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The Who Cares Era

dansinker.com

431–440 of 765 posts

Re: The Who Cares Era

#431
post #91
post #5

I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…

Pay shit get shit work simple as that

Labor rates where I am are among the highest in the nation. People in the trades largely live in the outlying suburbs and pick up the lucrative work in the urban core.

A lot of the companies I deal with will jerk you around, not return your calls, not show up to do the work etc. etc..they're busy and can ask a lot of money, and there's no fear of being out of work. I think that affects the work product quality more than anything else right now right here.

You are probably right somewhere else.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#432
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your position is "well, it lasted this long and the organizational rot only killed a few hundred people" we may be unable to meet on this topic. How many deaths would be sufficient? I argue the decline in fatalities over time is due to commercial air traffic regulations and systems. https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-flying-keeps-getting-safer-0...

> "well, it lasted this long and the organizational rot only killed a few hundred people" It should be clear that is not what I meant. This reinforces my view that popular criticism towards Boeing is unhelpful and ironically is relevant to the posted essay. People care more about gotchas more than deep discussion. If the 737 Max incidents were due to negligence on Boeing's part, the many of the incidents in the 70s w…

It’s not meant as a gotcha. It’s meant to illustrate that the effects of financialization, stripping an enterprise of its value, and the culture that enables this (of which short termism is a component) can take some time for the symptoms to surface. Boeing cared more about profits than safety, this is what the evidence shows. If you disagree, of course, you’re entitled to your opinion. I believe I’ve supported my thesis adequately with citations. It was a long corporate journey to the crash sites, but the journey is well documented.

(GE also took substantial time to fall apart, but with no deaths to my knowledge)

Re: The Who Cares Era

#433
Devious people used to try and hide unpleasant or harmful information. Now they obfuscate it by surrounding it with a boatload of irrelevant information.

Important contract terms are buried in a 100 page mortgage contract. Wasteful government spending on someone's pork project is on page 980 of a 2000 page spending bill that no one reads before voting on it.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#434
The who cares era is just a symptom of the unaccountability machinery of our era.

It's hard to care or be passionate when you are certain that anything you produce which is worthwhile or original will be crushed, lost in the ocean of slop.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#435
there’s a lot to unpack here. Makes me think of the This Is Fine meme. People know the room is burning around them but they just don’t have enough bandwidth to address it.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the gripping hand, if you do put in the hard work, you are likely to be exploited. I can think of several examples of excellent workers: they come in, do great work, do not play politics, are known for being dependable, etc. Management ignores them and promotes the mouth breather who does nothing but cheerlead themselves at every opportunity for accomplishing the most basic of tasks.

Be careful that's not selective memory kicking in. I've thought that too but have had to point out to myself that some very deserving people were in fact promoted. Your point more generally, that squeaky wheels get the grease, does seem to be typical.

Obviously deserving people do find career advancement. Yet it is incredibly frustrating that I can think of two load bearing individuals who were the most dependable people in the company, yet received no recognition for this fact. They would just constantly roll up their sleeves and do the vital, non flashy work that kept the business functioning.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#437
post #130
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in New Zealand a couple of months ago and today something crystallized about my experience there - I consistently encountered people who were good at their jobs there. They've got a shortage of people in the trades, but their tradies seemed highly professional and efficient, the folks at the bike shops were on point, the airport staff were quick to help and super informative (gate attendant explained visibility…

I think that observation stands in the US too -- there are certain professions where you're more likely to find someone who cares. You mentioned bike shops. At least in my area (New England) every person I've ever seen working in a bike shop was competent and cared about working in a bike shop. (They weren't necessarily the nicest and most personable people, but that's a different story.) Who works in a bike shop? Al…

Agree. But, ha ha, now explain airport staff.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit I genuinely think this is a factor in some ways. 500 years ago, what were people worried about? Their immediate concerns, those of family, and neighbors. Realistically, there was no way to get caught up in the minute-by-minute concerns of…

People are expected to care about things they have zero control over and have ~zero impact on their lives or their family's lives. It's ridiculous. I get a ton of crap for not reading the news or caring about stuff happening 3500 miles away that I can't do anything about.

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