Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity • Hacker News Board

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#21

Post by cosmic_cheese » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

SilverElfin wrote: post #6

hobs wrote: post #3

"Study hard, get good grades, follow the formula and ultimately merit wins." That's really funny, I remember the day I watched a kid's femoral artery get slashed in a fight and watched my teacher use his belt as a tourniquet, thankfully the kid lived because of that. Most of my schools were taught by burnt out underpaid angry folks who wanted you to stay in line, that's it, any other behavior would be met with derisi…

> Meanwhile rich kids get into good schools because they can afford after school activities and tutors since birth. This is a myth - most non-legacy admissions kids getting into good colleges aren’t spending on these things in the way that you think. They’re getting there because they’re actually smart and hard working and have a stable environment (like two parents). It doesn’t take much to get a very high test scor…

Based on personal experience I don't believe it has as much to do with smartness or willingess to work hard. A lot of poor kids have that too.

The bigger difference is that successful parents are constantly acting as role models, giving their children cues to follow, and passing on important knowledge that schools don't whether they realize or not. Many poor kids miss out on those things entirely, and as a result end up spinning their wheels later in life due to misplaced efforts and fumbled attempts. They may eventually figure things out on their own, but it'll happen several years down the road, and while they can narrow the gap closing it entirely becomes more difficult the further they ascend (feels a bit like Zeno's Paradox).

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#22

Post by saltysalt » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

This is great advice:

"It also means that staying the course when things don’t go your way isn’t just a virtue but a practice. To play the long game, you have to keep showing up even after crushing disappointment without getting cynical of the process. Put differently, you need high levels of frustration tolerance."

Stoicism helps, or any form of resilience training. Leaders need high frustration thresholds to reach the top, because the view from up there doesn't get any better.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#23

Post by flybrand » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

geocrasher wrote: post #8

My experience with school wasn't that different from work life. Lessons that I learned in school that followed: 1) I am a dork, embrace it 2) Avoid Math 3) Scientific method = troubleshooting with purpose. Use it. 4) People in charge can be total idiots, but they're still in charge 5) Popularity and Competence are not related 6) Competence and compensation are not related 7) If you stay focused and just do you, you'l…

> 8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything about it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your life.

This needs to be taught more actively in school. Negligence in stopping abuse, or fostering abuse = just as immoral as abuse.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#24

Post by SilentM68 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

Hmm, this does not sound like an accurate interpretation of work culture. Perhaps this is true in an ideal job environment. The word "Work" says it all. It's work, labor, hard stuff, not fun and stressful. There is no actual way to manager that kind of stress unless your work is what you normally do for fun, and you enjoy. This does not describe the average work environment.

In my experience, everybody that I've worked with has been stressed, by the job, the managers, co-workers, and their client base. The worse the economy is, the higher the likelihood of people getting let go, so of course everyone is weary of everybody else and making sure that if somebody's head is heading for the shopping block, it's not themselves.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#25

Post by geocrasher » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

flybrand wrote: post #23

geocrasher wrote: post #8

My experience with school wasn't that different from work life. Lessons that I learned in school that followed: 1) I am a dork, embrace it 2) Avoid Math 3) Scientific method = troubleshooting with purpose. Use it. 4) People in charge can be total idiots, but they're still in charge 5) Popularity and Competence are not related 6) Competence and compensation are not related 7) If you stay focused and just do you, you'l…

> 8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything about it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your life. This needs to be taught more actively in school. Negligence in stopping abuse, or fostering abuse = just as immoral as abuse.

Exactly. I left high school over abuse. Another student spent the whole period sitting next to me staring at me muttering about how he was going to tie me up in the middle of the desert, and all the things he was going to shove up my ass, serious serial killer vibes, and the teacher just acted helpless, despite seeing everything. When they started stalking me after school, and it started getting physical, and the school did nothing, I left.

Thankfully that level of toxicity did not follow into the workplace, but I did have a car vandalized by a coworker.

Truth be told I was a bit of a punk, and had a knack for pissing off the wrong people. We all have our flaws, but nobody deserved what I went through. I'm a man now, not the insecure boy who tried to act like he was better than others to compensate, and I reject toxicity immediately. No room for it. Hard lessons to learn when you grew up with abuse.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#26

Post by andy99 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

yoyohello13 wrote: post #11

rs186 wrote: post #7

> If you have to, blame stupidity not malice > No one is out to get you; they’re just out to get through the week. The author seems to be too naive. I don't have first-hand experience, but just hearing my friends who work at a certain company talking about what's happening, I know how terrible some people can be. And that's a widespread issue (otherwise I would not hear about similar things happening to people in dif…

Yeah I think “don’t attribute to malice what can be explained be stupidity” is applied too broadly these days. There is absolutely malice behind some decisions/actions, and it’s dangerous to just shrug it off. Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

> Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

yeah a lot of people that get ahead seem to be intentionally ignorant (to the point of fooling themselves) to provide a kind of plausible deniability. It's obviously put on because you see they are shrewd political operators and and "errors" are always in their favor. But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#27

Post by aitchnyu » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #10

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.

Someone downvoted you and it's against the spirit of HN to challenge this because it makes for boring reading but I AGREE PEOPLE tell me WHY you find this thought distasteful or disturbing tech used to be a safe hiding spot for geeks to, idk, hack on something with total disregard for social norms and personal hygiene; now we have assholes weaponizing this by promoting RTO, hustle culture and "hurrr we are all one fa…

In the past computers affected only telephone lines. Now they affect drones, taxis, movie distribution etc so "noone cares about computers anymore" and "other industries" as GP said is hard to define.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#28

Post by aleph_minus_one » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

andy99 wrote: post #26

yoyohello13 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think “don’t attribute to malice what can be explained be stupidity” is applied too broadly these days. There is absolutely malice behind some decisions/actions, and it’s dangerous to just shrug it off. Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity.

> Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide behind stupidity. yeah a lot of people that get ahead seem to be intentionally ignorant (to the point of fooling themselves) to provide a kind of plausible deniability. It's obviously put on because you see they are shrewd political operators and and "errors" are always in their favor. But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossib…

> But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.

The people who are actually hard to ascribe any malice to are often politically very inept, i.e.

- (nearly) "everybody" knows these people are not malicious

- but since people want to be manipulated, such people don't make any career

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#29

Post by righthand » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:25 PM UTC

rs186 wrote: post #7

> If you have to, blame stupidity not malice > No one is out to get you; they’re just out to get through the week. The author seems to be too naive. I don't have first-hand experience, but just hearing my friends who work at a certain company talking about what's happening, I know how terrible some people can be. And that's a widespread issue (otherwise I would not hear about similar things happening to people in dif…

Agreed. For example, if 90% of C-Suite at corporation are only interested in extracting capital from their subordinates and riding trends, then it’s malice, not incompetence.

Re: Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity

#30

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

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 is it's own thing too.