Root of Evil Bears Bitter Fruit

[Dawg]

I think we need to make it like it is on Star Trek.......No jobs, just utopia. Want a new flashlight or some other electronic dodad, just step up to the replicator.

 

[CodeOfLight]

We already are in an "Intellocracy". Those who retain the intellectual capacity to think for themselves, and to come up with new and better ways of doing things will rule the world. I do not mean rule as in the way a king rules. I mean rule economically. I have a standard of living far above the average because I have learned a LOT of things in my life on my own. I still do. I still cannot even explain what I do for a living to 80% of the public in any but the most general terms. That percentage is growing. I speak with a lot of young people who do not know the very basics of physics, chemistry, or history. These are things they should have learned in the 5th grade. Now they let them out of high school with a diploma with that level of knowledge or below. There is not a shortage of jobs out there. I personally have conducted many job interviews for programmer type position in my company. Many of them had MASTERS DEGREES in CS. They knew next to NOTHING about the subject. I had to drag the most rudimentary answers to questions out of them. We turn those people down, yet I am sure that they will be out there telling everybody about the shortages of positions with someone of thier skills and credentials. Ironically, this is the exact truth. We simply do not fill the position until we find somebody who has the skills necessary. The job remains open. Twenty years ago, anyone with a masters in CS would have been a shoe in for the job. With the continuous slide in the standards of our educational system, this is not true anymore. In fact, I cannot pick out candidates from resumes any longer. Candidates routinely lie and fabricate experience on them. We had a candidate once tell us that "database" was practically his middle name. He talked a good game and sounded impressive. I asked him what the difference between an inner and an outer table join was. (A basic db operation). He did not have any idea what I was even talking about!!! I would have better luck screening resumes if i threw them up in the air and picked whichever ones ended face up.

 

[CodeOfLight]

I think we need to make it like it is on Star Trek.......No jobs, just utopia. Want a new flashlight or some other electronic dodad, just step up to the replicator.

If you were s Stargate-SG1 fan, that would be a BIG mistake!!

 

[tradderran]

everyone is entitled to their own opinion, especially when they do not forcibly impose it on others, and the world is certainly big enough for more than one way of thinking. in fact, it is how we as humans learn and grow, and hopefully be better off as a result.

instead of a cursory dismissal of something which that poster has clearly done some thinking about, maybe you'd like to offer the reasons why you feel what that poster has said is unrealistic, or share your own alternate view.

Hello there
Just for your information. I am a retired Electric& Electronic Engineer. I have
Completed many projects in your own country Malaysia. This subject has
been debated by some of the best Engineers in there fields. And it was termed
Not feasible in the foreseeable future. This is just the way it is.
I have been there dun that. bout the T shirt. The way to get ahead in this world is Get a good Education LEARN to be the best at what you do. Never
stop Learning .
TRADDERRAN

 

[bfg9000]

The more optimistic view of robots is that they will save democracy. The history of democratic societies shows that they did not exist for long without slaves; such societies functioned by having slaves do all the work so the free citizens had time to research and develop opinions on issues before voting on them. Our own society has now been free of slavery for most of its short existence and as evidenced by sound bites and exit polling, most votes are submitted by those who readily admit to being poorly informed or not having made up their minds before actually voting.

Of course once these robots become sentient and demand civil rights or robot soldiers are ordered to suppress the unruly populace, you will be free to take a more negative view.

 

[Jorge Banner]

The self-correcting nature of free market ("laissez-faire") capitalism is the basis for capitalism's greatness. And capitalism - along with other freedoms - are what make America great.

Circuit City is demonstrating the marvelous self-correcting nature of free market capitalism by paying their employees what they are actually worth in the marketplace, as opposed to what the employees wish they were worth. This is good.

I salute that.

You might consider the alternative: the state "protects" the "underprivileged" and prevents companies from firing people. So, people stop working hard (or at all) because they collect their salaries no matter how they perform. Production goes to hell. Quality goes to hell. Companies go to hell. Country goes go hell. Salaries are then worthless. The economy crumbles. Everybody is miserable. "Employed" and miserable. That's called "collectivism" (see Soviet Russia, Cuba, Nazi Germany, Chavez's Venezuela, Argentina several times along her history and so on and so forth).

On the other end of the spectrum is Capitalism and America. I salute that, again.

 

[PEU]

I don't consider what I said optimistic but rather realistic. Either it comes to pass or we face the extinction of our species. The fact is whether we like it or not automation is here and will only become more prevalant. If the technology exists in ten years for fast food places to replace the equivalent of several workers with one $100,000 android you think they won't be all over it? Sure they will, and so will any other business which do work which androids can do.

I also believe that, robots will take over retail employment in the foreseable future. An interesting read: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm (The guy is the creator of the popular site www.howstuffworks.com)


Pablo

 

[Ken_McE]

What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. CC has forcefully reminded its employees that they are unimportant and expendable, and that under no circumstances will they be rewarded for loyalty or reliability. The more able among them will be encouraged to look around for other employers. Time will tell if this effects the work ethic of the remaining ones, the people who can't get jobs anywhere else.

