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Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

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Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#121

Post by JadeNB »

geocrasher wrote: post #18
yoyohello13 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m with you except for 2. Knowing math is great.

Math is amazing, and I'm becoming interested in it after being out of school for over 30 years. But, my own incompetence with numbers meant gravitating away from them, for me. I am not dyslexic, but I think my ADHD does with numbers what dyslexia does to words and letters.

Dyscalculia means that you should probably avoid situations that require you to do your own arithmetic, but there's way more to math than arithmetic, and most professional mathematicians aren't that great at arithmetic either.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#122

Post by majormajor »

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…

Yes and no. On the flip side, you now have the means to have a much more comfortable and pleasant life than the high school dropout classmate you haven't seen in six years.

You have already made it very far, in that sense.

You put effort in, you've gotten rewarded. The washouts from the up-or-out places have lots of soft landing places available compared to most people.

Whether you crash yourself against the rocks of having to be the top of the absolute whole world... that's a personal thing. Being aware of the structure is probably good for informing your decision, but you might've noticed it earlier too.

Other people have gotten rewarded more than you. And this is probably not new to you. There are almost always teacher's pets, spoiled brats whose parents gave them way more than you, beautiful people who get things handed to them for existing, easily-charismatic assholes who coast by or fail upward because everyone likes them, etc. One of the dirty secrets of elite high schools and higher education is already that not everyone worked as hard as you to get there.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#123

Post by lmm »

array_key_first wrote: post #100
rmah wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then they're not easily replaceable. Which implies those workers have other options. And thus employers that treat workers worse than other employers will see workers leave and/or find it harder or more expensive to hire. So it all works out.

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…

Well, maybe fast-food restaurants were a low-interest-rate phenomenon or whatever the equivalent term is (a high-labour-supply phenomenon?). If that kind of business can't afford good enough working conditions to get a decent supply of labour while selling its products at a decent price, then yeah, the whole industry will burn. But if there's a demand for it then sooner or later someone will start offering it. I think that probably looks like a decoupling between middle-class-oriented (e.g. Costco or Chipotle) and working-class-oriented.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#124

Post by closeparen »

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…

Even if you "make it" in the context of your career and organization, you will lose in the housing market of any metropolitan area where such careers are on offer, simply because other people were there first.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#125

Post by rendaw »

majormajor wrote: post #122
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…

Yes and no. On the flip side, you now have the means to have a much more comfortable and pleasant life than the high school dropout classmate you haven't seen in six years. You have already made it very far, in that sense. You put effort in, you've gotten rewarded. The washouts from the up-or-out places have lots of soft landing places available compared to most people. Whether you crash yourself against the rocks of…

You say no but you're not disagreeing - you're saying that there's enough space in the middle of the pyramid for all the people who didn't drop out of school which AFAICT is orthogonal to GP's point, that there's not enough space at the tip of the pyramid for all the talented people who work very hard.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#126

Post by danbolt »

array_key_first wrote: post #118
danbolt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes we do our own laundry, sometimes we pump our own gas, and sometimes we prepare our own meals. Not having a servant to do those things for us doesn’t make us destitute; it makes us human.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#127

Post by DiscourseFan »

apwell23 wrote: post #5

it used to be that tech provided somewhat a safe space for autists like me to hide out. now its full of management ppl who would've gone into other industries but were lured in by high pay in tech. i miss the days where tech pay only slightly above average and ppl in tech were considered losers and dorks.

I'm currently one of those "management ppl" you are referring, or at least on track to be one, but I swear its not my fault! The industry pays a lot better than any other job I could swing, and my background is very relevant and I know for certain that some of these projects wouldn't run without me. And also, there is no "balance" here, being dorky or "autistic" does not make you a good programmer. There are many brilliant engineers who are also very sociable. Being able to work with others is an important skill and, all else being even, in a highly competitive industry having that kind of skill will get you ahead.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#128

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

> Study hard, get good grades, follow the formula and ultimately merit wins

I don't think "winning" at school has anything to do with those things. That sounds like a waste of time. Winning at school is about building knowledge and relationships which further goals that you set for yourself, not that the school sets for you. Sometimes good grades are a side effect.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#129

Post by pjdesno »

I run into a fair number of good undergraduate students who are terrible phd students.

Same problem. They did well solving problems that someone already knows the answer to, applying concepts that were explained to them in class. Suddenly they face problems no one knows the answer to - otherwise we wouldn’t be trying to solve them. And they fall apart.

I think this is one part missing from the OP - some people just can’t seem to work without fairly rigid requirements. They do well in undergrad or a professional MS program, and there’s a place for them in a lot of big organizations, but there are a lot of jobs (phd student being one) for which they just aren’t a match.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#130

Post by Danjoe4 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #89

This is somewhat funny because many of my classes in school barely even managed a veneer of objectivity in scoring, and grades for many things were far more opaque than any annual review I've had at my job. - In general any class with subjective grading where the work was not anonymized, the name on top would affect the grade (sometimes significantly). - Some friends actually did an experiment once; person A said tha…

Male instructors are more objective.
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