from the Looking-for-a-job-or-an-education? dept.
More info is available about which college majors pay off, but students aren't using it:
When the University of Texas system teamed up with the Census Bureau to show how much money graduates earn, broken down by major and campus, the idea was to help future students make good choices.
College is, after all, a huge investment, with costs consumers often criticize and toward which many have to borrow. If they knew that one major results in higher salaries than others — or that graduates from one university earn more than those with the exact same degree from another — wouldn't they make the higher-paying choice?
Two years after the groundbreaking collaboration began, however, students haven't seemed to alter course, said David Troutman, the system's associate vice chancellor, who oversees the project.
[...] He and other advocates stress that they want students to continue following their passions. But they also want them to be aware that earnings vary widely among graduates, even when they have identical majors, from different universities and colleges, affecting not only their quality of life but their ability to repay their student loans.
That's a principal reason more and more information about job opportunities and salaries is being made available to students and their families, most recently by the federal government, which this month expanded a feature of its College Scorecard website showing the earnings payoffs of 37,459 majors at 4,434 colleges and universities.
[...] Texas legislators have required, starting this year, that the online form used by applicants to Texas public universities include prominent links to employment rates and some wage information. West Virginia lawmakers have ordered that, starting next fall, job demand and wage data be collected and shown to every high school student.
In Virginia, which already reports postgraduate earnings data, "I see growth in the analytics of the website. The emails I get asking for assistance and guidance are more frequent on these topics than they were in the past," said Tod Massa, director of policy analytics for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.
[...] Massa isn't sure that, after the pandemic, there will be a rush to major in the fields with the highest pay. But he thinks people will begin to notice that Americans who have kept their jobs were disproportionately those with college educations.
"They're going to look around and say, 'Wait a minute, the people who lost their jobs and were out of work, they were in jobs that didn't require a college degree,' " he said. "That will change the discussion: 'Am I going to be able to acquire that degree that has that stability?' Is it the amount of money that matters or the ability to weather bad times?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:04AM (1 child)
When I was a Computer Science undergrad, the job forecast changed so frequently I found it worthless.
When I started, it was a good time to be studying CS. The next year, it was a bad time to be studying CS. The 2 years after that CS was good again. My final year, when I graduated, CS was bad. The economy had just entered a mini downturn.
Yeah, took me 5 years to get the degree, thanks in part to the general inflation in program times. Engineering degrees were supposed to take 4 years, but somehow the average time to complete a degree was a hair over 5 years. Also, the CS department was terrible thanks to some idiotic decisions by university administrators. The worst move was letting other departments use CS as a dumping ground for their worst professors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:01PM
It did look like a dead-end career, destined for offshoring, until smartphones and CRUD-unfriendly HTML browsers created more IT jobs.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:07AM (57 children)
Losing your job was a benefit for most people. The "essential" workers mostly don't require degrees, and kept getting their shitty wages, while the people on unemployment were earning twice as much doing nothing. The essential workers and small business owners are the only groups who really got fucked.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:29AM (53 children)
was it now. let's take my office as an example. engineers, we earn 250k+ per year. multi-billion national VAR, 3 offices in Chicago. My rent was 3k/month, strategically located downtown near the office and half the clients. Bills are about $500/month, wife and I spend about $1500/month in good quality groceries.
First, 2 of the offices close down, everyone fired - no severance. I now drive to work an hour and a half each way. Then the lockdowns hit, so everyone can work remote. Except since tech sales and shipment of all equipment are at full stop, I don't get to work remote. I and half of the remaining office also get canned. 6 months left on my lease.
Unemployment hits. Instead of 15k/month post-tax, I now get 5k of unemployment. In a couple of months that goes to 2k/month. And that's where we're at now. Applied to about 500 jobs nationally and internationally. Eating the cheapest food I can find. Living in different airbnbs, whatever is cheaper, for 9 months total.
It's not a dire life. And I did plan for it, and have a lot of savings to fall back on - enough to live on like this for over a decade actually. Work is impossible to find - it's 50 people applying for the same job, and half the jobs are fake - as in the same job, being posted over and over again, since february - just hr people creating work for themselves so they don't get canned.
So, unemployment was a benefit? I'm not most people, but here is most people:
average salary in USA is 50k/year
unemployement benefits: 30k/year
those most people you talk about, who just took a 20k/year pay cut? they also have no insurance now during the pandemic. Much shittier insurance now takes out about another 5k from that. so now we're at 25k.
so, sherlock, explain to me how most people, who have just had their salary slashed in half, got a benefit from being on unemployment? Oh, you mean the 2 months of $600 benefit and another 6 weeks of $300? That's true. That adds 10k. so a net loss of $15k/year for the average person.
lolwut indeed. tell me, all the meth you use and cheap bourbon you drink to create this reality for yourself, does it cause you to hear voices too, or is it just the stupidity.
Essential workers - the guy who makes sure the grocery store gets stocked with food you eat, indeed did not get effected job-wise. What did happen is their job changed, pay didn't. See, here outside of your crackhead delusion, when we're in the middle of a dangerous virus spreading and killing you and your parents, a job that has higher risk pays more. There are lots of things that don't require a lot of skill, but do require a lot of risk.
Like, you and 100 people get hired for a job. Before you tell them what salary you want, they let you know two people from this group will die. Also, by working here, you put you, your family and everyone you meet at risk of dying, crippling hospital bills to put you in debt for life, and risk of year-long or permanent complications such as the scarring of lungs. You cool still asking for minimum wage? No? Well they don't care, take it or leave it.
See sherlock, their work didn't change, but their job did - for the same shitty pay. Truck driver and truck driver in a mine field - same job, right?
god damn you're a fucking retard. seriously, I would love to see you "die" from obesity. see how I put "die" in quotes just like you put "essential" in quotes? you know who is essential? literally not you. die. no quotes.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:41AM (19 children)
Wow.. That's quite a story you tell there, bub. At least now we know where that bitterness comes from.
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:57AM (2 children)
(Score: 0, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:09AM (1 child)
So where does all YOUR time come from? Let me guess, not too much demand for questionable tube steak inna bun in Yellowstone during a pandemic?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 28 2020, @03:33AM
From having a job that's a whole lot less demanding than high tech contractor.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:26AM (15 children)
aah, did mommy tell you that all the people making fun of you in highschool were just bitter, and it stuck with you as a coping mechanism for adulthood? yep, so very very bitter, traveling across europe with my wife right now, since I don't have to work. actually quite bitter about that. limited number of countries to visit due to covid - not an optimal situation. very very bitter about that.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:22AM (14 children)
Do you own your own home? If not, and if you have the money for it, now might be a really good idea to do one of those tiny home things. Not the stupid trendy ones that cost more to furnish than they did to build, but a simple 12' x 24' by 12'-high block building on a concrete slab foundation somewhere, well-insulated and optimally laid-out, with as much DIY as you can.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:43PM (13 children)
No, people who like to travel and move around do not own their home. In the last 10 years, I've lived in 5 countries and 3 states. At one point, I had an apartment rented in the states, in france, and in russia - at the same time. I had 3 rental properties, which I thankfully sold off last year, and dumped the cash into blue chip mutual funds. One of those was as expensive to furnish as it was to build, which was a great move, since that tripled the rent I could charge. My mutual funds have gone up 35% this year. Sold all properties about 6 months before people stopped paying rent. 2 of those were paid off, one still had a mortgage. But hey, at least I'm not paying 15k in property taxes anymore, and have to worry about constant repairs. Between the 3 of them, I got fucked in the ass with sales taxes (chicago's stamp tax) and brokerage fees.
I don't have kids. I do have a wife who is younger. When selecting a job, I like to look worldwide and not be tied down. I don't own furniture. Right now when my lease expired and we decided to go travel, all my stuff fit in a 5x8 storage locker, with room to spare. The last thing I want is to be tied down to a physical place for zero reason. Owning a home does not make financial sense either - only owning apartments to rent out does - and even on that, it's because you can write off any repairs and depreciate the building. I haven't even owned a car in 15 years - rentals and cabs when I need one.
