[entuno]

This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies - so it was in the company's interest to spend years training them up investing in them, with the knowledge that they might get decades of productive work out of them afterwards. One of my grandparents joined a company as an apprentice as 16, got trained by them, and then worked there for 40 years until retirement.

But nowadys with the culture being much more to to repeatedly jump between companies looking for salary increases, there's a lot less incentive to train juniors - because odds are they're just going to get poached or jump ship before that investment has really paid off.

The big companies or startups with VC funding and deep pockets will always be able to hire experienced people - but it's going to become increasingly hard for other people (and particularly public sector and nonprofits) to do so, as the pipeline of juniors -> seniors is being eroded.

[bryanlarsen]

> then worked there for 40 years until retirement.

And what are the odds that any given company is even going to be around for 40 years these days?

[quesera]

> This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies

In my observation, employers stopped being loyal to employees long before employees stopped being loyal to employers.

[entuno]

I'm sure you can find plenty of example of both. But TBH, I don't think it really matters which side you try and point the finger at after decades of decline - the point is that the employee/employer relationship has fundamentally changed, and it's hard to see it ever changing back.

[quesera]

Agreed. It's not about blame, just that employers are almost always working with a better perspective and more information.

Business circumstances made it advantageous, and then necessary, to break the social contract.

It might be possible to go back, but I can't imagine any series of events that leads in that direction which doesn't break the global economy in the process.