Who comes up with these crazy theories?

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by merrylander

Apples and Oranges gentlemen. The comment that I quoted in the OP was that "people loose their skills after a year", and that is pure unadulterated horse shit.

I concur with this. I'd go further and argue that skills, with the exception of some well defined occupations, stay the same for long periods and this is particularly the case in the manual professions. Even in a field where technological change is rapid, say, computing, the fundamental thought processes and techniques are quite applicable to the new and changed technology. If you were a good Fortran programmer fifty years ago, you'd probably make a good Java programmer today. I once read that Microsoft liked hiring physicists as programmers because they were better despite not having the breadth in theoretical computer science that a CS major would have. The point being that the difficult part is always the thought process with the machinery, 'garden variety arithmetic," being secondary.


I do think it is wrong to take the length of unemployment as a factor in hiring. Of course, I'm biased because I'm self-employed and that in itself wouldn't be appealing to most employers IMHO. Go run up that hill! Hold on, I'd like to discuss the intricacies of a frontal assault.