It's a different life than yours. People value different things. I don't value things - I value experiences. I can get on a plane today and live in a different country or city. I ended up living in Japan for several months because I came there with some friends, and just stayed, for zero reason than it was different. This not only gets you higher salary, it makes life interesting and worth living - for me, since my mid 20s and up to now. I'm sure that'll change as I get older or have kids. At which point I'm definitely not getting some sort of microhouse or doing DYI construction, because as I learned from experience, with my DIY skills of being handy, my construction results in paying someone to tear it down and do it right.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:01AM (7 children)
Don't count on that. My own version of mobility still works for me today. "Home" is only home because that's where the wife is. I can pick up and go pretty much anywhere, but the wife won't go. I'll come home when I'm ready. My name is on the deed, but it's her home, and that's just the way it is, for us.
There are some self imposed limits on my mobility. I WILL NOT submit to a TSA orifice check, so I'm not flying anywhere. Otherwise, I'm good to go!
If you've got wanderlust, age doesn't cure it, unless/until medical conditions stop you.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @04:07AM (6 children)
yeah, this is why I waited till almost 40 to get married. had to find the right person, for me. my wife has no say in what we do or where we go, or any purchases. she teaches mandarin and japanese to little kids in daycare and takes care of the home - that mba is coming in real useful.. i do my geek work and manage our finances. for me, it was finding a person with complementary skills and interests, not someone like myself. took a while to figure that out, but i think it's best. when the areas of family responsibility don't overlap, you don't need to discuss everything or make up compromises.
the wanderlust is slowly going away. i'm definitely leaning to retiring in a decade when we have kids, and the way it's feeling now - to a fucking forest in the middle of nowhere. or a small french town, to be more realistic.
if you think tsa is bad, oh boy, you haven't been to a few places. try leaving israel. they let you come in no problem. leaving is a 2 hour interview, they want logins to your social media, to read your emails, etc. been there like 20 times, last time they blocked me from visiting again. Mostly because I wouldn't answer a single personal question, I've got stamps from turkey/qatar/sa/kazakhstan/etc in my passport, and didn't show them any emails, and made gay sex jokes as the guy strip searched me. I'm jewish, i got an aunt living there, i'm banned from the country.
TSA is a mellow puppy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @04:35AM (3 children)
I've got an attitude problem. If I'm in Turkey, I'll show the Turks their due respect, and maybe even a little ass kissing if necessary. Ditto every other country in the world.
In America, I owe no one anything beyond basic human respect. TSA goon wants to pat me down, I want to punch him in the face. FBI wants to talk about my online presence, he can go screw himself. CIA wants to talk about someone I talked to online, again, they can go screw themselves. I'm an American.
In fact, the last time a cop stopped me, he wanted to know what I was doing "in this part of town" after sunset. I looked him in the eye, and told him, "I'm an American, driving around in America. I don't have to tell you what I'm doing, or why." He choked on that one, and called for backup while running my driver's license. The backup guy was former Navy. Navy told me that I was in a drug interdicting area - and that they like to check on people visiting the area. He also noted my bumper sticker, we compared naval careers, and found that we have a lot in common. Both cops wished me a good night, I thanked them, and went about my business.
You can imagine that I would cause a whole lot of problems in an airport in America today. Best I just stay away.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @07:17AM (2 children)
well, you kinda wrong there. it's america. we have a lot more freedom than just about every country. but that doesn't mean freedom just for you and your view point.
the tsa is employed by the airport. the airport is free not to use them. it's their choice to. it's the choice of the airlines to use that airport. you don't have to use the airport or the airline, and pay 5x the price for a charter flight, and there is not TSA or patdown.
you are choosing the cheap solution, the people selling that are why you get patted down. "my restaurant my rules." this is not government nor america. this is a business, run by people, and those people have a right to choose to bake you a cake or not. you are free to buy your cake somewhere else, and you have lots of options. they cost more.
so no, you would not cause problems in an airport in america today. you would cause problems going into a business with rules they freely made, and expecting to make your own there. start your own airline, you can make your own rules. just like those people. or do business with a flight without TSA - there are many.
now the reason the cop choked on that and called for backup is because you didn't just know your rights and stand by them. you started a conversation that was confrontational, so he's gonna check you out, because for some reason in the middle of nothing, you decided to start an argument.
you don't have to answer the cop's questions or tell him anything at all. and likely, if you just didn't answer, he'd run your plate and move on. Last time I was pulled over was a decade ago for doing 5 over on the highway, in my brother's beater chevy. The standard questions were asked of where I was going to and coming from, and did I know how fast I was going. I gave my license and registration, insurance, and said I decline to answer questions. The cop ran my license, gave it back to me, and told me to have a nice night. What I didn't do is go on a rant no one asked for and start a confrontation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)
"now the reason the cop choked on that and called for backup is because you didn't just know your rights and stand by them. you started a conversation that was confrontational, so he's gonna check you out, because for some reason in the middle of nothing, you decided to start an argument.
you don't have to answer the cop's questions or tell him anything at all. and likely, if you just didn't answer, he'd run your plate and move on. Last time I was pulled over was a decade ago for doing 5 over on the highway, in my brother's beater chevy. The standard questions were asked of where I was going to and coming from, and did I know how fast I was going. I gave my license and registration, insurance, and said I decline to answer questions. The cop ran my license, gave it back to me, and told me to have a nice night. What I didn't do is go on a rant no one asked for and start a confrontation."
Oh, STFU. Fuck those seditious tyrannical pigs. They should be glad they are not being hunted for sport.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:38AM
umm, yes, fuck those pigs. completely agree, smile when they get shot.
you have zero brains. you cannot think for yourself. you have a cult think for you. this way, you don't have to think and form an opinion on anything. this however means your brain ends up not thinking about individual issue, because it only has the capacity to think of one - which group of people do I belong to. then you let that group form the decision for you. because you're too dumb to form opinions on thousands of things.
normal people, most people, are not like that.
lemme blow your mind: fuck trump, fuck bush, fuck bernie, fuck aoc. fuck blm and fuck the cops.
you should be glad you're not hunted for sport. by people. who think you're deer. because you have about the same iq as one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:51PM
lol imagine being one of god's (and capitalism's) chosen people and having to get an asian mail order bride. almost as sad as publicly kvetching about not having a $1,700 monthly food budget. kimoi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:29PM
Yeah well, some of us like to punch the kids out early so we can see grandkids by the time we're 40(ish). And you know what's great about grandkids? You can send them home! And also, seeing ahead two or three generations of your own is kinda cool, but jeeze! Every week a birthday! A funeral! The dementia... I believe in big families, because we need brains. More brains equals more progress. Have lots of kids, and at least one of them will turn out just right. And your sperms are healthier at 20 than at 40 after your body has absorbed all the poisons around.
