Leadership at most businesses have decided it is easier to hire experienced workers rather than grow and develop the next generation workforce.
Sadly this isn’t new to 2025. In 2008 I was working at an employer that said this to my face when I asked for a paid training class on a tool we were using in our production “We don’t train. We hire trained workers.” This was a shockingly bad admission about the corporate culture there with implications I immediately grasped. Whats more, I looked around at my coworkers that had been there for 5 or 10 years, and I saw he was right. All of them were using old skills on old out-of-date tools which I quickly realized also forced them to stay at that employer because no other employer was using those out-of-date tools anymore so they couldn’t switch jobs easily. I’d like to say I quit shortly afterward, but if you see that year you’ll know what was coming. I was happy to have a job during the great recession, even at an employer that had these toxic ideas.
People entering the workforce are at an extreme disadvantage without a training, mentorship and ongoing support.
I agree with this, and wanting to be part of the solution, I thought about becoming a mentor. However, the path I took (entry level, working up) is closed. I can’t say I have a great suggestion for an alternative for those I would mentor. They’re walking a path I didn’t take. I’d be figuring it out with them, but if I gave them bad advice, it could have massive negative implications on their career. Further, they’re saddled with way more debt than I was during that time in life, which means they need to be more risk averse than I was. I’ve done some mentoring to the younger generation, but I haven’t felt as useful to them as I had hoped to be, or as mentors I had coming up, were to me.
My general opinion of business leadership is not high, but this situation really exposes the depth of their laziness and lack of forethought.
Perhaps at a megacorp perspective it might be different, but for a small employer its not nearly that simple.
Each employee you have brings a cost (paycheck, employment taxes, healthcare subsidies, HR overhead, IT support burden, etc). These costs are worth it to pay because that employee produces something that brings in revenue at or above their costs. If that new employee cannot perform work that brings in revenue, then those costs have to come from somewhere else. Most solvent companies do have a war chest of savings that could be drawn from, but those savings are also used to weather periods of poor sales to keep paying employees or possible to pay for cost overruns if there is a mistake made by an employee that the company has to pay for. The war chest is not infinitely deep.
Further, this war chest money is also where raises come from. Any extra cost to the company has to be paid, and the raises or bonuses come from what remains. So if you bring on an untrained worker that isn’t able to produce enough to cover their costs, the costs for that worker is essentially being paid through the money that would otherwise be raises for the employees that are covering their costs and generating more. You risk pissing off or discouraging your best people with lackluster raises or bonuses by trying to bring on someone that can’t carry their weight. If you do that too much, your best people leave. Your company will fold shortly afterward with your talent departing. Your middle-of-the-road folks lose their jobs because the company went under.
There used to be “grunt work” that was capable of being done by new workers with little to no training. The work itself was an exercise that did partial training of the new worker. However, with automation, most of that work its gone. With repair costs being more expensive than replacement, that’s another avenue for training lost. There’s a “hollowing out” in the workforce ladder where you, as a new worker, might get one or two rungs up the ladder, but when you look to go higher you see dozens of rungs missing before you’d be able to climb again.
I recognize the problems, but I don’t have a solution. I doesn’t help that many companies war chests of funds are being eviscerated by trump tariffs or poisoning of international markets and business relations by trump’s antics.
I’m the owner of a small business, so I am deeply familiar with this equation. The way we solve it is to “look for talent where no one else is looking” (actually strategy), then train the shit out of and mentor them (informal strategy). My managers are expected to be better than and train the staff to do their work - from technical skills to knowing what good looks like. Then as staff move into management they are expected to pay it forward. Is it a lot of work? Yes - but it’s also how you don’t end up with a knowledge gap at the top.
Edit: I hold myself to this same standard, which makes it easier to expect it if others.
I’m the owner of a small business, so I am deeply familiar with this equation. The way we solve it is to “look for talent where no one else is looking” (actually strategy)
I applaud your efforts but I’m not seeing how this addresses the problem of bringing someone on that can’t generate revenue nearly immediately. In decades past, the “grunt work” a new person could do would cover some or all of their costs until they were trained up enough to be revenue positive. This system worked well until customers stopped paying for the grunt work some time ago (because of automation).
then train the shit out of and mentor them (informal strategy).
This isn’t without cost though. It could take the form of formal paid training, or loss of revenue generation from your own hours because you’re spending them training up someone from scratch. Where are you deciding for that to come from in the organization? What loses so the new worker wins? Is there perhaps another piece of your industry I don’t know about that invalidates my question?
My managers are expected to be better than and train the staff to do their work
Up to a certainly level I agree, but especially in technical roles there are folks that are fantastic technologists, but horrible people managers. There are good people managers, that aren’t good technologists. Those are two different skill sets. I’m not saying someone can’t have both, but that person is generally much more rare/valuable/expensive than two people each doing their role. There’s the other part that a person may be capable of both skills but doesn’t like to do one of them. Making workers do work they hate is a fast way to have them quit.
Edit: I hold myself to this same standard, which makes it easier to expect it if others.
For short bursts I can see that, but that doesn’t sound sustainable. How do you protect yourself from burnout? You’re wearing 3 full time hats:
delivering/producing your product or service
training staff
running the business tactically (day to day operations) and strategically (vision, goals, investment decisions)
These are all honest questions on my part as I’d love to find out someone has these answers I don’t.
We keep costs low by doing an evening paid training “try before you buy” model - so we can see how people work and they can see how the job is with relatively low commitment. Our work culture isn’t for everyone, so we want them to try it out without disrupting too much. We bring on people who are trained, like the job and ready to generate revenue. All staff are paired with a mentor and manager so they learn how to produce client-ready work.
