then it's too late for the diner to reconsider. They'll probably be surprised when their business slowly fades down to nothing.


Okie John

[UNK]

Maybe someone on here has a great online job or work for for my buddy. Hes driven like a Mal. The word intense is an understatement. He treats his job like its his business and performs performs every day. He tested in the top 3% of machinist nation wide and performs more like an Engineer than a Machinist. Hes capable of programing with g code or with modern cad software. His favorite is Fusion but he knows multiple platforms. He has his own CNC milling center a machine shop setup in his garage. Ive started an Airgun thread https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?43940-Air-Rifles&p=1093528&viewfull=1#post1093528 that shows some of his hobby work. He also tool and die certified. If you needed someone to do design work or examine tool paths for optimization, or do process sheets or make some parts for your organization.
Hes also an 8 year Vet with deployment time including 10th Mountain deployment in 93.
If any of this holds some interest for you shoot a PM and Ill give you his contact info.

[JohnO]

It has been this way on Tool and Die for a while now and has only gotten worse with recent events. The shops in my area are always looking for employees. From entry level to master Toolmakers such as myself. There aren't enough skilled guys to go around, and none of the young people want to get into the trade because you have to actually work and may get dirty. We have had a number of people last less than a day.


My uncle (RIP) a master Tool & Die maker learned his trade at Winchester Repeating Arms in New Haven after he returned from Korea. He was well known and respected in the area. During retirement he would get a call and agree to terms. A shop would send a car and pick him up. He would go in and provide his expertise. Anything from looking at plans and telling the shop the job isn't worth to setting up their machines and getting them started or training other machinists.

After my aunt passed my uncle lived alone. My cousin his daughter and her kids were very tight with him. My cousin was managing his affairs to make sure nothing fell through the cracks. She would say Dad how much cash do you want on hand? Occasionally he would take a some but always pocket change. One day he had his grandkids with him for the day. That night when the kids went home my cousin saw all 4 kids each had 2 $100 bills. She called her dad and asked, where did the money come from? He said I do a little consulting on the side. She said where and how you're not driving anymore? He said various places. They come pick me up, I do my thing, they pay me cash on the barrelhead, then take me home. That's how we discovered what he was doing.

[rob_s]

I simply cannot comment on “skilled trade” labor. What I can comment on is the service industry. As I type this, I am sitting out side a coffeeshop (imagine that, me and coffee, but I digress). I just had a conversation with the manager on this topic. They are opening a second location, and the bottleneck is the interviewing and training. It has become cliché for new hires to fail to show on the second day of training. They simply can’t hire enough people to staff the upcoming opening. Another friend of mine is the GM for a local chain of restaurants—he called this “the worst labor market in 20 years,” and “a total shit show.”

One of the venues I book pulled half of the weekly concerts on the summer series, because they can’t keep enough staff to stay open into the evening to run the mid-week concert night. Totally an employee thing: they will hire people and train them for a week, then they ghost. Over and over again, like Sisyphus and that damn rock, only it’s apps/interviews/orientations repeat… all summer.

Every grocery I’ve been in (a whopping 3, but still) has a “now hiring sign” up. All the McDonalds have “15/hr text to apply” lettering on their outside reader boards all over town.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Supposedly, WA’s enhanced unemployment lapses this month, so things may change, but right now, it’s a spectacle to see, for sure.

At any rate, carry on…


Restauranteurs will really suffer. Restaurant work is incredibly hard and the pay is horrible. A lot of restaurant workers realized how much they hated it once they were forced to find other work and now they're not going back. The demand side is also suffering. People learned to cook (or became better cooks) last year and will no longer pay to eat a badly-prepared meal served by a lackadaisical waiter. Prices are also higher and more than a few places have quietly inserted mandatory service fees and tips into the bill. In once case, it was a 5% service fee AND a 15% tip. These were listed on the bill but by then it's too late for the diner to reconsider. They'll probably be surprised when their business slowly fades down to nothing.


they will innovate or die.

Grocery stores are adding more and more self-checkouts. As the boomers die off and take their checkbooks with them, they'll be able to convert more and more lanes over. This will coincide with the tech getting better and more user friendly along with consumer familiarity getting better as well.

There's a local restaurant here where a friend and I like to take business lunches. At some point in the last few months, the waitress showed up with a tablet instead of a notepad. I didn't think much of it, but the food showed up crazy fast. it's because the order went from our table to the kitchen, not from our table, to the bar, out back for a smoke, to the shitter, and then to the kitchen. When she came to deliver the check, she still brought a paper ticket, but she ran the card right at the table.

When we were in Norway a couple of years ago, this was the NORM not the exception, and they even went so far as to forego the paper check. They handed you the table, you reviewed the bill and you either inserted your own card or they did it for you. Add the tip, and you're done.

Net result, tables turn faster with more people paying for it and less people attending to them.

[Borderland]

We have been on a hiring spree, and every time I get the new hire email, or here about this “stud” that we just landed, I think of the above.

We had a new hire/promote a few years ago (hiring as a project manager, when their current position with their current employer is assistant project manager. Always a bad idea IMO and has basically never played out) who was whining in his interview that his current employer just didn’t give him any opportunity. Most of the people in the room thought the guy was great. One of the principals in the form, after listening to everyone praises the kid, says “what do you know about him that we don’t? They’ve known him for 6 years. We’ve known him for two hours.”

Within two months his boss, who wasn’t part of the hiring, wanted to kill him. First, he didn’t have the basic skills he represented. Second, he had communicated certain blank spots in his skill set to the hiring group but said group didn’t communicate those gaps to the new boss (presumably because they didn’t want to admit they had hired bad). Third, even when told “do this, then that, then the other thing” the kid would come back having done half of the other thing, without bothering to do this or that, because he thought he had grasped the task but missed all of the nuance. For example, “take this electrical subcontract, review it against your project, edit it, and then get with me to review it” resulted in him taking the old contract, changing the names on it, and then asking for a meeting to review. There were items in there that had zero to do with the new project, showing that he hadn’t read the plans, or the contract, or both.

BTW, when the new boss tried to fire him, the hiring committee, presumably because firing him would mean they’d have to admit he was a turd, transferred him to another project… in assistant project manager capacity (while remaining at project manager pay!), under a guy that himself just got promoted to PM who couldn’t find his ass with two hands and a map. Great for mentoring!

I always have to ask why a person wants to leave a job that they presently have. If they say a lack of opportunity for a promotion I have to wonder about that. If they were truly that good at what they were doing no employer in their right mind is going let that person go over a raise or promotional opportunity. It makes no sense to me why a company would let someone start shopping their resume around during a boom that they wanted to keep. There's probably a reason that person hasn't been promoted. Their present employer doesn't care if that person finds another job. Some people will use the I found a better deal over at xyz to get a promotion. That might work if you're actually worth what you think you are, but generally everyone pays about the same company to company. When I was working in the private sector I never walked away from a job. If I left it was because the company was downsizing in a poor economy. That's actually what drove me into a gov't job. Around here in the 70's-80's it got so bad that people bounced from company to company just to stay employed. There wasn't much of an unemployment safety net. Hard to believe but companies didn't even have health care benefits.

I'm with Farscott. I think we're heading into one mother of a recession. The economic recovery will hit a wall in the next 2 years and reverse into a recession.

[Totem Polar]

Who's telling kids to maybe take a couple of years off first... maybe enlist, or get a job doing scut work in a field you think might be interesting- or dump the idea of college all together and get into trades? Take a few years to grow up a bit, shed the harmful work midset foisted by the public education system, and really 'find yourself' without the debt?

I am delighted to be able to say that I am.

So far, there hasn’t been too much blow back on me, because by the time someone gets kicked out of my studio, most of the other faculty are just as happy to have them out of their classes as a side effect of me pulling the plug too, even if the bean counters are displeased that the list of departmental majors goes down by one or two.

[peterb]

I always have to ask why a person wants to leave a job that they presently have. If they say a lack of opportunity for a promotion I have to wonder about that. If they were truly that good at what they were doing no employer in their right mind is going let that person go over a raise or promotional opportunity.

A lot of companies don’t have a good technical path for advancement. The only promotions are into management, which is a waste if that’s not where your skills or interests are. Folks who want to stay in the shop/lab/field doing more advanced work hit a dead end.

[okie john]

I always have to ask why a person wants to leave a job that they presently have. If they say a lack of opportunity for a promotion I have to wonder about that. If they were truly that good at what they were doing no employer in their right mind is going let that person go over a raise or promotional opportunity.

Yes and no.

I worked in the creative department at Starbucks for a while. They had exactly the right people in exactly the right places, and paid them well to stick around. They also promoted internally, and everyone knew who would get promoted if a certain slot opened up. Climbing that particular ladder in those days took 3-4x longer than in most advertising and marketing agencies.

Not sure if things are still like that over there, but a bunch of good people jumped ship right after their stock vested.


Okie John

[Borderland]

A lot of companies don’t have a good technical path for advancement. The only promotions are into management, which is a waste if that’s not where your skills or interests are. Folks who want to stay in the shop/lab/field doing more advanced work hit a dead end.

I saw that where I worked. The solution wasn't to go to work for someone else. Several people I know started their own consulting/professional services business and left that dead end environment behind. There's always a solution for self starters who excel in their chosen occupation. The downside is if you fail to achieve your goal you can't blame your employer for a lack of promotional opportunities.

I know people who left the agency where I worked for a better job with another employer. At last count 3 of those people came back to their old jobs within 5 years. How many never came back IDK.

[rob_s]

I always have to ask why a person wants to leave a job that they presently have. If they say a lack of opportunity for a promotion I have to wonder about that. If they were truly that good at what they were doing no employer in their right mind is going let that person go over a raise or promotional opportunity. It makes no sense to me why a company would let someone start shopping their resume around during a boom that they wanted to keep. There's probably a reason that person hasn't been promoted. Their present employer doesn't care if that person finds another job. Some people will use the I found a better deal over at xyz to get a promotion. That might work if you're actually worth what you think you are, but generally everyone pays about the same company to company.
Evidence of this is when a company offers to beat or match our offer once presented with a resignation letter. As has happened now twice in the last week, with two guys that I think may well have actually been "studs". Sometimes companies just lose track of people, or don't know that someone isn't happy with their pay, or whatever. It's particularly common in construction where people aren't visible every day.

My first employer, after losing maybe a half dozen people back in 2005/6 went around and gave basically everyone in teh company a bump to head this off. Of course 2-3 years later half those people were laid off...



I'm with Farscott. I think we're heading into one mother of a recession. The economic recovery will hit a wall in the next 2 years and reverse into a recession.
I have heard 2025 floated as "the date" more than once. I just got a copy of one of my investments. Up 30% in the last twelve months. My response in my mind was first "yay" and then "oh crap".



