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"People from different backgrounds approach problems from different angles—that much should be blindingly obvious." It's not obvious and in my experience is n
by dbuder 7y ago
"People from different backgrounds approach problems from different angles—that much should be blindingly obvious."
It's not obvious and in my experience is nonsense when it comes to the workplace, it doesn't matter what color your skin is or where you grew up, if you're at company x it's because you fit through the same sieve and have the social awareness to shut up and conform. I have both observed and learned the hard way again and again that even a good solution to a long term problem will be ignored or treated with hostility.
You are more likely to be fired for your suggestion box submission than your idea implemented.
- goatinaboat 7y agoRight. If everyone in an organisation is a graduate of the same handful of universities, attended the same lectures from the same professors, read the same books, is about the same age etc then where is the actual diversity?
- gonzo41 7y agoIn my fathers life you would see and hear stories of people who started in the mailroom / loading dock and, they made it all the way to the top. That doesn't exist anymore. And if you catch the hiring threads here every once and a while. You can see people hire for 'cultural' fit. Few if any people would hire for conflict or dissent.
- jessaustin 7y agoIn fairness, the journey from loading dock to executive suite probably included enough sieving and sanding to produce a fairly precise cultural fit. That is, the loading dock supervisors probably possess more variety than the VPs, but less than the loading dock workers they supervise. How likely is a person who has spent an entire career climbing one ladder to have any ideas foreign to the organization?
- gonzo41 7y agoMy point was more that they had that job for a time, and that shaped them. Falling out of the Ivy League and into a job with friends in SC and then climbing the ladder up doesn't expose you the rungs of people in life.
- banmeagaindan2 7y agoA genuine difference of opinion presents itself as trolling. Consider an idea you probably have not heard before. I come from a blue collar background and went to university to study computer science. I came to the conclusion that Moravec's Paradox means wages must decline for people who process information for a living. The western education system has been against tacit knowledge for political and social reasons - this adds a multiplier to MP. Society has been rolling with the assumption most working class would join the middle class and information-work led to higher wages. If this is not true then the wages for blue collar can rise over white collar. To a middle class person this is not one of the possible options. I can be wrong - but the consequences of this opinion are not acceptable - they will not be factored into the model. I present this as controversial but this happened once before in the industrial revolution for a smaller group - middle class used to have servants. If you are the 21st century's example of a Farmer this idea might bother you.
- goatinaboat 7y agoI present this as controversial I don’t consider that controversial at all - I have always believed there will still be plumbers and hairdressers long after the last accountant has been automated away. And those jobs are safe from offshoring too. I wouldn’t advise any young person today to go into “knowledge work”. Lawyers and doctors were smart enough to protect themselves with regulators. But programmers say “hey, anyone can program, it’s easy!”
- banmeagaindan2 7y agoI agree but we are breathing rarefied air - the middle class has been pouring its children into the universities for decades - they have bought into the belief information work is more valuable than - as they like to describe it - "digging ditches". The middle class is correct that information work is valuable and wrong that it has a high future price. Growing food was and is valuable. I have fun imagining what happens if everybody found out about MP at the same time. Real trends are slow but the social world could overreact. Will the herds of goats - former lawnmowers - take over the buildings at Google and Apple? Who will write the book of Exodus when the students flee the universities? Headline: Was Ted Right? Do Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page escape the Seal Teams from the NeoFeudalist government? One of us must write this post-apocalyptic novel - and you have experience with goats - a future lifeskill.