We only promote managers that can do both technical work and people manage. In companies past, this will scale to about 300 people in our line of work. It helps that we only promote from within.
I do work lots, but I am an owner, so that seems fair. I work from home and with family, so I’m able to double up some of my work life balance. But we have also automated pretty much all business operations, so realistically it is 1-2 hours per week. Training at night is a pain in the ass, but again I’m m an owner and this seems fair to me.
Sadly this isn’t new to 2025. In 2008 I was working at an employer that said this to my face when I asked for a paid training class on a tool we were using in our production “We don’t train. We hire trained workers.” This was a shockingly bad admission about the corporate culture there with implications I immediately grasped. Whats more, I looked around at my coworkers that had been there for 5 or 10 years, and I saw he was right. All of them were using old skills on old out-of-date tools which I quickly realized also forced them to stay at that employer because no other employer was using those out-of-date tools anymore so they couldn’t switch jobs easily. I’d like to say I quit shortly afterward, but if you see that year you’ll know what was coming. I was happy to have a job during the great recession, even at an employer that had these toxic ideas.
I agree with this, and wanting to be part of the solution, I thought about becoming a mentor. However, the path I took (entry level, working up) is closed. I can’t say I have a great suggestion for an alternative for those I would mentor. They’re walking a path I didn’t take. I’d be figuring it out with them, but if I gave them bad advice, it could have massive negative implications on their career. Further, they’re saddled with way more debt than I was during that time in life, which means they need to be more risk averse than I was. I’ve done some mentoring to the younger generation, but I haven’t felt as useful to them as I had hoped to be, or as mentors I had coming up, were to me.
Perhaps at a megacorp perspective it might be different, but for a small employer its not nearly that simple.
Each employee you have brings a cost (paycheck, employment taxes, healthcare subsidies, HR overhead, IT support burden, etc). These costs are worth it to pay because that employee produces something that brings in revenue at or above their costs. If that new employee cannot perform work that brings in revenue, then those costs have to come from somewhere else. Most solvent companies do have a war chest of savings that could be drawn from, but those savings are also used to weather periods of poor sales to keep paying employees or possible to pay for cost overruns if there is a mistake made by an employee that the company has to pay for. The war chest is not infinitely deep.
Further, this war chest money is also where raises come from. Any extra cost to the company has to be paid, and the raises or bonuses come from what remains. So if you bring on an untrained worker that isn’t able to produce enough to cover their costs, the costs for that worker is essentially being paid through the money that would otherwise be raises for the employees that are covering their costs and generating more. You risk pissing off or discouraging your best people with lackluster raises or bonuses by trying to bring on someone that can’t carry their weight. If you do that too much, your best people leave. Your company will fold shortly afterward with your talent departing. Your middle-of-the-road folks lose their jobs because the company went under.
There used to be “grunt work” that was capable of being done by new workers with little to no training. The work itself was an exercise that did partial training of the new worker. However, with automation, most of that work its gone. With repair costs being more expensive than replacement, that’s another avenue for training lost. There’s a “hollowing out” in the workforce ladder where you, as a new worker, might get one or two rungs up the ladder, but when you look to go higher you see dozens of rungs missing before you’d be able to climb again.
I recognize the problems, but I don’t have a solution. I doesn’t help that many companies war chests of funds are being eviscerated by trump tariffs or poisoning of international markets and business relations by trump’s antics.
I’m the owner of a small business, so I am deeply familiar with this equation. The way we solve it is to “look for talent where no one else is looking” (actually strategy), then train the shit out of and mentor them (informal strategy). My managers are expected to be better than and train the staff to do their work - from technical skills to knowing what good looks like. Then as staff move into management they are expected to pay it forward. Is it a lot of work? Yes - but it’s also how you don’t end up with a knowledge gap at the top.
Edit: I hold myself to this same standard, which makes it easier to expect it if others.
I applaud your efforts but I’m not seeing how this addresses the problem of bringing someone on that can’t generate revenue nearly immediately. In decades past, the “grunt work” a new person could do would cover some or all of their costs until they were trained up enough to be revenue positive. This system worked well until customers stopped paying for the grunt work some time ago (because of automation).
This isn’t without cost though. It could take the form of formal paid training, or loss of revenue generation from your own hours because you’re spending them training up someone from scratch. Where are you deciding for that to come from in the organization? What loses so the new worker wins? Is there perhaps another piece of your industry I don’t know about that invalidates my question?
Up to a certainly level I agree, but especially in technical roles there are folks that are fantastic technologists, but horrible people managers. There are good people managers, that aren’t good technologists. Those are two different skill sets. I’m not saying someone can’t have both, but that person is generally much more rare/valuable/expensive than two people each doing their role. There’s the other part that a person may be capable of both skills but doesn’t like to do one of them. Making workers do work they hate is a fast way to have them quit.
For short bursts I can see that, but that doesn’t sound sustainable. How do you protect yourself from burnout? You’re wearing 3 full time hats:
These are all honest questions on my part as I’d love to find out someone has these answers I don’t.
We keep costs low by doing an evening paid training “try before you buy” model - so we can see how people work and they can see how the job is with relatively low commitment. Our work culture isn’t for everyone, so we want them to try it out without disrupting too much. We bring on people who are trained, like the job and ready to generate revenue. All staff are paired with a mentor and manager so they learn how to produce client-ready work.
We only promote managers that can do both technical work and people manage. In companies past, this will scale to about 300 people in our line of work. It helps that we only promote from within.
I do work lots, but I am an owner, so that seems fair. I work from home and with family, so I’m able to double up some of my work life balance. But we have also automated pretty much all business operations, so realistically it is 1-2 hours per week. Training at night is a pain in the ass, but again I’m m an owner and this seems fair to me.