A lot of companies don’t have a good technical path for advancement. The only promotions are into management, which is a waste if that’s not where your skills or interests are. Folks who want to stay in the shop/lab/field doing more advanced work hit a dead end.

I saw that where I worked. The solution wasn't to go to work for someone else. Several people I know started their own consulting/professional services business and left that dead end environment behind. There's always a solution for self starters who excel in their chosen occupation. The downside is if you fail to achieve your goal you can't blame your employer for a lack of promotional opportunities.

I know people who left the agency where I worked for a better job with another employer. At last count 3 of those people came back to their old jobs within 5 years. How many never came back IDK.

I've never really come up with or seen a good fix for this. and I'm not entirely clear on what the employees expect either. There is a kind of "promote or die" in just about every industry. I have people here that are going to price themselves out of their job, even with just an annual COLA raise, which is where they're currently at and appear to be fine. At some point, you have to go USE that knowledge you have to influence and manage others because that's where your value is.

As Boderland kind of alludes to, right or wrong, a guy that wants to get to a certain point in his career and stagnate is going to have issues. At some point there just isn't "more advanced work" or if there is it isn't worth the cost of the 50-year-old guy.

Outside of "skilled" work I have seen more than a few 50+ year old guys holding down very lower-tier positions in the construction management side. Project Engineer is the entry level position for most companies and I've even met "senior project engineers" where their understanding of contract administration was worth the premium over the kid coming right out of school. Sometimes there can be value in being the absolute best floor-sweeper.



Yes and no.

I worked in the creative department at Starbucks for a while. They had exactly the right people in exactly the right places, and paid them well to stick around. They also promoted internally, and everyone knew who would get promoted if a certain slot opened up. Climbing that particular ladder in those days took 3-4x longer than in most advertising and marketing agencies.

Not sure if things are still like that over there, but a bunch of good people jumped ship right after their stock vested.
I've seen this too. I worked at one contractor that was not interested in growing past their current volume, and all of the people at the next level above me were in their 50s, and it was a good place to work, great if you were at that level. Where does that leave everyone else? You gotta either grow in volume or kill off the old guys to make room for advancement. Funnily enough, after I left they grew, hired a guy from another GC to run operations, and they didn't manage the growth well and then that guy didn't fit the culture, and they lost a bunch of old-timers to voluntary attrition.

[LittleLebowski]

That's about the only thing I miss about the surveying world. The big projects with hundreds of 40 acre lots scattered across the Alaska wilderness. Or big giant helicopter jobs where we established township boundaries and broke them down into sections. The pressure of the boss telling you that if you didn't perform they were sending you home.. and loosing 10's of thousands of dollars.

I oddly miss the 12 hour days for 5 to 6 months with no days off and my HP41CV running a program I wrote that calculated how much money I was making by the second.

Do they call those 40 acre lots "ranchettes" in AK too?

[BehindBlueI's]

So the robots are making keys, not a huge thing but a step on the road to replacing people. However, the robot key copier still needed Mike to stick the keys in the slots, so not totally replaced yet.

The one at my local Lowe's is completely automated.

[Borderland]

That's about the only thing I miss about the surveying world. The big projects with hundreds of 40 acre lots scattered across the Alaska wilderness. Or big giant helicopter jobs where we established township boundaries and broke them down into sections. The pressure of the boss telling you that if you didn't perform they were sending you home.. and loosing 10's of thousands of dollars.

I oddly miss the 12 hour days for 5 to 6 months with no days off and my HP41CV running a program I wrote that calculated how much money I was making by the second.

I think I read about those public land surveys in AK. All done by gov't contract using helicopters. I think AK was the last state to subdivide the public land. Before that I believe southwestern states in early 20th century so quite a stretch of time between those surveys. Most of the public land surveys were done with mules and horses when the railroads moved west and completed by 1920.

[Borderland]

Do they call those 40 acre lots "ranchettes" in AK too?

Hunting or fishing lodges.

[Casual Friday]

they will innovate or die.

Grocery stores are adding more and more self-checkouts. As the boomers die off and take their checkbooks with them, they'll be able to convert more and more lanes over. This will coincide with the tech getting better and more user friendly along with consumer familiarity getting better as well.


My favorite is when Grams wait until all her groceries have been scanned to even begin filling out the check. The push back from people under 50 about self checkout always surprises me though. We love self checkout. When my wife and I are able to go together, we split up the shopping and meet up at self checkout. She scans and pays, I bag and load into the cart. It takes less time for us to do that than to have the a checker scan and bag our stuff. We were doing the grocery pickup for a while, but it got to where none of the available times worked for our schedules.

[rob_s]

My favorite is when Grams wait until all her groceries have been scanned to even begin filling out the check. The push back from people under 50 about self checkout always surprises me though. We love self checkout. When my wife and I are able to go together, we split up the shopping and meet up at self checkout. She scans and pays, I bag and load into the cart. It takes less time for us to do that than to have the a checker scan and bag our stuff. We were doing the grocery pickup for a while, but it got to where none of the available times worked for our schedules.

One thing that finally occurred to me is that when you have nothing else/better to do, the little things become your adventures and you have way less incentive to get to the next thing (because there is no next thing).

I *try* to remember to cut the old folks some slack, but the Gen X or younger people that complain about progress, technology, innovation, change... jesus that cracks me up.

There's some cliche about if it existed before you were born it's ok, if it was invented before you were 20 it's new and cool, and if it's invented after you're 20 it's annoying and scary. :cool:

[Borderland]

Around 2025 we're going to see a reset in the economy because of AI and job loss. Probably become apparent in a few years when the slide begins.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/10/27/us-lost-over-60-million-jobs-now-robots-tech-and-artificial-intelligence-will-take-millions-more/?sh=52e6614d1a52

[AKDoug]

Hunting or fishing lodges.Nope :D Some of those lodges do sit on U.S. Gov't homestead lots, but those were done mostly prior to 1976.


Do they call those 40 acre lots "ranchettes" in AK too? Most of the big projects I worked on were called Native Allotments. Alaska Natives were granted different sized parcels based on their regional corporation. They were scattered across the land based on their traditional uses for their families. Of course, some gamed the system and chose traditional use lands based on speculation that it would be valuable some day. The vast majority were parcels that were berry picking areas, hunting areas, or fish camps. I have no ill will towards the system. Alaskan natives deserved to have their traditional lands conveyed to them on an individual level. I don't necessarily agree how regional corporations deal with their land or take care of their people, but that's an entirely different discussion.

If you are interested in learning about the system, this website explains it. It is an important part of Alaska history. https://ancsaregional.com/about-ancsa/

[farscott]

This is how I am approaching these current times as well. Slimming and trimming while others are spending. Once you've seen the cycle repeat a few times, you realize that it's a *cycle*. The main thing, actually, is trusting that it will come back after it hits the bottom. Otherwise you don't invest during the times that you need to.

I've tried to anchor my business to types of customers who are virtually recession-proof, which has ended up with me working on inglorious crap like dumpsters for my county public works dept. But public works will be one of the last places in the world to run out of $$$$....

I thought I had recession-proofed my business before COVID. One of my customers had years of backlogs in terms of aircraft orders, another was involved in tracking the movement of high-value cargo like pharmaceuticals, and others filled in some gaps. Then the COVID shutdown hit, and they all pulled back. Even those that did not shutdown wanted to preserve capital. And contractors are the first to be shown the door. I learned my crystal ball is cracked and foggy at best. I came out okay, but that was due to luck rather than skill or strategy.

I am a big believer in the macro cycles, and I act accordingly.

[trailrunner]

I always have to ask why a person wants to leave a job that they presently have. If they say a lack of opportunity for a promotion I have to wonder about that. If they were truly that good at what they were doing no employer in their right mind is going let that person go over a raise or promotional opportunity.

That hasn't been the case for me. I've seen many examples of the wrong person getting promoted, for all sorts of reasons. One of my bosses had a thing for attractive blondes. One very attractive blonde worked for me, until my boss invented a position for her, promoted her to it, and I found myself working for her, even though she was 20 years my junior, I had a better degree, and I knew very well the quality of her work was mediocre. I've seen countless examples of a worker who is absolutely worthless to their peers, but they know how to suck up to the big boss, and then they get the promotion because because the big boss thinks they are wonderful. Somebody from my last job just called me to rant that a well-known very lazy, unresponsive administrative person was getting a key promotion. I've seen the good 'ol boy (and girl) network at work, the service academy graduate club in action, the retired fighter pilot fraternity in action, and so on. I've even been offered a promotion that I was a poor choice for because I was somebody's favorite (I turned it down). Getting iced out of a promotion is a common thing, and would not necessarily be a red flag for me.

ETA: Another way people don't have opportunities for advancement is that dead wood sticks around. I worked at a lab that had retired annuitants in about half the division director jobs, which caused a bottleneck of promotions for every one below them. One guy had a full career in the military, then worked at our lab for several decades, and was not young - probably in his late 60s, if not over 70. He retired on a Friday, and came back on a Monday as a retired annuitant, making a sh!t ton of money with all of his retirements and full salary. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of smart mid-career folks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s waiting their turn to ascend upwards. I really felt sorry for the younger generation, not only for them, but our organization sure could've used some young blood in management.

Another situation that happened to me - there were three of us branch chiefs, and a deputy director position opened up in our division. We were all waiting for it to be posted, and then may the best man among us be selected. But then another deputy director in another division got in a big fight with his boss, and got transferred to our division to fill the vacant deputy director position. When the branch chiefs complained, we were promised that it would only be for four months until they figured out what to do with him. The *promised* it was only temporary. Well, that was 2013 and he's still in that position. And, he's too old, and was very ineffective in that position. An incredibly poor fit, unpopular (he would call people into his office for religious counseling), but there he was, one position above me, blocking a promotion opportunity.

[peterb]

The push back from people under 50 about self checkout always surprises me though. We love self checkout. When my wife and I are able to go together, we split up the shopping and meet up at self checkout. She scans and pays, I bag and load into the cart. It takes less time for us to do that than to have the a checker scan and bag our stuff.

I find that it depends on how much fresh produce I’m buying. It takes me longer to look up the codes than it does for an experienced cashier who has them memorized.

I also try to make the bagger’s life easier and get things bagged the way I want it by organizing my items on the belt(cold stuff, packaged stuff, produce, etc)instead of making a random pile.

Self-checkout wins for smaller quantities and packaged goods.

[Borderland]

This is how I am approaching these current times as well. Slimming and trimming while others are spending. Once you've seen the cycle repeat a few times, you realize that it's a *cycle*. The main thing, actually, is trusting that it will come back after it hits the bottom. Otherwise you don't invest during the times that you need to.

