Bootstrappers guide to being successful.

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Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,959
7,978
So give the guy a slight edge in comparison to the other candidates. If his knowledge and experience is superior because of the side projects, that should come through in the interview even if they go unmentioned.

My point is that it is a silly arbitrary distinction and will likely eliminate a noninsignificant amount of candidates, just like requiring them to match all the keywords in a job req. How many people do you know that program on the side? I've been in this industry either tangentially or directly for 10 years and really having trouble coming up with one person. Maybe it's not a popular casual work topic, just can't think of one.
 

Fifey

Trakanon Raider
2,898
962
yeah unfortunately this time period is over, where hard work actually means something.

that shit ended with my dads era and when he grew up.
Well I'm thirty so it's still around, it's just primarily in the trades.

We have the hardest time finding entry level positions, half of the kids are too retarded to be able to wash a car and the other half feel like they should be making 35k a year. I regularly try to get our most long time one to start helping me(which is how I started) and he never wants to pick up a hammer and learn. Not trying to be a grumpy old man saying kids these days cause I know they were around when I started, it's just so rare to find a non retard.
 

ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
<Banned>
25,295
48,789
Once the 99% lose their last vestiges of political representation, then yes, I expect the food lines and gas lines to start right back up. And don't ever hope to get medical care.

I expect the US to be unrecognizable in 15 years.
I do too if we keep adding weeping vaginas as yourself to our population. Stop fucking complaining and get a degree worth half a shit instead of a useless sociology masters, fucking cunt.
 

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
Is this a joke? It seems more like the new generations aren't willing to work hard and then complain about no job opportunities. You could start an hourly job for slightly more than minimum wage in the Wal-Mart auto department doing oil changes at 16 and by 20 you could be making 40-60k in an automotive shop. This is not some fairy tale either, this is my friends nephew. Basically, you show up and do your goddamn job and you will reap the benefits. Have you looked at Lyrical's business thread? He is begging for people to just show up and do LAWN CARE and they cannot just show up and do the job.

It is the instant gratification, not willing to start at the bottom young (and old) shitstains that decry how hard the WANT to work, but only if the pay is right.
It goes both ways. I worked hard at my job in Texas. Showed up early for every shift for nearly ten years. Ran the night training program within a year of starting there. Got the MINIMUM fucking raise every year, DIDN'T get a raise one year because my manager at the time was a pussy and was scared the CTO was going to fire him (he was right). From one side of the mouth my supervisors and managers would praise my work ethic, intelligence, and say shit like, "I could use a dozen of you". From the other side they'd say shit like "We'll give you a promotion next year" or, when pressed, "we'll look into that". Eventually I got tired of it and took matters into my own hands, started working on my degree. Toward the end my dumbass coworker accidentally left his paystub in plain view. That fucker, who was dumb as rocks and whom I trained more than once on several systems despite being there for two more years than me, that fucker was literally making twice as much as me.

Being a good worker is not enough. I've learned that lesson over the years.
 

khalid

Unelected Mod
14,071
6,775
Once the 99% lose their last vestiges of political representation, then yes, I expect the food lines and gas lines to start right back up. And don't ever hope to get medical care.

I expect the US to be unrecognizable in 15 years.
If anything, in 15 years we will have better access to medical care in the US.
 

Cad

scientia potentia est
<Bronze Donator>
25,847
50,771
Once the 99% lose their last vestiges of political representation, then yes, I expect the food lines and gas lines to start right back up. And don't ever hope to get medical care.

I expect the US to be unrecognizable in 15 years.
You are a fucking whackjob.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
47,938
82,643
Embedded software and hobby electronics are loosely related to circuit design and layout. If you do the latter, you more than likely know a lot about the first two, but doing them in your free time isn't going to help you decide how many fingers to put on that NAND gate for the Cu45LP library.

Let me be clear, I have no problem with working extra hours for my job. I often stay late because I'm in the middle of coding a function and I'm actually having fun. I was quite frustrated at my last job because I had no way to work remotely. Sometimes, I'd want to put a few hours of work in during the weekend, but I'm not driving in for that.

The closest I've come to wanting to work a side project is to make a little program that will easily switch the default playback device between my monitor speakers and headphones. I've made spreadsheets for games I play, one of them had 100's of hours invested and you might have used it(original warrior dps spreadsheet, it was on EJ for a while).

