There's countervailing inefficiencies in America. Just to touch on a few:
We don't train people; they're expected to self-finance virtually all training. This often leads to a severely undertrained workforce, partially masked by immigration. When potential employees self-direct training, it also leads to mismatches between employer needs and employee training.
Following the lead of employers, employees have discovered theres no loyalty at all and hence treat employment as an adversarial relationship. Witness, eg, the bullshit from asshole Mark Suster. Your employer retains the right to drop you for any reason, or no reason at all, with no termination pay or help... but you better not go down the street for a better offer. Loyalty flows upwards only!
It's an enormous risk to develop very deep skills in a tiny niche: that niche may go out of need, and as an employee, you're just fucked. No serious assistance retraining. Zero assurance that, after your one year of unemployment benefits are up, society won't shrug and say, "Tough fucking luck; welcome to poverty."
The incredible overpriced mess that is us healthcare. We spend roughly 2x as much as anyone else in the developed world, for mostly worse outcomes. With way more friction.
The debacle of US infrastructure, particularly in a place like the valley. Poor and overpriced telecommunications. Incredibly high housing costs. Terrible transportation. No real attempt to address any of the above. Endless whining that there aren't enough engineers, but an unwillingness to pay trained engineers from the midwest or west or south enough money to afford anything like an equivalent life. Contrast to tokyo: if an engineer were paid $50k to live in the valley, they'd be living in their car. In tokyo, there's developed enough transportation systems this is manageable.
Lack of support for parents: from very modest time off for parents, to expensive daycare ($300-$500 per week for an under-two year old child), to a dozen other issues. One parent takes a huge productivity cut or the parents hire a nanny for $25k+/year.
> It's an enormous risk to develop very deep skills in a tiny niche: that niche may go out of need, and as an employee, you're just fucked.
Not to mention if you've been at a company for a long time and they have you in charge of the legacy systems, which are moving farther and farther away from the profit center systems with all their shiny new bells and whistles. Again and again and again I have seen people punished and let go due to their "loyalty" in maintaining the legacy systems, as opposed to working on the systems with constant new features that are where the business growth and revenue is.
We don't train people; they're expected to self-finance virtually all training. This often leads to a severely undertrained workforce, partially masked by immigration. When potential employees self-direct training, it also leads to mismatches between employer needs and employee training.
Following the lead of employers, employees have discovered theres no loyalty at all and hence treat employment as an adversarial relationship. Witness, eg, the bullshit from asshole Mark Suster. Your employer retains the right to drop you for any reason, or no reason at all, with no termination pay or help... but you better not go down the street for a better offer. Loyalty flows upwards only!
It's an enormous risk to develop very deep skills in a tiny niche: that niche may go out of need, and as an employee, you're just fucked. No serious assistance retraining. Zero assurance that, after your one year of unemployment benefits are up, society won't shrug and say, "Tough fucking luck; welcome to poverty."
The incredible overpriced mess that is us healthcare. We spend roughly 2x as much as anyone else in the developed world, for mostly worse outcomes. With way more friction.
The debacle of US infrastructure, particularly in a place like the valley. Poor and overpriced telecommunications. Incredibly high housing costs. Terrible transportation. No real attempt to address any of the above. Endless whining that there aren't enough engineers, but an unwillingness to pay trained engineers from the midwest or west or south enough money to afford anything like an equivalent life. Contrast to tokyo: if an engineer were paid $50k to live in the valley, they'd be living in their car. In tokyo, there's developed enough transportation systems this is manageable.
Lack of support for parents: from very modest time off for parents, to expensive daycare ($300-$500 per week for an under-two year old child), to a dozen other issues. One parent takes a huge productivity cut or the parents hire a nanny for $25k+/year.