I've tried to anchor my business to types of customers who are virtually recession-proof, which has ended up with me working on inglorious crap like dumpsters for my county public works dept. But public works will be one of the last places in the world to run out of $$$$....

My neighbor who is retired had a business as a mechanic/welder installing and maintaining garbage compactors. He had a lot of public works clients. Never a slow down in his business the entire time he owned it. He traveled a lot, even AK to do work. He grew his business to a point where it suited him until he retired. Garbage is a good business to be in.

[rob_s]

I find that it depends on how much fresh produce I’m buying. It takes me longer to look up the codes than it does for an experienced cashier who has them memorized.

I also try to make the bagger’s life easier and get things bagged the way I want it by organizing my items on the belt(cold stuff, packaged stuff, produce, etc)instead of making a random pile.

Self-checkout wins for smaller quantities and packaged goods.

Funny, the things you can teach an old dog...

It was pointed out to me, in the self-checkout, that almost all of the produce now has a bar code on the sticker too. As someone that worked at a grocery store nearly 30 years ago, I was amazed! :p Without self-checkout, I never would have known this.

I also put the stuff on the belt the way I want it bagged. Then I watch the teenager reach OVER the ice cream to put the cereal in with the frozen pizza and I want to punch him in the throat. :mad:

Truth be told, I'd rather just bag my own shit.

[omega9]

I'm more or less an apprentice. The positions over me make about $16.50 an hour. Several of these people are flat our phenomenal at what they do, and did it in the private sector for 20 years before they came to work at the municipality. 10ish years ago jobs took a hit and they moved to the steady paycheck. I'm here for the schedule, and if I stay long enough the retirement - but that's apparently not what it once was. It's often hard for people to remember what the median household income is, and how many people are below it.



That is a topic of frequent conversation in the parking lot. Our employer has to come to grips with the fact they won't retain people with pretty big pay increases. And that pretty much means taxes are going to jump... the whole thing is a lose/lose.

If you’re leaning electrical I would stick with it as long as you can and use it as a resume builder. I currently work at a peaker power plant and whenever we have an opening we always look for guys with electrical, instrumentation, and controls experience before operations experience. Typical starting pay for someone with skills is about 40 bucks an hour in the Houston area.

If you would like the names of some power plant operations companies to keep your eye on just let me know.

[peterb]

Funny, the things you can teach an old dog...

It was pointed out to me, in the self-checkout, that almost all of the produce now has a bar code on the sticker too. As someone that worked at a grocery store nearly 30 years ago, I was amazed! :p Without self-checkout, I never would have known this.

I understand the utility, but I’m curmudgeon enough to also think that stickers on every vegetable or piece of fruit are annoying and wasteful. ;-)

[TGS]

This thread is awesome, because we have the virtuous hard-working nobody-does-it-better-than-my-generation bitching about younger folks who are apparently bitches, and then we have younger folks explaining why nobody wants to take a job working for the bitchy old people that aren't as awesome as they think they are.

Old people bitching about the younger generations is a past-time that spans every civilization across every age. The story that the newest generation in the workforce is so bad that they're a blight upon society and civilization will end as we know it because of their incompetence and laziness is probably the same spiel that old artisans in Alexandria Egypt were bitching about thousands of years ago....and yet here we are, the sun still rises everyday, and society is more productive than ever and the human development index continues to grow.

It just might be possible (that's sarcasm) that people gain experience as they grow in the workforce, and that every generation was once that shitty, horrible, lazy, useless generation to someone else until they took over the reigns as the older generation timed out. I think a quality worth striving for is recognizing that you're not born awesome on the job from day 1 and that you too, indeed, once upon a time, were that little shit to someone else that you're bitching about today. I hope to keep this in mind as I age out of my late 30s. It's also possible that if you're not getting the employees you want, it might be because you're not as good an employer in numerous respects as you think you are, which is basically what is being pointed out by one of our newer tradesmen in the thread.

ETA: Truly, one of the things I hope to not do as I age is become the annoying old person blaming the new generation tilting at windmills for everything while thinking that my shit doesn't stink.

[Joe in PNG]

The fun thing is that I started bitching about how the old days were better and those darn kids suck and their music sucks when I was 17, and haven't really changed.

To be fair, congenital rectrial-cranial inversions are common among the young people, so the old dudes do often have a point. Especially those who pointed out my own failings in that regard when I was young, stupid, and lazy.

[Welder]

My neighbor who is retired had a business as a mechanic/welder installing and maintaining garbage compactors. He had a lot of public works clients. Never a slow down in his business the entire time he owned it. He traveled a lot, even AK to do work. He grew his business to a point where it suited him until he retired. Garbage is a good business to be in.

I cringe when someone sees me at the landfill and thinks the only thing I do is work on dumpsters. It's a pride thing. But if nobody else wants to do it, that's a vacuum that I *will* fill at an appropriate pay level, and it probably represents 10% of my annual gross.


The story that the newest generation in the workforce is so bad that they're a blight upon society and civilization will end as we know it because of their incompetence and laziness is probably the same spiel that old artisans in Alexandria Egypt were bitching about thousands of years ago....

This. I'm Gen X, and my parents' generation all said the world would end when my generation got the wheel. Now my generation is saying the exact same stuff to the next. It's silly and nonproductive.

I see people of *all* generations sitting on their fat butts salivating over the next check the gov't will cut them rather than getting out there and making it happen for themselves. You can't pull yourself up by the bootstraps when your boots are by the door and you're clicking through the Hulu choices on the sofa at 11 a.m.

Hard work and the taking of healthy risk *must* be taught; they are not natural to most if not all people. I'm glad it's not my responsibility to figure out how to right this ship; this is a complex problem which I believe goes back to the ongoing death of some of our country's moral roots. The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.

[Borderland]

I understand the utility, but I’m curmudgeon enough to also think that stickers on every vegetable or piece of fruit are annoying and wasteful. ;-)

Somebody had to put those stickers on all those vegetables and fruit. They didn't grow on there. I wonder what they were paid per hour to do that and what that did to the prices.

[Borderland]

That hasn't been the case for me. I've seen many examples of the wrong person getting promoted, for all sorts of reasons. One of my bosses had a thing for attractive blondes. One very attractive blonde worked for me, until my boss invented a position for her, promoted her to it, and I found myself working for her, even though she was 20 years my junior, I had a better degree, and I knew very well the quality of her work was mediocre. I've seen countless examples of a worker who is absolutely worthless to their peers, but they know how to suck up to the big boss, and then they get the promotion because because the big boss thinks they are wonderful. Somebody from my last job just called me to rant that a well-known very lazy, unresponsive administrative person was getting a key promotion. I've seen the good 'ol boy (and girl) network at work, the service academy graduate club in action, the retired fighter pilot fraternity in action, and so on. I've even been offered a promotion that I was a poor choice for because I was somebody's favorite (I turned it down). Getting iced out of a promotion is a common thing, and would not necessarily be a red flag for me.

ETA: Another way people don't have opportunities for advancement is that dead wood sticks around. I worked at a lab that had retired annuitants in about half the division director jobs, which caused a bottleneck of promotions for every one below them. One guy had a full career in the military, then worked at our lab for several decades, and was not young - probably in his late 60s, if not over 70. He retired on a Friday, and came back on a Monday as a retired annuitant, making a sh!t ton of money with all of his retirements and full salary. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of smart mid-career folks in their 30s, 40s, and 50s waiting their turn to ascend upwards. I really felt sorry for the younger generation, not only for them, but our organization sure could've used some young blood in management.

Another situation that happened to me - there were three of us branch chiefs, and a deputy director position opened up in our division. We were all waiting for it to be posted, and then may the best man among us be selected. But then another deputy director in another division got in a big fight with his boss, and got transferred to our division to fill the vacant deputy director position. When the branch chiefs complained, we were promised that it would only be for four months until they figured out what to do with him. The *promised* it was only temporary. Well, that was 2013 and he's still in that position. And, he's too old, and was very ineffective in that position. An incredibly poor fit, unpopular (he would call people into his office for religious counseling), but there he was, one position above me, blocking a promotion opportunity.

I've seen the lookers promoted into a job created especially for them also. One woman I knew slept with enough managers, one who was married, until she found the right door to a management position. Funny how that works. I also saw a woman without any college, technical training or experience promoted into a technical job that paid 70K a year. Before that she was admin staff making about 45K. She had the look. Also saw a woman manager promote her young stud into a tech position way above his qualifications. She even coached him for the exam and let him see it before he took it. None of this was in my work unit so I just had to laugh. Management does want they want so as long as they weren't riding my ass over some performance or PC issue I was good. That was back in the days when all promotions were in house. The personnel dept finally wised up and made those positions completive and opened them to the general public. People were pissed because all of a sudden their credentials weren't quite good enough to land a promotion. They stagnated in place and became really bitter employees because they hadn't prepared themselves to compete in the real world.

I heard a manager tell one person that couldn't get a promotion that he just needed to work more overtime if he needed more money. They never questioned the 50-60 hour weeks people claimed they worked. They sometimes did that for years.

[Joe in PNG]

I've known a few master level BS artist, and am amazed that most have never gotten themselves into a sales position. If they could only use that power to sell good merch instead of their own non-existant or crappy skills, they'd be rich.

For instance, we had a guy here who was at the Grandmaster level at BS. He was very, very good at talking himself and his skills up, and never delivered. For instance, if you asked him to cut a couple of boards to length, he'd talk for hours about how great he was at cutting boards, about all the boards he cut in the past, and about how he could modify the saw to be better when it came to cutting lumber. He would then take the saw apart, destroying it in the process, and disappear for a few days having never cut a single board. He also borrowed a truck from another organization, and basically destroyed it. He promised that he'd totally rebuild the thing, took it half apart, then left.

[Snapshot]

This thread is awesome ...

It just might be possible (that's sarcasm) that people gain experience as they grow in the workforce, and that every generation was once that shitty, horrible, lazy, useless generation to someone else until they took over the reigns as the older generation timed out. I think a quality worth striving for is recognizing that you're not born awesome on the job from day 1 and that you too, indeed, once upon a time, were that little shit to someone else that you're bitching about today. I hope to keep this in mind as I age out of my late 30s. It's also possible that if you're not getting the employees you want, it might be because you're not as good an employer in numerous respects as you think you are, which is basically what is being pointed out by one of our newer tradesmen in the thread.

ETA: Truly, one of the things I hope to not do as I age is become the annoying old person blaming the new generation tilting at windmills for everything while thinking that my shit doesn't stink.

Sir, I reject your sarcasm because in my experience this is so true. At work we had a couple of senior technologists who were extremely knowledgeable and effective, and they led the way on every important I project and activity, while the next generation seemed to hold back. We were worried about how things would work when they senior guys eventually left, but as it turns out the next generation emerged, equally knowledgeable and effective, in some ways better because they had more up to date training and had also learned from watching and working with their predecessors.