 

[riffraff]

"Things are seldom as good, or as bad, as they seem."

I've kept that in mind since I was laid-off two years ago, after 25 years with "the company."

I took a year off. I went into a different field...not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I worked for two other international corporations as a contractor for six months each time (you would easily recognize their names). I currently have a 6-month contract, making half again what I was, working for the same company that laid me off!

The wife is bitter; I'm not. I recognized a long time ago that is no loyalty towards employees in America. At least, not at the corporate level, by and large. How can there be, when you people dictate their actions?

Yep, you, as investors and stockholders, punish companies during lean times and reward them during bountiful times. "But I don't even own stock!" I hear you cry. It doesn't matter. If you have a pension that's stock-based, or a retirement plan, or mutual funds in your life insurance fund, you help precipitate Wall Street's knee-jerk reactionary economy. Deal with it.

These folks at Circuit City will either go on to a real job, or they'll learn the service economy mantra real quick:
"Would you like fries with that?"

 

[MarNav1]

Have you ever wondered why they changed the department name from personnel to
human resources?

 

[Jorge Banner]

This morning I remembered something I read somewhere. But I can't remember where or from whom the quote was. But it goes like this: "the most important words in American history are 'you are fired'. ".

 

[CodeOfLight]

Hey, the day they invent nanotech capably of being injected into me that will repair cell damage, unclog arteries or any number of a variety of tasks I will be first in line for the injection. I want an sd card slot in the back of my skull that I can store 50 terrabytes of info on. I want to be able to type out code as fast as I can think it. It's my fingers that slow me down.

 

[BB]

An update on Circuit City's layoffs of their experienced and more expensive staff:

Circuit City's Job Cuts Backfiring, Analysts Say

Circuit City fired 3,400 of its highest-paid store employees in March, saying it needed to hire cheaper workers to shore up its bottom line. Now, the Richmond electronics retailer says it expects to post a first-quarter loss next month, and analysts are blaming the job cuts.

The company, which on Monday also revised its outlook for the first half of its fiscal year ending Feb. 29, 2008, cited poor sales of large flat-panel and projection televisions. Analysts said Circuit City had cast off some of its most experienced and successful people and was losing business to competitors who have better-trained employees...

-Bill

 

[CodeOfLight]

Yep, companies do not seem to realize that what they do will affect the way the market behaves. Classic accountant response. Once the money people take over a company instead of the engineers, all they care about is the bottom line. They will ignore all human nature responses to thier "adjustments" to the company, and simply add up the figures. Few of them realize that this is an information age, and that the news that they are laying off 3400 people to hire cheaper workers WILL affect customer relations, and it will affect it almost instantaneously.. A LOT of people will stop buying from them out of sheer spite. Most accountants do not take that into account when they make the decision to make the cuts. This is precisely what happened to Digital Equipment Corporation. When Ken Olsen (the founding engineer) retired, a market type guy took over the company. The change int the company atmosphere was almost overnight. I worked for them at the time. We used to take customers out and buy them lunch, schmooze with them. All that stopped, because it was seen as a way to save money. They never stopped to account for the FACT that that may have been the ONLY reason we won the contract in the first place. Good customer relations cost money, and loosing just ONE of the contracts we subsequently lost was FAR MORE expensive!

Digital Equipment Corporation, once the second largest computer manufacturing company, no longer exists today. I am convinced that it's journey to extinction started the day an engineer was no longer in charge of an engineering company.

 

[SoundMix]

I won't be "training " any of the new employees as I don't plan on going in their stores anymore.

 

[Manzerick]

I just wrote a paper on business ethcis at school..

it started... The first goal of a corp is to increase sharholder value... The rest is making sure you don't look silly and alarm the papers and create bad press with these moves...

 

[CodeOfLight]

I just wrote a paper on business ethcis at school..

it started... The first goal of a corp is to increase sharholder value... The rest is making sure you don't look silly and alarm the papers and create bad press with these moves...

I would say that the first goal of a corp is to stay in business, then to increase the shareholder value. If the corp is to continue to exist in the free market, positive public perception of the corp is directly proportional to the amount of business it receives. I think that the laying off of these employees and the stated reason will be far more expensive to the company in terms of public perception, and the business lost, than the higher priced employees were. I also think that people like to spread the blame, and the same folks who made that decision will NOT engage in an honest evaluation of of the consequences. They will continue to ignore the fact that thier name is mud, and blame some other reason for the decreased market share. If they ever came to the conclusion that thier actions made things worse for the company, then resignations would be in order. They will not do this.

I am not one of those that believes that the corp's purpose is to employ people.

 

[cerbie]

The company, which on Monday also revised its outlook for the first half of its fiscal year ending Feb. 29, 2008, cited poor sales of large flat-panel and projection televisions.

WHAT?!

They were told that was going to happen by everyone and their dogs and cats as soon as they tried to sell those things so cheap after Halloween--there's not enough deman for those things to make it worthwhile. Why rely on such a narrow range of products for that bottom line?