Blessed by the Potato

There was an article in the London Free Press today about a lack of skilled workers in the city. (Note: the LFP has pretty terrible online retention, this article may not be accessible after a week).

A London company is poised to grow, hiring as sales increase — but it will have to expand outside the city.

Autodata Solutions is an example of how the shortage of skilled workers is hurting the city’s economic growth.
…
In fact, 62 per cent of companies said they faced a shortage of qualified candidates and another 29 per cent said they had trouble finding people to relocate here.
…
The most ambitious of the plans is to bring more than 1,000 students from Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario to the London Convention Centre in January to meet with businesses looking for workers.
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For companies such as Autodata Solutions, which cannot find software developers, the labour shortage has had a serious effect.
…
Over the last year, the company has hired about 100, and it now employs about 200.

“The problem is we do not need people out of school. We need workers with three to five years’ experience. The issue is skill,” said Lisa Harrison, director of human resources. “I would prefer to grow here; we love London, we’d be happier if we could find people here.”

[Emphasis mine]

This is just retarded. It’s not that there’s a shortage of skilled workers: this is a university town, with way more skilled workers graduating every year than the city can possibly hire all by itself. The problem is with a lack of skilled, experienced workers. But companies have to realize that someone has to hire recent grads in order for them to get skilled. Yes, they’ll need a bit more training, but they also cost less at first, so it’s a bit of an investment, really. After all, someone with 3 years seniority at another company will still need to be trained to the specificities of your company. It might take only a few months instead of a year or two, but it will hardly take 3 years for a recent grad to actually catch up in the experience specific to your company. If nobody in the city hires recent grads, then the grads move away. And once they move, it’s very hard to get them to come back. While many students may come here with a plan to move to Toronto as soon as their finals are done, there must be a substantial portion who would stay if they had a local job offer within weeks of graduation.

As one advances in life beyond graduation, one tends to settle down, start a family, etc. Once that happens, it becomes hard to convince one to move cities for a job. Especially considering how difficult the “two-body problem” is to solve in London. If I am a talented, experienced software engineer, there may be a nice selection of jobs for me. But if my wife is a teacher or librarian, then there might be no work for her, and I might instead try to find a job for myself in a larger city like Toronto or Ottawa, where we could both find jobs. These factors make it much harder to lure someone away from another city as they progress in life, and again the solution appears to be hiring recent grads and training them up within the company. Get them while they’re single, then keep them while they put down roots here, and it might even help reduce turn over down the road.

If indeed this one company in London has hired 100 skilled employees over the last year, how many of those really needed to be veterans, and how many could have been trained in house? If they have a need for another 100 in the next year or two, how much easier and how much sooner could those positions be filled with local recent grads than job searches abroad? Is it better to have a position lay vacant for a year while one searches for an experienced employee than it is to hire a fresh employee and have them trained up by the end of that year?

And, moreover, how much does training cost vs. opening another branch?

The company is looking to add branches outside London and is considering the United States, Guelph and Windsor, where there are workers.

“Our growth will not be in London and the skills shortage here is a big part of the issue,” Harrison said.

There may be skilled workers in Guelph and Windsor at the moment, but with cities that are even smaller than London, how stable is that job market/pool of workers?

We had dinner last night at the Dragonfly Bistro (Richmond St., just south of Oxford in London). It’s a cute, tiny little place, with just about 8 tables (consequently, reservations are recommended). The menu was quite limited (a choice of one soup, 3 appetizers, and 5 entrees) that fit on a single sheet of paper (in large font at that), and rather pricey (over $50 for two, expect more if you’re inclined to drink). The food was good though, and it was a nice, relaxed, quiet atmosphere (it’s a bit of a change being able to practically whisper at dinner, since so many restaurants are fond of blasting music lately). Note that the place is brighter inside than it looks from the street, almost too bright given how intimate the atmosphere is otherwise. Just as we were finishing up, another couple came in — a loud couple — and we found out thanks to them that the staff is open to changing up the menu on request. Apparently the fish option is pan-fried, but they were open to the suggestion of possibly grilling it, or making up a salad (and oddly enough, salad is only an option on the lunch menu).

Earlier yesterday, we went off into the country to go apple picking. There’s a cute little farm on Dundas, about 4 km east of the city. We found out about it from a little guide book to u-pick-ems that we got at Home Hardware, and the directions were something like “head east on Dundas, look for signs”. We saw one sign, and it had no directions on it, just the name of the farm, and it was in the middle of a field that had already been harvested (not an apple orchard) so we weren’t sure if it was just advertising for the place we were looking for, or what. After driving for another few kilometers, we figured that was indeed the place and went back to turn down the street the sign was nearest (Richmond Street, though not that Richmond), and found it about a kilometer down that street.

It was a pretty bustling place, with a fry/hot dog stand, a shop full of souvenirs, fudge, and pies, and of course, pre-picked apples. The apple picking was busy with all sorts of families with small children. They had a really cute train made up that cost $3 to take (from what we understood, a mandatory cost of going out to pick apples) that would drive you out to the orchards, and pick you up again after the picking was done. It was actually the first time I’ve gone to pick apples, and I was amazed at how small the actual apple-producing trees were. I always imagined them as being, well, tree-sized. Like 10 m tall. My aunt and uncle have an apple tree (it produces tiny yucky green apples though), and while it’s not quite as big as most of the maples in this area, it is an impressive tree, quite large enough for a tire swing (I know this because it does actually have a tire swing). At the orchard though, the largest fruit-producing tree looked to be maybe 5 m high, with several being not much taller than I was (2.5 m, maybe). And the apples grew much denser than I ever thought possible — they seemed to be about half the mass of the tree!

