On 12/23/2013 7:42 PM, F. George McDuffee wrote:
On Mon, 23 Dec 2013 18:30:48 -0600,
wrote:

On 12/23/2013 5:55 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
...

There is also an inherent difference in objectives here. In the late
1960s, I asked one of my better EE professors why they taught us so
much theory and so little of what was actually being used in industry
at the time. His answer was quite succinct - the stuff actually used
today would be obsolete in a few years, but the theory would endure for
an entire career.

So, the companies wanted short-term knowledge (so the new employee
could "hit the ground running"), but the theory is the better
investment from the employee's perspective.

...

It's also by far the better investment for the company as well.

Indeed, but this again conflates/confuses the company with
its management. In the last analysis the
company/corporation is a trope like mother nature or father
time. The decisions are made by real people with personal
agendas, which may or may not include the best interests of
the owners/stockholders in either the short or long term.
In too many cases the decisions are made based on what will
jack up earning and the stock price for the quarter so
management can cash out rather than the long-term viability
of the company and stockholders/stakeholders such as the
employees and community.

You're' right at the point that "decisions are made by real people" but
from there you pretty much lose it at the technical employee level of
hiring.

In every organization I've been associated with, either as an employee
or as a consultant (and w/ 30 yr working time that turns out to be
quite a sizable number), almost w/o exception the actual employment
interview/decision once past the preliminary screening was done by
individuals at a low-enough level that these high level boardroom-level
corporate direction objectives had no effective bearing whatsoever on
the evaluation of candidates. Again w/ the exception of a couple of
PHB/Dilbert types who were simply totally inept, the actual hiring
decisions were made pretty much on rational evaluation of perceived
abilities weighted by the intangibles of "team player", etc., etc.,
etc., ... I ran across very few who would choose an obvious
robot-follower over a clearly capable innovator/thinker type for any
position other than an assembly-line operator.

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