Its not fair at all.


But who said the system is fair?


And why would the people who manage the system want it to be fair?

It's not always the old guys who are keeping the young ones from working.

There are many professions that are simply not fashionable these days. The companies that offer them struggle to fill apprenticeship positions. There aren't enough young people being trained to replace the old ones.

Again: Free market dynamics at play


Entire industries need to keep up. If industries become unfashionable, they die. its the same with employees who have to go on training courses every few months to stay up to date and to keep their CV fresh, because otherwise they risk becoming obsolete.


If a company doesnt invest in itself to stay relevant and attractive as a place to work, it will struggle to hire the best talent and in the long term, will lose traction and eventually, implode.


Every large company paints itself as a wonderful place to work. The reason for this is that by attracting 200 applicants for a midlle position, they can hire a person based on their own terms. This means lower salaries and benefits overall. Thus, the money spent on marketing the company as an employer is recouped, and then some.

Yes always - like pig farming, or rubbish collection, dead and gone

Probably not a good place for war stories but anyway.

One time I worked for a Basel based company that was in the chemicals business that decided to early retire people and bring in the young and dynamic.

Turned out the new people did not know enough about the history to ensure the small scale production test processes actually produced the required chemicals.

So after protracted negotiations the retired people came back at high temporary salaries to run the processes and train new people.

However due to the high unplanned and un-budgeted costs of the "retired" people there was no budget left to hire and train new people especially due to the failure of the expected savings due to the planned people age/salary reduction.

So far as I know the "retired people" are still there and now heading into their 90's

These stories happen time and time again, often involving some sort of what-could-possibly-go-wrong off-shoring which is equally disastrous and expensive to fix. The source of the problem can always be traced to three simple letters: MBA.

Same experience probably with the same company

And I'm not kidding - one of those "retirees" on a forever-temporary-contract literally died in his office. Late 70s I think. Well that's just brilliant.

Having been in that industry a bit now, I’d say there’s a disproportionately high number of individuals who thought that banking was a tenured profession and thus they didn’t have to be particularly driven to keep their jobs. Layoffs have, unsurprisingly, targeted those individuals first.

It’s a history of not firing crappy employees finally being corrected that leads to your perception, I’d guess.

Maybe. I don't work in the financial industry and can't make a final comment, it's indeed just perception.

However, my experience with the annual round of layoffs is that at least my company doesn't get rid of the dead wood or those that are genuinely underperforming. Occasionally yes, but not large-scale. Rather, they get simply have to get rid of X amount of employees and then pick whoever just happens to work in the wrong department or have the wrong job title or - dare I say it - be of an undesirable age at that specific point in time.

Both of which need to be subsidised by the government.


I wonder why that might be? Perhaps because, if the local and federal government wasnt subsidisingthem, they would quickly die out?

I've never worked in financial services either. But when I was younger, I worked for a telecommunications research company needing to thin out staff. In these cases, you loose a good number of folks to early retirement, but also you loose younger folks wanting something new.

Having been in management too (later), I think sometimes the dead wood needs to be cleaned from the top. Just never seems to be. And, where I worked, the only way to advance was via management. But not everyone is suited to management....lots of people with good technical skills should have a place in the firm.

Again, not financial services. But in many places, some balance needs to be achieved between loyalty and productivity, as well as resources for decent management.

Why wouldn't the government subsidize at least trash collection? Nothing to do with the job itself.


Most people working in management aren't suited for management

But I agree it's often the only way to advance as much less value is given to technical or specialty knowledge. The result is just beautiful....

The dead wood at the top and in the middle indeed should be cleaned out first, yet indeed never is. But the fish always rots from the head down, doesn't it...

It's sad really. I wonder why almost everyone seems to be aware yet in the real world, we're all deaf, dumb and blind

Simply put, no kid grows up thinking 'a rubbish collector sounds like a fantastic career path'.


To actually get people to apply for the jobs, salaries need to relatively high (or other benefits need to be offered). In the private sector, the cost couldnt be recouped only by selling the provided service. Hence, local government gets involved. Its the same reason that 65% of a farmers income in switzerland comes in the form of government subsidies. Farmers are, like garbage collectors, basically public employees, even if they work for a private company.

Whatever.

My point was that you are making some pretty sweeping statements, over simplifying a complex and dynamic system, which are not factually correct.

Are you saying it is factually incorrect that both farmers and refuse colelction is publicly subsidised?

If free market forces really were at play, i don't think we would see so much of this.

Oh yes, my little brother wanted to become a garbage collector because he believed those guys work only one day per week.

Yes happened to me, but this was in Belgium when we lived there. Rife there even more than in Swizzle.

If they truly did work only 1 day a week, they'd probably have more applicants.

Pedantic, i know, but 120k>100k is not a 20% cut...its a 16.7% cut.


A 20% cut from 120k would put you on 96k. While not a huge dfference, it is still a not-insignificant difference of 333Fr per month, compared to 100k.


Going from 100k>120k is a 20% increase...but not vice versa.