Your life may be gratuitous, but it ain't normal!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 28 2020, @02:09AM (4 children)
If that works for you, great :) it actually sounds really interesting, but I'm a nester, a stereotypical Cancer (despite 1) technically being a Leo and 2) astrology being utter bunk). Security is a much higher priority for me than for you, maybe because I've never had it. It sounds like you have some really awesome experiences under your belt.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @03:56AM (3 children)
oh, I started out as a nester too, and did "own" my house, with a huge mortgage. shit changes when you write some storage tiering software for fun, general electric buys it because you're good friends with a vendor sales rep who has an in w/ the cto, and you're 25, grew up dirt poor, in debt up to your ass, and all of a sudden you're very well off overnight. that starts a "booze, cocaine, and fucking girls around the world" phase in your life as you try to piss away some cash. thankfully that didn't last long enough to kill me, but the traveling and seeing the world thing seems to have stuck.
having a house you live in doesn't give you security. in fact, it removes it. one flood or fire or tornado, and your security is gone. a large emergency fund gives you security. it doesn't give you a "home," but the world can be a home, if you convince yourself enough.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 29 2020, @01:33AM (2 children)
That's actually really interesting, and not something I'd thought about in too much depth (though I'd never build somewhere prone to natural disasters in the first place, hence why I want to get to Halifax). Though if I suddenly became rich like that, it wouldn't have lead to drinking and drugs. It *would* have lead to a bunch of investment and, yes, building a house though.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday December 29 2020, @05:01AM (1 child)
you never know, especially when you're young. I invested. I bought a house in need of repairs and launched a "keep the walls gut the inside" 3 year multi hundred thousand dollar remodel. i bought an apartment in another country. paid off my parents' house, all my friends' credit cards, did a bunch of other good shit. blew half a mil over 10 years on a business investment that didn't work out.
here's the thing. you're 25. you do ok w/ girls, but not great. you're now sitting with your buddy on your birthday, at a table full of ones who look like models, and they're doing coke, speed and drinking. I've done coke before - like 3 times a year on average. so you do a line with them, then another, then fuck one because the dance club has vip rooms. with beds and showers. and a 5 star restaurants. and famous bands playing a few songs on stage. actual cirque du soleil performers spinning on strings from the ceiling - they drop by during break and do a line with you. "club Rai" moscow - youtube it.
so, cool night. the afterhours club opens at 7am. you party from friday night, to sunday afternoon. you're exhausted, you've fucked 2 models, then 2 more together, coke and viagra do mix. then you sleep for 2 days straight.
guess who calls next friday? it's one of the girls you hung out with. guess where she is? she's downstairs in a limmo, with her friends. they're going to dinner, you should come.
one small step at a time. anyone can do anything, whether they would or not. and i wasn't rich, just well off. not an amount that invested properly would let you not work again.
and i don't regret it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @07:21AM
Ooooh! KC Jones, fear and loathing in Moscow, it's the new Acapulco.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:10AM (10 children)
If the virus were as deadly as you claim, why aren't those front line heroes the grocery store cashiers dropping like flies? They keep showing up to work, day after day, interacting with hundreds of customers and doing their jobs. Same for so many people/jobs.
(Score: 5, Touché) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:35AM (9 children)
well, as a 41yo who smoked for 15 years, my chance of death is 2%. Since I got savings, there is literally zero that would make me ring up your fat ass at the grocery store. If I didn't have savings, I would ask for at least 200k salary for that.
they keep showing up to work and getting their parents and family sick, because if they didn't, they would starve to death in the middle of a street in winter. but your dumbass is taking this completely off topic. the claim was that people took a salary boost from unemployment. the fact is, most people took a huge salary cut.
2% is not "dropping like flies." but 300k dead is a lot of flies. here's hoping you and your family get some of that flypaper.
fun fact, covid's worse the second time around. my 25yo brother who works out daily and never smoked had a mild fever the first time. when he got it again several months later, he ended up in the hospital. Still not a big deal for him. After insurance, he's going to be paying for that incurred debt for about the next 5 years. Unless he gets it a 3rd time. Then it'll be the next 10 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:01AM (8 children)
What, no universal health care over there in Israel?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:46PM (7 children)
No idea, I've been banned from the country for about a decade. Any more bright questions? How's your welfare check in alabama and kentucky? How's your daughter's pussy today - did she finally start washing it like you told her a million times? How's your fat wife doing - still getting railed by Leroy as you watch? How about deer - you ever get the smell off your shoes from that time you removed the piss sack? How's bebbi the sheep? Still moist whenever she sees you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:14PM (2 children)
You're a funny dude, man! I like the way you roll! Which was your previous troll account?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:31AM (1 child)
it's always been fakefuck39 - i didn't see the need for an account till i started donating to the site. 3 in hangul reads "saam", which in russian means "self," 9 reads "goo." so it's and extremely clever joke about how you splooge cum all over yourself when you jack off. you need to be part of mensa and an iq of 16#10E-3 to understand.
and believe it or not, i'm not trolling. i'm here for good on topic discussion. i'm just extremely not nice to people who are wrong or being stupid. you can't do that in real life, so an outlet for shitting on someone provides me some entertainment. troll accounts, or even these trumptard accounts spreading bs - those are losers who have literally nothing else going on in their lives - highschool societal rejects in old bodies. old sexy bodies. like my uncle tom's. i miss him so, especially around kwanzaa.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:31AM
Mensa is for really stupid people. 99.7% of all us geniuses get that right away - that only someone really stupid would pay to join a club for geniuses.
So congrats for being on the stupid/easy to manipulate/insecure as all shit end of the bell curve.
Because your insecurities are undeniable except to a "stable genius."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:06PM (3 children)
ha ha sex with sheep
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:41AM (2 children)
that's your takeaway from that? what are you, a moron? this is a serious issue dude. israel needs to burn a slow death. It's a world minority of the jews, and equivalent to what isis is for the arabs. i say as a member of the elite non-zionist majority of the jews worldwide.
but seriously, this is a serious issue. the racist trumptards like the one I replied to are the reason israel exists, yet they're against the jews in places like america. us jews - we don't want israel. they're the violent uneducated crazy bottom of the jew barrel. we want all funding to stop - isreal wouldn't survive a year w/o american help. and so far, we've given that shithole over half a trillion dollars of our tax money. yes, half a trillion.
look at bernie and natalie portman. jewish. against israel. like all the normal jews are. but not anti-semetic, because israel != jews, since most jews don't live there, nor share their view. then you got these anti-semetic trumptards like OP. the vote for and elect racist fascists, like themselves. and those politicians funnel money to... israel. which they're supposedly against. and why does it work out that way? because they're literally dumber than a doorknob.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:23AM
The rest is so irrelevant, and so stupid in this context (choice of jobs/career) that its yet another obvious and amateur attempt at trolling and deflection.'
All those classes in psychology and sociology turned out to be very useful in tech. You might want to get a bit of a varied education before you try again.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @01:54AM
Hmm, I do believe you are jumping the shark. There's a definite sameness to all your troll posts lately. And really, now that we know what you are, maybe you should split for a while, come back with a new name and try again.
Thank you
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:54AM (7 children)
Well, it's no wonder you got shitcanned. Poor attitude, calling people names, and being a complete asshole will get your name at the top of the list come layoff time. Being a fake fucking moron just seals the deal.
Kill yourself you worthless piece of shit. Don't think about it. Just fucking do it.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:52PM (6 children)
yes, people getting laid off due to a pandemic means they have a poor attitude. you know what sucks more than my poor attitude? being poor, like you. newsflash jimbob. normal people (not you) can shit all over some random idiot on the internet, and behave differently with coworkers. i know that's hard for you to understand.
as far as worthless, I can bet pretty much anything here that the capital gains tax I pay each year is more than your salary, even when i'm unemployed. my life is so far detached from your shitty life, to you it would be a surreal tv show. you are the ant I step on - i don't actually look at people like you as human. you're just a rat under my feet.
> Just fucking do it.
I see newsmax ran out of precanned slogans for you, so you've turned to nike. apt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:09PM
i get the warm fuzzies reading your post
tell us more about your great investments being more than our salary, always a popular ice-breaker
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @10:32PM (4 children)
IDF, right? Or just a wannabe? Big tough talkin' mofo...
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @11:01PM (3 children)
the funny thing is, sometimes a bunch of anonymous cowards across ten different threads are literally one autistic guy. take your pills buddy. the voices and the fixation will stop, and you'll live a normal, productive life, in your 80yo mom's basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @01:42AM (2 children)
You're starting to sound a little "formulaic". Please, do try to keep your material fresh, my dear friend!
P.S. I know what you did
(Score: 3, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @04:20AM (1 child)
how's that hole coming jesse? how far down do you think it's buried? p.s. i know you're autistic, and there's nothing you can ever do to ever be able to live a normal life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @07:09AM
As I stated, you live gratuitously. That's your normal.
