will the cloud rain on the direct hire employment model? 1

[boyze]

will the cloud enable or perhaps drive the demise of the direct hire employment model? i already see it starting in my world

Have Fun!

James A. Pike

http://www.xl4sim.com

http://www.erieztechnologies.com

 

[zdas04]

There absolutely are more than a few unproductive old duds in the workplace. As competent old guys leave the workforce (mostly before mandatory retirement age, I was 50 when I started my consulting business), too many of their positions are taken by the "unproductive old duds". I see a lot of 30 year old guys that should be the lead hand (through competence and personal drive to learn more about stuff outside their narrow scope) that are frustrated by the idiot who claims to have 30 years experience when in fact he has 6-months experience 60 times. I keep getting e-mails from younger guys who've taken my 5-day class asking if there is any way (short of murder) to get around the Luddites that they work for. So far the only advice I've been able to give them has been to work to broaden their scope of influence until they can ease around the old guy (make him irrelevant), it is never easy, but it is often doable.


David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[DHambley]

rb1957, Interesting to read that some managers you have met may view contractors as defined by your state, "staff good, contractors bad". 'cause they have their self-interet at heart. I think this is a rare case.
I have worked with a handful of other contract engineers, hired due to a schedule crunch. ALL of these contractors had at-heart, the goals of a quality product. I don't know a contract engineer who has a priority of some selfish goals as defined in that first case.

David, Yes. That $180 seems like a lot more than $50 but as you know, the cost of a $50 employee is a lot more than $50. Several years into my consulting career I had an aerospace manager complain, "you get to KEEP all that money." He had no understanding that I had double the FICA tax that he did, additional state business tax, my own insurance, 20% of the time looking for the next client, writing bids, proposals, etc. He never sat and thought about things like paid vacation and 401K matching which he always got for free, if they were actually "free".

The business model of $180 vs $50 for the same work has quite a few caveats.



Darrell Hambley P.E.
SENTEK Engineering, LLC

 

[zdas04]

It does have many caveats, but I was looking at it from the other side. If I could pay $50/hr (OK, with benefits, office space, vacations, etc call it $100/hr) to get the same work as my having to pay (all in) $180/hr for a contractor, only an idiot would prefer the latter. The reason I'm busier than I really want to be is that Engineers are not a commodity product and all things are never equal and you never get "the same work".

What amazed me was that my old company was one of my first clients and they never made any moves to keep me around when I decided to take [really] early retirement at 50 years old and were anxious to have me back as a consultant. Doesn't seem rational to me, but it did to them and they are fully grown.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[cranky108]

You may forget that several contractors don't actually do the work. They have youngerlings do the work and they only give a quick glance before they stamp it.
Often the drawings look really bad, with things missing, and it typically required a person 25% of his normal time to manage a contractor vs doing the work himself.

It also takes more time in some cases because of the time it takes to rework because the job wasen't done correctly the first time.

It's much easer to just hire retired people to just come back.

Now and again you will find a contractor that does a good job, then you don't let them go because it is so difficult to find another good one (maybe you should just hire him).

Cloud is like a fog between you and the person you hired.

 

[JohnRBaker]

...I have to think that it is higher among the stupid.

I'm sorry, but 'stupid' is a pejorative term. It would have been much more accurate to have used the term un- or undereducated, particularly when you consider the question that you were responding to:

So is the birth rate from educated people higher or lower than uneducated people? Just interested to see if there is a trend for more or less educated people?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[zdas04]

Go to that life sucking hole called "FaceBook" Pick any article and read the comments under it. The word is "stupid". If you insist I can go with "uneducatable", but not "uneducated".

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[JohnRBaker]

You still seem to have completely missed what was being asked. Your response was uncalled for, pure and simple. Or are your prejudices so ingrained in your psyche that you can't help yourself?

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[zdas04]

You start off by lecturing me? When that is ineffective you insult me? I just don't get who you actually think you are. Dad's dead. So's mom. But even with that I'm not in the market for a new parent.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[JohnRBaker]

I don't really give a damn, one why or the other.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[CheckerHater]

I'm sorry, but 'stupid' is a pejorative term. It would have been much more accurate to have used the term un- or undereducated

I used to work with a few people who didn't have a chance to get formal education, but were very bright and more talented than myself.
I also encountered several "educated" creatures who can only be described as "stupid" despite their diplomas.

Sometimes you have to call things the way they really are.

 

[cranky108]

OK I tried to be nice and use the tearm educated to imply people of a higher IQ, knowing full well some of the educated did not fit that description.
I also intended to imply people with a higher IQ but that were uneducated fit into the catigory of educated.

So I come to the least common phrases, stupid, and not stupid. I don't like these tearms, but if you must demand that I use them i will.

I also don't believe everyone who is educated remains in the higher IQ status through there whole life. And that educated in some liberal arts dosen't mean a higher IQ.

I was using the term uneducated to be nice, and more PC than stupid.

