Re: [tlug] [OT] A Question About Degrees

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Attila Kinali writes:

 > > And when business goes bad, they stop hiring employees, and only
 > > partially compensate with increase in contract work.  This is bad for
 > > everybody.
 > 
 > I don't exactly see how you come to that conclusion.

The statistics say so, for one thing.  It's hard to be sure because of
the great variations in unemployment insurance and other structural
aspects of the labor markets in different countries, but the
conventional wisdom in labor economics is that the studies that find
that in European economies (France, Germany, Spain, Italy) wages
respond to economic fluctations much more sluggishly than in the U.S.,
while both hiring and firing are somewhat less responsive.  It's
believed this is partly due to unionization levels, and partly due to
regulations that create friction "at the margin", ie, for the people
who are being hired and fired rather than those in long-term spells of
employment or unemployment.

 > If business goes bad, a normal company here would try to minimize
 > wasting money as much as possible, probably stop hiring new people
 > in order not to be forced to lay off the ones that they already
 > have at some later point.  From the employees point of view this
 > gives him a lot of security, as he will not be forced to look for a
 > new job in an economy with potentially many job seekers and few
 > jobs.

Exactly.  Those with jobs like this system, precisely because it
protects existing workers at the expense of new entrants, generally
younger, not union members, and less likely to vote.  A more flexible
one has a general decrease in wages with higher employment.

 > Uhmm.. once upon a time, i tried to look for a PhD position in
 > Japan (one of the few countries that did research in the field that
 > interested me).

Well, I was not talking about PhDs here.  BTW, I would not suggest
getting one here if you can possibly avoid it, unless you have a very
good, known honest contact in the faculty you'd like to study. ;-)

 > Having seen the academia in Europe, i was quite surprised and
 > wondered how Japanese universities could stay competitive to the
 > rest of the world.

They aren't.  Look up where the recent Japanese Nobelists were when
they did the research that they were cited for in their prizes.
Except in medicine, a much lower proportion than world average were in
academic research (including government and private think tanks
supported by government research grants rather than private profit) in
Japan when they did that research.

 > That is defintily a japanese thing. Hardly anyone here with a degree
 > of any kind would let him use as a gofer. And be it just for a short
 > period. On the other hand, i did my internship in Japan and did nothing
 > of that kind.

Engineering is probably different.  My undergrad and MBA students end
up in general management positions, mostly, which is what I'm
describing for first few months of work.  (AFAIK the job search
process is basically the same for engineering students as for
economics students.)  Those with graduate degrees generally end up in
research institutes, and they are expected to be productive in helping
to collect data and generate documents of various kinds; probably the
economics approximation to your experience.

 > Here in Switzerland for one,

OK, Switzerland may be different.  Switzerland is also relatively
small; I'm referring specifically to the big 3 (France, Britain,
Germany) and especially France and Germany.

 > Also, the companies are allowed to lay off anyone they dont
 > want. They have to write a letter of recomendation and have to pay
 > the salary for at least 3 months (the employment continues during
 > that time, even if the empolyee is fired "on the spot").

That's pretty flexible.  In the U.S., IIRC in most cases salaried
technical people get 1 month "severance pay."  At least that's what my
brother usually got (he's a EE in Boston; he worked for DEC for about
10 years, then for several network startups).  He's never had a
problem finding a job when he was laid off, but he's got a special
combination of skills.

 > (Quite contrary to Germany, where in some sectors there are hardly
 > any regular employees, because the company cannot lay them off
 > anymore. Hence most people are just limited time contractors)

Well, yes, that's the "Europe" my labor economist colleagues
describe. :-)