I can see the future! You will never see beyond your first born
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:01PM (2 children)
If you were making $250k a year and didn't have en emergency fund to cover you for, that's your own damned fault. The essential workers, were and are living more or less hand to mouth. many of whom are one disaster away from bankruptcy despite being "lucky" enough to be working. That's a detail that a lot of people miss. There's a bunch of people whining about being whipped out that were just begging for it by having no emergency fund. Between the extra money from unemployment, a reasonable emergency fund and just cutting out all the extras, people should be fine. Of course, the government should be giving everybody money like other countries are, but most of this was self-inflicted.
What's more for the essential workers, if we lose hours, we don't get compensated for it as we didn't lose hours due to the pandemic. So, when I had my hours cut from 32 down to 8, I only get nothing. I was in school last year working part time and I don't have the hours in from my base year to qualify for assistance and because I'm an essential worker that lost hours due to the company choosing to overhire, I don't get any of the pandemic assistance either.
It really gets on my nerve how self entitled people are. The unemployed have already gotten nearly $10k that they didn't own or deserve and we can't even get a promise of free vaccinations and effective PPE, let alone compensation for having to take on the extra risk and work to keep things from completely shutting down.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:44AM (1 child)
>didn't have en emergency fund to cover you for
you have trouble reading, I know. reading is hard. that's why when by your first line it was clear you didn't read my post, which says literally the opposite, i stopped reading yours.
we're the same you and me. we both didn't read each other's posts. you, because your reading speed is 10 minutes per page, mine because why bother, I have enough from your first line to shitt all over your face and in your mouth. now swallow bitch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:12PM
I reread it, and you're full of shit. I see no mention of having the 3-6 months of expenses set aside to help ease the burden. What I see is somebody that didn't save for this and is now in a bit of trouble as a result. I have absolutely no sympathy for you.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:29PM (9 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @11:08PM (8 children)
5gh grade literacy level error: you only finished 4th grade
logic error: you are literally agreeing with me. you should give that 5th grade english course a try to find out why.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @12:17AM (7 children)
Then you replied with this:
I pointed out that your example doesn't apply to the majority, because , as I wrote, Most people aren't engineers
If this is an example of your logical abilities, no wonder IT is in such shitty shape.
Bec … drumroll … your situation is not like most people's. So your anecdote is just an anecdote. It doesn't invalidate the original claim that most people were better off collecting unemployment and stimulus benefits.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:49AM (6 children)
correct. my anecdote does not invalidate the original claim. i literally stated that. which is why i spent literally the entire second half of my post invalidating the claim as it applies to most people, whose average income is 50k/year in america - much less than they get for unemployment, and even less after they have to pay for insurance out of pocket.
is it add that makes you not able to read half a page of text, or is it that you read with your finger, spelling out syllables, and it takes you an hour to get through half a page, instead of the 20 seconds it takes for normal people w/o your disability?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:41AM (5 children)
Funny how you brag about being in Mensa, when 99.7% of all people who are geniuses avoid it like the plague because it's a scam.
Guess you're not that smart. And very insecure. And stoopid, because stupid is as stupid does. And shelling out money to Mensa to meet other insecure geniuses is really really stupid. That way you'll never meet the 99.7% of geniuses who aren't stupid and insecure. After all, if you did, you'd be confronted with how stupid you really are. As stupid as the people who fail for Nigerian prince scams, or get catfishes.
Sucker. Reminds me of another totally fucked up "stable genius."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:18AM (2 children)
TBH, I never joined because I didn't have the coin. Later, I had the coin, but by then, I no longer wanted to join. I figured that other people as smart as me were probably assholes too, and I didn't need to hang with a bunch of assholes.
They DO have some of that highly touted "networking" shit that college kids brag about. Said networking should make a return on the initial coinage required to join by several orders of magnitude.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @02:39AM (1 child)
' I used to play volleyball with a few Mensa members. Couldn't see what they got out of it.
Knew another one who was found to be NCR for the big one. Schizo. Not exactly a great recommendation.
Personally, we both probably dodged a bullet. Mensa is literally for people with more money than brains.
I'm just amazed that so many people who claim to be so smart can be so stupid - or maybe the right word would be foolish.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:18PM
I likely qualify, but I never saw any point in joining. I took the pretest one time and I did well enough to consider taking an official test. The fact of the matter is that the cut off is somewhat arbitrary and just because you've got a qualifying score, doesn't mean that you're actually worth talking to or spending time with. I'd personally rather spend time around grad students and those with advanced degrees if I want to be around really smart people and talk about things that are more complicated without having to constantly simplify things for those not in the know. Of the 3 people in my family that likely would have qualified, I've got more education than the other two combined and I'm the only one that really uses the brainpower on any kind of regular basis. But, we'd likely all have qualified.
But, really, with the internet and the ability to interact with people that are experts or serious hobbyists in various fields, I'm not sure there's any real point to membership other than as a sign of elitism at this point. In the past, it may have been worthwhile, but these days, there's just too much access to groups that are intellectually minded to need Mensa with the IQ requirements.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @04:16AM (1 child)
yes, clearly i was bragging about being in mensa. see, when you're a loser from early youth, and are shunned by society into adulthood, you end up lacking the basic social skills to properly understand basic things people say.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @12:29PM
So too stupid / unselfaware / complacent / lazy to learn. Got it.
It must be convenient to blame others for your shortcomings. Takes the pressure off of addressing them.
The answer is obvious - if it doesn't bother you, keep up the pretence. If it does, then admit you can't fix it yourself (or you already would have) and go see a social worker or therapist.
But you already knew all this. And the odds are very low you'll do anything that requires you to move out of your comfort zone. Easier to just be angry at the world.
Ultimately you have to ask yourself what you want. There's nothing wrong with being different. There's a lot wrong with being profoundly unhappy with how your life turned out. At a certain point it's your responsibility to take action if you want things to change. Time to be brutally honest with yourself. I'd say good luck, but luck isn't involved. Just lots of hard work, because change is frigging HARD!
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:27PM
Yes, that's right, work is impossible to find. You can thank dear departed fake job peddler Michael David Crawford and Soggy Soylent Fake Jobs. MDC is lucky he's fucking dead forever. Lying motherfuckers who run fake job boards like MDC don't deserve to live.
Which brings us to lying motherfuckers like you. That's right: you, motherfucker. You continue to spread the myth that engineers earn $250K, when you know for a fucking fact that the real number is $0. You and the fake job peddlers are in league with each other, and you all deserve to die. Go join MDC in death where you belong, fucker.
Fuck MDC
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @01:23PM (2 children)
You must still be living in Mama's basement. This isn't the first time that the federal government has allocated buckets of money for unemployment. Nor is this the first time that those benefits have expired, leaving unemployed people without a meal ticket. Remember, congress doesn't administer all the state's unemployment programs. Nor does congress allocate money for decades at a time. They allocate enough money to see those unemployment programs through a few months at a time. On the date of expiry, everyone loses that money. Worse, congress does nothing to extend unemployment eligibility. If you were entitled to 6 months of benefits before the "emergency", you only get 6 months during the said "emergency". Then, you go hungry. And, after the "emergency" ends, you're just another unemployed fool, trying to re-enter the job market.
Bill Clinton had a program that almost doubled unemployment, years ago. It looked good to some of us in the construction industry, because people laying around the house were making more than those of us who were working. But, the freebies ended, and people who were working invariably earned more money for the year, than those who weren't working.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @01:18AM (1 child)
Oh, shut up. A bunch of people I know were/are on unemployment while working landscaping or construction under the table. I've been working the entire time, and have changed jobs during the shutdown.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @04:24AM
the barista at starbucks and the walmart cashier, and the pc support guy putting patches on corp laptops also had no problems changing jobs. you should look up what frictional unemployment is, and why it's a good thing. not something that applies to low-skilled labor though. which is why you can change jobs easily. but then again, you don't exactly have your retirement covered or have a multi-year emergency cash fund, so if you lose a job, you need another fast to pay for your living expenses. the ones who are victims of frictional unemployment? well, they're traveling across europe right now enjoying themselves, while they look for work.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:09AM (2 children)
What you enjoy, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:01AM (1 child)
Eeeee-yup. I didn't know the name of it but that's why I got into pharmacology as anything more than personal interest.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @11:50AM
I find if I do anything other than what I take a passion to do, I do a shitty minimal job just to get paid. No joy, no pride. I feel like a prostitute, who just found a John, pay me for ass kissing.
