In fact, the reason supply-side economics is perceived by many as failed is because people did not take such initiative – either smart and/or hard – to capitalize on the opportunities it presented. Because they were led to believe that others … government, union, employer … was supposed to hand them prosperity on a silver platter, as they simply punched in, did the minimum, and punched out each day – while also expecting to work the same job the same way in the same place for a lifetime. OTOH those that took the initiative to capitalize on its opportunities did better their lot, present and future.

All that being said, I can relate to your factory-floor experience … from my first job after graduating with my BSEE, I quickly learned that others that do not share my book learning deserve my respect, for they know things about how to build a deliverable product that would never be found in a textbook. They have saved my professional reputation on more than occasion.

Maybe I misunderstood the paradigm, but I always thought that working smarter was for the guy in the work belt. If all he did was work harder, he only got a little more done, in incremental increase in pay from overtime, and was more tired at the end of the day, but if he worked smarter then he was the one who invented the new widget that made his job go faster with less work.

The guy in the suit has no idea of what the problems in the field are, so he has no idea of how to improve the workflow. He may be smarter (or not), but he is more likely to make a decision that hinders than helps, then he pats himself on the back for doing such a good job. The second picture in Jester Naybor‘s link has the guy on the factory floor working smarter, but I don’t think he is working harder, as the caption recommends. He gets more done from the smart moves he makes.

I had some experience with this. For a while, I was writing procedures for use on the factory floor, but my advantage was that I was also the guy who ran those procedures. It was easy for me to make improvements, because I knew where even the most subtle of problems were and how to change my procedures. Later, I had another position in which I was writing the procedures but others were running them. I thought I knew how to write optimized procedures, but occasionally they came to me with improvements on the worst problems, not the subtle ones. It wasn’t until I was assigned to help run the procedures as well as write them that I once again improved even the most subtle of problems. It takes hands-on to know what is happening on the floor and how to work smarter.

That fancy degree that I got from that prestigious university didn’t make me able to divine what was needed on the factory floor.* To make it work smarter I still had to get down there and see how it was working and to take advice from the others around me on the floor. One company I worked for recommended “management by walking around,” talking to the actual workerforce to make sure they had what they needed when they needed it.
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Max wrote: “They always rise to the level of their own incompetence.”

There is a whole principle based upon this concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

I thought it was so old that it predated the fad of going to college for a degree, but it seems to only be half a century old. So now I have to wonder whether rising to the level of incompetence is old but was not noticed or whether it came about because there were suddenly so many college graduates that people were promoted before they were ready.

By the way, I was not yet prepared for almost every job that I started (especially promotions within a company and many times starting new projects), so I had many fast, on-the-job, training-by-doing periods, learning how to do the new sets of tasks. It was a lot like when my father threw me off the end of the dock to make me learn how to swim. (I know it is a cliché, but he really did it, and I dog-paddle really well, thank you for asking.) If this is standard operating procedure in industry, then I can see how someone eventually reaches a level at which he does not eventually get good at the new job. You don’t know when someone will reach that level until it happens. Peter principle explained.

The college fad began shortly after World War II, when the U.S. started the “G.I. Bill,” which included some amount of funding for a college education. Some people thought that the 1950s were boom times because all those fresh, middle class, college graduates were a superior workforce {citation needed]. With a workforce so strong, employers needed another way to weed out prospective employees, so requiring college degrees became a popular weed out method {another citation needed].

College became so popular that easy loan terms and college grants were created to help students afford the rising cost of a college education. So many students were attending college, more than we could possibly need as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and PhD scientists, that new — and useless — major areas of study were created (at one time the joke was that people were graduating with basket weaving degrees, then underwater basket weaving degrees, these days it is “women’s-studies” or other-studies).

Oh, how ironic that U.S. universities have managed to turn even their once-useful degrees into useless pieces of paper, not worth the price of the frame for mounting to the office wall. And thus end-eth the fad.
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* So why did I graduate from that prestigious university? The in-state tuition was cheap. Oops — back then it was called “registration fees,” but it was rapidly increasing to a similar amount as a tuition.

I was next up for an ‘chemical engineer’ job at the same company. Even after being told by the boss to apply they picked another woman.

Even our government contracting company didn’t need more than one real engineer for 6 positions. The government never asked about it until problems happened.

