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Career advice for people with bad luck

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Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#501

Post by collyw »

neltnerb wrote: post #154
collyw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone at family company was friendly at lunch, it's just the we didn't socialize after work at all (well a couple of times). The younger company regularly went drinking together.

Actually, let me put it this way. If you are relying on your employer to provide opportunities to make friends, you're shifting responsibility for maintaining relationships from yourself to your employer. I don't think that's a good idea. When people elsewhere on this thread have commented that back in the day people's main opportunity to make friends was at work, they didn't mean that work gives them opportunities a…

I am not saying its anyone's responsibility, it was just an observation between two different workplaces.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#502

Post by adamsea »

friendlybus wrote: post #448
rovolo wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's controversial because it sounds pseudo-scientific. Why would removing all vegetables from his diet help with an autoimmune disorder? His daughter's blog called "Don’t Eat That" had the tagline "The food pyramid is a lie, fat is good for you, and many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone." (though, it does now say "Do not take this as medical advice. I am not a doctor. This is my story and…

I have my own problems with his daughter’s profiting off his back. I don’t see what you posted there as more click bait than anything else. Many research bodies and authorities on health have flipped the food pyramid around. The CSRIO supports a low carb diet over the traditional carb heavy food pyramid. She’s just repeating what the experts have said. That part is the opposite of pseudoscience, and it’s lazy parroti…

His daughter:

“”I can also, strangely enough, tolerate vodka and bourbon.”

The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.“

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#503

Post by adamsea »

burntoutfire wrote: post #328
adamsea wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about Jordan Peterson. Some of his advice may be OK but he's also profoundly weird / not very self-reflective .... only eats meat? Meat cures all? IMHO the Socratic Dialogues, as basically the foundational text of all Western Philosophy, and being pretty friendly and approachable, are the right place to begin. Helps you figure out how to figure it out for yourself. You can make your own calls from there.

> Meat cures all? When did he say that?

I’m making a point, not quoting the man.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#504

Post by throw4failure »

pmiller2 wrote: post #451
throw4failure wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of approach would you suggest? Genuinely curious :)

What do you want to learn? How to pass interviews, or actual fundamentals? For that matter, fundamentals of what?

Interviews are (with varying degrees of efficacy) meant to gauge fundamentals - so I think you're presenting a bit of a false dichotomy.

That said I haven't really solicited advice on either. My concern is more specifically related to how to frame my past employment and medical issues for a future employer - not so much making it through a technical screening.

I was, and am, curious about what others deem important to their career and craft (e.g. fundamentals), but like I said it's mainly curiosity. If you have something to share I'm all ears, and if not I wish you well.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#506

Post by sam_goody »

pmiller2 wrote: post #381
worik wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"* If you have an absurd amount of money, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt from getting sick." Or you live in a country with a socialised medical system.

I see you caught my implicit punch line. None of those things above the level of "unexpected car breakdown" really ought to be things people in the country with the largest economy in the world ought to be worrying about. We need to do something about that, whether it's a move toward social democracy, or even full on socialism. But, there's such a "fuck you, got mine" attitude among our political class that we're nev…

I agree these things should not be what "people in the country with the largest economy in the world ought to be worrying about".

But Socialism is not the answer.

As Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Socialism is great in concept. In class, which deals with the theoretical, it sounds great. For teachers, who can teach concepts and don't need to deal with the pesky nastiness of the real world, it is the thing to teach.

But in real life, Socialism, and partial socialism, and partial social by other names, are all TERRIBLE for the average dude.

Study history, for real. Look at the countries which have had all the "ism's". Democracy (and in many cases, even autocracy - which is also REALLY bad) are better.

I am not at all wealthy, live simply (no car, no smartphone, no whatever). I moved from the States to a socialy democratic country with an excellent public Medicaire system.

Even so, if I could make it more democratic and less socialistic, I would, and so would anyone else I know. A massive amount of my neighbors have moved to the States or are waiting for papers to do so. Everyone who can afford it has supplemental insurance.

