this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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This is something only doofuses playing semantic games say.
"Unskilled labor" is a term with an established definition: it's work that you don't need special schooling or training beforehand to be qualified to be hired to do, and also generally means that someone who is hired to do it can be fully trained to do the work to a satisfactory level within a month.
And you absolutely do get better at the job over time. A seasoned employee doing nearly anything is better at it if they've done it a few years.
I work a job that can be taught to most people. Although you do need to be strong and be ok with a lot of travel. General dexterity and familiarity with hand tools helps immensely. I am also a college dropout. I have had very few of my trainees fail to last at least a year. I am so much, almost infinitely better at it than a new hire though.
The other part of my argument here is I coordinate constantly with people who have multiple certifications all the way up to advanced degrees. Every single one of them I've spoken to about it says that their work is roughly 90% learned on the job. To me this makes the certifications and degrees they earned 90% worthless, except that education got their foot in the door to actually learn the job.
We need an overhaul in the way we think about qualifications for jobs. I think college education is a wonderful thing that generally creates a more well rounded individual, and I am grateful that I was able to spend a few years doing it. But pushing people into massive debt so they have a chance to get their foot in the door for a better paycheck is fucking insane.
This is not sound logic. Those certifications and degrees are the baseline, foundational knowledge that make it possible for the job-specific knowledge to be learned.
To use a simple analogy, you can't do calculus if you don't know arithmetic first. But in a calculus class, you learn 'on the job' all-new stuff. That doesn't mean the 'certification' of knowing arithmetic is worthless--without knowing arithmetic, it would be impossible for you to learn or do any calculus.
This is a self-solving problem. If an employer puts too many or the wrong prerequisites 'in front' of a job that doesn't actually need them, they will deprive themselves of X% of actually-qualified talent and the business will be worse off, versus employers who place only the appropriate (which in some cases, can easily be 'none') prerequisite(s) that are actually required for the work.