But specifically worked on an open source project outside of work? Never. It's an arbitrary distinction no different than companies asking for too much on their job reqs.
I agree with you and don't work on side projects for the same reason you don't. However I'll reiterate my previous post that if you or I were switched into a job where we no longer do interesting work we'd naturally want to use our creativity on side projects.

When interviewing someone who doesn't happen to be doing interesting work currently the best thing they can do to show they're not just a 9 to 5er who happens to have went to school for engineering is to show they do something technical as a hobby. Maybe their electronic audio switch isn't going to give them the technical answers they need to do real circuit design, but it shows they enjoy it.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
27,504
43,769
It goes both ways. I worked hard at my job in Texas. Showed up early for every shift for nearly ten years. Ran the night training program within a year of starting there. Got the MINIMUM fucking raise every year, DIDN'T get a raise one year because my manager at the time was a pussy and was scared the CTO was going to fire him (he was right). From one side of the mouth my supervisors and managers would praise my work ethic, intelligence, and say shit like, "I could use a dozen of you". From the other side they'd say shit like "We'll give you a promotion next year" or, when pressed, "we'll look into that". Eventually I got tired of it and took matters into my own hands, started working on my degree. Toward the end my dumbass coworker accidentally left his paystub in plain view. That fucker, who was dumb as rocks and whom I trained more than once on several systems despite being there for two more years than me, that fucker was literally making twice as much as me.

Being a good worker is not enough. I've learned that lesson over the years.
You have to be your own advocate. Literally no one gives a shit about your value besides you. Not even your mom. Even if she's your boss too.

If you can't demand and command the value that you bring then the only one to blame is yourself. If you wait around for opportunity or for someone to reward you without a signature to accompany the praise/promises, you will forever be taken advantage of.

Hard work is only the currency, if you can't negotiate the asking price you will still get taken for a ride 100% of the time.
 

Rhuma_sl

shitlord
762
0
That Mike Rowe video was inspirational and it really does shine a light on what's happening. On one hand i don't agree that it's because of parents pushing a 4 year degree as the only way to live but when you don't get a degree in something and you're flopping around in today's economy, where every employer treats you like a roll of toilet paper, its hard to even get opportunities to make it without one.

When you're poor you look around yourself and see people with money, nice suits, expensive cars, jewelry and going out to eat, naturally you conclude they have a degree and you need to do what they did.

Your average electrician or welder isn't driving BMW's and wearing suits, most of the time he's driving a truck and wearing blue jeans, it doesn't scream "i make a shitload of money and you can too for little or no money!" Its a case of envy and those jobs just aren't loud enough to get young people's attention.

Bill o riley is a perfect example of the mantra "find what you like and make money doing it." A good majority of our young males are playing video games and are aspiring to be twitch streamers, coders and comp. Repair technicians for an already bloated IT industry, inevitably they are "good" at using and fixing computers but they lack a lot of skills and I'd wager itt tech is funded mostly on this setup, good luck in that specific field where every wow player has an a+ cert.

I think the best advice i heard in that video was look at where everyone else is going and go the other way, do what noone else is doing and learn to love it.
 

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Gold Donor>
31,523
24,124
Is there a trend of people losing access to health care or increasing access to health care in the last 15-20 years?
That really depends who you ask.

The US is dead last in access to healthcare among industrialized nations and our costs keep going up.
 

Deathwing

<Bronze Donator>
16,959
7,978
I agree with you and don't work on side projects for the same reason you don't. However I'll reiterate my previous post that if you or I were switched into a job where we no longer do interesting work we'd naturally want to use our creativity on side projects.

When interviewing someone who doesn't happen to be doing interesting work currently the best thing they can do to show they're not just a 9 to 5er who happens to have went to school for engineering is to show they do something technical as a hobby. Maybe their electronic audio switch isn't going to give them the technical answers they need to do real circuit design, but it shows they enjoy it.
I've never been on the other side of an interview, how do you judge whether work is interesting or not? My current job as a test engineer has a fair amount of drudgery, especially now since we're in heavy testing for release. But the times I get to work on the testing system, which is mostly written in Python, is quite fun. Especially coming from a perl background, learning Python has been a pleasant surprise.

