America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.

On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.

Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...

Your mentors are your peers at work which can include your manager. Career growth is the accumulation of both knowledge and experience which is beneficial to both parties so I dont understand how those are misaligned unless fraud is involved.

(So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)

Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.

I don't know how you could believe that career growth interests are aligned between employees and their managers. For the majority of employees, their optimal career path will involve changing companies at some point. This is generally not in their current manager's best interest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43698197 ("The best advice I ever got was from a mentor who told me: Your network is your net worth but only if you give more than you take.")

Career growth has always been a shared responsibility between employees and employers. In white-collar fields--especially medicine and engineering--education has long been frontloaded, with formal schooling as the main on-ramp.

Blue-collar jobs, by contrast, have relied more on trade schools, mentorship, and hands-on training. These pathways have steadily eroded since the 1980s.

Much of this traces back to the Open Door Policy with China and the broader Free Trade Agreements that followed. These moved massive segments of industry offshore--along with the structures that once incentivized long-term employee development through education and skill-building.

Revitalizing domestic industry could reintroduce competition among employers, which in turn could restore the pre-1990s incentives for long-term investment in the workforce.

A huge part of her job is recruiting and hiring. Part of her pitch is proactive career development.

Paraphrasing: I want you to join our team. I also understand that this job is just one stop on your journey. While you're here, what can I do to help you get the skills and experience you want for your next job?

Consequently, she has a HUGE network, built over decades. Something comes up and she knows just the right person. She has her pick of new opportunities.

Wouldn't you love to have her as your boss?

I've had precisely 2 bosses in my career that had any impulse for nurturing, mentoring, career development. Whereas I've tried to be that kind of boss, given the limits of our current system.

Of course, in the end it doesn't really matter, it is all Orwellian anyway.

It was otherwise. And is IS otherwise in many other rich countries, as well as not-so-rich ones.

In these places, the employer-employee relationship is more of a relationship and less of a transaction to be reassessed every morning.

If you don't believe it, because you've never seen it, then you are probably American, probably young. And seeing other possibilities is a good reason to study (modern!) history, and to travel.

That's right - by keeping output constant (e.g. through automation) while reducing capital!