It would be a shame if the States lost what they have right.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#507

Post by reactspa »

KerryJones wrote: post #249
LarryDarrell wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's because there isn't much advice to give. My answer, having checked a few of your boxes... Your lifetime wages are going to be lower than many of your peers. This is unlikely to change. Adjust your worldview accordingly. Don't assume any debt that relies on increasing future earnings to be comfortable. By all means, keep trying, but stay level headed. Success for most is not always right around the corn…

I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman. I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side: - Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't - Only keep friends arou…

Thank you fellow Taleb reader.

Also: Scott Adams, in his book "How to fail..." has a chapter on increasing one's luck. Worth a skim if you haven't checked it out before.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#508

Post by dwd »

adamsea wrote: post #260
KerryJones wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think luck is as "random" of a factor as much as most people think it is. Checkout "Luck Factor" by Dr. Richard Wiseman. I do think there are a lot of things you can due to get probability more on your side: - Keep your eyes open for opportunities and look for the upside ("be optimistic" is the woo-woo version), but it's been proven in experiments that you'll catch things others won't - Only keep friends arou…

IMHO we are not only discussing luck but also our imperfect and fallible nature as people. All you say is excellent advice, but -- sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

I've said this before, so apologies for repeating myself:

Luck is making the better decision in a timely manner based on incomplete knowledge where each option appears equally valid. However, people generally are poor at calculating probability combined with risk/reward and simply make bad decisions. And sometimes, all choices lead to bad outcomes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308323

To expand on this; if you are a healthy, intelligent adult I don't accept the idea that sometimes you don't have a choice, that somehow it is all out of your hands. That thinking leads to victimhood which is really an avoidance of taking responsibility for your decisions.

Yes, sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you - but you chose to take on the bear, whether directly or due to some previous decision (that didn't involve a bear at all).

Enjoyed watching "The Gentleman" the other night and a fan of films like Lock Stock, Two Smoking Barrels and the idea of events snowballing from the choices people make (and then the interaction of each individual's ongoing choices). But the situations that they find themselves in were a result of something they did.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#509

Post by Arete314159 »

jlokier wrote: post #482
Arete314159 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak to one of your points! I got dealt a bad hand in terms of health issues. However, a few years before I developed my health issues, I happened to have a long talk with a guy who had advanced MS. He told me that after his diagnosis, he tried to sock away as much money as possible and go for higher-paying jobs, as he knew that one day he'd become fully disabled and have to live on disability. Also, disabilit…

> - Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot) I think it's awful that such jobs are hard to find, considering the effect on disease progression of all things. My own only very distantly related anecdote. I'd had an interview with a hiring manager, who would be my boss, who liked me an…

Wow. That is nuts.

The thing is, for technical jobs like the ones folks at Hacker News tend to have, I find almost no difference in my output between 30 and 40 hour weeks. 30 hours / week I'm more mentally / physically refreshed and better able to problem-solve, so I get my work done faster.

The only advantage to a full-time schedule is that it's easier to coordinate / follow-up with other people.

Re: Career advice for people with bad luck

#510

Post by Arete314159 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #491
jlokier wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Looked for jobs with slightly under full-time work loads to allow me time to rest (found only one for 2 years, but the extra rest helped me slow down disease progression a lot) I think it's awful that such jobs are hard to find, considering the effect on disease progression of all things. My own only very distantly related anecdote. I'd had an interview with a hiring manager, who would be my boss, who liked me an…

This is exactly the reason why part-time jobs are so difficult to find. By saying "I don't want to sacrifice as much time as possible to this job" you send a bad signal. You working 4 days instead of 5 is frankly not a problem. But you wanting to work 4 days instead of 5 is. Why hire a guy who wants to sacrifice less, when you could hire a guy who wants to sacrifice more? Having a life outside of job is a red flag. D…

I see where you're going with this, but a health problem which you are open about is often the kiss of death. Going by your theory, it means you'll never be able to make that sacrifice and you'll always have a different set of priorities...

But really what happens in corporate America is more brutal: "health problems" = weakness, and showing weakness is very bad.

A lot of employers prefer a mediocre employee who is there all the time to a stellar employee who has any sort of "defect." So actually it took me some effort to find employers who were "nice enough" to rate me only on my work output and quality rather than on some sort of law-of-the-jungle, survival-of-the-fittest thing.

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