The Myth of Retraining: Joe and Matilda Fuzzypants

One of the oft-cited "solutions" to the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs is "re-training". It sounds helpful and hopeful. If you can't do "A" anymore, we'll just teach you to do "B" and Bob's your uncle. Unfortunately it is not enough to simply teach someone to do something different. They also must be have ability and desire. I want to tread lightly here. I'm a believer in hard work and self-improvement. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from going back to the drawing board and reinventing themselves. As a re-inventor myself I know it can be rewarding! The problem with many folks however, is the technology curve and the speed of adaptation.

Joe's Saga

To illustrate let's talk about Joe. Joe's coming out of high school with ok grades and he wants to do something to "make good money" so he can feed his video game addiction and marry his cat (don't judge). Joe decides to become a computer programmer. Programming seems like a good choice. He can certainly make a living doing it. Even though Joe has little to no experience with programming, he did take a class in High School. Although he wasn't an "enthusiastic" student, he did eke out a B.

Joe enrolls in the local university as a CS major. Along with everything else Joe learns the basics of programming from three classes in Java. His classes prepare him to build software objects and classes, work with UI's, compile and jar up his code and work with a group. He scrapes by, graduates (Thank God - no more school!), finds a job doing java and marries Matilda Fuzzypants (don't judge).

A few weeks into his job he comes to a startling realization. Only 60 percent of what he learned about Java in school is useful (I'm being generous). His new job consists of "figuring things out", implementing new frameworks, and preparing for the massive changes that are coming with the next version of Java. Far from being done with school he is embroiled in an entirely new learning experience and his job is on the line. He decides programming is too much like being a student, so he and Matilda move back in with Mom and he takes a job at the local Petsmart where his dalliance with a calico is a source of constant domestic tension.

Muse pro-tip: If you are a CS major, by the time you take a job using Java, much of what you have learned will be deprecated (that's how programmers say "useless and out of date").  The next version of Java will be on the horizon. Six months later and you will need to be learning Java 9 (or whatever) in preparation for the upgrade. The next buzz-worthy framework will be peculating through the blogosphere and your manager will ask you "what do you think about retrofitting application A to this new approach?" This is simply what tech jobs are like. In my company we call this the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the time you are working on something and 20 percent you are preparing for the next thing by learning something new.

Lessons Learned

So in the new economy it's not enough to know something - to have been taught a skill. You must also have the aptitude for change. The most important aspect of this aptitude is curiosity. The best employees of my consulting company are those who are learning because they can't help it. They are just naturally interested. The second most important aspect is "speed leaping" - the ability to grasp a new paradigm, metaphor, approach etc. and know without a book or a seminar how to take advantage of it.

I'm not sure anyone can "train" a worker to succeed at high levels in the new economy without these qualities - at least not at wage levels previously provided by manufacturing (although there are certainly exceptions). Workers have to be equipped to quickly grasp and master new technologies on an ongoing basis. New technologies drive changes in software, systems and management processes. The days are gone when mastering 6 or 7 skills was enough to keep a worker employed. Instead, he or she will need to devote some portion of their time to "staying current".

What happens if you are not personally wired to be curious and make mental leaps? What if you don't pick up a new phone or tablet or laptop and intuitively grasp how it works and the ways you could use it? You end up taking a service job.

This Ain't Weimar Germany

For all those hyperbolic folks looking for a toothbrush mustache on the sandy haired emperor of Trump Tower I have a few thoughts. First a disclaimer. Yes, Trump favors "toughness." Yes, he likes strongmen. Yes, he's said nice things about dictators.Yes he has allowed space for racism to fester in his camp. Yes he has bullied his way to the top. But, to paraphrase Roy (Mathew Quigley), "This ain't  Weimar Germany, and Trump ain't Adolf Hitler." Let's all take a breath shall we?

Like most things in his life (his attempt to look wealthy for example) Trump is a caricature that reminds folks of Hitler. The raucous rallies with sycophantic fans, the hyperbole, and the in-your-face approach to the media, combined with racist overtones hint at a dictator in waiting. Fortunately the similarities end at the shallow end of the pool. Here are some important things to keep in mind.

Hitler Co-opted a Failed State

Weimar Germany existed at a time when communism was a powerful force in Europe. Far from being the "default government system", democracy seemed like an experiment with a real downside. The far right wing was a reaction to communist forces and the uncertainty of democracy. The German hard-right wingers were in favor of strong executive power. Many preferred a return to the monarchy. They saw the rising tide of communism using democracy to eventually take over the state. By the late 20s in Germany, a center right coalition insured that the cabinet and president (Hindenburg) ruled the country through emergency powers with little input from the Reichstag (parliament). The military served as stamp of legitimacy on this arrangement. It was a tenuous structure with a small cadre of true players and it teetered and tottered and threatened to collapse annually.

By 1933 (Hitler finally becomes Chancellor) the Republic had suffered 2 attempted coups in the decade plus since WWI. Hitler himself was central in one of the coups in 1923. He served little more than a year as the leader of a plot to overthrow the republic. Let that sink in. The republic was so weak and unpopular that the government and citizens were willing to give coup plotters an "E" for effort and a slap on the wrist as punishment for failure. That's how very weak Weimar was as a government system.

The US on the other hand, has much less structural weakness. Far from having true power concentrated in a few hands, power in the US is diffused through a dizzying array of states, branches, and bureaucracies. There is no conceivable path to "take over" the US government without a military coup. That seems the least likely of all the scenarios to this writer. Hitler exploited structural weakness to become dictator of Germany. No such weakness in US government is evident.

Hitler had Organized Para-Military Forces

The SA (Sturmabteilung or Storm Detachment aka the Brown Shirts) were three million strong at the beginning of 1933. They had commanders, hierarchy and rank and file "soldiers". They were armed and functioned as military units. They were frequently used as a force to put pressure on local and state government. In essence, they were Hitler's private police force and he used them effectively to implement his will. The SA served as pending threat of civil war - a sword of Damocles - insuring the NAZI party received accommodation.

Trump forces on the fringe are not organized, nor does Trump have any compulsion to control them. He seems to prefer to ignore them altogether. They don't seem to interest him. In spite of press hyperbole, a DC rally in a Washington hotel where Richard Spencer leads seig heil is not the same as men marching in rank through Jewish sectors of a city and smashing windows, or kidnapping, torturing and killing key community members systematically. One is play-acting, the other is deadly serious. One wonders why the press covered the Spencer side show at all.

Hitler's WAS an Ideologue, Trump is not

Trump has a goal of favoring himself within his office. Hitler had a complex (albeit insane) world view that he preached and acted on constantly. Both were opportunists, but Hitler had folks following his ideology. That ideology included overt acts of violence, war and conquest, the creation by force of an "ethnic German community", and the Führerprinzip - a particularly insidious ideology with dire consequences for Europe and the Jews.

In spite of Trumps flaws (and they are legion) he has little if any of these overriding drives. Hitler's world had him seated on an imperial throne ruling the Aryan west with an iron hand and subjugating all people to his will. Trump's vision has him living out his days in Trump Tower fabulously wealthy and finally able to stick his finger in the eye of the fancy pants NY debutantes who have laughed at him all his life. If he has a vision for America it's provincial and it stops at economics.

Conclusion

Historians hate these sort of "It can happen again" comparisons. Yes, there are things about Trump's rise that are troubling and alarm bells should be ringing. Yes we should work to preserve our institutions and push back against any encroachment - it's a slippery slope. But no, Trump is not Hitler. The US electorate should be saying (again paraphrasing Roy), "I said I didn't have much use for constitutional liberty, I didn't say I didn't know how to use it."