The interview and the article state that "In some cases employers do not want to hire anyone at all, they think it's cheaper to leave positions unfilled!". If it is cheaper to leave a position vacant, why bother listing it as open? Wouldn't it make more sense to eliminate it?
Both the article and the interview say that employers "think" that it's cheaper to leave the position unfilled, typically because of lousy cost accounting systems that do not give an accurate picture of the reduced system throughput (and thus the foregone revenue). Most companies optimize locally, which results in de-optimizing the whole system -- a department saves some money by not hiring a new systems administrator until the next fiscal year, and the whole company suffers decreased effectiveness.
Some positions advertised may be, in fact, better eliminated. But that's not the point that the article and interview are making.
My guess is that it's a device that an employer would use to manipulate the employees who are filling in "temporarily" -- so that the employees feel something is being done and they'll only be doing the extra work for "a little while." So they can say, "we really are trying, but the work you do is so valuable, just not that many people can do it."
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The interview and the article state that "In some cases employers do not want to hire anyone at all, they think it's cheaper to leave positions unfilled!". If it is cheaper to leave a position vacant, why bother listing it as open? Wouldn't it make more sense to eliminate it?
Both the article and the interview say that employers "think" that it's cheaper to leave the position unfilled, typically because of lousy cost accounting systems that do not give an accurate picture of the reduced system throughput (and thus the foregone revenue). Most companies optimize locally, which results in de-optimizing the whole system -- a department saves some money by not hiring a new systems administrator until the next fiscal year, and the whole company suffers decreased effectiveness.
Some positions advertised may be, in fact, better eliminated. But that's not the point that the article and interview are making.
My guess is that it's a device that an employer would use to manipulate the employees who are filling in "temporarily" -- so that the employees feel something is being done and they'll only be doing the extra work for "a little while." So they can say, "we really are trying, but the work you do is so valuable, just not that many people can do it."
Sometimes there is an internal candidate that will get the job, yet it still has to be posted for some arcane rule/law... Or so I hear.
I hear this excuse often, but in ten years at a large company I never met anyone I never met anyone who was the beneficiary of such a thing.