Social Justice Warriors Thread

[SuburbanFarmer]

Mentioning that hard work pays off seems to arouse a lot of anger in you. Strange. Why is that?

And how is a system that rewards effort “corrupt” in nature?

Because it's a lie. The system does not reward 'hard work', or ditch-diggers would be millionaires. The system rewards 'commercial value', or more accurately, 'marketability'.

You can give yourself a better chance through hard work, but you will not necessarily be rewarded for it.

I think you’re conflating hard work with physically demanding labor. Digging a ditch is physically demanding, but that shit ain’t hard. You can teach a ten year old to do it.

Landing a probe on Mars is hard. It takes hard work to get it done. Not physically demanding work, but work most people can’t do on account of it’s difficulty.

Simple supply and demand. People able to perform truly hard work are in short supply, meaning wages go up when their numbers are outstripped by demand.

That’s a beautiful system which rewards hard work. It’s simple. Elegant. Not corrupt in the least.

Again, a child's view of reality.

Manual bookkeeping is hard work. No matter how much 'work ethic' you have, if you're using an un-marketable skill, it's worthless.

Remaining relevant is indeed hard work, but hard work is not rewarded on its own merit.

[SuburbanFarmer]

More companies dropping college degree requirement for new hires
https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-fi ... -new-hires
(More people getting in the door without degrees)

The many people I know advancing in their careers all pursue advanced and continuing education/training. Those I know who are going nowhere almost universally believe that effort doesn’t matter, there are only elite and poor, etc.

Seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy in my experience. People who try will eventually succeed. People who complain, blame, and deflect simply stagnate.
/shrug

It's about time, I've said for a long time degrees are pieces of paper in most instances in where it shows you can pass a test... I've known too many IT experts that have nearly all the alphabet soup under their belt but still can't do simple stuff...

I still remember asking a guy who had his degree, and over a dozen certifications, why he couldn't do a simple start network. He said that it wasn't taught in school...

Do I really need to say it, but overly educated people except in key fields, are not required. It is better to get someone off the street, train them and use them accordingly. (Pay is good too)

For one of my old jobs (90s) we interviewed two people for an open position, we used Novell networking at the time so that was a requirement. First guy had a degree and a resume full of certs (including Novell), we asked him how he'd setup permissions on 3 directories, one group has access to A&B, 2nd to B&C, 3rd to A&C... He was clueless. Next guy was ex-military (Army) with a HS diploma and 4 years of actual hands on experience - he nailed it after a couple minutes to think it through.

Back in 2000 at a small .com I was at they interviewed for a Unix admin (Solaris & Linux). They hired this guy who had several years as a Unix admin at a medical device company. First week on the job he's asked to change some passwords on a Solaris box... "Where's the GUI?" - he had no idea how to operate at a Unix command line. (We were laughing at that for days, called him "Waldo" behind his back - aka "Where's Waldo?"). The next week he had to reboot a critical machine (pipeline for all the online orders)... He noticed there was an extra tape drive on the box, a broken old DAT drive nobody had bothered to remove, so he removed it and did a "reboot -r"... Which reconfigured the hardware and made the good DLT drive /dev/rmt0 (the DAT was 0, the DLT was 1) and when backups kicked off that night... Well, let's just say there wasn't enough disk space for a huge file in /dev called "rmt1", filled the disk and took out order fulfillment for several hours. He was walked out the door the next day - didn't even make it two weeks.

My last job we had a team of guys in India the boss insisted we give work to. I had an install of this canned app that needed installing (new version), I had done it the first time - just un-tar a big directory tree (on 3 machines) and tweak two XML files for IP, database string & user/password, etc. FOUR HOURS LATER he disappears offline - I ask one of the other offshore guys if he'd finished it - "no idea, know nothing about it". No turnover to the next shift, he just walked out the door and went home. I tried starting the app one one machine, errors all over... I look at the XML file for the database info... (I'll use parens instead of angle brackets)

(username)CHANGEME(/username)

Became....

(DBuser)CHANGEME(/username)

...this was a graduate of India Tech.

Not knowing what he had done, and by then it was 3pm and the boss had promised the "customer" we'd have it for them by 5, I just nuked it all, un-tar'd it fresh, and did it right... In 45 minutes flat for all 3 machines.

He didn't last long. I told the boss we should just get a couple of U.S. high school graduates with some basic computer skills and train them, we'd be far better off for probably the same price. (Of course not, the company mandated we outsource to indithe). Honestly the job was typically made harder by the offshore crew (with maybe 3 exception over the decade I was there, a few really good ones).

My personal experience the degree doesn't matter, you either know what you're doing or you dont. At least 50% of the people I've interviewed over the years with a degree and certs... didn't.

Could not agree more. The problem is always justifying to 'management' why they should actually care who does the work.

If you can't even communicate clearly with half of the team, it's worse than not having them at all.

[DBTrek]

Because it's a lie. The system does not reward 'hard work', or ditch-diggers would be millionaires. The system rewards 'commercial value', or more accurately, 'marketability'.

You can give yourself a better chance through hard work, but you will not necessarily be rewarded for it.

I think you’re conflating hard work with physically demanding labor. Digging a ditch is physically demanding, but that shit ain’t hard. You can teach a ten year old to do it.

Landing a probe on Mars is hard. It takes hard work to get it done. Not physically demanding work, but work most people can’t do on account of it’s difficulty.

