That's not really what Farley is saying if you read through the whole interview: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/784875/ford-ceo-jim-farley-...
e.g.
"We’re investing in trade schools and scholarships to recruit technicians for vehicle repair as well as our factories."
"But this is a society problem. The one that bothers me the most is cultural. We, as a culture, think that everyone has to go to an Ivy League school to be valuable in our society, yet we all know that our parents and grandparents made our country wonderful because of these kinds of jobs. There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers. But our society doesn’t celebrate those people like they do the latest AI engineer."
>But our society doesn’t celebrate those people like they do the latest AI engineer.
He fails to mention that AI engineers probably get 4x the pay with a job that is less physically demanding.
Of course it is -- if you tout investments, that means previously you didn't invest. Whereas any competent business would be looking at demand, the head counts, ages, and doing some quick math.
And eg
> There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers.
Not really. Ask anyone who does it; you'll hear minimum wage or not much above, and piles of transport of fat people. ie huge risks to the joint health for the people stuck moving them.
And of course, dignity ain't cash. This The whole thing is an extended whinge that rounds to I don't want to pay more.
Plus the implicit idea that society is responsible for preparing employees for Ford, not Ford.
Yeah, why do we as a society want high paying jobs that we're not forced to take 40 minutes of pay for hours of work? Clearly its the celebration that's missing.
That's the cultural issue that's talked about, which also caused the explosion of people trying to get into tech whether they actually liked the work or not.
Because the choice is/was - make $20/hr busting my ass with body breaking work and barely scrape by, or get a CS degree and live comfortably because no other career offers the pay required.
The cultural issue is - why aren't other careers paid as well? (Aka, why don't we value them). Someone risking bodily injury in a trade arguably should be paid more than most desk jobs, but they aren't.
Much like discussion here on HN about how we need an IC promotion path that doesn't lead to management, society needs equal opportunities for high paying careers across a variety of fields, not just white collar or tech work.
Pay isn't set by culture. It's set by economics.
That said, building socioeconomics such that individual payrate is extremely critical and life changing is a societal problem.
lol no that’s exactly what he’s saying, you just can’t read between the lines