My Confession Being a Manager of a Multi-National Corporation Regarding Trump's Election Win

Most of these responses are both comical and tragic.

The OP makes good sense to me. It's not the whole picture, but his perspective brings up a lot of harsh truths.

my idea when it comes to quality of life?
is not to give someone i do not love more time than i would my own family, on an hourly basis.
i graduated with a class of engineers, but i have loved-ones who matter more to me than a stupid paycheck.

all for one and one for all actually has a basis in reality...

you don't have to pet dogs that you know will bite you, you can leave them be, yes, i know, they still bite; leave them be.
why compromise my innocence/quality of life for anything?

a reply to: Aazadan

I have DONE my time in too many clean rooms assembling hard drives and chips to buy that, A MONKEY could do that assembly work IT'S BORING as HELL that IS the challenge to it.
Corporate America DOESN'T value employees who get the job done any more,THEY want TOTALLY optimal and overtrained employees for part time work who CONFORM to the model for predictability and profit.
NOW they will have nationalism to contend with.
Things have changed.

a reply to: RedDragon

You know what put them into that state of being? The removal of the sector of the economy they used to operate. That's the impact of removing/automating your industry base. Got the rug pulled right out from underneath them and now they are flat on their butts.That's the silent majority and they have been disenfranchised and they are pissed about it.

Gods and clods...The clods are ready for deicide.

originally posted by: SeekingAlpha

Whether Clinton or Trump won the election, I'm sorry to say that there is nothing realistically we can do to save the uneducated working class; regardless of race. When I work in the midwest on projects, I hired both non-skilled and skilled employees. The non-skilled employees were generally not very productive. They did not work that hard, they always called in sick to go hunting, and wanted high pay for doing something that frankly a robot can do. Some of them learned HR rules and played the game where they became very disruptive for moral on a project team.

My heart really goes out to these people because they don't have an option and are being left behind. But, they aren't doing anything to improve their position in life so hanging their hopes on a person who will not be able to deliver for them is truly going to be very disappointing for these working class people.

Thank you. I keep saying similar and I have no qualifications such as yours. It's not rocket science. It's "evolution".

I don't think most who voted for Trump have a clue who he really is.

I don't think most grasp reality beyond their own porch.

I am intentionally trying to raise my grandson to be competitive in the adult working world he will face - - about 10 years from now. Childhood is so short. Raising someone to be a child is counter productive in the long scope of this world.

This kind of attitude is exactly what got trump elected.
Unskilled labor is bound to be less productive at an average iq of 90. They are unskilled usually for a reason.
When you go to a foreign country and hire for high wages compared to their native country you can get cream of the crop.
Working 60-70 hours every week of manual labor is exhausting on the body. I work in construction and do it occasionally.
Not everyone lives to only work a ton of hours. People should work, but only work and no leisure isnt living.

So you have a large population of people left behind. They're no longer competitive in todays market. So you decide to give them jobs, to reduce homelessness and welfare costs. The problem is of course cheap labour and machines can perform the job more cheaply, meaning giving these people menial jobs is only cost effective if it's cheaper than supporting them via welfare and/or other costs.

A large force of people who don't work DOES cost us money--like in lost productivity. They can turn up in emergency rooms, commit theft and other worse crimes, require council meetings in government, and generally trash property and business values by their presence. The bottom line is people need to be fed, clothed, sheltered and need water. Society MUST have a surplus of these things to support people who're no longer in the work force.

I've always felt if you care about someone you don't just throw money at them, you show them how to make money on their own. You don't just support someone, you try to teach them to support themselves. You should always expect something in return when you help them. Otherwise you're hot holding them accountable. That teaches them to leach.

Also I want to agree with the OP:
www.washingtonpost.com - Alabama tried a Donald Trump-style immigration law. It failed in a big way....

Americans want those jobs, but not for that pay or for those hours. That's the central probelm Trump will have to face. There's a ready and willing undocumented work force and has long proven itself capable, so why would business turn them away now? No, there needs to be another solution. Trump has to have known this. He hired undocumented himself.

a reply to: SeekingAlpha


You say when you are abroad the construction teams are a hundred per cent committed etc. The fact is that they pretend to be committed. Their perceived working ethic is paid for by money. They would rather do an eight hour day, get a fair pay, and have a life. Not have to compete like a load of idiots, for very few jobs, get burnt out by forty, and be replaced for some one younger who thinks they are indestructible. This crap has gone on for to long.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
America is in bad Shape today Because the Education System has Failed Us . High Skilled Tech Jobs need Workers Trained in the Sciences to Fill them.