Of course there are still some that bear watching, and just like any other field of human endeavor there are slackers and morons to work around. But it is much more individual than generational, and while I miss some of the ones that have left I am confident in the abilities of most of those who remain.

[OlongJohnson]

I've known a few master level BS artist, and am amazed that most have never gotten themselves into a sales position. If they could only use that power to sell good merch instead of their own non-existant or crappy skills, they'd be rich.

For instance, we had a guy here who was at the Grandmaster level at BS. He was very, very good at talking himself and his skills up, and never delivered. For instance, if you asked him to cut a couple of boards to length, he'd talk for hours about how great he was at cutting boards, about all the boards he cut in the past, and about how he could modify the saw to be better when it came to cutting lumber. He would then take the saw apart, destroying it in the process, and disappear for a few days having never cut a single board. He also borrowed a truck from another organization, and basically destroyed it. He promised that he'd totally rebuild the thing, took it half apart, then left.

They never got into a sales position because in sales, you have to deliver results or you starve. And you have to make sure that what you sell people actually gets delivered, or you don't build a book of business. Sales, done well, is serious, hard work, and people who do it well and take care of their customers and their deals earn their commissions. True bullshitters fail in sales just like they fail in everything else.

[rob_s]

This thread is awesome, because we have the virtuous hard-working nobody-does-it-better-than-my-generation bitching about younger folks who are apparently bitches, and then we have younger folks explaining why nobody wants to take a job working for the bitchy old people that aren't as awesome as they think they are.

Old people bitching about the younger generations is a past-time that spans every civilization across every age. The story that the newest generation in the workforce is so bad that they're a blight upon society and civilization will end as we know it because of their incompetence and laziness is probably the same spiel that old artisans in Alexandria Egypt were bitching about thousands of years ago....and yet here we are, the sun still rises everyday, and society is more productive than ever and the human development index continues to grow.

It just might be possible (that's sarcasm) that people gain experience as they grow in the workforce, and that every generation was once that shitty, horrible, lazy, useless generation to someone else until they took over the reigns as the older generation timed out. I think a quality worth striving for is recognizing that you're not born awesome on the job from day 1 and that you too, indeed, once upon a time, were that little shit to someone else that you're bitching about today. I hope to keep this in mind as I age out of my late 30s. It's also possible that if you're not getting the employees you want, it might be because you're not as good an employer in numerous respects as you think you are, which is basically what is being pointed out by one of our newer tradesmen in the thread.

ETA: Truly, one of the things I hope to not do as I age is become the annoying old person blaming the new generation tilting at windmills for everything while thinking that my shit doesn't stink.

The only thing sillier than one generation blaming the other is reducing the argument to a generational one. ;)

[MVS]

This thread is awesome, because we have the virtuous hard-working nobody-does-it-better-than-my-generation bitching about younger folks who are apparently bitches, and then we have younger folks explaining why nobody wants to take a job working for the bitchy old people that aren't as awesome as they think they are.

Old people bitching about the younger generations is a past-time that spans every civilization across every age. The story that the newest generation in the workforce is so bad that they're a blight upon society and civilization will end as we know it because of their incompetence and laziness is probably the same spiel that old artisans in Alexandria Egypt were bitching about thousands of years ago....and yet here we are, the sun still rises everyday, and society is more productive than ever and the human development index continues to grow.

It just might be possible (that's sarcasm) that people gain experience as they grow in the workforce, and that every generation was once that shitty, horrible, lazy, useless generation to someone else until they took over the reigns as the older generation timed out. I think a quality worth striving for is recognizing that you're not born awesome on the job from day 1 and that you too, indeed, once upon a time, were that little shit to someone else that you're bitching about today. I hope to keep this in mind as I age out of my late 30s. It's also possible that if you're not getting the employees you want, it might be because you're not as good an employer in numerous respects as you think you are, which is basically what is being pointed out by one of our newer tradesmen in the thread.

ETA: Truly, one of the things I hope to not do as I age is become the annoying old person blaming the new generation tilting at windmills for everything while thinking that my shit doesn't stink.

So I had to go back and check my post to be sure, but no, not just blaming the young generation. Spreading the blame around. Looks like a lot of the others are too. That being said I think there is a lot of laziness in this newest generation but much of that is because of how they are being guided and what they are being promised

[LJP]

I simply cannot comment on “skilled trade” labor. What I can comment on is the service industry. As I type this, I am sitting out side a coffeeshop (imagine that, me and coffee, but I digress). I just had a conversation with the manager on this topic. They are opening a second location, and the bottleneck is the interviewing and training. It has become cliché for new hires to fail to show on the second day of training. They simply can’t hire enough people to staff the upcoming opening. Another friend of mine is the GM for a local chain of restaurants—he called this “the worst labor market in 20 years,” and “a total shit show.”

One of the venues I book pulled half of the weekly concerts on the summer series, because they can’t keep enough staff to stay open into the evening to run the mid-week concert night. Totally an employee thing: they will hire people and train them for a week, then they ghost. Over and over again, like Sisyphus and that damn rock, only it’s apps/interviews/orientations repeat… all summer.

Every grocery I’ve been in (a whopping 3, but still) has a “now hiring sign” up. All the McDonalds have “15/hr text to apply” lettering on their outside reader boards all over town.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Supposedly, WA’s enhanced unemployment lapses this month, so things may change, but right now, it’s a spectacle to see, for sure.

At any rate, carry on…

This… not really “service industry” or necessarily “skilled trades,” but the commercial ambulance service that I work at just hosted another hiring class. We were slated to hire 20, and struggled to get 13 applicants, most of whom have no experience whatsoever. One of our hires was NC/NS after two days of training. Not sure if I scared her away with the suicide statistics for 1st responders, or whatever made her decide that commercial EMS wasn’t her gig. Some of it is the effects of COVID, and some of it is just another generational cycle. Most of the “kids” we hire these days are very smart, but just don’t pay attention.

[DDTSGM]

Around 2025 we're going to see a reset in the economy because of AI and job loss. Probably become apparent in a few years when the slide begins.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/10/27/us-lost-over-60-million-jobs-now-robots-tech-and-artificial-intelligence-will-take-millions-more/?sh=52e6614d1a52

This should be screamingly obvious for anyone with half a brain.

What are we going to do with all the people who are what we now consider working age?

A couple posts up folks were talking about self-checkout, I got no problem with that EXCEPT I've never heard of a business saying 'hey, we've passed the saving on to you, everything in the store is a penny cheaper.'

Myself, I like shopping at Aldi's. Those checkers move right along. The other day I was buying some salad fixings and the lady said 'cash or charge.' I said 'charge.' She said 'please put your card in the machine.' It was one of those rare moments where there was no one waiting and I said jokingly 'Hey, what's the hurry, you haven't finished yet and there is no one in line?' She told me doesn't make any difference they are timed on every transaction.

Standards, so rare and old fashioned they are written on the walls of caves.

[MickAK]

What are we going to do with all the people who are what we now consider working age?


Prison or the military. Same as it ever was.

[Joe in PNG]

This should be screamingly obvious for anyone with half a brain.

What are we going to do with all the people who are what we now consider working age?



The peasant class has to come from somewhere. Pay too many of your people to do nothing, and your society collapses.

It's interesting to note that we still don't know all of the science and technology that the Romans had, and much of what we do know is the result of modern investigations and archeology.
How to make cement, for instance, was lost for centuries. Reading this thread does shed light on some of the reasons why a lot of that knowledge disappeared.

[rob_s]

A couple posts up folks were talking about self-checkout, I got no problem with that EXCEPT I've never heard of a business saying 'hey, we've passed the saving on to you, everything in the store is a penny cheaper.'

I don’t expect to see a reduction in price. I expect that most of this is that they’ve already started to see a reduction in profits, and someone at corporate has done the math finally and said “ok, today’s the day, Biden wants middle-school drop-outs to make $42k a year so we gotta stop the bleeding now before we go out of business”.


She told me doesn't make any difference they are timed on every transaction.

Standards, so rare and old fashioned they are written on the walls of caves.

So much this. I RANT about this at work.

Set the standard.
Measure performance.
Correct missteps either with training or revision to the standard.
Revise the standards as technology changes.
Hold people accountable.

We are TERRIFIED that if we actually tell people what to do and then hold them accountable to that, they’ll walk. This is part of what I refer to as the millennialization. Boomers and Xers have bought into this bullshit, maybe some actual millennials too, and the managers have scared themselves out of managing. It’s like like teenager afraid to talk to a pretty girl. I have three millennials on my staff. They all respond well to being held to a standard. My department is one of the most successful in the company. We track our budget, we track our schedule, we advise when we can’t meet one of the other and why, we come up with ways to mitigate those issues, we document our work, we even do jobs that aren’t ours…. I have zero issues with millennials. I have a massive issues with idiots like Sinek making millions scaring people.

And why do we care if they walk? Because we are booking and burning baby, booking and burning. And even if they screw up, making half of a $2M fee is still better than nothing at all, particularly when we are in a business where all of our on-tie costs are covered.

There’s two ways to increase profits. The broadsword or the rapier. The broadsword (increasing volume) is gross and heavy and easy. The rapier (increasing efficiency) is intelligent and elegant and considered to be hard. The problem is that when everything goes to shit the broadsword leaves you ever-extended and open to counter, while the rapier leaves you nimble and ready to parry. I keep hearing about “agile” and all I think is “no, we’re just brute”.

[BehindBlueI's]

We love self checkout.

I despise self-checkout if I have more than a hand full of items. They are designed to slow you down to help prevent theft/fraud. If the scanner worked as quickly as the cashier's scanner did, maybe. I view it more like washing my dishes at a restaurant. No thanks. If I'm going to bypass the cash register entirely I might as well use the free service where they bring it out to my car. Which probably works great for everything but produce.


Somebody had to put those stickers on all those vegetables and fruit. They didn't grow on there. I wonder what they were paid per hour to do that and what that did to the prices.

Not sure if joking, but a machine did it and didn't get paid anything.



This should be screamingly obvious for anyone with half a brain.

What are we going to do with all the people who are what we now consider working age?


You would think, but I've beat this drum for years and usually just get fingers in ears and shouting of "socialist!" and "but buggy whip makers..." Player Piano (Kurt Vonnegut novel) is prophecy, and inevitable.

[BehindBlueI's]

Radio news story on my way in this morning:

Skilled trades employment is at 50% of what it was in 2005, lower levels then "The Great Recession", and contractors are stating they can't finish jobs on time due to worker shortage.



Which made me wonder, how much did The Great Recession damage the trades long term?