I am in CS/EE because I have a passion to do this, not much different than anyone else wanting to do their passion.
No, I do not get paid anymore to do this. I would rather work a simple menial job so I can enjoy my own private "soduku" of designing unusual electronic devices. I can no longer enjoy having people constantly evaluating me over how I react when I am raced to deadlines, which forces me to release half-baked crap that embarrasses me to be seen in public, much less sold to them. Left alone, I want my stuff to meet my own standards, which are quite high. Stuff I would be proud to say " I made this!", not ashamed to admit being associated with the whole mess.
I realize some people chase money, and they will find people to pay them and place people like me under them. Time is money. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Get it out now, we can fix it later. I already have thrown away way too many things that were built with profit maximization in mind.
I flat do not want to participate in that game.
So, if you want to be a wage slave, working for the MBA, go get the papers he wants to see, and become his show dog. While I am perfectly happy to be the mutt. Doing what I enjoy doing. Making stuff.
It's not an expensive hobby... I find most of what I need in the trash. AliExpress will sell me exotic parts pretty cheap. Ebay sells me car parts cheap. Cars have a lot of very interesting sensor and actuator technology.
So I got my training in something I like doing. And maybe one day I will find a company that will allow me to be creative on their stuff.
My advice... Only work for the one who owns the company. If a middle manager gets between the two of you, he will throw stumbling blocks in your path to prove he's the better man, and creative people have a hard time thinking up these kind of schemes... We can't seem to take our mind off of the techie stuff to deal with the makers of many forms and office politics. You will resent his meddling into your work, and he will document this in his reports, referring to your trying to shoo him away as "not a team player", "has a bad attitude", "being a perfectionist", in a way very similar to how AT&T words ads for $49.95 internet. The owner usually wants the job done right, the MBA wants to look good. He will make a lot more money than you, but his enjoyment is in what that money will buy him. I'd rather enjoy doing the job.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:22AM (6 children)
How many college students realistically act as if they will be supporting themselves upon graduation? Of those, how many need earning potential info spoon-fed to them?
Back in the 1980s I was somewhat of a "go-to" in my dorm for this kind of information, but it was pointless because the only students who sought my advice were trust fund babies who didn't care about what they earned after graduation, so "follow your passions" was the only meaningful advice. Anyone who intended to support themselves already had acquired the info for themselves, and trusted their sources at least as much as mine.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:19AM
And along with this, there is also the question--are you doing anything related to your college major? Many people are not, my major was in architecture and I do mechanical engineering, go figure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:06PM (4 children)
Back in the '80s you could pay for college by working a summer job. This kind of thinking wasn't terribly important because a degree itself was still unusual enough that it would grant entry into all sorts of jobs which would pay enough to justify the effort of getting the degree. These days, you more or less need a full time job or lots of breaks in order to avoid having student loans and the gap in pay is much narrower than it was back then due to the government not funding it the way that they used to.
Sure there are some legitimately worthless degrees out there like women's studies, but there's also a ton of degrees that have value and society would suffer for not having. The degrees related to social work is a good example, it's a critical role to play, but the government spends basically nothing on those jobs because they help the poor and troubled.
What's more, the economy is changing so quickly that what might seem like a great/terrible idea when enrolling might turn out to be terrible/great 4-5 years later when you finally graduate. For the most part, that wasn't the case in the '80s.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:23AM (3 children)
It is still possible to get a degree by working your way through. My kid took very minimal loans, and took very little from Mom and Dad. Between scholarships, grants, and hustling work - mostly in his field of study - the boy didn't need much in the way of loans. First year out of college, he paid back everything he borrowed. Everything.
If you had asked me, I wouldn't have thought it was possible. But my son proved that it is possible.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:12PM (1 child)
It's a lot easier to go to college with no debt of you're over 25, because the federal grants are ass backwards. Military service is a good route to college, even though it greatly devalues degrees (you will get into positions through the side door anyway). The real goal of pushing everyone to go to college is to increase student debt, which is the federal government's largest asset (https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial-report/balance-sheets.html note 4).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @09:25PM
Congratulations! That wins the "stupidest thing I've read today . . . so far" award. So the employers who impose these college degree requirements for mundane jobs are all in cahoots with the government to keep people in debt?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:22PM
It is possible, it's not possible to do so on just a summer job. I personally have no sympathy for those that go $100k into debt for most degrees. It's one thing if that's for medical school, but for an education degree, that's insane.
The reality is that back in the '80s you could fund a degree purely on a summer jobs and that is completely impossible for most people these days. Summer jobs tend to pay close to minimum wage and the cost of tuition has gotten extremely expensive. What I paid for tuition at a 4 year college 20 years ago is what students going to 2 year schools pay now. Books are at least twice as expensive and summer jobs only pay more because the voters decided to up minimum wage a bunch. It's still less than what you'd have made 40 years ago, but it's a bit better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:04AM (59 children)
If you go to college and choose majors based on post-graduate earning figures, you are setting yourself up for failure.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:39AM (23 children)
As opposed to choosing majors without considering post-graduate earning figures and graduating with something like Irish literature?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:47AM
Heck, that could make you more employable in tech!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:20AM (20 children)
The thing is, if you're going to make a career out of something, it should be something you enjoy. Hence the basis for "follow your passion."
That being said, people usually have more than one interest that floats their boat, so might as well pick something that is both interesting and makes money.
Of course, what looks good and safe today can be a dud tomorrow. So, pardon the pun, but you're making an educated guess.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:53AM (3 children)
a passion for something and enjoying something are not the same thing. this is terrible advice. work is work, and yes, it's better if you're doing something you like. that's not a passion. a passion is french wine, so the teen majors in that and competes for the 20 jobs in his country, in a class of 5000. a passion is skating, so he now teaches kids to skate at the community center for $10/hr. a passion is irish lit. so the kid now serves coffee to a guy in a suit.
the average salary for a career when a kid starts college is not going to be magically changed 4 years later when he finishes. something that is a passion, we normal people turn into hobbies. the best way to destroy your passion in something is to make your passion into work. your passion is painting? cool. now to pay the rent, you have to paint what sells, not what you want, and you have to make 20 paintings/month and sell 10. enjoy the inspiration.
you find a list of careers, sort by pay, and pick the first thing you'd be interested in doing. or you get a degree in passion, and bring me my fucking coffee.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @12:25AM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:54AM (1 child)
tell me, are you literally donald trump? are you the orange man? who are these most people that think passion for something is the same as liking something? i know, people say - right? that's what everybody says? very very many people, fine people, best people, say "I have a passion for noodles with sauce" when they're at the olive garden.
a balance between job satisfaction and money is literally avoiding picking your career based on your passion. it's picking a career on something you like to do that pays well. people like many things. they have one or two passions, and passions don't pay well. if you're passionate about writing c code, or you're passionate about unix administration, you got some shitty life buddy, and you should find something to be passionate about.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:08AM
Word salad much?
You certainly seem passionate about trying to take things too literally. I know, trolling is a passion of yours. Me too :-) Because it takes one to know one, right?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:12PM
I've been a believer that one should pursue the intersection of your interests, society's needs and what people will pay for. That is, unless you're independently wealthy, in which case, please stop screwing over the poor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:12PM (5 children)
I'm reminded of the Landscape Architect who was hired at minimum wage to be an aide to our disabled child in elementary school. Thousands of graduates in her field for dozens of available jobs nationwide.
