I disagree arlo. There have always been the hire and fire companies like HP, Motorolla, boeing and the auto industry that are notorious for those practices, but it's the ones that you don't hear about on the news (which outnumber the ones you do hear about by a long shot) that prefer the experience in the work force.
The problem is, those companies had people coming and going in quick succession for most of the last 10 years. Of the 50 or so people I worked with 11 years ago, perhaps 7 are still with the company, and none of them were layed off. Of the 7 that are still with the company, 3 of them left then came back. For those that prefered security, it was there. But most were chasing the % increase in the salary and hopped wherever they had to. We had about 10 startup fabs get going at the same time in the area... and people were going from $15/hr with 1 year experience to $22/hr with a new startup. Why not make the change? Then when the new startup failed because of too much overhead, they went to the next new startup making even more.
We now have an experience gap where I work. There's the old dogs with 10 or more years and there's those with 4 or less years... a relatively small percentage in between. It's a bit odd given that 96-2000 were our major growth years nearly doubling the size of our work force.
MiniD