[rob_s]

You would think, but I've beat this drum for years and usually just get fingers in ears and shouting of "socialist!" and "but buggy whip makers..." Player Piano (Kurt Vonnegut novel) is prophecy, and inevitable.

I prefer to use the coach-builder analogy.

Some went by-by when the car came around, others managed to pivot into offering a bespoke service to up-fit said cars.

[rob_s]

Radio news story on my way in this morning:

Skilled trades employment is at 50% of what it was in 2005, lower levels then "The Great Recession", and contractors are stating they can't finish jobs on time due to worker shortage.



Which made me wonder, how much did The Great Recession damage the trades long term?

IMO, irrevecobly. I know I keep bitching about the management side, but it's true on the trade side too.

What one generation offers to the next, ideally, is a vision of the future and the long game. You don't swipe your goddamn thinset around before setting the tile, regardless of how much your inexperienced-ass thinks it looks cool or "should" work better. Why? Well kinda "because I said so", but if that's not good enough then how about "because the motherfucker making the tile says so" and if that's still not good enough (because who has any time to read instructions) then "here's pictures of the jobs where I got paid to go back in and fix the screwups by the swooping morons on other projects. We got paid to fix their shitty work, we don't get paid to fix our own".


https://youtu.be/9NtDCOPF0wI

[rob_s]

Even the AGC cares...

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YTLSH7N

Some interesting questions in the survey...

8. If you are having a hard time filling available positions, what are the reason(s)? (mark all that apply)

No opening or no trouble filling available positions
Unemployment insurance supplements are keeping workers away
Potential employees are worried about coronavirus exposure
Potential employees report needing flexible work schedules/option for remote work (e.g., to stay home to care for a loved one)
Potential employees report difficulty acquiring reliable transportation to and from a jobsite
Available candidates are not qualified to work in the industry (lack of skills, failure to pass a drug test, etc.)
Unsure
Other (please specify)



9. Has your firm added or increased use of the following to provide workers in the past 12 months? (mark all that apply)

Have not tried to hire
Applied for employment-based visas (e.g., H-1B, H-2B)
Engaged with career-building program (e.g., high school, college, career & technical education)
Engaged with government workforce development or unemployment agency
Executive and non-craft worker search firm or professional employer organization
Staffing firm (craft)
Implemented software to distribute job postings and manage applicants
Sub- or specialty contractors
Unions
Added online strategies (e.g., Instagram Live) to connect better with younger applicants
No changes
Other (please specify)


13. Has your firm increased its efforts to actively recruit women, minorities, and other under-represented groups into the construction industry?

We do not actively engage in these efforts
No change
Yes (please describe your efforts)




16. How have rising materials costs affected your firm’s projects, if at all? (mark all that apply)

We have not experienced unanticipated cost increases
We have passed on some or all of our additional costs
We have tried to pass on costs but have not succeeded so far
We have absorbed all additional costs
We have canceled orders
We have changed suppliers or specifications




20. Which technologies (hardware or software) have you adopted over the last 12 months to help alleviate any labor shortages or enhance worker productivity at your firm? (mark all that apply)

Bidding
Cost Management / ERP
Data & Analytics
Document / File Management
Estimating / Quantification
Project Management
Reality Capture
Site Safety
Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality
Workforce Management
Other (please specify)




21. How has the rate of technology adoption changed at your firm in the last 12 months?

Increased
Decreased
No change




22. How do you anticipate the rate of tech adoption at your firm changing in the next 12 months?

Increase
Decrease
No change

[BehindBlueI's]

I prefer to use the coach-builder analogy.

Some went by-by when the car came around, others managed to pivot into offering a bespoke service to up-fit said cars.

Yes. Some folks see the writing on the wall and can pivot *if* the skill set is the same or similar enough. The issue now is two fold. The automobile created more jobs than it killed. The automation/information shift does not. The barriers to entry in terms of intelligence, training, skills, etc. were similar in the new jobs vs the outgoing jobs in the industrial revolution. That is not the case in the current shift.

In short, if you can drive a mule team, you can almost certainly pivot to driving a truck in a very short amount of time. If you can drive a truck, it's a much lengthier process to learn to code self-driving trucks, many truck drivers will simply not have the ability to learn the new task, and there will be many fewer positions for coders than drivers.

Obviously being a cop isn't exactly a trade in the sense this thread means it, but we're seeing pretty similar issues. The 'social pay' in terms of prestige and social standing has been greatly reduced. The actual pay tends to be somewhat lackluster compared to the jobs that qualified people can otherwise get. Mission creep has made this job much more intellectually demanding than it used to be. The body of law and case law continues to grow and be more and more...granular. The interaction with technology is greatly increased. It's to the point a lot of folks retired rather than learn to use the new reporting systems. I used to be able to do a DUI arrest's paperwork in 5-10 minutes. Now it's easily an hour. The last report I did was towing a car abandoned in the roadway. It took me over 40 minutes to do the report. Granted, I suck at it because I don't use the reporting system much any longer, but even someone who's good at it would take maybe 10 minutes. The system is complicated and cumbersome, especially compared to how we did it when I started...calling a telephone number and dictating the report to a recording that a transcriptionist would then type up. Towing a car, maybe a 2 minute report if you did a report at all as opposed to just a tag and tow.

[Borderland]

Not sure if joking, but a machine did it and didn't get paid anything.

I wasn't joking, I didn't know that. Fascinating piece of machinery.

[Casual Friday]

I despise self-checkout if I have more than a hand full of items. They are designed to slow you down to help prevent theft/fraud. If the scanner worked as quickly as the cashier's scanner did, maybe. I view it more like washing my dishes at a restaurant. No thanks. If I'm going to bypass the cash register entirely I might as well use the free service where they bring it out to my car. Which probably works great for everything but produce.

Sounds like your grocery store has shitty self-checkout machines. The ones where we shop won't let you turbo scan items through, but it's not painfully slower, and there is generally no line to wait in to use self-checkout, unlike the traditional checkout lanes. They have a couple workers there watching people and assisting when they get jammed up scanning or paying. The washing of your own dishes at a restaurant isn't that great of a comparison to self-checkout. Washing of the dishes isn't a process that has to be completed before you're able to leave the restaurant, but paying for your groceries is, and there's no way to wash your own dishes without adding a considerable amount of time you're there before you can leave. No lines to wait in, no other customers ahead of you bogging down the process etc. Since using self-checkout, we have never got home to find broken eggs, smashed bread, bruised produce, or a leaky milk jug, and all of our meats and cold items are put in the insulated bag that we bring instead of a checker sticking bananas and Ritz crackers in there.

The grocery pick up is great...if there are times available that work with your schedule, and you're okay with someone else picking out your produce and meats. I'm not. Especially meat. If they give me apples or bananas that aren't what I would have chosen, we're still gonna eat them. But I want to be the one that picks out the steaks. I know when the flecks and streaks of fat are just right, if there's not enough, or there's too much. The kid picking them out probably isn't gonna be as fastidious about it.

[rob_s]

Yes. Some folks see the writing on the wall and can pivot *if* the skill set is the same or similar enough. The issue now is two fold. The automobile created more jobs than it killed. The automation/information shift does not. The barriers to entry in terms of intelligence, training, skills, etc. were similar in the new jobs vs the outgoing jobs in the industrial revolution. That is not the case in the current shift.

In short, if you can drive a mule team, you can almost certainly pivot to driving a truck in a very short amount of time. If you can drive a truck, it's a much lengthier process to learn to code self-driving trucks, many truck drivers will simply not have the ability to learn the new task, and there will be many fewer positions for coders than drivers.


This is very true. We've seen this with the transition to digital. Everyone starts drawing and writing, even if it's gibberish in the dirt, at a very very young age, and access to that "tech" has almost literally no barrier to entry.

I'm not even kidding when I say that I've concluded that my ability to type has both (a) benefitted my career and (b) influenced it. All because hot chicks took typing in High School. :p

I hear a lot about how "young kids today grew up with tech in their hands" almost as ubiquitous as the stick in the dirt, but it's not translating 1:1 to useful skills. In the field, we rarely print drawings anymore. If you can use an iPad to find a fishing time, you can use it to read plans, but they often won't. So if you're a guy that went into drywall because you didn't want to "do tech", you're fucked. Same for plumbing, concrete work, etc. The lower you stay on the totem pole, the less likely that tech is, but it's still a thing. You're almost like the guy that couldn't read 30 years ago.



Obviously being a cop isn't exactly a trade in the sense this thread means it, but we're seeing pretty similar issues. The 'social pay' in terms of prestige and social standing has been greatly reduced. The actual pay tends to be somewhat lackluster compared to the jobs that qualified people can otherwise get. Mission creep has made this job much more intellectually demanding than it used to be. The body of law and case law continues to grow and be more and more...granular. The interaction with technology is greatly increased. It's to the point a lot of folks retired rather than learn to use the new reporting systems. I used to be able to do a DUI arrest's paperwork in 5-10 minutes. Now it's easily an hour. The last report I did was towing a car abandoned in the roadway. It took me over 40 minutes to do the report. Granted, I suck at it because I don't use the reporting system much any longer, but even someone who's good at it would take maybe 10 minutes. The system is complicated and cumbersome, especially compared to how we did it when I started...calling a telephone number and dictating the report to a recording that a transcriptionist would then type up. Towing a car, maybe a 2 minute report if you did a report at all as opposed to just a tag and tow.

A lot of similarities there to what I posted above. the skills required for the basic performance of the duties have a higher "floor" than they used to. Go back far enough and the requirements to be a cop were (oversimplifying here to make a point) walk, talk, and fight. Then they added horses, then shooting, then cars... fast forward and you have emotional intelligence, technology, public relations, community relations, conflict resolution...

[Borderland]

In short, if you can drive a mule team, you can almost certainly pivot to driving a truck in a very short amount of time. If you can drive a truck, it's a much lengthier process to learn to code self-driving trucks, many truck drivers will simply not have the ability to learn the new task, and there will be many fewer positions for coders than drivers.

I had the unique opportunity to see automation from 0 to 60 in the surveying profession. When I started there were no sensors, scanners, electronics of any type being used. We didn't even have hand held calculators. Everything was done with a metal tape and a transit. Calculations were done using a book of trig tables and a pencil. When I retired we were using 25K total stations and data collectors/controllers that ran Windows with Bluetooth.

The problem with the technology was that many surveyors never could transition. I worked with people who insisted they had to do their calculations on paper with a pencil and a hand held calculator when they had a hand held computer already programed to crunch the numbers. The survey crew was reduced from 4 to 2. Some companies can do it with 1 on some construction jobs. I saw that with designers/drafters also. When AutoCAD rolled out a lot of them retired or found other work. Basically to difficult for some people to retrain using automation. It's still a problem in the public sector as many refuse to stay current with new software releases. You can't get hired or keep a job in the private sector if you don't stay current.