While I believe it is true that most people can become passionate about many things, most of my classmates in the '80s had the problem of being passionate about basically nothing. What I believe our University children should be doing is prescribing a generously low required earning potential and then selecting their careers of passion from among those many fields. Instead, we have a tendency to optimize and herd like cattle in the direction of the peak earning potentials, which floods the fields with too many graduates and explodes the supply/demand ratio.
The lesson I learned, too late, is that salary level is only one part of the overall equation. Over-specialization will increase salary, marginally, but it severely restricts employability and your choice of places to live. I've watched physics PhDs get basically told where to move if they want to earn using their degree and the places aren't what most people would choose.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:02AM (4 children)
Everyone should have a basic set of tools and know how to use them. And how to figure out which breakers serve which plugs and maximum collective load per circuit so they don't plug 2 10,000 btu air conditioners into the same circuit as the kettle (or at one job run an extension ifrom the servers to the kitchen to power the microwave, kettle, and toaster at the same time).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 28 2020, @03:06AM
I know plenty of stuff like this, it's good for being able to tell the tradesmen to F-off when they tell me they can't get around to my service call for 4 days and then try to delay even further (like our recent plumber call), but... it's not much for a backup career when I get laid off from my main-line job description.
Most bizarre piece of career advice I ever got came from a stranger at a Holiday Inn while I was interviewing for a position at the Savannah River Nuclear materials farm - his message to me was "I started in foods 6 years ago, I can get jobs from anybody in the foods industry, but I'm basically stuck in foods for life - it's near impossible to start over." Part two of the message was: "they took real good care of mama when pappy died, he did hot laundry at the facility." Between the lines: start your career in nuclear, you may never do anything else and nuclear isn't the safest choice out there. In the years since I've run across two nuclear-medicine workers who died untimely deaths that certainly read like they came from on-the-job exposure: rare blood cancer at age 22 after a thesis on dosimetry, and general spreading cancer at age 55 after being "top guy" at a company with an isotope pile for 20 years. Neither one was blamed on their work, but the coincidence is hard to deny.
Thing is, even when you want to job-hop to something "beneath" your career position people still don't want to hire you for all kinds of reasons. I was told by a place that had an average 3 month turnover for programmers that they didn't want me because I might leave suddenly - well, hello, if I last 3 months isn't that at least as good as average for you? I'm not asking for more than your usual pay, so what if I get a better job and leave? I think they didn't want a non-disposable programmer with experience contaminating their culture.
Everybody should learn what I call "basic life skills" as you describe: how to add up load on a circuit, how to wire a switch / outlet, how to replace a pipe or toilet, even how to patch a leaking roof - all those things come in very handy when you can't get a tradesman to show up, but there's a whole extra hurdle to actually earning a living as a handyman.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:18PM (2 children)
If they have to take a year off to learn most of that stuff, it's a failure of parenting (and to a lesser degree, our hamstrung public school system). Children aren't used as free labor for nothing, they should be able to use those skills their entire life.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @03:15PM (1 child)
Who said anything about taking a year off to learn this stuff? Most of it can be picked up informally, or by reading.
And a lot of it you can pick up just by being curious.
Then again, I remember reading one news report where a mother was still wiping her adult son's arse because he was literally too lazy to do it himself, so who knows. There are kids who don't have a streak of independence, aren't interesting in learning how to do anything themselves, and parents who won't push for it because just doing it for them is the path of least resistance.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 29 2020, @01:54PM
The Wanderjahr is an excellent concept, and while it may look like a year off it is actually a year of independent functioning and cultural exposure.
I didn't have the luxury of a continuous year, but I did get 3 months one year and 6 weeks the next in which I learned a great deal more than the two years of graduate school they were sandwiched between.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:26PM (6 children)
That's a very female outlook on education and life. Men are required to perform and required to accept responsibility, and so make decisions somewhat differently than what you describe.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:28PM
I'm not so sure about your generalizations.
There's a lot of single parent families out there that would disagree.
What I described was an optimization strategy. Pick something you enjoy that you can make money at.
Since different people have different interests, this helps optimize everyone's experience because you avoid everyone surging into the same field because it pays the best, flooding the market, lowering pay, and most people being at best mediocre, if not garbage.
As an example, there's a government subsidized program a decade ago for people wanting to learn how to be a "webmaster's assistant " - whatever the fuck that is ("go make the coffee?"). So at the end they have to do an internship. We got stuck with a bunch of them. Including one guy who never figured out how to use a mouse. He'd get to the edge of the mouse pad and get "stuck."
Obviously he had no real interest in or aptitude for tech - it was strictly to get a job.
I studied psychology and sociology. But afterwards I found myself fascinated with the pre-IBM PC computers, and saw that there was something else I was interested in that was probably going to be HUGE. And let's face it, getting in on the ground floor is always fun if you have talent.'
Were my studies wasted? Absolutely not. They gave insight into why most managers are shit, most meetings are a waste of time, most projects are doomed, and how absolutely conservative and resistant to change most people in tech are.
As a practical example, there are way too many distros out there, and way too much duplication of effort and going their own way.
Logically, instead of having 2,000 people packaging the same software for 2,000 distros, it would be far more efficient to consolidate into, say, 50 distros, and only need 50 people devoting some of their time to that activity. That would free up than-hours to do something else, like maybe some real innovation, instead.
Logical, but it's never going to happen, because of the psychology of why people make their own distros, and this would be too much change - it would be like herding cats. So everyone wastes most of their time polishing their knobs - or their interfaces, because that's what everyone does.
Change won't happen because everyone is guarding their own little patch. It's the same reason we see such resistance to unions - even though they would prevent the illegal abuse most tech workers put up with, such as uncompensated overtime and crunch. It's too hard to give up the myth of the rugged individual toiling at the code face.
That's the prevailing attitude amongst the men who dominate tech. Kind of like turkeys voting for thanksgiving.
Every problem is a people problem, even in tech. And way too many useless turds have leeched onto it as a way to make money as managers, etc who can't do anything productive. And if they ever had an original idea, it would die of loneliness.
So if you choose based on money alone, that's not going to get you through the times you need to deal with the bs that every single field of endeavour has.
On the flip side, there's joy to be had doing any useful job (which most software isn't) with great co-workers. And in the long run it's more sustainable.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @12:39AM (4 children)
Well, what did you expect?
But seriously, I'll take that as a compliment. The world leaders who handled the pandemic properly were women and the men fucked it up. Probably has something to do with why businesses led by women usually do better than men (with the exception of women with political aspirations, who just f it up and move on, "falling up" the same as men).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:30AM (2 children)
Sounds like a political statement, more than anything.
And, to this date, the world hasn't taken the pandemic seriously. The UK identifies a new strain of the virus - and within weeks, it's on four continents for sure, and probably on six of them. Well . . . . maybe not Oz . . . or maybe so.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @03:16AM (1 child)
Its never personal / its always personal … it's never political / its always political.
Somebody else wrote that I think like a woman. And that men think differently.
There's plenty of proof of that, from risk-seeking behaviour in young males contributing to higher death rates, to studies showing men have riskier investment strategies in the same conditions.
I am opposed to sexual stereotypes, but there is some evidence for them. Whether it's innate or environment (nature or nuture), who knows? So we're stuck with unrealistic experiments and observational studies. The best evidence so far is transsexuals. Brain structures that are more like the sex they identify as than normal, and just the whole cross-gender identity seem to indicate gender differences.
Like many things in life, it's complicated, but it could also be an evolutionary advantage to have the sexes have different decision-making methods and ways of evaluating things, rather than having both sexes doing everything the same way, competing for the same interests , jobs, etc.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @03:55AM
There are stereotypes for a reason. Even the stupidest have some basis in fact, and the less stupid have a lot of facts to support them. Don't ever fall for the idiots who say that stereotypes are all wrong. Just don't join the other set of idiots who can't see past a stereotype.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:25PM
Nancy Pelosi is a man? Both McConnel and Trump were willing to cave to her demands before the election for a package around $2tn, but she kept moving the goalposts around to help Biden out. The package that we do get, is only about $500bn with the rest of the nearly $1tn price tag coming from unspent Cares Act funds that were returned.