I understand your points, they have some merits. I guess I just push back against this because I see it as a bad form of creep. I never want the expectation that you spend 10-20 hours outside of work to become the standard. Sure, those 10-20 hours will definitely help that candidate, but side projects shouldn't be a binary elimination criteria.
 

Cad

scientia potentia est
<Bronze Donator>
25,847
50,771
That really depends who you ask.

The US is dead last in access to healthcare among industrialized nations and our costs keep going up.
Those statements you made are unrelated to the question I asked.

I understand healthcare spending per capita is higher in the US than in the other OECD countries.

But is access to healthcare in the US getting better or worse?

If you don't know, what makes you think in general the 99% won't be able to get healthcare in some short amount of time?

And don't think I'm uninterested in the topic, even though I'm of the 1%, all the evils you put on the 1% are directed at the .01%, they are the ones with all the wage growth. I'm not finding it right now because I have a brief to work on but there was a chart showing the historical wage growth for the lower .9% of the 1%, the lower .99% of the 1%, and the top .01%, and it's the top .01% that have gotten all the growth. Your normal "working rich" like lawyers, doctors, brokers, etc are dealing the same issue as most workers. Starting salaries at big firms haven't changed since 2007 and probably aren't going to anytime soon.
 

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,968
Those statements you made are unrelated to the question I asked.

I understand healthcare spending per capita is higher in the US than in the other OECD countries.

But is access to healthcare in the US getting better or worse?

If you don't know, what makes you think in general the 99% won't be able to get healthcare in some short amount of time?

And don't think I'm uninterested in the topic, even though I'm of the 1%, all the evils you put on the 1% are directed at the .01%, they are the ones with all the wage growth. I'm not finding it right now because I have a brief to work on but there was a chart showing the historical wage growth for the lower .9% of the 1%, the lower .99% of the 1%, and the top .01%, and it's the top .01% that have gotten all the growth. Your normal "working rich" like lawyers, doctors, brokers, etc are dealing the same issue as most workers. Starting salaries at big firms haven't changed since 2007 and probably aren't going to anytime soon.
While you are correct in that people with earned income are not the problem, this does not change what Mist said. The divide between the haves and have nots is growing larger and larger real fast and, unless something changes, it will reach a critical point. Like Mist i believe a violent uprising is in the future if things continue as they have for the last 30 years. I also believe that the recent riots by the darker portions of our population are the beginning of such violent uprisings.
 

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
While you are correct in that people with earned income are not the problem, this does not change what Mist said. The divide between the haves and have nots is growing larger and larger real fast and, unless something changes, it will reach a critical point. Like Mist i believe a violent uprising is in the future if things continue as they have for the last 30 years. I also believe that the recent riots by the darker portions of our population are the beginning of such violent uprisings.
I can't say I disagree with this. I do think what will eventually set everything off is the realization that one of our essential ingredients to survival, water, will eventually reach a point where we just flat out don't have enough of it.

Which is why we need to be crucifying people likethis dipshit.
 

khalid

Unelected Mod
14,071
6,775
Access to healthcare in the US is getting better and it will continue to get better. Stop looking at the world through Dumar-colored glasses.
 

Cad

scientia potentia est
<Bronze Donator>
25,847
50,771
I can't say I disagree with this. I do think what will eventually set everything off is the realization that one of our essential ingredients to survival, water, will eventually reach a point where we just flat out don't have enough of it.

Which is why we need to be crucifying people likethis dipshit.
Don't be ridiculous. Water doesn't go anywhere, and 2/3rds of the planet is covered with it. Now the cost of water might change (especially if dumbass oil companies continue polluting groundwater), and it might not make sense to live in the fucking desert anymore, but thats hardly the end of civilization.
 

khalid

Unelected Mod
14,071
6,775
Don't be ridiculous. Water doesn't go anywhere, and 2/3rds of the planet is covered with it. Now the cost of water might change (especially if dumbass oil companies continue polluting groundwater), and it might not make sense to live in the fucking desert anymore, but thats hardly the end of civilization.
Yeah, worst case it becomes way more expensive to live and farm in places like California. Plenty of parts of the US have all kinds of fresh water. The world isn't a mad max movie.