Has anyone really worked their way from the mailroom to CEO since Barry Diller?

We're thinking about this because of a new HRE Online article on job training that says 50% of employers think their new hires aren't prepared for work. (Note that these are hires, not job candidates.)

It used to be that you could start in the mailroom wherever and learn the job on the job. Entry-level positions were incredibly basic, and you could "grow into" a new role. People stayed with the same company.

That's gone now, as is the mailroom-to-CEO myth, for the most part. And, Peter Cappelli writes in the piece, these two things are linked.

If an employee's not going to stick with the company for long, then why invest in training them? Why not expect them to already know the job? Any money spent in training is money "wasted" if the employee jumps ship—at least, that's the perception, Cappelli says.

So that leaves internships—many of them unpaid—as the way to get "on the job" experience. Advantageous to employers, not advantageous to any jobseeker that wants to work but can't afford to work without pay.

Meaning that the ill-prepared workers stay ill-prepared.