Where I worked at one point they wanted the field surveyors to learn AutoCAD so we could do field to finish mapping while some the surveyors couldn't use the latest version of software on their controllers. That wasn't well received. It's my understanding that recent civil engineering graduates are up to speed with AutoCAD, basically cutting out an entire layer of technicians that used to do drafting. I believe it's also creeping into the surveying industry.

[jh9]

the skills required for the basic performance of the duties have a higher "floor" than they used to.

That is true, generally, across the board. Everything you do as a "job" is more complicated than it used to be. It has to be, because the world you live in is more complicated. That allows for things that were firmly in the realm of fiction a couple decades ago, but it also requires higher level cognitive skills just to tread water.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I don't have strong feelings about self-checkout machines, but I do find it hilarious that every one of my FB friends who bitches about them on the grounds that they kill jobs plus "I don't work for your company" owns a bunch of Ikea furniture.

[BehindBlueI's]

...it it also requires higher level cognitive skills just to tread water.

And that's an issue because it leaves more and more people essentially unemployable. As much as people don't like to face it, intelligence and the ability to learn can be improved but only to a point. Roughly 15% of the population is significantly below average IQ but not considered cognitively impaired. Those folks have historically been gainfully employed in unskilled and semi-skilled roles. Factory floor work is often demanding, but not something that demands a high intelligence, flexibility in thinking, etc. That is, not coincidentally, the jobs that automation is taking over the easiest. Computers suck at flexible thinking, for now. What happens when they get good enough to displace the roughly 50% that is of average intelligence?

What happens when the bar is high enough it incorporates that group as well and 2/3 of the population is essentially unemployable? I don't know, but society will be radically altered.

[rob_s]

And that's an issue because it leaves more and more people essentially unemployable. As much as people don't like to face it, intelligence and the ability to learn can be improved but only to a point. Roughly 15% of the population is significantly below average IQ but not considered cognitively impaired. Those folks have historically been gainfully employed in unskilled and semi-skilled roles. Factory floor work is often demanding, but not something that demands a high intelligence, flexibility in thinking, etc. That is, not coincidentally, the jobs that automation is taking over the easiest. Computers suck at flexible thinking, for now. What happens when they get good enough to displace the roughly 50% that is of average intelligence?

What happens when the bar is high enough it incorporates that group as well and 2/3 of the population is essentially unemployable? I don't know, but society will be radically altered.

so long as we keep increasingly headed in the direction of reverse-Darwinism (rewarding the feeble for having kids, penalizing the talented), I think we know right where it gets us.

I had a gifted teacher in 7th grade that, at least once a week, would go on these rants about how we (the students in that class) needed to make sure to have a lot of babies when we grew up. I can just imagine how that would go over now. But she wasn't wrong. Sadly (although probably happily to many here) I've let her down.

All of this, however, is why I am such a proponent of public school funding and free lunch/breakfast programs in the schools. Since I doubt my sterilization program ideas will ever gain traction I've pivoted to a more palatable approach.

But I keep wondering why we can't just put salt peter in government cheese. and crack.

Remember, too, that the barrier to entry on good tech has gotten really, really low. And I have a hard time tolerating someone walking around insta-twatting and face-toking all while telling me they can't find the drawing they need to do their job.

[BehindBlueI's]

Sounds like your grocery store has shitty self-checkout machines. The ones where we shop won't let you turbo scan items through, but it's not painfully slower, and there is generally no line to wait in to use self-checkout, unlike the traditional checkout lanes.

All self-checkout machines are shitty. They *feel* faster, but on average they are not. See: Self-checkout paradox.

You are one person. You are taking the items out of the cart. You are scanning them (on a scanner that is designed to be slower). You are bagging them. Then you pay. If you are buying alcohol, you have to wait for the clerk to come over and ID you. If the computer doesn't believe that your 12 apples are 12 apples worth of weight, you have to wait for the clerk to come over. If you're buying a lot of veggies, you have to key in a lot of codes or numbers. (Apples have stickers sometimes, kale typically doesn't).

"Traditional" lines have three people dividing the tasks. You may have to wait in line for your turn, but then you only have one task. You unload the cart, someone else scans them, someone else bags them. You can pay while bagging is ongoing.

Yes, you don't have to wait in line, and maybe you specifically will save time, but on average and for the average shopper you will spend more time self-checking. Just like if you had to do your own dishes before you left the restaurant. You are doing their work and taking more of your time. Obviously there are exceptions. Run in for a gallon of milk and there's three people with giant carts in line, of course. Before you'd likely abandon the milk and just go to a convenience store. Now you'll self checkout.

What they actually do is make you feel like it's faster and, therefore, less frustrating as well as let you control the bagging process.

[Spartan1980]

I don't have strong feelings about self-checkout machines, but I do find it hilarious that every one of my FB friends who bitches about them on the grounds that they kill jobs plus "I don't work for your company" owns a bunch of Ikea furniture.

Well every Wal-Mart Super Center I've been into in the last several years (admittedly I avoid them if at all possible) has at least 20 checkout lines and NEVER has more than four of them manned. So it would seem absolutely true that it has had an effect on employment. Perspective of one and all....

[jh9]

Well every Wal-Mart Super Center I've been into in the last several years (admittedly I avoid them if at all possible) has at least 20 checkout lines and NEVER has more than four of them manned. So it would seem absolutely true that it has had an effect on employment. Perspective of one and all....

I think a lot of those lines are basically for Black Friday and Christmas. Retail is notorious for how much of its revenue comes in just a handful of days. They make more money letting that dead space exist the other 50 weeks out of the year than trimming it back, having a smaller store and their most profitable days have people leaving out of disgust because it takes hours to check out.

Probably another in the "win" column for automation though. Since now there's basically one person basically running (almost) all the registers at once 50 weeks out of the year.

[rob_s]

All self-checkout machines are shitty. They *feel* faster, but on average they are not. See: Self-checkout paradox.

I've looked for these things several times in the past, and I still can't find the data that any of these people reference. They mostly seem to be people with an anti-self-check agenda (unions, boomers, contrarians) not really objective reporting.

They also *generally* seem to time the scanning/bagging and not take into account the real metric would should be time to enter line to time to leave line, and it should be averaged over many many transactions, some of which need to include the old lady with her dog and checkbook in line in front of you, not to mention her expired coupons...

many of the articles, and the very paradox itself, mention customer happiness. If I'm happier because I didn't have the pimply faced kid mash my bananas, who cares if it's really faster or not?

and, the experience is undoubtedly going to do nothing but improve. In fact, if the metric is "happiness" and people start to backslide because they are mad about "unexpected item in bagging area" then they'll eventually fix that too, even if it means a certain amount of loss tolerance for the few times someone doing that is actually stealing vs. just standing there mad at the machine.

Like most tech, you have your early adopters, and then the mainstream, and then we don't even really think about it. Blackberry came out and only the dorks had "smartphones", then they got kinda mainstream, then apple made them better/easier, and now even grandmas have them.

[OlongJohnson]

If you can use an iPad to find a fishing time, you can use it to read plans, but they often won't. So if you're a guy that went into drywall because you didn't want to "do tech", you're fucked. Same for plumbing, concrete work, etc. The lower you stay on the totem pole, the less likely that tech is, but it's still a thing. You're almost like the guy that couldn't read 30 years ago.

A major issue I've had dealing with tradespeople in the automotive realm is that, although they are "literate" and have no problem texting and doing stuff on a screen socially, when it comes to work, they simply will not read on any kind of consistent basis. You can watch them, and it's like their brain shuts down when confronted with writing that's beyond a social interaction. Therefore, written communications are ineffective, and writing-based workflow tools such as shop travelers are generally shaky. So if there's a simple additional piece of information relevant to a job written on the shop traveler, it will not make it into the brain of the person doing the work, even if they are skilled/competent at the actual hands-on aspects.

Project this into a tech environment, and you get what's being discussed here. A plausible hypothesis is that the failure to engage tech is a subcase of the more general failure to use reading and writing, even by people who can pass high school level tests of literacy.


Basically too difficult for some people to retrain using automation. It's still a problem in the public sector as many refuse to stay current with new software releases.

Where I worked at one point they wanted the field surveyors to learn AutoCAD so we could do field to finish mapping while some the surveyors couldn't use the latest version of software on their controllers. That wasn't well received. It's my understanding that recent civil engineering graduates are up to speed with AutoCAD, basically cutting out an entire layer of technicians that used to do drafting. I believe it's also creeping into the surveying industry.

Another factor is that lots of software just sucks. I can adapt, but I can also articulate exactly what about it sucks and why. I hang onto an old installation of AutoCAD, for example. I also have a newer installation, and it has many more capabilities than the old one, but the old one does everything I need to do in most cases for my work. And in order to organize and implement the additional capabilities of the newer version, everything becomes more complicated to do. A one- or two-step operation becomes a two- or three-step operation involving multiple menus. It's not that I can't learn the new system. I have learned the new system, and the old one is more efficient in addition to being easier to use. It's not just efficiency in time, it's efficiency in cognitive overhead required to use the tool vs. the cognition available to actually perform the task that the tool is meant to facilitate. I check myself against coworkers who have lost their old installation when upgrading their machine, and they agree. In other cases, I have encountered software that was so anti-intuitive that I struggled to be able to perform a task within it almost immediately after having the process demonstrated.

[peterb]

That is true, generally, across the board. Everything you do as a "job" is more complicated than it used to be. It has to be, because the world you live in is more complicated. That allows for things that were firmly in the realm of fiction a couple decades ago, but it also requires higher level cognitive skills just to tread water.

It’s frustrating when that is unnecessary.

I worked on our production line for a couple of months this spring, doing light assembly that included scanning in part and assembly barcodes. One of the annoyances was that the operator interface was so badly designed for the job. It allowed you to do a wide range of complex tasks, but had not been optimized for the simple repetitive task you did 99% of the time. The data entry sequence was ridiculously and unnecessarily complex.

The designer obviously did not believe in

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

[Spartan1980]

I think a lot of those lines are basically for Black Friday and Christmas. Retail is notorious for how much of its revenue comes in just a handful of days. They make more money letting that dead space exist the other 50 weeks out of the year than trimming it back, having a smaller store and their most profitable days have people leaving out of disgust because it takes hours to check out.

Probably another in the "win" column for automation though. Since now there's basically one person basically running (almost) all the registers at once 50 weeks out of the year.

Exactly my point. "Back in the day" all those registers were staffed, at least during peak hours.

