> People are a "moving target". What may be a bottom-tier worker now, could very well be a valuable employee in 5-10 years. Many folks have built their career by starting at a low level and then getting promoted and upskilled over time through hard work and commitment. Starting at a low position and advancing is becoming, sadly, a rare thing.
I think the validity of this point depends on how you understand "bottom tier". When I read "bottom tier"[1] I tend to read that as a combination of "people who suck at their jobs" and "people who are doing things that are highly commoditized or commoditizable". The former interpretation in particular has nothing to do with seniority.
[1] And I'm reading it this way probably because I'm back-projecting based on experience of working with some outsourced/offshored workers who sucked at their jobs.
People who suck at their job can learn, and become better. Not all, but everyone was bad at something before they leveled up.
Highly commoditized positions are also a great way to learn about less commoditized work. How many old rich people used to say they started in the mailroom.
I was out of work a couple years ago and I applied to work in a mailroom. It turned out that the company whose mailroom it was, was not the hiring entity - it was outsourced. So, no working your way up anywhere.
Furthermore, the interviewer spent the entire interview complaining about how she mostly couldn't even get people who would show up, let alone act maturely. We discussed the starting date, but within a day or two she reneged, presumably because I had dressed formally for a minimum wage job and was overqualified.
Another thing that comes to mind is the janitorial duties were outsourced in the building I used to work in.
This sort of thing is why I think it's dumb whenever I read something about a progressive company having a minimum wage of whatever for their employees - it's purely a statement about who they keep on their books and who they use indirectly.
How does one deal with a culture of decreasing vertical mobility within a particular organization. They may suck at their job and be shuffled between the bottom tiers of increasingly flat management structures. If there is no room for growth this model fails, many older people did move vertically but this practice has been almost deliberately been removed from corporate life.
Junior employees must have deliberate exposure to responsibility and challenge in a structured environment that supports them if the are to grow. This is the job of middle management, who are the first target of every MBA driven reorg. Hence the end of development.
My dept is a bunch of Linux Admins, of varying skill level; but all at least mid-grade or higher. There are no junior admins. They are paying top wages so we can do paperwork, create accounts, and manage file permissions.
Then they can't understand why projects fall behind.
I think the validity of this point depends on how you understand "bottom tier". When I read "bottom tier"[1] I tend to read that as a combination of "people who suck at their jobs" and "people who are doing things that are highly commoditized or commoditizable". The former interpretation in particular has nothing to do with seniority.
[1] And I'm reading it this way probably because I'm back-projecting based on experience of working with some outsourced/offshored workers who sucked at their jobs.