I'm in school for a high skilled tech job. It takes a lot of work and there's not much help available. There's a reason that 9 out of 10 people with CS degrees can't find work, even though the demand for the degree has never been higher. Lots of people just don't learn what they need to learn. There's also a problem on the industry side, everyone wants to hire 10's (the rockstars) for work that 3's (the "unskilled") can do and the industry itself has totally failed on bringing people in and training them. It has been fully offloaded to the schools because it's less risk.

I am sorry to hear that . If the Job Market Improves under a Trump Administration , and it should in the next 2 years , the Demand for Skilled Workers must increase to the point of being more Inclusive for all Levels of Abilities .

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: Aazadan

I have DONE my time in too many clean rooms assembling hard drives and chips to buy that, A MONKEY could do that assembly work IT'S BORING as HELL that IS the challenge to it.
Corporate America DOESN'T value employees who get the job done any more,THEY want TOTALLY optimal and overtrained employees for part time work who CONFORM to the model for predictability and profit.
NOW they will have nationalism to contend with.
Things have changed.

If a monkey could do it, it may be tech but it's not skilled labor.

I think there's actually a practical reason US companies put such high job requirements on a position. It's because if a candidate doesn't meet their unrealistic expectations, they can use those requirements as leverage to give them a lower salary.

Let me give an example from a company I applied to recently for an internship. This was what they were asking for, for a junior (as in entry level) software engineer:
Bachelors degree
3 years additional experience
5 years experience with a specific piece of software
Being fluent in 3 different programming languages (this is especially ridiculous because industry practice is to pick up and drop languages as needed, not pigeonhole yourself into specific ones)
Experience with 3d modeling
1 year experience with virtual reality
And a couple more I don't remember.

Now, this is utterly ridiculous for a junior. I know this because I've actually done freelance the exact job they were advertising for (but for another company). What they should have been asking for was basic knowledge of programming (loops, variables, recursion, etc) and done all other training in house (3d modeling, and the specific piece of software each take about 3 months to get decent with).

I previously said why they don't, but if they did they would fill the position sooner and make more money.

Some of us get left behind it can't be helped. You think every Chinese person has amazing work ethic? You only see the ones that do. The lazy underachieving ones are hiding in basements like me, wondering what drugs people are taking that make them want to work so damn much.

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
I am sorry to hear that . If the Job Market Improves under a Trump Administration , and it should in the next 2 years , the Demand for Skilled Workers must increase to the point of being more Inclusive for all Levels of Abilities .

That's very unlikely for Computer Science. The cost to hiring bad employees is too high. Waiting and not settling for average really is the most profitable move. I blame the schools.

Bad employees in CS are unfortunately too costly. To reiterate my point above, I think companies are asking for too much right now, but a bad employee could mistakenly delete your database or push a serious bug to the software your clients are using. Suddenly the difference between paying a lesser skilled person 70k, or leaving the position open and giving up 10 million in lost revenue is dwarfed by the fact that you just cost your company $25 million on one screwup (and the person will make multiples).

That's how the companies rationalize it, and they're not wrong. Sometimes the problems are more subtle too. If a computer program runs once a minute and completes in 3 seconds if it was built by a tech guru and 7 seconds if it was built by a novice, and you're running this program on 100 machines that's 400 seconds lost per minute, 24,000 lost per hour, 576,000 lost per day, 4,032,000 lost per week, 209,664,000 lost per year. Or to put that in hourly terms 58,233 lost man hours. That's the same number of hours you get out of working another 30 people 40 hours per week.

A Trump presidency isn't going to solve this issue. He might be able to offer some input into better organizational structures due to his business expertise, but the end result of that will just make everyone more specialized working assembly line style on a product. Specialization is something of a huge risk in CS fields, sometimes it works... being one of the few who knows how to write fortran for the banking industries legacy systems is very lucrative, but that's not where we most need jobs.

CS these days is largely in the artisan days, where a single person (or small team) are dedicated experts and able to work on multiple parts of the product. Most other industries have moved into the assembly line age for better or worse.

originally posted by: anonentity
a reply to: SeekingAlpha


You say when you are abroad the construction teams are a hundred per cent committed etc. The fact is that they pretend to be committed. Their perceived working ethic is paid for by money. They would rather do an eight hour day, get a fair pay, and have a life. Not have to compete like a load of idiots, for very few jobs, get burnt out by forty, and be replaced for some one younger who thinks they are indestructible. This crap has gone on for to long.

