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Comment by blackguardx | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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