The reason it might seem like women are doing a better job is that there are fewer women running countries and countries with female leadership are more likely to be progressive and wealthy enough to be able to take better action to handle it. Thatcher was a woman and a huge disaster when she led the UK.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:09PM (1 child)
Come on let's be realistic here. Most 18 year old's passion is posting on social media and non-stop training to become the next Michael Phelps, just as soon as masturbation is added as an Olympic sport. And beyond that most kids are not only looking for the bare minimum of work, but are also generally scared of things that sound hard - well hard in a different way than trying to remain conscious after taking a shot of beer a minute for 100 minutes - Century Club! Century Club! And on top of this most think that, no matter what they do, they're likely to become millionaires in the future. Because they're special. And so their weighting of factors in coming to a decision is going to be grossly distorted.
Most majors in colleges are going to lead to bad life outcomes, but they sound fun. I can go learn about social deviance, Ancient Greek culture, and ponder paradoxes such as "This sentence is false." Or I can go get through 2 semesters of calculus, another of differential equations, just as prerequisites to start getting into the fields that are going to lead to good life outcomes. It's easier to follow your passion when you're living comfortably, than when you're working at a Starbucks treading water on a $100k debt while earning $10/hour. And so even with that as a goal, a focus on outcomes is critical.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @01:16AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @03:26AM
Well, if you did, at least you would know about the Salmon of Knowledge, the An Bradán Feasa. Big bucks to be had, if you find it!
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:55AM (22 children)
Do you actually think people are going to college for some other reason than earning money?
I would guess for at least 99% of people, that's the primary reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:04AM
No, that is just 99% of you. It's called "projection". You see a lot of it around here. Pay attention to who submitted the Fine Summary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:13AM (17 children)
Some people on this board are more evolved than the lower classes who obsess over money and supporting themselves. They are gross, frankly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:19AM (15 children)
Don't assume poor people are of a lower class intellectually. I've been poor all my life, including one mercifully brief stint of homelessness, and am the furthest thing from "concerned only with satisfying one's bodily desires" this board has to offer. The hard truth is, though, food and shelter are the bottom tier of Maszlow's Pyramid and "self-actualization" is at the top. You have to feed the body sufficiently before you can feed the mind, because its substrate is the brain.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:17AM (14 children)
So, um... here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
The frustrating thing is that you might not see the point I'm making.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @01:33PM (13 children)
You realize that the dunning-kruger effect applies to all the idiots who major in feel-good artsies, at least as much as it applies to STEM workers? The difference is, STEM workers have at least some valid reason to believe they might be capable to solve life's problems. Now you should eat some of your art that hasn't sold in 5 years.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:36PM (4 children)
The dunning-Kruger effect applies to humans. All humans. It describes human behaviour, nothing more or less.
The field would be better off if techies bothered to study the humanities so they could get a clue as to why the field is so toxic.
Because "learn to code" sure as hell isn't going to fix all the problems of workers displaced by tech, and an "I got mine, Jack " attitude will just make it worse.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:20PM (2 children)
Since I'm not a code monkey, I have never implied any such thing. In fact, if you were to waste time searching all my posts on the subject, I'm somewhat contemptuous of those code monkeys who (think auto mechanics) pretend to be "computer scientists" (think automotive engineers). Many, maybe most, coders are nothing more than technicians, who want to wear "engineer" and "computer science" titles.
As a little tyke, I heard from my elders that there are three kinds of people in the world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what the hell happened. Those who make things happen are often toxic assholes. And, they don't much care what the others think of them. It's up to you to lead, follow, or just get the fuck out of the way.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @09:06PM
And some, some are toxic assholes that wonder what the hell is happening, and their ignorance makes them into the toxic assholes they are! Like Runaway1966!
Besides, everyone know the three kinds of people are, those who can count, and those who cannot. Now cut bait or swim. Some people never get educated.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 28 2020, @12:31AM
Most people can't code. Most coders can't code, which shows when they apply for a job and can't do a simple loop.
"Learn to code" only benefits the businesses (colleges and universities) looking to employ teachers via government grants to "teach people how to code." And that's a waste of resources and sets people up for failure.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:28PM
Dunning-Kruger mostly just applies to unintelligent people, when they're intelligent, it's usually the Imposter Syndrome. They're both basically ways that people cope to the same inability to know what you know, it's just that the intelligent tend to underestimate themselves and the stupid tend to overestimate yourself. Of course, you get exceptions, but by and larger the belief that you know less than you do tends to encourage intellectual growth whereas overestimating it tends to discourage further education and thinking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @04:52PM (6 children)
Sounds like you could have used some more humanities courses. Also nice sig. Little late since his presidency is about over, but still nice!
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @05:08PM (5 children)
LOL, Mr. Dunning-Kruger - my sig is for the incoming idiot, not for the outgoing idiot. I know it's asking a lot, but try to keep up!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:09PM (4 children)
Ouch, and here I thought you'd stopped the attrition of brain cells. Viva la MAGA!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:35PM (3 children)
You might want to tickle some of your gray cells - see if you can't recall the Dems talking about impeaching Donald exactly four years ago, before he was even sworn in. And, the resistance thing. And, the notmypresident thing.
What goes around, comes around, cupcake.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:07PM (2 children)
I'm curious, is being an ignorant moron painful? Do you wake up in a flop sweat as your nightmares try and inject reality into your conscious mind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:49PM (1 child)
If we can get permission to put you into an MRI for a few days, we might answer some of your questions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @08:17PM
No need, it being an idiot indeed causes me pain, but I don't assume everyone is wired the same as myself. Thank Jesus Maria Christo I am not Republican, I don't know if I would survive.
Props to anyone that can maintain such levels of cognitive dissonance, too bad it never seems to be harnessed for anything good :-(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @08:00AM
Here, the Dunning–Kruger effect applies to something else. Look at the first thing it wrote:
"Don't assume poor people are of a lower class intellectually. I've been poor all my life"
Azuma Hazuki is a socialist with TDS. There is no understanding of basic economics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:34AM
I always enjoy wondering how sarcastic comments like these are. I've known people who hold similar attitudes, and some that would find such a view abhorrent.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:08AM (2 children)
99% of people haven't had a single thought about what they should do with their life. They just do what their parents and other authority figures tell them to do, well into their 20s. The lack of free will and initiative cripples them. I blame their ideology.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 27 2020, @01:35PM (1 child)
FTFY
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:42PM
That said you've probably heard it all already... ;)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:01AM (10 children)
> If you go to college and choose majors based on post-graduate earning figures, you are setting yourself up for failure.
That's bullshit and you know it. There are many counter examples and, as other posters have explained, things change. Sometimes the change is rapid.
Take libraries. Twenty five years ago, taking a second degree to become a librarian was a path to a reasonable career and had been so for generations, although it led to a low but livable salary. Now, it is a sure-fire path to working at the supermarket shelving stock.
Take engineering. Twenty five years it was a path to an interesting career with pay that would put you into the upper middle class. Now it is a high stress job with long hours, long commutes, frequent changes of employers and a position several notches lower than upper middle class.
Take any service job. Fifty years ago, you could live on the money from one job. Now you would have to have three such jobs concurrently plus live with a bunch of housemates to even just scrape by.
Despite the absence of pay for most jobs, there is more money moving around in the markets than ever before. The difference is that now neither companies nor governments are reinvesting that money, especially not in employees. The money is all disappearing as "profit" into the pockets of a few executives both as direct compensation and through forms of embezzlement like share repurchase programs. How many of the big companies pay their share of taxes? Basically none. How many of the pay any taxes? Close to none. Fix that and many financial problems go away.