And I'm not against self checkout. As a matter of fact I like it. I go in and get what I'm after and go to checkout so I can haul my ass outta there. Sam's Club app is even better, I just purchase with my phone and go straight to the door checker. :cool:

[jh9]

Another factor is that lots of software just sucks. I can adapt, but I can also articulate exactly what about it sucks and why. I hang onto an old installation of AutoCAD, for example. I also have a newer installation, and it has many more capabilities than the old one, but the old one does everything I need to do in most cases for my work. And in order to organize and implement the additional capabilities of the newer version, everything becomes more complicated to do. A one- or two-step operation becomes a two- or three-step operation involving multiple menus. It's not that I can't learn the new system. I have learned the new system, and the old one is more efficient in addition to being easier to use. It's not just efficiency in time, it's efficiency in cognitive overhead required to use the tool vs. the cognition available to actually perform the task that the tool is meant to facilitate. I check myself against coworkers who have lost their old installation when upgrading their machine, and they agree. In other cases, I have encountered software that was so anti-intuitive that I struggled to be able to perform a task within it almost immediately after having the process demonstrated.

From the other side of the fence, the reason software just sucks is because the UI is the only part about it people can see. So everyone "helps" by opining on what the UI should look like / do. I've sat in a meeting before where the fully loaded cost for the FTEs in that room was probably several million dollars a year while some people droned on about shit like what particular shade of yellow a button should be. And since they were Senior Important People, By Fuck that button was not only going to be yellow, it was going to be the exact type of yellow they wanted. I did not envy our UI person that day, and her patience is still legendary to me.

They did not restrict their input to colors. Many of their Helpful Suggestions made its way into the released version. User feedback was carefully curated to imply that this was the right way and people liked it.

Dilbert is not an exaggeration. I can't possibly stress that enough.

[BehindBlueI's]

I've looked for these things several times in the past, and I still can't find the data that any of these people reference. They mostly seem to be people with an anti-self-check agenda (unions, boomers, contrarians) not really objective reporting.

They also *generally* seem to time the scanning/bagging and not take into account the real metric would should be time to enter line to time to leave line, and it should be averaged over many many transactions, some of which need to include the old lady with her dog and checkbook in line in front of you, not to mention her expired coupons...

many of the articles, and the very paradox itself, mention customer happiness. If I'm happier because I didn't have the pimply faced kid mash my bananas, who cares if it's really faster or not?

and, the experience is undoubtedly going to do nothing but improve. In fact, if the metric is "happiness" and people start to backslide because they are mad about "unexpected item in bagging area" then they'll eventually fix that too, even if it means a certain amount of loss tolerance for the few times someone doing that is actually stealing vs. just standing there mad at the machine.

Like most tech, you have your early adopters, and then the mainstream, and then we don't even really think about it. Blackberry came out and only the dorks had "smartphones", then they got kinda mainstream, then apple made them better/easier, and now even grandmas have them.


The data exists, even if it's not free and a Google away. As do data packages on increased shrinkage (aka shoplifting and fraudulent ring up), it's relationship to scanning method and speed, etc. Consultants make money doing it for small businesses and big businesses do it in house. The abandon rate of various interfaces, etc. Target used to be one of the leaders in information gathering at the point of checkout, they were very data driven to the point that they were one of the most sophisticated fraud detectors in retail. They tied credit card transactions to time stamps in surveillance video, etc. I only know because of a class at university nearly 20 years ago.

There's nothing wrong with you liking them or liking them for reasons other than speed. I just don't and I find them irritating when I need to scan 21 cups of yogurt when the cashier scans it once and then punches in 21...

You can guarantee there are folks making good money to remove pain points from these things. Even tweaking the appearance of the interface and seeing how it affects abandon rates, etc. Also ways to shrinkage, etc.

[jh9]

but had not been optimized for the simple repetitive task you did 99% of the time. The data entry sequence was ridiculously and unnecessarily complex.

"We have UI optimization in our backlog and it will be in a future release."

Yep yep. Aaaaaaaany day now.

[jh9]

Target used to be one of the leaders in information gathering at the point of checkout, they were very data driven to the point that they were one of the most sophisticated fraud detectors in retail.

And how!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

[Casual Friday]

All self-checkout machines are shitty. They *feel* faster, but on average they are not. See: Self-checkout paradox.

You are one person. You are taking the items out of the cart. You are scanning them (on a scanner that is designed to be slower). You are bagging them. Then you pay. If you are buying alcohol, you have to wait for the clerk to come over and ID you. If the computer doesn't believe that your 12 apples are 12 apples worth of weight, you have to wait for the clerk to come over. If you're buying a lot of veggies, you have to key in a lot of codes or numbers. (Apples have stickers sometimes, kale typically doesn't).

"Traditional" lines have three people dividing the tasks. You may have to wait in line for your turn, but then you only have one task. You unload the cart, someone else scans them, someone else bags them. You can pay while bagging is ongoing.

Yes, you don't have to wait in line, and maybe you specifically will save time, but on average and for the average shopper you will spend more time self-checking. Just like if you had to do your own dishes before you left the restaurant. You are doing their work and taking more of your time. Obviously there are exceptions. Run in for a gallon of milk and there's three people with giant carts in line, of course. Before you'd likely abandon the milk and just go to a convenience store. Now you'll self checkout.

What they actually do is make you feel like it's faster and, therefore, less frustrating as well as let you control the bagging process.

Not in my experience. If the person that was standing in line for their turn at the regular register when I get to the front of the store is still standing there while I'm walking away to my car with my groceries, there's no paradox. See Rob's point in bold. I've never bought alcohol at the self-checkout, I rarely buy alcohol because I rarely drink. The bunches of kale, asparagus, cilantro, all have a bar code. I can't remember the last time produce was complicated at self-checkout. Like I mentioned in my other post, my wife scans and pays, I bag and load the cart. That's at the big grocery store in town where we do most of the shopping. If we need something midweek, there's a small grocery store closer to home that we'll go to, that doesn't have self checkout. It's more expensive, with less options, so we don't do our major shopping there.

I'll tell you where I don't use self-checkout. Home Depot. Their self-checkout sucks ass. If the grocery store's self-checkout was like Home Depots, I wouldn't use it.


I've looked for these things several times in the past, and I still can't find the data that any of these people reference. They mostly seem to be people with an anti-self-check agenda (unions, boomers, contrarians) not really objective reporting.

They also *generally* seem to time the scanning/bagging and not take into account the real metric would should be time to enter line to time to leave line, and it should be averaged over many many transactions, some of which need to include the old lady with her dog and checkbook in line in front of you, not to mention her expired coupons...

many of the articles, and the very paradox itself, mention customer happiness. If I'm happier because I didn't have the pimply faced kid mash my bananas, who cares if it's really faster or not?

and, the experience is undoubtedly going to do nothing but improve. In fact, if the metric is "happiness" and people start to backslide because they are mad about "unexpected item in bagging area" then they'll eventually fix that too, even if it means a certain amount of loss tolerance for the few times someone doing that is actually stealing vs. just standing there mad at the machine.

Like most tech, you have your early adopters, and then the mainstream, and then we don't even really think about it. Blackberry came out and only the dorks had "smartphones", then they got kinda mainstream, then apple made them better/easier, and now even grandmas have them.

[OlongJohnson]

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

That is one of my favorite quotes. The SAK in my pocket has one blade.

[peterb]

That is one of my favorite quotes. The SAK in my pocket has one blade.

It’s the counterpoint to “If it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features.” ;-)

[awp_101]

I ran across this a couple of years ago and immediately thought of it when I started reading this thread.


https://youtu.be/IRVdiHu1VCc

[BehindBlueI's]

Not in my experience. If the person that was standing in line for their turn at the regular register when I get to the front of the store is still standing there while I'm walking away to my car with my groceries, there's no paradox. See Rob's point in bold.

Sure, like I said it may be faster for you as an individual and for how and what you buy. That's fine. Industry data, at least when I was exposed to it, said that was not the case for the average shopper over multiple visits.


And how!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/


Folks who missed that the first time around should click it.

[Totem Polar]

While not at the intellectual standard of the recent tone and posting in this thread, a couple of random comments:

I have a friend who’s brother made his fortune inventing an edible fruit sticker. Because, as she put it “people are too fucking stupid to not eat the sticker. Somebody had to invent it, I guess…”

I like the order the groceries online, and show up to the side, where an elf brings me my groceries. I solve the meat and produce issue by going to the local farmer’s markets and local farm rows to get that stuff directly from the source—sources that are generally more healthy than Kroger.

On mission creep: I used to get paid the big adjunct bucks to just show up and teach my shit. Now showing up and teaching my shit is only part of the deal, after recruiting, advising, counseling, marketing, writing my own contracts for the payroll people (seriously).

The amount of stuff getting pushed back into the boots on the ground is amazing, really.

[BehindBlueI's]

I solve the meat and produce issue by going to the local farmer’s markets and local farm rows to get that stuff directly from the source—sources that are generally more healthy than Kroger.

I get most of my vegetables at a local sorta-farmer's market sorta-local grocery. Self-checkout is not an option. Most meat, I get at the butcher shop. If I see a good clearance sale, I'll get meat at the grocery, though.

[AKDoug]

Another factor is that lots of software just sucks. I can adapt, but I can also articulate exactly what about it sucks and why. I hang onto an old installation of AutoCAD, for example. I also have a newer installation, and it has many more capabilities than the old one, but the old one does everything I need to do in most cases for my work. And in order to organize and implement the additional capabilities of the newer version, everything becomes more complicated to do. A one- or two-step operation becomes a two- or three-step operation involving multiple menus. It's not that I can't learn the new system. I have learned the new system, and the old one is more efficient in addition to being easier to use. It's not just efficiency in time, it's efficiency in cognitive overhead required to use the tool vs. the cognition available to actually perform the task that the tool is meant to facilitate. I check myself against coworkers who have lost their old installation when upgrading their machine, and they agree. In other cases, I have encountered software that was so anti-intuitive that I struggled to be able to perform a task within it almost immediately after having the process demonstrated. My point of sale/inventory software provider is one of the biggest in the country and supplies hardware stores, lumber yards and auto parts industry. They have a great feature that allows me to look at snap shot of my business performance on a pop up window. It give me identical columns of info for that day, this month to date, last year month to date (so I can compare) and this year to date... they glaringly miss a column of "last year to date" which is really important information as well. When that pop-up was offered in our update a decade ago I applauded because it was super handy to get a macro picture of what was going on, but I pointed out we needed that other column. They said it wouldn't fit in the window. I told them to make the window bigger (which they have for other functions already) I've been asking annually for this upgrade to no avail. Yet they rearrange functions of certain backroom applications, with no real benefits, with every version that comes out. Those applications require my staff to re-learn their routines for using them, but those changes never make those functions work more efficiently. There are obviously software engineers changing it to just justify their jobs. My emails to them to upgrade the columns has become increasingly funnier and more snarky over the years. I haven't started to curse, but it's coming.


