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Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

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Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#111

Post by no_wizard »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #110
oceanplexian wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it weird that I have a totally different perspective on this? Then again I dropped out of college at 19 to start working in Big Tech (tm) after exiting my startup and have been there 15+ years now. It doesn't matter how fast you spin your wheels working on things unless those things are aligned with delivering value to actual paying customers. Politics also doesn't really matter. Well, it matters to idiots, there…

>It doesn't matter how fast you spin your wheels working on things unless those things are aligned with delivering value to actual paying customers. Really doesn't matter. I promise you. It might score you some points, sure. But it's not required or necessary. >Politics also doesn't really matter. It is the only thing that matters.

> It is the only thing that matters.

This the long and short of it. It comes into play at some point either being your accelerator or your ceiling, depending on how things go.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#112

Post by kstenerud »

oceanplexian wrote: post #103
lordnacho wrote: post #77

The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying to people for years on this topic: School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went, you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you from anything. Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work…

Is it weird that I have a totally different perspective on this? Then again I dropped out of college at 19 to start working in Big Tech (tm) after exiting my startup and have been there 15+ years now. It doesn't matter how fast you spin your wheels working on things unless those things are aligned with delivering value to actual paying customers. Politics also doesn't really matter. Well, it matters to idiots, there…

It depends a lot on where you end up. There are niches where you can live by market forces alone, and breeze through life being almost unaware of politics - but that's the exception.

For most people, politics will be a dominant force - if not THE dominant force - that they live or die by. Once more than 2 people are involved, you by definition have politics (albeit weak politics). It then grows slightly until it suddenly becomes much more important at about 150 people or so. By the time you're at 1000 it's a major force, and at 5000 it's the only force that matters anymore.

And even if it's not your organization that's this big, a small company selling to Amazon will only succeed if they know how to play Amazon politics.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#114

Post by listenallyall »

lordnacho wrote: post #77

The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying to people for years on this topic: School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went, you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you from anything. Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work…

I disagree that competition among fellow high-achievers is the primary obstacle. Maybe, very early on, when you're in a class of investment banking recruits or first-year law associates, etc. But that gets sorted out in the first few years.

The next 25+ years of your career are often dealt navigating corporate politics, financiers' M & A, industry developments, etc. And it's here that lots of smart, academically excellent people struggle. You can be the world's greatest data scientist, but if you are revealing truths that your boss (or boss's boss) doesnt like, you're probably going to get bounced. You could be doing a great job managing a large group of employees and operating your division efficiently, but some private equity fund buys your owners out and strip-mines the company. Many, many more scenarios. But these aren't "hopeless" situations, there is opportunity to succeed, but that opportunity is based upon people skills as opposed to the academic ideal of right answers vs wrong.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#115

Post by ElevenLathe »

rgblambda wrote: post #105
everdrive wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point. My first job was retail, and I was accidentally late for a shift _once_ and I got put on probation for weeks and wasn't even allowed to take sick leave during the probationary period. The better the job the less you're treated like trash. People float all sorts of explanations for why this would be, but I think fundamentally people just don't know how to move away from class hierarchy. I think it…

Often I hear "I wouldn't take a higher paying job. It's not worth the stress". But I find the opposite to be true. The better paid the job, the less that's expected of you.

This is what you say when you don't want to tell your boss that moving into management means becoming a class traitor.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#116

Post by listenallyall »

oceanplexian wrote: post #103
lordnacho wrote: post #77

The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying to people for years on this topic: School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went, you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you from anything. Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work…

Is it weird that I have a totally different perspective on this? Then again I dropped out of college at 19 to start working in Big Tech (tm) after exiting my startup and have been there 15+ years now. It doesn't matter how fast you spin your wheels working on things unless those things are aligned with delivering value to actual paying customers. Politics also doesn't really matter. Well, it matters to idiots, there…

This is a little tricky. I think it's more about understanding the philosophy. Lets say you make washing machines. The "academic" will say, great, for next year's model, let's fix the most common failure point and improve reliability so our customers love us while the "psycopath" or "savvy employee" will say, no, our brand is still strong, let's make cheaper machines and save money and we can manipulate some of the review sites and anyway, better for us if they fail after 6 years than 10 years, the customers don't have many choices anyway.

