I think a lot of this is because employee turnover in the software industry is much higher than for most professions.
An accountant, lawyer or architect can reasonably be expected to stay with the same firm for a decade or longer, often their entire career. It makes sense under that context for employers to invest more in long-term skills.
Whereas, once you get to the heart of Silicon Valley, it's not unusual for people to jump employers every 6 months. That's maybe not the rule. But even Google and Microsoft has turnover rates that imply a half-life of no more than a few years for the average employee. The economics of long-term re-training just doesn't make sense.
Is this the worse thing in the world though? It allows savvy workers to continuously jump around companies and continuously re-negotiating higher compensation packages. That helps to make sure that workers are paid at or near their market value. In a way that doesn't work in the accounting industry, because future employers would look down at your resume history.
An accountant, lawyer or architect can reasonably be expected to stay with the same firm for a decade or longer, often their entire career. It makes sense under that context for employers to invest more in long-term skills.
Whereas, once you get to the heart of Silicon Valley, it's not unusual for people to jump employers every 6 months. That's maybe not the rule. But even Google and Microsoft has turnover rates that imply a half-life of no more than a few years for the average employee. The economics of long-term re-training just doesn't make sense.
Is this the worse thing in the world though? It allows savvy workers to continuously jump around companies and continuously re-negotiating higher compensation packages. That helps to make sure that workers are paid at or near their market value. In a way that doesn't work in the accounting industry, because future employers would look down at your resume history.