However the question hasen't recieved any answers yet.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I'm sorry but IQ is technically not related to one's level of education but rather measures a person's potential to learn or at least being able to comprehend complex principals. I believe that for the topic being discussed and particularly with respect to the question as asked by cranky108, we should really stick to original inquiry, does EDUCATION level play a role in the birthrate of a society. And I say yes, but only if you look at a large enough sample since there are always exceptions when dealing with individuals and even when looking at certain sections of society. Take for example America. Over the years, as both industrialization and public education has changed the face of the country, the actual birth rate has declined due to the effect of BOTH trends. In the case of moving from an agricultural based economy to when where most of the people were employed in manufacturing pursuits the need for large families was reduced. This was further impacted by raising levels of literacy and education particularly as it applied to girls and women attending school and getting an education, and this trend accelerated when more and more women started to attend colleges and delayed marriage as they pursued first a higher education and then the careers that they now were qualified for.

But even now there are exceptions to this due to cultural and in some cases even ethnic or religious norms. You can all remember when it used to joked about how Catholics always had big families and while that has NOT held true for me personally as I didn't come from a big family and neither did my parents and both sides of my family have been of Catholic stock for several generations, but there were some, like my two cousins with their combined 16 kids. And even today there parts of this country where those situations still apply at least antidotally. Take Utah for example or any local with a significant LDS population. You will find large families and one could hardly say that this was the result of a lack of education or even lower intelligence, since I work with many Mormons and I have yet to find any whom I would say have chosen to have large families out of ignorance or a lack of education.

Anyway, I think the original question, as asked, was absolutely an appropriate one since I believe that there are social factors at work which are related to education and educational opportunities, and the responses should have stuck to that topic.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cranky108]

Thank you.
I still see a large group of people who are uneducated (nothing to do with IQ), that are in the work place. And as it appears, more and more jobs are being created for educated people (in this I include tech schools). So what are we doing with providing benifits that keep these people from looking for jobs, and limiting the number of these jobs being created?

I read about automating farming jobs. So what will that do to the jobs market? It will end up with making a whole class of people who because of a lack of education will become unemployable.
An under class of people.

In some way we do need to consiter making manual labor as an option, as these people who might just start demanding more and more. Automation should have it's limits.

Hireing people who are "here" will still have it's place, but maybe some rain is to be expected.

 

[ewh]

Tax the robots the same as you would the workers. That might even the playing field a little.

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[JohnRBaker]

In some way we do need to consiter making manual labor as an option...

I saw that first hand once on my second or third visit to India. We were meeting with a potential customer and when we walked into the building we noticed perhaps a half-dozen or so men digging what looked like a trench to lay what I assume was going to be some pipes or electrical conduit between two of the factory buildings. When we were leaving I asked the person we had been meeting with, who was the managing director of the company, as to why they didn't use a back-hoe to dig that trench since I had seen several in other parts of the city. His response was that yes, they could have done that and the final costs wouldn't have been all that much different, other than perhaps the time it was going to take, but this way six or seven families will have been fed as opposed to only one or two if he had hired someone with a back-hoe.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[cranky108]

During the construction of the railways, there were times where there wasen't enough work for all the workers. The builders noticed more fights during those times, so they started making work to keep the workers busey. So in places along the railroads you would see a stone wall that seemed to have no purpose. The purpose was to keep the workers busey so they woulden't fight.

Maybe that is a solution for crime, and wealfare. We could all have stone walls around our yards.

 

[Gymmeh]

Cranky,

I completely agree..."You want your gov't check, what are you good at? Here's a broom." But that is socialist and 'Marica ain't no commi' state.

 

[KENAT]

Cranky, I don't want any of that socialist Keynesian stimulus type economics talk around here thank you very much.

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[cranky108]

So you think I was serious about stone walls around our houses? So many of the people on welfare would not be worth $10 an hour, but maybe if we cutoff there welfare they might be a little more enticed to do some actual work.

Many other countries where work is hard to find, the streets are so full of street venders, and taxies. But because of our laws requireing licences for these, we don't have them. The only way our goverment can keep those people from rioting is to pay them not to work. We have created a mess. Make work sounds much better than goverment handouts.

The real solution is to make changes to the laws that allow those people to work, or make jobs (street venders), and to get rid of the welfare.
But at $10 an hour, I'm not hiring a handyman, or yard worker. It's cheeper to buy a new one, or a machine so I can do it faster.

Bottom line is there needs to be an income disparity between poor and middle class to create enough jobs for the poor.

 

[beej67]

My short answer to this question is:

Yes.

And it's absolutely how I built my business from the ground up. I have Google Voice bounce to my cell phone, Google Apps manage my email, and Dropbox stores my corporate files. I can work from anywhere, share information with anybody, and my entire office infrastructure costs me a hundred bucks a year, which I more than make up for with my home office deduction.

I think as the future unfolds, the people in big companies who are actually making the bread and butter are going to steadily get sick of watching two thirds of their work get payed up the flagpole for no good reason other than to support people who aren't actually doing any work. ("Gotta get that TIMES THREE MULTIPLIER BOYS!")

All a "multiplier" on billable hours is, is another form of taxation. And it doesn't go towards things that people actually need to be productive anymore. It used to. Typists, receptionists, plotters, libraries, yadda yadda. Bosses of the typists and bosses of their bosses. It no longer does. All that money dumped into IT and other corporate BS just impedes your ability to do work.




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