Wayfare, throwing caution to the wind, picked an apple off the tree, and then ate it. Just like that, no cutting, no peeling, no checking for worms. I felt like we were taking our lives in our hands, it was thrilling. Today, I had a few more for breakfast.
“What are you doing?”
“Making apples.”
“No, the trees make the apples. What are you doing to them?”
“Err… peeling them?”
“Hmpf.”

I have to peel them and cut them up before I eat them, I don’t quite know why (maybe I was a browncoat in a past life?), and of course the apple slices go best with a bit of peanut butter smeared on them.

After apple picking, we went to the farmers market out there (I’m not quite sure if we were in Thornton or Thames Centre) just as they were closing up. If you want to eat cheap, then that’s the time to go. We stopped at one stand to grab some field tomatoes (which were huge and cheap, but didn’t look great with lots of spots on them). “I’ve got a special on right now,” the guy said, “get a cauliflower for a dollar. Or, two for a dollar. Or, three, for a dollar. Or our best value, four for a dollar.”

London, for being a relatively medium-sized city, has a relatively decent bus system. If you want to go to a lot of places on major streets then you can do pretty well for yourself. While there are a few blind spots in the coverage, and some strange route choices, for the most part they even come often enough to be useful. And once they arrive, they’re pretty quick to get to where they’re going! However, I just can’t figure out a lot of the weird burst scheduling they do. For example, today we were at the hospital waiting for the bus to come to take us up to campus. One of my office mates said “oh, it’ll be nice and fast, the #6 comes every 5 minutes or so” and I said “well, it averages out to every 5 minutes, but we usually get 2 every 10.” And that’s actually the way the London Transit system works. In the summer, when there are fewer busses running due to the lack of students, there are two busses running down Richmond (or to put it in a way that’s more relevant, two busses that would take me from my old apartment to work). They each ran on 20-minute intervals outside of rush hour, and of course, they always came back-to-back, rather than being one every 10 minutes.

So there we are in the bus shelter, and 15 minutes after I made my quip about it averaging out with two busses every ten minutes, sure enough, three busses show up. Not just any three busses, but two #6’s and a #13 (which does a very similar route to the #6). Now, during rush hour that makes a bit of sense: when you can see that there’s another bus right there, you don’t try to kamikaze the doors of the already-full bus. But at the same time, the masses of people at the bus stops wouldn’t form quite so much if a bus actually came every 5 minutes instead of getting swarms of them every 15-20.

It got worse as the day went on, though. After seminars were over, it was time to head back to the hospital from campus. On campus there’s a spot in front of the Natural Sciences building where the busses stop for a bit to “get back on schedule” or let the drivers get a coffee and a break, etc. So in front of Natural Sciences are 4 idling busses: 3 #10’s and an “out of service” one. There were a bunch of people queuing up for the #6, which was nowhere in sight. Then, the driver for the “out of service” bus came back from break and started flipping, oh so slowly, through the route signs, keeping us in suspense. So, what did he reactivate his bus as? Not a #6, which a bunch of people were waiting for, and not a #2, which just had two busses come through but didn’t actually have any sitting right there at the moment. No, he came back into service as a fourth #10. That was just ridiculous. Then, a bit later, two #6’s came through, and within 3 stops we had completely filled the first one.

Twice after we moved in, Wayfare and I asked our landlord how to turn off the water to the pipes on the side of the house. “Oh, you don’t need to” she said, “I’m pretty sure they’re the new ones that won’t burst.” I had never heard of such pipes. It was possible there was a small heating element in it (there is a small wire attached to the pipe, but as far as I can tell it then goes into the cable box, so my guess was that it was a grounding strip). It’s also possible that the world of plumbing has advanced and water freezing and expanding inside pipes doesn’t lead to failure anymore. To be safe, I asked the last tennant as well, and she said she never had to turn it off.

“Oh well,” we shrugged “it should be fine.” Of course, now my landlord’s on vacation in New Zealand (not just out of the country, but completely out of touch and in a completely different day/night cycle) and the pipe decides to burst. It’s very strange though that it would burst today: it’s close to freezing for the first time in weeks; I would have thought it would have burst last week in the bitter cold. Naturally, along with the water spraying all over the side of the house and the deck, there’s now water seeping into the basement.

I got my car back this morning (7 am, ugh). When I was cleaning it up, I found a ton of clues that the cops just don’t care about (I know no one was hurt, so they’re not exactly putting their best man on the case, but you’d think they’d bag some evidence just in case they caught someone else red-handed and wanted to pin this on them, too).

First off, there was a razor blade left on the passenger side. It was one of the 1″ wide disposable construction tool type razors, with 3 overlapping fingerprints clearly on it. I know 3 overlapping isn’t as good as 1 clear one, but you’d think the cops would take what they could get. As I mentioned before, there were McDonald’s wrappers and a cup in the back seat and on the floor on the passenger’s side. There were towels in there, though I’m not sure if they came from my bag of towels in the trunk that was on it’s way to the humane society that was ripped apart, or if they were the thief’s towels. Underneath, there was a brown button (the kind with no holes through it that sew on from an attachment on the back) and half a brick. The driver’s side door had a partial and very muddy boot print on the inside. The stereo when I got it was off, but as soon as I turned it on it was set to level 18 (full blast, essentially) with no CD inside (my CD had been taken and/or thrown out the window).

I know I’m not a cop, and I care a little bit more than not at all, but to me that sort of says “hey, this car was stolen and used to rob a house in a new subdivision, or one that was being renovated.” Sure, it could be that the brick wasn’t from a construction site that night (it could have been used as a hammer to drive out the door lock before the car ever left my lot), and the mud could be from some drug haven by the river, and the whole thing was just for a joy ride and to be destructive… But who steals an old Honda Accord for a joy ride?

Also, the repair shop or locksmith stole my vicegrips (they were there when I got my stuff out of the car).