If the economy can be likened to an energy system, "profit" is heat.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @11:47AM (3 children)
Yes, these days the US is totally upside-down. You work your ass off. and are rewarded with less pay than you earned because your employer is exploiting one of the many ways to cheat you. Unpaid overtime, skip the lunch break, even chisel you on the "take 5" hourly breaks everyone is supposed to get. Young and inexperienced, and hungry to prove themselves are ripe for exploitation, and boy, are they exploited. You can take more of that when you are young, but you won't stay young. You should be spending your youth building a nest egg. not barely scraping by and unable to save anything at all. For many jobs, entry level pay is a joke, but you can't hold out for a better deal, you have student loans to pay, and now that you've graduated, the clock is running on those, racking up interest far above the rate of inflation. They wouldn't hire you as an employee, they would only hire you on a 1099 basis. And you take that too, because you're young and desperate.
That "follow your passion" stuff? Very useful to employers, to get you to accept less pay so you can be in the field you want. This is especially true of teaching. Yes, what job is more rewarding than teaching the young? So you'll be just fine with less monetary reward, in exchange for those feelings of reward, the feeling that you're Making a Difference?
They further count on you overlooking certain expenses, such as travel. Like one job that could've been done at an office was somehow always house calls. all over the county. $22/hour sounds livable if a bit low, until you factor in that you had travel an hour, unpaid, to get 1 hour of paid time, so your real rate is $11/hour, before tax. You can't get 40 hours of paid time per week, you can only get about 20 hours. as there aren't enough hours in the day. Yeah, sure, you get to deduct the traveling expenses from your income tax. That in no way compensates for your time, and cannot raise your effective hourly rate above $11, it only gets it closer to $11. You probably can spend less on car maintenance than you get to deduct from taxes, but it's not much. You also get that "standard deduction". After that, the tax rate on earned pay starts at 25%. Afterwards, I learned that the "employer" was collecting an additional $30 to cover traveling expenses for house calls, and passing on precisely $0 of that. No wonder they preferred house calls!
Meanwhile, the trust fund baby is making a killing in the stock market, and didn't have to lift a finger to do it. In a year's time, $1 million in index funds can easily grow to $1.1 million. $100k of unearned income, for doing absolutely nothing. (Historically, the rate of return on the stock market has averaged 10% per year.) If trust fund baby has $2 million, that's $200k of unearned income, no additional effort required. No education required. And, oh, if that money is in a Roth IRA, no taxes owed at all. If not, well, still no taxes owed until funds are actually sold, then it's 15%, on the profits. Hmm, pay at least 25% on earned income, and only 15% on unearned? WTF? All that's needed is a tiny bit of discipline not to burn up your principle. Just live off the profits, and don't panic and sell when the market takes a dive, nor get caught up in the enthusiasm and buy when the market is high. Trust fund baby can afford a college education, just for kicks, just to have something to do, and need care nothing about the marketability of the knowledge and skills acquired.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:02PM (2 children)
Yes, Indeed. Sadly, labour laws in the USA are utterly fucked. And even when the laws are in place, it's impossible to enforce them as well, unless you have an arsenal of lawyers at your behest, in which case labour laws are probably not your friend in the first place. And clearly, anyone in any sufficiently comfortable management position can and will exploit this power asymmetry - not just the labour asymmetry, but also the asymmetry in the pool of workers as you mentioned.
And they just had an election. Were any of these issues brought up in the political debate? Of course not. The people that have taken over the country have mastered the use of wedge issues to prevent any debate on issues that will legitimately promote progress. It's not probably that hard to do though when the broadest groups of the populace are so utterly stupid.
It's simply hopeless. The USA is a failed nation, with the few decades it took the world to recover from World War 2 being a mere aberration in time. Now they're happily sliding back into the dumpster fire they were back during the first Gilded Age. Study history, everyone. This is how things have always been and will always be. The USA will always be a country where elite barons fuck over the citizenry.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Sunday December 27 2020, @08:18PM (1 child)
I think consideration of laws and politicians misses what may be a much more fundamental issue. One thought experiment I like to is to imagine the people of one country being swapped with the people of another. Imagine we all collectively swapped with Saudi Arabia. So we entered into a system where all of their laws and concepts were installed and vice versa for them. Would the Saudi People suddenly become "Americans" and adopt our way of seeing things for the sake of our laws and geography and resources? Or would they rapidly revert to their own views and values? And vice versa for us within Saudi Arabia.
The point I make with this is that the laws of a country, the culture of a country, and all of these other factors are little more than reflections of people living within that country. It's not just employers treating employees poorly. The opposite is also true. Or consider how holding a different political opinion has now frequently become tantamount to a declaration of war. Everybody is ready to dehumanize everybody else over any perceived difference or the slightest of slights. And I do not think this is the sort of problem one can solve with politicians or laws. Our decline since that "mere aberration" has not been driven by anything beyond ourselves. And that's exactly where we need to look in order to find the solution.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Sunday December 27 2020, @08:55PM
I agree with everything you posted, and that's a very interesting thought experiment. I do think, on the more fundamental levels you are mentioned, that the core issues are a lack of ability to empathise, lack of ability to see things from different perspectives, proneness to infighting, and probably others. I think these are the fundamental properties that have led to the state that the country is in today.
Sadly, I think if you look at history, you will find very few periods where the USA legitimately improved. The ones I can think of are:
So to be honest, I don't know what the solution is. For the world, I would say it is to get used to the way things were when the USA wasn't a country that could be relied upon (remember how long they idled on the sides during World War 2?). For the USA itself... yes, it will probably just take a great deal of internal reflection, but also an absolutely massive social movement. It has happened before, so there's hope, especially now that a real center-left wing party (or faction thereof) is finally starting to emerge. The fact that it's starting to emerge suggests that internal reflection is finally starting to happen. But I'm not holding my breath - there's a very long hill to climb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @02:54PM
Many who invested decades ago and are rich now will tell you to buy property coz it goes up. So you take out a loan and buy something, become the new landlord and you increase the rent because you need to pay the bank right? And so now the person renting your property needs to make more money to pay you, so you can pay the bank, and the bank can pay dividends, interest and tell investors they're doing better than ever.
Then you sell your property for a higher price to someone else, rinse, repeat and the person renting the property needs to either move to a cheaper city/town or work more jobs. Sure at some point the music will stop and people stop "pass the parcel/property" and the last person holding the parcel "unwraps" the property and finds it's no longer worth as much, but till then...
In some places there are rent controls or regulations to increase affordable housing. It distorts stuff and is not very capitalistic but maybe it'll work out better for the "normal folk".
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 27 2020, @03:39PM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday December 27 2020, @06:35PM (3 children)
This is the thing most people miss when they hear reports about the "economy" doing great. The stock market is manipulated to have rising stock prices, and since the 1980's it has diverged further and further from the reality that the average citizen lives with day to day. Look how fast the stock market rebounded after its initial plunge when the pandemic broke. Since March U.S. billionaires have increased their wealth by nearly 1 trillion dollars, a roughly 25% increase. They have no connection to the economy as the rest of us live in it, other than as leeches. A healthy real economy has the middle class and even the poor with some cash (not credit!) to spend on goods and services. Instead we have massive numbers of people out of work, falling into greater debt, and otherwise struggling.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:10PM
Wage slavery, with enough slippage they can point to statistical outliers and pretend everyone has the same opportunities.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:42AM (1 child)
Exactly. I can't count the people who pretend that they are "successful" because they live in a million dollar home, and drive $50,000 automobiles - but the bank owns everything they claim to own. A person can be very poor indeed, and still be more financially secure than the average American. A tiny lot, with a three room house, paid off, is worth much more than a McMansion that won't be paid off for 30 years or more.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @06:57AM
"A tiny lot, with a three room house, paid off"
Right, but not enough people have that or the wages to even start the 30 year process. The middle class has been decimated by offshoring and a constant lowering of taxes on the wealthy. To keep things somewhat normal without massively increasing taxes on the lower incomes they lobbied to destroy needed social programs in the name of fiscal responsibility. Numb nuts like you cheered the whole time with anger at poor people riled up with race baiting bullshit. Three cheers for the party of no-responsibility.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday December 27 2020, @07:06AM
180 degrees from the truth. Obvious troll.