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Comment by dyarosla | Hacker News Reader

What criteria determines who should get a position then? What salary should those positions command? Sounds pretty handwavy.

Edit: responders to this comment seem to miss that the parent comment is suggesting Google hire new individuals and train them, not find talent in their workforce and do training there. Thats the unrealistic part- creating a secondary application process for individuals without the skills -- when they already reject a ridiculous number of people with many of the skills.

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On the job training was pretty standard in the tech industry in the past. I worked with a guy at an HP (oldest high-tech co. in CA) spinoff that was the head embedded software architect and worked his way up from the machine shop in the '70s. He started out manning a drill press and learned to program when they started using NC (numeric control) machine tools.

Do you think Google lets anyone to work their way up from front desk admin or barista?

This is basically how my mother was trained as a programmer. She got a job, was literally handed a stack of books and reference material and started figuring shit out.

She changed careers before I can really remember her at that job, but I too am self-taught in this field (but I trained myself at home).

The whole idea of companies not investing in their people is relatively new.

To be fair, employees are no longer particularly faithful to employers-- after all, it's considered completely normal to spend only 2-5 years at a job, then move to the next one. This definitely complicates the benefits of on-the-job training: why waste 3-12 months training somebody to basic competence when they might leave a few months after that? Some of this is obviously due to employees fighting back against stagnant wages/lack of promotions, but it makes me wonder: who started the faithlessness first, employers or employees?

I don't know about started, it's been back and forth forever, but in recent history a big epochal change was the hostile takeover movement of the 80s. Many companies, including those that had had a reputation for loyalty to their employees, were bought out by corporate raiders who often took actions that lead to huge number of layoffs.

Yes, actually Google does have programs to let people work their way up on the inside. Barista is a bit extreme and not really internal since they're vendors, but admins, help desk, etc. do have avenues to move into other roles.

That's good to hear. Carly Fiorina worked her way up from Admin to CEO. Though, that is a bad example because it didn't work work out too well for HP.

I don't think being a barista is much different than my example, though. Maybe they should make them internal hires.

>"What criteria determines who should get a position then?

A basic aptitude for the role or transferable skills maybe?

>"What salary should those positions command?"

Whatever the company wants to pay. Why does that matter at all? Employment is still an agreement between the two parties.

>"Sounds pretty handwavy."

Not at all, "on the job training" has a history stretching from Medieval Ages and the guild system, to the industrial revolution, powering the war-time workforce etc:

https://msu.edu/~sleightd/trainhst.html

I don't have solid answers, but that's exactly how my father-in-law got into the computer field back in the early 60s. He was working an administrative job at a bank, someone IDed him as having potential, and the bank put him through internal training in programming and computer science-y stuff. It worked out, he spent some time programming, and eventually moved into management.

Who determines who should get a training slot? What kind of subsistence shouls that training command?

The commitment of capital to tanglible jobs that lead towards ojt is not handwavy at all. That said, i bet the tax breaks from the schooling is substantial

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