I found out that my friend who is a mechanical engineer is having trouble finding new engineers who have any experience at all. Apprenticeship programs used to require the student to work with different machines in order to better understand how things are actually manufactured in a shop. He has new engineers who have never even seem a drill press or lathe, let alone a multi axis milling machine. Electrical engineers who have never assembles a circuit board.

Because of Jimmy Carter, jobs were hard to find when I turned 17 in 1980, so I tried flipping burgers at McDonald’s working for a 25-year-old who had a masters degree in microbiology as my manager. An eye-opening experience.

I am a union member hourly employee for 30 years. (Union is like insurance against college educated salary bosses who are easily offended and retaliate against those who embarrassed them)
There are nearly 600 people under me in seniority, all with varying levels of education raging from Harvard, to high school equivalence.
They used to promote college education… and then wondered why things aren’t getting done, and why the management was becoming bloated with paperweights.
Everything had to be managed by committee, no one person taking the blame for a bad decision. They found out that everyone who has ambition, does not necessarily have qualifications. They always rise to the level of their own incompetence.

Now days they promote from within the ranks for those who have common sense and a attitude for the work, send them to school for the certifications if necessary. No one is hired off the street without an internship first to see if they are functional.
Critical thinking skills are hard to find, I often tease the engineers that one day they will figure out how to make water flow downhill.

Some of our best workers are coming from the islands, Tonga/ Samoa, with little education or a drivers license but are willing to learn and work and play hard. The same values as the farm boys that were raised with nothing, who know how to put in a good days work.
The city kids do not last long. Even though they’re adults, I call them kids because they always have a phone in their hand as an excuse not to make eye contact or conversation. It’s for these that we’re always needing mental health seminars to help them express what they’re feeling… without saying anything at all so it does not offend another.
I admit I don’t understand it because I’m a happy person. Perhaps it’s to prevent another employee from trying to commit suicide with a 4 million dollar piece of equipment.

There is truth that most of the highly educated people will go into government jobs, state jobs and education. The current administration is having a difficult task forcing current government workers to come back to the office buildings. They’re preferring to work from home or doing no work at all… kind of like our congressmen who talk a lot but do none of their constitutional obligations.

As for a free college education? you get what you pay for! Kids won’t show up for class because it’s free, and teachers won’t show up for class because there’s nobody there, and they get their money for free whether they teach or not. Anything you get for free is worthless.

Similar to one opinion on how to solve the homeless problem is not to give homeless a home, but print up a stack of certifications and hand them a degree in plumbing, accounting, nursing, electrician etc. so they can go out and get a job and earn money to buy their own home. All they need is the paper!
Don’t laugh, Joe Biden told the pipeline welders that they should just learn how to code… While silicon slope is laying off their computer workers and outsourcing their jobs to India. (AI writes its own code, as it is attempting to rewrite others)

The so-called “professional” field of HR is a cesspit of human debris whom, in and rational economy, would be relegated to digging post holes — with their counterparts filling them in. It is where the unproductive who are too politically influential to be successfully buried in an organization are placed, and is ironically as fertile a breeding ground for some of the worst ideas and methods for successfully managing interaction among humans as ever witnessed.

When two out of three of your hiring criteria are purely subjective, the HR department’s DEI / CRT program is up and running.

https://www.foodengineeringmag.com/ext/resources/Everyday/06-2017/MIKEROWE_900x550.png

This does not sound like happy trails for all non-leftists, as the last paragraph of this article suggests.

Almost pushed me to vandalism.

This started with the Rand folks however–who never appreciated labor.

James Street: No, those creative people with diverse backgrounds all work at SpaceX. :)

Seriously, about six years ago SpaceX wanted to hire some new software programmers. Rather than put out a call to the space industry, it sent a team to a software game convention. It didn’t want people with paper credentials, it wanted people who knew how to write good software that worked. (I posted about this on BtB, but can’t find the post now.)

It is very clear that SpaceX and Musk don’t pick people like most corporations, with an HR department that simply checks boxes. Instead, they look for the right people, and don’t care what credential boxes they check.

I’ve wondered if it’s because now Computer Science programs weed out creative people with diverse backgrounds and instead train uncreative math nerds who can pass the advanced math and engineering prerequisites.

Note that the University of Calgary got 98% passes when it sought it’s accreditation.

Meanwhile these apprentice trainees gain valuable skills in industries with real potential for career advancement and good wages.

Look for political push to reinstate the requirement. They want to push as many as possible into and through the academic world, to increase influence.

As less push to go straight to college, you will see more reject the academic view of the world, in favor of a view based on reality.