martinusher

Re: Having Equity Makes a Big Difference!
"Pie in the sky", I believe its called.

(From an old song by Joe Hill, "The Preacher and the Slave"....

You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

BTW -- "Its a lie!")

KW64
3 hours ago edited
OTH, I came from farm country. I remember reading that in 1900 80% of the workforce worked in the agriculture chain. Now it is 4% yet we produce even more food. Those people who left that business found other jobs as unemployment there is low. Also, I keep hearing that we are not having enough babies. Perhaps some of these 600K workers can fill the vacancies in Fire Departments or Police Departments or even, become agricultural workers to prevent our food supply from "rotting in the fields!" unpicked. As non-citizens who choose not to work depart, some social workers may also get surplused and can fill these vacancies as well. Free markets reallocate resources to where they are most useful. Labor is not exempt from that. //

MeanDeb
2 hours ago
Why is this surprising? Machines replaced hand weaving. Automobiles & trains replaced horse drawn carriages. Telephone operators are a thing of the past. On & on as tech advances. Automated container on docks run by a few people w multiple computer screens are unbelievable. US longshoremen unions fighting like crazy to get them banned in US.

The frustration has reached a point where AI companies themselves are backing away from their own technology during the hiring process. Anthropic recently advised job seekers not to use LLMs on their applications—a striking admission from a company whose business model depends on people using AI for everything else. //

However, this trend from businesses has led to an arms race of escalating automation, with candidates using AI to generate interview answers while companies deploy AI to detect them—creating what amounts to machines talking to machines while humans get lost in the shuffle. //

So perhaps résumés as a meaningful signal of candidate interest and qualification are becoming obsolete. And maybe that's OK. When anyone can generate hundreds of tailored applications with a few prompts, the document that once demonstrated effort and genuine interest in a position has devolved into noise.

Instead, the future of hiring may require abandoning the résumé altogether in favor of methods that AI can't easily replicate—live problem-solving sessions, portfolio reviews, or trial work periods, just to name a few ideas people sometimes consider (whether they are good ideas or not is beyond the scope of this piece). For now, employers and job seekers remain locked in an escalating technological arms race where machines screen the output of other machines, while the humans they're meant to serve struggle to make authentic connections in an increasingly inauthentic world.

Perhaps the endgame is robots interviewing other robots for jobs performed by robots, while humans sit on the beach drinking daiquiris and playing vintage video games. Well, one can dream. //

OldPhartReef Ars Centurion
12y
225
Subscriptor
You can skip all the AI silliness by just going back to old-fashioned relationship building. You know, the human-2-human; face-2-face kind?

Smack me now for such a stupid idea. //

fuzzyfuzzyfungus Ars Legatus Legionis
12y
10,222
I'd be a lot more sympathetic if Team HR hadn't been using fairly extensive(if less technically trendy) tooling for auto-screening resumes for keywords and such and just silently binning any that don't meet criteria; and (at least judging by the hype) they were all on board with 'AI-enabled' resume screening as well.

Obviously an arms race is a loss for everyone involved; but let's not pretend that there was some sort of bucolic non-broken state before people started huffing LLMs.

It must be nice to sit in a climate-controlled CNN studio, debating the merits of whether American workers deserve skilled trade jobs, without a second thought about who made that studio bearable in the first place.

That’s exactly what happened this week, when CNN analyst Nia-Malika Henderson casually dismissed jobs like HVAC installation and repair—along with other skilled trades—as the sort of thing Americans shouldn’t really care about. Her reasoning? That bringing these jobs back to the U.S. might make stock markets in other countries “nervous,” and she questioned whether they’re really “worth it.”

Let that sink in. //

This is the kind of elitism that’s been rotting through the national media for years. They’ll nod along to phrases like “the dignity of work” and “supporting working families,” but the moment actual working-class jobs are on the table—pipefitting, HVAC, diesel mechanics, welders, electricians, machine operators—they wince.

It’s always the same story: Those jobs aren’t “aspirational.” They’re too dirty. Too noisy. Too blue collar. Too real.

Completely set the tariff issue aside. As much as she would want it to really be about those tariffs, she is revealing her fundamental bias against people with working-class jobs. People who don't wear the nice outfits she gets to wear on television while looking down on them. This is also a group of people who largely voted for Donald Trump, and that increases her disdain of them a hundredfold. //

You won’t hear these folks mock a Wall Street hedge fund analyst who makes millions rearranging numbers for a living. But a guy who keeps schools, hospitals, and newsrooms cool in the summer and warm in the winter? Suddenly, that job isn’t “worth it.” //

Let’s be clear about something: Without HVAC workers, that CNN studio wouldn’t just be uncomfortable—it would be uninhabitable. Without truck drivers, no one’s getting makeup shipped to the green room. Without electricians, the lights go out. Without welders, no one has a desk to sit at. Without construction crews, there is no building to broadcast from.

This country runs on the backs of skilled workers—the very people elite media types so often ignore, stereotype, or outright ridicule.

These jobs aren’t beneath anyone. In fact, they’re the backbone of the middle class. And when the media mocks them, they’re not just showing their ignorance. They’re revealing their disdain for the people who keep America running.

When Henderson asked whether these jobs are “worth it,” she wasn’t just questioning economic policy. She was questioning the value of the people who do those jobs.