[WalterBright]

The local Starbucks over the years has had many turnovers in the staff. It usually takes about 3 days for a new worker to learn the job.

That makes it unskilled labor.

Skilled labor is something like welding, where it can take a year to get good at it. Or things that require calculus, which take 4 years of specialized training to even get an entry job at it. Or flying an airplane - you can't just flip through the instruction booklet and fly an airplane.

[onion2k]

It usually takes about 3 days for a new worker to learn the job.

Starbucks hires juniors and trains them to be good baristas. That takes a long time. Just because someone is able to work a coffee machine after a few days doesn't mean they're not skilled eventually. Your argument is like saying 'it only takes a few days for junior devs to be onboarded, so there's no real value in senior devs'.

[rad_gruchalski]

Yes, and McDonalds hires junior burger flippers and turns them into senior and skilled burger flippers.

It doesn’t take a phd to make a coffee, no matter how fancy the cinnamon/cocoa heart is.

[onion2k]

It doesn’t take a phd to make a coffee, no matter how fancy the cinnamon/cocoa heart is.

All you're saying here is that you've failed to see the value in customer service, hospitality, speed, accuracy, politeness, etc that go with a retail coffeeshop job. The coffee is the same in pretty much every Starbucks, but the experience can vary wildly depending on how good the baristas are at everything else besides making coffee. Those skills take years to master.

[rad_gruchalski]

Yes, that’s what I’m sort of saying. I haven’t failed to see any of that. But it doesn’t take a phd to make coffee politely or less politely. All I want is the coffee. Don’t ask me what my name is. I don’t care about the „experience”.

[onion2k]

You do care about the experience though. Everyone does. If you have a bad experience you'll complain, or stop going to that Starbucks, or moan to your friends. To you, by the sounds of things, a good experience consists of asking for your order, paying, and getting out fast. An experienced retail worker will be able to read all that from your cues - not engaging in small talk, having your payment ready, moving along quickly, etc. They'll factor those things into their interactions with you, they'll remember you next time, and they'll make the experience what you want. All that takes time to learn, and few retail workers get good at it. I will concede that it doesn't require a PhD though. Few jobs do.

[rad_gruchalski]

I don't go to Starbucks anyway because they just keep that stupid ritual of "what's your name" and they can never understand what I'm saying so we are just standing there on the opposite side of the counter exercising our knowledge of the military alphabet. If that's the sort of skill required, sorry, anyone can do it. Tell me - how long does it take to serve your first coffee at Starbucks as a barista?

Just sell me the damn coffee and bugger off with "experience". It doesn't require a "skilled" person to politely serve me a coffee. Just make sure the coffee doesn't taste like shit and I'll come back to you unless you spit at me or offend me. Again - no need to be "skilled" to not do that.

[8note]

The 10x developers don't exist. You can get somebody off a days experience to write a couple lines of code, so there's no skill involved in it.

[cammikebrown]

How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista? You should try it out sometime, with a 50 person line. I’m sure it’ll be a cake walk and your labor will be fairly compensated. I’ll even give you a 3 day head start just to be fair!

[yourusername]

You can do the basic job after 3 days and after a month rush hour won't be a problem either. I've done similar jobs, the skill cap is not that high. My labour won't be fairly compensated which is why i don't do jobs like that anymore, but they're not hard to learn.

[InSteady]

To be fair, Starbucks purchases machines that are automated to a much higher degree than your standard high end espresso machine you'd find in a local shop. It's a lot more button pushing in the correct sequence, a lot less art. This is standard procedure for a multinational fast food service company: they want things automated and streamlined not only for speed of service and easy training, but consistency of the product.

From what I heard from a former Starbucks barista, the biggest challenge was to not scald the milk during steaming (which is not very difficult, basically just requires holding it at the correct angle to induce a whirlpool effect and keep things moving).

The skilled aspect is dealing with customers efficiently and pleasantly, and all the nuance/craziness that can entail.

[hnbad]

They likely meant that onboarding takes three days. As there is no meaningful metric for competence beyond that (or at least no metric that is measured and used) "good" doesn't apply.

There are of course tons of ways a good, seasoned barista distinguishes themselves from a trainee with 3 days of onboarding but those are externalities. The difference between skilled and unskilled labor is not whether competence and experience can make a difference but whether that difference is measured as performance or only affects externalities.

I.e. "unskilled labor" is not about the worker but about the company. Notably these often do involve skill that directly contributes to performance but because the job is considered unskilled, it's instead treated as some nebulous a priori form of intelligence and personal aptitude. What's more, beyond a certain point skill is often actively punished (e.g. by raising quotas to take advantage of higher productivity, resulting in more work for the same pay).

[lesostep]

>> I.e. "unskilled labor" is not about the worker but about the company

That part really stood out to me.

While a lot of us can agree that barista is an unskilled job, I heard people call barmen labor a skilled labor. Which is crazy, because it's essentially the same job (mix stuff up and serve in a cup). But it makes sense if "unskilled labor" is a function of an employer not an employee

[Dylan16807]

> They likely meant that onboarding takes three days.

You can onboard welding in less than 30 days too.

> As there is no meaningful metric for competence beyond that (or at least no metric that is measured and used) "good" doesn't apply.

Barista quality isn't much harder to measure than weld quality. "and used" is a cop-out.

[WalterBright]

Knowing professional welders myself, and trying my hand at welding, it takes a lot more than 30 days to get good at it. A welder also needs to learn some chemistry, all kinds of techniques, the strengths and weaknesses of various kinds of welds, how to prep the weld, etc.

A good weld is a thing of beauty.

Welding is also pretty dangerous. It takes a good welder to do it safely, and do it without ruining very expensive parts.

There's good reason that competent welders get paid a lot of money.

In 30 days, the new welder probably has learned how not to set himself on fire, blind himself, fill his lungs with poisonous gasses, etc.

[Dylan16807]

I don't think any of this makes what I said less true.

There's a lot you can learn in many basic service jobs, and become much more effective than if you don't learn it.

But if the standard is "onboarding", then both are quick.

> In 30 days, the new welder probably has learned how not to set himself on fire, blind himself, fill his lungs with poisonous gasses, etc.

I am not a welder, but I've had some welding safety training. It doesn't take a month.

[mlrtime]

You both are talking around each other I feel.

In any job there is a spectrum from bare minimum to a master. This goes for welding and baristas. Is someone who pushes a button on a Nespresso a barista? If I go get a soldering iron am I a welder?

You overlay the normal distribution of all baristas and welders and look at the difficulty in learning various skills. I'm sure they are not exactly equal.

[hnbad]

Sure but unless you're Tesla, welding quality is more relevant to your bottom line than coffee making quality (yes, I'm aware there's more to being a good barista than just making the coffee).

[bombcar]

> You can onboard welding in less than 30 days too.

You can be doing useful work as part of a welding group in 30 days, but you will not be a master. Grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't and all that.

[Dylan16807]

I know.

But you won't be a master barista right away either.

[WalterBright]

Starbucks coffee tastes the same whether it's the barista there for year or the 3-day newbie.

[WalterBright]

> How could you possibly know that it takes “3 days” to get good at being a barista?

Because I have gone to the same Starbucks every day for many years, and see many new hires as the staff turns over. It takes about 3 days to go from "cannot operate the cash register" to "efficiently fulfills customer orders".