Cobol - When have companies supported employees?

Author

When have companies supported employees?

Paul Robinson

2005-01-25, 3:55 pm

Robert Wagner wrote:

> Simply put, they stopped learning new skills in the '70s out of
> personal laziness. Why should companies support their personal sloth?

Maybe this is slightly off topic, but given the practices of downsizing,
layoffs, management incompetence in designing systems that cannot be
implemented without massive unpaid overtime, (or sometimes plain can't
be implemented) and lots of other bonehead stunts can we even argue that
companies in general support their employees at all?

Are the companies willing to pay for the training for their employees to
keep up on important skills, or do they presume that if they do so, the
employee will move someplace else for more money?

Are they willing to pay people on the basis of performance? Are they
going to pay more as people learn more about their profession and become
more productive?

Want to bet that if a competitor raised the rates they pay Cobol
programmers in order to get better people, they would be screaming in
outrage about how it is drying up the supply (but they won't train new
people)? Yet if that same company's competitor raised CEO or Board of
Directors pay, yoc can bet that there wouldn't be one note of protest as
the very same company that would otherwise be complaining about the
raising of pay of Cobol programmers then matched or exceeded the pay
scale of their competitor for executives.

docdwarf@panix.com

2005-01-25, 3:55 pm

In article <cKsJd.508$2i4.368@trnddc01>,
Paul Robinson <postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us> wrote:
>Robert Wagner wrote:
>
>
>Maybe this is slightly off topic, but given the practices of downsizing,
>layoffs, management incompetence in designing systems that cannot be
>implemented without massive unpaid overtime, (or sometimes plain can't
>be implemented) and lots of other bonehead stunts can we even argue that
>companies in general support their employees at all?

If 'a company in general' exists in order to maximise shareholder value
then any 'support of their employees' must be weighed against this end.
As for training... somebody posted this here back in 1997 and to the best
of my knowledge not much has changed since then:

<http://groups-beta.google.com/group...en&lr=&ie=UTF-8>

--begin quoted text:

It is a Well-Known Fact that if you give someone training they will
immediately jump ship to a higher-paying company because said company is
foolish enough to think that a person, trained, is more valuable than a
person, untrained... don't they know that Gratitude Is Enough?

[snip]

Let's look at it another way... assume that an organisation has invested a
great deal of money in the upgrading of the physical plant. If sufficient
investment has been made then it is likely that serious consideration will
be given to upgrading the security system (new locks, etc.) to prevent
these improvement from 'walking off'. Also consider the common term of
'golden handcuffs', a recognised metaphor for increasing salary/benefits
to prevent human capital from *physically* walking away. Now, consider the
investment of money in humans to upgrade skills in order to make them more
valuable to the company. Consider how many times you have seen a corporate
policy stating that an increase in salary/benefits accompanies the
successful completion of such an upgrade (courses).

Years ago the Wall Street Journal did a story on one of the major NY
houses... I think it was Morgan Stanley or Morgan Guaranty or the like.
They hired *only* the 'unhireable'... kids with BAs in Library Science,
Art History, etc... they put these kids through two years of hell, 60 - 70
hr w

s, and turned them into *crackerjack* programmers... and then saw
said kids being hired away by the competition at double or triple the
salary. When asked why a raise did not accompany the completion of the
course the HR representative replied 'Oh, we cannot do that... all the
money has been taken up by training.' (compare this with 'Oh, we cannot
upgrade the door-locks... all the money went into oil-paintings to hang on
the walls.')

After a few years of seeing themselves serve as Wall Street's unofficial
programming school the company finally 'wised up'... and cancelled the
program entirely.

--end quoted text

DD

Robert Wagner

2005-01-25, 3:55 pm

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:30:32 GMT, Paul Robinson
<postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us> wrote:

>Robert Wagner wrote:
>
>
>Maybe this is slightly off topic, but given the practices of downsizing,
>layoffs, management incompetence in designing systems that cannot be
>implemented without massive unpaid overtime, (or sometimes plain can't
>be implemented) and lots of other bonehead stunts can we even argue that
>companies in general support their employees at all?
>
>Are the companies willing to pay for the training for their employees to
>keep up on important skills, or do they presume that if they do so, the
>employee will move someplace else for more money?

It depends on whether the employee is viewed as an asset or expense.
If he or she is in a support or admin role, expense. If working in a
money-losing segment of the business, expense. But if working AS A
DEVELOPER on a 'mission critical' system in the company's profitable
core, he or she is a valuable asset worthy of training and high
salary.

For example, in the oil and gas business, programmers working on the
refinery system are overhead but those on the exploration side of the
house are lavished with money. In the pharmaceutical industry,
manufacturing is an expense that reluctantly gets 10% of sales while
research is seen as the source of profit, thus gets 25% of sales
without complaint.

If you want to make big bucks, understand the industry and position
yourself where they're being spent. Rule of thumb: ask whether the
company would ever outsource this job to India.

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