Comment by glitchc
11 days ago
> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise?
On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.
Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...
Outside of government, this shift also coincides with the decline of pensions and the rise of the 401k.
Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp.
Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s.
Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building.
Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.
I would point to the emergence of Milton Friedman’s school of thought that the only thing a company should care for is delivering “shareholder value.”
It's the same problem in the trades. Apprentices tend to cost the company more than their output so no one wants to hire and train them.
It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.
Certainly true, my comments are specific to the North American workplace.
Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.
I find "human capital" better than "human resources", as it has connotations of something valuable to be invested carefully as opposed to something simply to be consumed and discarded.
Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.
Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales.
(So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)
Inventory is part of working capital. Companies generally understand that they want to expand working capital.
Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.
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How do you improve your "return on capital"?
That's right - by keeping output constant (e.g. through automation) while reducing capital!