T

There's nothing wrong with you liking them or liking them for reasons other than speed. I just don't and I find them irritating when I need to scan 21 cups of yogurt when the cashier scans it once and then punches in 21...

Funny enough, in my retail application I require all bar codes to be scanned. There are items that are different SKU's that look identical (like different flavors of yogurt) and scanning one for them all causes inventory nightmares. I notice these kinds of things because of my job, and I haven't noticed a cashier using a keyboard for like items at a register in a long time at any of the major grocery stores I shop at. Every item seems to be scanned.

[OlongJohnson]

Yet they rearrange functions of certain backroom applications, with no real benefits, with every version that comes out. Those applications require my staff to re-learn their routines for using them, but those changes never make those functions work more efficiently.

That's a whole other thread, but yeah, that. It's like our business culture has taken "continuous improvement" to a pathological level. You must invent some change continually, or you're not doing continuous improvement, and you have to do continuous improvement. At some point, it denies the possibility of optimization, or the existence of a "right" solution. And to me that's obviously stupid.

[rob_s]

Eventually, one of the other things that will happen if it's not happening already, is that the constant "agile" software development cycle will start to reward those that can adapt to change, and leave the rest riding their donkeys.

Don't like change?

you'll like obsolescence even less. :p

-Or-

the only thing that's constant, is change.

-also-

Different isn't always better, but better is always different.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Well every Wal-Mart Super Center I've been into in the last several years (admittedly I avoid them if at all possible) has at least 20 checkout lines and NEVER has more than four of them manned. So it would seem absolutely true that it has had an effect on employment. Perspective of one and all....
The question isn't "do self-checkouts eliminate jobs?"

The question is "if you have a problem doing a task yourself that would ordinarily be done by paid employees...how do you justify buying furniture from Ikea?"

[Borderland]

Another factor is that lots of software just sucks. I can adapt, but I can also articulate exactly what about it sucks and why. I hang onto an old installation of AutoCAD, for example. I also have a newer installation, and it has many more capabilities than the old one, but the old one does everything I need to do in most cases for my work. And in order to organize and implement the additional capabilities of the newer version, everything becomes more complicated to do. A one- or two-step operation becomes a two- or three-step operation involving multiple menus. It's not that I can't learn the new system. I have learned the new system, and the old one is more efficient in addition to being easier to use. It's not just efficiency in time, it's efficiency in cognitive overhead required to use the tool vs. the cognition available to actually perform the task that the tool is meant to facilitate. I check myself against coworkers who have lost their old installation when upgrading their machine, and they agree. In other cases, I have encountered software that was anti-intuitive that I struggled to be able to perform a task within it almost immediately after having the process demonstrated.

I talk to friends who still work where I used to work. I had a conversation with one the other day and he was stressed (drinking a Margarita at noon on Sunday) about the fact that they had scrubbed his work computer and removed the coordinate geometry software that he had been using. When he asked for them to reinstall it they said it was obsolete and that management decided he could use the AutoCAD surveying module. I was using the same software he was about 10 years ago and it worked great for what we needed it to do. Now he has to learn a bunch of things he has no use for to get back to a few basic coordinate geometry routines. He probably won't trust it even if he does learn to use it being pixel based and all. I'm pretty sure he'll be looking for another job soon.

[Darth_Uno]

The question isn't "do self-checkouts eliminate jobs?"

The question is "if you have a problem doing a task yourself that would ordinarily be done by paid employees...how do you justify buying furniture from Ikea?"

Ikea is forbidden in my home. I built my own kitchen table, and you could flip that sucker over and ride it down an avalanche.

My new home contracts specifically mention Ikea items as products warrantied solely through the vendor. "Builder provides no warranty or guarantee on items purchased from outside vendors (Ikea, etc) and all further warranty work is to be provided by manufacturer."

[OlongJohnson]

I talk to friends who still work where I used to work. I had a conversation with one the other day and he was stressed (drinking a Margarita at noon on Sunday) about the fact that they had scrubbed his work computer and removed the coordinate geometry software that he had been using. When he asked for them to reinstall it they said it was obsolete and that management decided he could use the AutoCAD surveying module. I was using the same software he was about 10 years ago and it worked great for what we needed it to do. Now he has to learn a bunch of things he has no use for to get back to a few basic coordinate geometry routines. He probably won't trust it even if he does learn to use it being pixel based and all. I'm pretty sure he'll be looking for another job soon.

It's a little different, since you're retired. But I've told my old friends when hanging out with them that, "The first rule about not working at _________ anymore, is you don't talk about working at ___________."

[Joe in PNG]

We hear alot about how much more complicated things are now a days, but I wonder. Before, a lot of the technical stuff was done in people's heads and based on memorized data. True, there were means to work things out on paper, slate, vellum, or clay tablets, but those were just tools to facilitate what your brain did. And depending on the society, there may have been reference works of facts and figures, but you needed to know where to look and how to use it.

Now, it's more about telling various magic elf boxes how to do the thing properly. True, it's faster and way more efficient for me to make an Excel sheet than to sit down with a calculator, and the calculator was more efficient than doing it on paper by hand. And like a lot of stuff, some people grok how it works, some just know you put the thing in the thing and it does the thing, some honestly can't work it out, and others could, but struggle to fight against the Fog of Disinterest.

[rob_s]

My point of sale/inventory software provider is one of the biggest in the country and supplies hardware stores, lumber yards and auto parts industry. They have a great feature that allows me to look at snap shot of my business performance on a pop up window. It give me identical columns of info for that day, this month to date, last year month to date (so I can compare) and this year to date... they glaringly miss a column of "last year to date" which is really important information as well. When that pop-up was offered in our update a decade ago I applauded because it was super handy to get a macro picture of what was going on, but I pointed out we needed that other column. They said it wouldn't fit in the window. I told them to make the window bigger (which they have for other functions already) I've been asking annually for this upgrade to no avail. Yet they rearrange functions of certain backroom applications, with no real benefits, with every version that comes out. Those applications require my staff to re-learn their routines for using them, but those changes never make those functions work more efficiently. There are obviously software engineers changing it to just justify their jobs. My emails to them to upgrade the columns has become increasingly funnier and more snarky over the years. I haven't started to curse, but it's coming.


Funny enough, in my retail application I require all bar codes to be scanned. There are items that are different SKU's that look identical (like different flavors of yogurt) and scanning one for them all causes inventory nightmares. I notice these kinds of things because of my job, and I haven't noticed a cashier using a keyboard for like items at a register in a long time at any of the major grocery stores I shop at. Every item seems to be scanned.

FWIW, ost software development is geared towards what PROSPECTIVE customers want, not CURRENT customers. The great thing about the former is that they aren’t familiar enough with the system to know what they don’t know, and are easily wowed and misled.

[Borderland]

We hear alot about how much more complicated things are now a days, but I wonder. Before, a lot of the technical stuff was done in people's heads and based on memorized data. True, there were means to work things out on paper, slate, vellum, or clay tablets, but those were just tools to facilitate what your brain did. And depending on the society, there may have been reference works of facts and figures, but you needed to know where to look and how to use it.

Now, it's more about telling various magic elf boxes how to do the thing properly. True, it's faster and way more efficient for me to make an Excel sheet than to sit down with a calculator, and the calculator was more efficient than doing it on paper by hand. And like a lot of stuff, some people grok how it works, some just know you put the thing in the thing and it does the thing, some honestly can't work it out, and others could, but struggle to fight against the Fog of Disinterest.

I saw that with some of the software we used. You had to be smart enough to know when the wrong answer came out. That could happen if you input the wrong information or the program actually had a bug in it that prevented it from doing the calculation correctly. If the software was working as advertised and you had your coffee with a good nights sleep you were way ahead of the game. If not, you lose. Fortunately most of us knew to have someone check our work with the idea that it was worth the time to prove yourself wrong. We had a saying that doctors buried their mistakes and surveyors recorded theirs for everyone to see.

[Sanch]

I despise self-checkout if I have more than a hand full of items. They are designed to slow you down to help prevent theft/fraud. If the scanner worked as quickly as the cashier's scanner did, maybe.

Oh weird, I only just started using grocery self-check out recently since was added to my local grocery store. It's like a Whole Foods but just slightly cheaper. And also I have been to Whole Foods self-checkout, I dont shop at WF regularly but on occasion and use the self-checkout.

It's faster than going through the regular line. There's no delay in the system to detect fraud. I wonder if that's a configuration set at the poor people grocery stores (no offense) because fraud is more likely there.

[Sanch]

All self-checkout machines are shitty. They *feel* faster, but on average they are not. See: Self-checkout paradox.

You are one person. You are taking the items out of the cart. You are scanning them (on a scanner that is designed to be slower). You are bagging them. Then you pay. If you are buying alcohol, you have to wait for the clerk to come over and ID you. If the computer doesn't believe that your 12 apples are 12 apples worth of weight, you have to wait for the clerk to come over. If you're buying a lot of veggies, you have to key in a lot of codes or numbers. (Apples have stickers sometimes, kale typically doesn't).

"Traditional" lines have three people dividing the tasks. You may have to wait in line for your turn, but then you only have one task. You unload the cart, someone else scans them, someone else bags them. You can pay while bagging is ongoing.


Ignoring the fact that the standard lanes have longer lines, which is the biggest time saver for using line-free self-checkout lanes. Here's why the standard lanes are slower in my experience:

1) Cashier isn't immediately ready when my time comes up to check out. Oh sorry, I need to change the receipt tape. Oh sorry, I'm changing with another cashier. Oh sorry, I need to break open this new roll of quarters.

2) Cashier having friendly discussion with customer in front of me instead of getting to my checkout. Spend 30 second finishing up the conversation they started while that customer was being checked out, and now I am waiting for my turn while they finish the conversation.

3) There is no bagger most of the times. Maybe your grocery store always has a bagger for each checkout lane. Mine tends to have one bagger that bounces between 3 different lanes, if they have a bagger at all. So the cashier is doing the bagging, too.

4) Cashier stops to bag my groceries to ask me how I want them bagged. Do you want paper or plastic? Should I wrap the meat separately? Do you want me to leave one of your drinks out for you to drink on the way home? Did you check your eggs for cracks? Did you find everything alright?

5) Cashier gets interrupted by another cashier in the middle or towards the end of my checkout to help them clear a code or something from their system.

I will say that it's likely faster to go through a regular checkout lane if you're buying 20+ different fresh produce items, because the cashiers have the PLUs memorized and you have to look them up in the computer.

[Bio]

Not infrequently I do self-checkout because I'm an introvert and sometimes I just don't want to interact with anyone.