Simple supply and demand. People able to perform truly hard work are in short supply, meaning wages go up when their numbers are outstripped by demand.

That’s a beautiful system which rewards hard work. It’s simple. Elegant. Not corrupt in the least.

Again, a child's view of reality.

/shrug

Well, I try not to argue with people’s religious beliefs, so I guess we’ll just agree to disagree. I’ll keep believing that hard work and effort is rewarded and you can keep on believing that some vast, corrupt, conspiracy controls the destiny of humanity.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I think you’re conflating hard work with physically demanding labor. Digging a ditch is physically demanding, but that shit ain’t hard. You can teach a ten year old to do it.

Landing a probe on Mars is hard. It takes hard work to get it done. Not physically demanding work, but work most people can’t do on account of it’s difficulty.

Simple supply and demand. People able to perform truly hard work are in short supply, meaning wages go up when their numbers are outstripped by demand.

That’s a beautiful system which rewards hard work. It’s simple. Elegant. Not corrupt in the least.

Again, a child's view of reality.

/shrug

Well, I try not to argue with people’s religious beliefs, so I guess we’ll just agree to disagree. I’ll keep believing that hard work and effort is rewarded and you can keep on believing that some vast, corrupt, conspiracy controls the destiny of humanity.

Deal.

Though, I don't believe that the 'elites' are competent enough to maintain any sort of Vast Conspiracy. It's simply a mixture of corruption and idiocy writ large, across the system. That system is now distorted beyond the scope of anything originally intended.

[DBTrek]

It’s a strange religion that preaches the nation is ruled by elite, incompetent, idiots. Especially when everyone else living under this system is so wise, and not idiotic in the least themselves.

We have 50k Special Olympics gold medalists ruling over 310 million Einsteins and Edisons.
Sounds legit.

[SuburbanFarmer]

It’s a strange religion that preaches the nation is ruled by elite, incompetent, idiots. Especially when everyone else living under this system is so wise, and not idiotic in the least themselves.

We have 50k Special Olympics gold medalists ruling over 310 million Einsteins and Edisons.
Sounds legit.

An appeal to extremis, if ever I've seen one.

[DBTrek]

For one of my old jobs (90s) we interviewed two people for an open position, we used Novell networking at the time so that was a requirement. First guy had a degree and a resume full of certs (including Novell), we asked him how he'd setup permissions on 3 directories, one group has access to A&B, 2nd to B&C, 3rd to A&C... He was clueless. Next guy was ex-military (Army) with a HS diploma and 4 years of actual hands on experience - he nailed it after a couple minutes to think it through....

My personal experience the degree doesn't matter, you either know what you're doing or you dont. At least 50% of the people I've interviewed over the years with a degree and certs... didn't.

Sure, the ol’ American trope of salt-of-the-Earth nobodies defeating a field of experts. Olympians training ten hours a day for track and field, but Joe dirt farmer knows an Indian boy on the Rez who can outrun them all. Moral of the story, just be born the best and you’ll be the best. An inspiring anthem for the lazy, to be sure.

Back in reality though, there are many jobs where you will never see an interview if you don’t have the paper credentials to justify taking the interviewers time. So if you want to be in the pool of candidates considered for the position, get the paper.

Or don’t.

But when no one will even consider hiring you as a chemical engineer because you have exactly zero credentials indicating you understand the subject, don’t blame some phantom conspiracy of idiot elites. Just know you failed to put in the hard work to demonstrate your abilities, and therefore received no reward.

[SuburbanFarmer]

For one of my old jobs (90s) we interviewed two people for an open position, we used Novell networking at the time so that was a requirement. First guy had a degree and a resume full of certs (including Novell), we asked him how he'd setup permissions on 3 directories, one group has access to A&B, 2nd to B&C, 3rd to A&C... He was clueless. Next guy was ex-military (Army) with a HS diploma and 4 years of actual hands on experience - he nailed it after a couple minutes to think it through....

My personal experience the degree doesn't matter, you either know what you're doing or you dont. At least 50% of the people I've interviewed over the years with a degree and certs... didn't.

Sure, the ol’ American trope of salt-of-the-Earth nobodies defeating a field of experts. Olympians training ten hours a day for track and field, but Joe dirt farmer knows an Indian boy on the Rez who can outrun them all. Moral of the story, just be born the best and you’ll be the best. An inspiring anthem for the lazy, to be sure.

Back in reality though, there are many jobs where you will never see an interview if you don’t have the paper credentials to justify taking the interviewers time. So if you want to be in the pool of candidates considered for the position, get the paper.

Or don’t.

But when no one will even consider hiring you as a chemical engineer because you have exactly zero credentials indicating you understand the subject, don’t blame some phantom conspiracy of idiot elites. Just know you failed to put in the hard work to demonstrate your abilities, and therefore received no reward.

"hard work" of taking on an insolvent debt load and passing tests for 4 years of your working life, so that you can get through an HR screening.

This is obviously a merit-based system.

[DBTrek]

"hard work" of taking on an insolvent debt load and passing tests for 4 years of your working life, so that you can get through an HR screening.

This is obviously a merit-based system.

Empyrical evidence would suggest so. All the complainers, pessimists, and excuse makers who continuously blame external forces for their lot in life stay at the bottom where they belong. System working as intended.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Believe harder and Succeed!