It's because of the differences in currency values. If the dollar were weaker, we would be able to do work for other nations and take advantage of the exchange rate back at home like the Chinese and Mexicans do with us. That's not possible with a strong, stable currency though.

originally posted by: corvuscorrax
Some of us get left behind it can't be helped. You think every Chinese person has amazing work ethic? You only see the ones that do. The lazy underachieving ones are hiding in basements like me, wondering what drugs people are taking that make them want to work so damn much.

my guess is that you were born into a family with a bit or lots of money and can afford to bum around.

might be a different story if you believed that being smart might be the only chance you have of getting out of sweatshops.

a reply to: Aazadan

Or to put that in hourly terms 58,233 lost man hours.

Not man hours, but computer hours. A big difference.

CS these days is largely in the artisan days

Man, this era is over like 20 years ago lol. CS using a lot of templates.

And almost all computer jobs are easily outsourced not for 70k $, but 20-25k $

To a certain extent, I agree with you regarding learning styles. But here is the issue. An average US born citizen that has better than average intelligence will not want to get down into the nitty gritty details. What he wants to do is to move up into management quickly so that he can manage others.

The problem here is that this person has not mastered his craft, but has good social skills to create relationships. This is good if you are in sales, but when you have to create a product that others will rely on, this person cannot be counted on to perform. I've seen it often and these folks usually don't last in my company.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: SeekingAlpha

It takes a lot to work and gain skills. There's also more family contribution towards learning in other countries. I remember a couple years ago here a story was posted which showed a Chinese family, their son had just become a doctor and it was mentioned that the parents sat down and did homework with their son every single night until the day he graduated. The comments ridiculed the family for coddling the child, but that's precisely what lets people learn.

In the US we have less involvement and basically tell children to learn it on their own.

Another difference I've found is that other nations tend to train people more narrowly, while the US isn't nearly as broad as I think we should be, we teach much more broad knowledge and accordingly when writing job requirements we require that broad knowledge base when overseas jobs may not have those requirements.

originally posted by: kitzik
Not man hours, but computer hours. A big difference.

They're the same thing. You need someone sitting at the computer interpreting that output. Alternatively, you have a script running and that's x% of your total computing capacity used up, which in turn means you need more servers to process information.

Man, this era is over like 20 years ago lol. CS using a lot of templates.

That depends, webdev uses a lot of templates with sites like Wordpress, but that's not really CS even though a lot of CS graduates go into it. You can't really template writing a graphics engine or building software for embedded systems.

originally posted by: SeekingAlpha
To a certain extent, I agree with you regarding learning styles. But here is the issue. An average US born citizen that has better than average intelligence will not want to get down into the nitty gritty details. What he wants to do is to move up into management quickly so that he can manage others.

That's primarily due to pay scales which is an easier issue to fix. We just have to shrink income inequality.

I'm all for quality of life as well. There can be a balance, but when employees are at work, I expect them give me 100% while they are there.

Gong back to low skilled workers. It takes discipline do be focused at work and at home so that you can have a balanced life. These lower skilled folks have a difficult time doing this and again, are being left behind. We are in a hugely competitive work environment right now where jobs are a premium and employers have their pick of the litter.

This is the monster that we've created called Capitalism. It is showing itself to be a vicious beast and has devoured half of our country. You have to fend for yourself out there and get creative. Otherwise, you're pretty screwed and are looking for a bailout which will never come whether it's Clinton or Trump.

Life is hard and if someone has made bad choices in life, I will be damned if that person has an impact on my life as I chose to be a productive member of society. This is part of the outrage others are expressing against Trump and his supporters. These people have made poor decisions and supported a failed republican economic plan since Reagan and now they want to blow up America on several fronts because they don't know which way is up. Reasonable people everywhere should not deal with this self-inflicted mess.

originally posted by: loveguy
my idea when it comes to quality of life?
is not to give someone i do not love more time than i would my own family, on an hourly basis.
i graduated with a class of engineers, but i have loved-ones who matter more to me than a stupid paycheck.

all for one and one for all actually has a basis in reality...

you don't have to pet dogs that you know will bite you, you can leave them be, yes, i know, they still bite; leave them be.
why compromise my innocence/quality of life for anything?

I'm sorry to say that there is nothing realistically we can do to save the uneducated working class

Very good point. Trump may be able to increase blue collar jobs in certain areas, mainly through fracking and drilling, but after his term there will still be a lot of ignorant poor people who will be really, really pissed that he didn't magically save them. What will happen to this country then I am scared to think of.