You can say the academic isn't solving the business problem, which isn't, how to make the best washing machine, but how can we make the most money by embracing enshittification. But that's probably not why he was hired.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#117

Post by righthand »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #102
righthand wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and have a stable environment For example, having a good supportive community with after school programs or other youth outreach programs. I was dining and eavesdropping a conversation at a table in a restaurant. It was a mother and 8 year old daughter talking about her future. They were talking about a career path to being a doctor, SAT scores and how she is studying right now for the SAT and other tests and the e…

Damn. That's quite early to be teaching the test. And specializing in niche extra curriculars. Competition must be fierce.

It sounded as if they had the next 10 years planned out with little room for anything else.

I think point of starting much earlier is making the research, learning, testing just aspects of life. Then there’s no time spent during their teen years learning how to do that stuff when their minds are extra unfocused it’s routine. I would have probably preferred that than the way I was brought up (minus the prude attitude).

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#118

Post by array_key_first »

danbolt wrote: post #109
array_key_first wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all works out, unless everyone is doing it, and then entire swaths of the economy just burn down. In lower level jobs like retail and food service, nobody can retain workers. You would think then "oh, labor market, the cost of labor goes up" But no. Everyone is greedy, stubborn, and stupid. Instead, you just run your business with half the labor. Does it work? Not really. So then you think, "oh, well free market d…

I promise I’m not that whiggish when it comes to automation, but there was a time when a good portion of human labour was washing clothing, and now that’s become much less of a thing for much of the world. Perhaps food service and in-person retail will start to go that way too. It’s my hope we can navigate that and still make a place where it won’t be so bad.

Most of the automating in retail isn't even automation, it's just corporate laziness. They're passing their job off to their own customers.

Why am I bagging groceries? Am I on your payroll?

Great, you put in a machine and replaced half your workers. Expect you replace them with me, your customers. The machine is just for kicks.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#119

Post by zug_zug »

prmoustache wrote: post #88

I prefer just doing my job, while putting my limits in the energy and time I dedicate on it. And I just look for a new job when I get fed up and/or want a rise. This whole mastermind bullshit just seems mentally exhausting.

Agreed. I’ve actually tried quite hard for decades now and I wish I had just chilled — that extra effort rarely turns into a commensurate reward

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#120

Post by dkarl »

Telaneo wrote: post #107
rockercoaster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but I've never been anything but complete shit at proofs, and I'm really good at debugging. They don't feel like the same activity to me at all. This "well actually you're doing math!" stuff feels like some kind of rhetorical trick, when the "math" I'm doing doesn't seem strongly related to or to require being any good at the math-thing it supposedly is. It's not quite the same thing nor quite so far off the mark…

> it seems at least in the same ballpark (ha, ha) as claiming that professional sports players use lots and lots of complicated trigonometry. It's maths in the same way as when your brain hears a note at 440 hz and you go 'that's a C', i.e. while it may be practiced, the maths part of that is subconscious and its completely detached from the conscious maths anybody except mathematicians think about.

All of these are interesting analogs to each other, in that they involve a critical "thinking about" aspect paired with an intuitive, creative, active mental process.

In the case of catching a fly ball, the "thinking about" approach using trigonometry is completely unhelpful. In the case of music, the "thinking about" approach of theory can be helpful, but many people who learned informally have been brilliant musicians without ever learning a formal approach to theory. In the case of math, the critical "thinking about" aspect is vital. Pretty much everybody needs it, Ramanujan aside.

What unites all of these cases, however, is that the formal "thinking about" aspect is useless on its own. Without the productive, creative aspect, it doesn't have anything to critique and make better.

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