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Someday a “reality check” situation happens. Might be writing a cover letter for their first job. Or trying to pass college-level calculus. But eventually, if s

Someday a “reality check” situation happens. Might be writing a cover letter for their first job. Or trying to pass college-level calculus. But eventually, if someone doesn’t actually know how to read, write, or think logically it comes to a breaking point. It doesn’t matter if a high school gave someone all As and a college gave out a degree in Community Building. The market judges everyone’s skills, and barring nepotism, the market will pay everyone what they are worth, which is sadly not much for a lot of people. After all, if you had to hire someone, are you going to offer a job to someone who writes in broken emoji-gibberish and can’t multiply? One time I got a resume from someone at a fairly well-regarded college for an internship, and the cover letter was a single run-on sentence without any capitalization. How could this person possibly succeed? How much money did they spend getting to this point of obvious failure? Very sad

Rumudiez 3y ago
> barring nepotism this is a pretty big issue, though. even here on hn, many folks claim the best or only way to get a good job is by networking
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Getting a first job is very helpful with nepotism. But to sustain being a negative employee - one that brings no value if not hurts the organization - I have only seen with the children / relatives of executives, and in the government.
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    I got a job as a "student worker" when I was in college, because my dad wanted to hire me in his graphics studio office. I was lazy one month and he wrote me up, gave me a PIP. I worked harder after that. :-) The best part of it was that I got to take walks with my dad during the lunch hour every day.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Most networking is not nepotism.
- twelve40 3y ago
  networking != nepotism
david38 3y ago
This isn’t true except for at the most extreme examples. Plenty of people have been promoted “out of the way”.
nullifidian 3y ago
>The market judges everyone’s skills, and barring nepotism, the market will pay everyone what they are worth That's when the the miseducated majority will find that the market is unjust. All goes according to plan.
tenpies 3y ago
> barring nepotism, And that's where Woke comes in. Sure, you're utterly incompetent but you have the Approved Believes, support the Approved Causes in the Approved Way, and you ticked the right superficial Identity+ checkboxes we needed. You're hired.
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  The really sad thing is that the once the markets stop rewarding woke-ism, all these people will be out of a job AND lack the skills to make it in the real world, because these companies have coddled them their entire working lives and stifled any growth opportunities to defend a "safe space".
- Varriount 3y ago
  Believe me, if it were that simple, I wouldn't have spent 3+ months looking for a job. In any case, what check boxes are you specifically referencing? Appearance?
  - gettodachoppa 3y ago
    If you're a straight white male, have you tried identifying as LGBT for oppression ladder points? If I was an American in need of a job I'd do it for sure.
nradov 3y ago
That "reality check" will never come for some people because they will get government jobs where the hiring process depends more on ideology than competence. For example, do you believe that working in the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing requires thinking logically?
- lovich 3y ago
  Do you believe that so many government jobs that would completely ignore results exist that will absorb our entire society’s yearly group of young adults entering the job market or do you maybe think that’s an extremely niche situation even if we accept at face value that they target ideology over all results?
achenet 3y ago
> The market judges everyone’s skills, and barring nepotism, the market will pay everyone what they are worth, which is sadly not much for a lot of people. false in the general case, you're basically invoking a just world hypothesis without actual proof for it. For a counter example, please see slavery - slaves were not paid anything, despite obviously producing something of worth. Furthermore, there was no difference in the salaries between slaves, despite there presumably being differences in output. For another counter example, you can look into the variation in programmer salaries based on country, or more generally location. The same job will pay anywhere from $180k in SF to $8k in India, due to differences in cost of living, which have a priori zero effect on programmer 'worth', which I presume would be how good the programmer is at writing code and delivering business value. It is true that at a certain point, 'real skills' matter - eventually, if you're working as a software engineer, you need to write code. However, it is false to assume there is anything besides a maybe a very mild correlation, if any, in the salaries of software engineers and their ability. You can have a Polish dev with 15 years of experience making less than a new grad in California, and that has nothing to do with skill, but everything to do with regional differences in salary.
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  You're missing the point. OP is generally right. It's a hard world out there, and you have to be educated to succeed at anything more than a trade or service industry job.
  - achenet 3y ago
    > It's a hard world out there, and you have to be educated to succeed at anything more than a trade or service industry job. this is true. The market isn't fair however, nor does it pay everyone what they are worth, and I would rather correct that common falsehood when I see it.
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      The market pays what their skills are worth given the demand for their skills in that location. That's all. If someone is in India they will not be paid a SF salary for many reasons. But the market sorts all of it into a quantifiable price for labor. If you want to voluntarily pay more than what the market demands, that's more akin to charity.

Rumudiez 3y ago

> barring nepotism this is a pretty big issue, though. even here on hn, many folks claim the best or only way to get a good job is by networking

monero-xmr 3y ago
Getting a first job is very helpful with nepotism. But to sustain being a negative employee - one that brings no value if not hurts the organization - I have only seen with the children / relatives of executives, and in the government.
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  I got a job as a "student worker" when I was in college, because my dad wanted to hire me in his graphics studio office. I was lazy one month and he wrote me up, gave me a PIP. I worked harder after that. :-) The best part of it was that I got to take walks with my dad during the lunch hour every day.
dotnet00 3y ago
Most networking is not nepotism.
twelve40 3y ago
networking != nepotism

david38 3y ago

This isn’t true except for at the most extreme examples. Plenty of people have been promoted “out of the way”.

nullifidian 3y ago

>The market judges everyone’s skills, and barring nepotism, the market will pay everyone what they are worth That's when the the miseducated majority will find that the market is unjust. All goes according to plan.

tenpies 3y ago

> barring nepotism, And that's where Woke comes in. Sure, you're utterly incompetent but you have the Approved Believes, support the Approved Causes in the Approved Way, and you ticked the right superficial Identity+ checkboxes we needed. You're hired.

syndicatedjelly 3y ago
The really sad thing is that the once the markets stop rewarding woke-ism, all these people will be out of a job AND lack the skills to make it in the real world, because these companies have coddled them their entire working lives and stifled any growth opportunities to defend a "safe space".
Varriount 3y ago
Believe me, if it were that simple, I wouldn't have spent 3+ months looking for a job. In any case, what check boxes are you specifically referencing? Appearance?
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  If you're a straight white male, have you tried identifying as LGBT for oppression ladder points? If I was an American in need of a job I'd do it for sure.

nradov 3y ago

That "reality check" will never come for some people because they will get government jobs where the hiring process depends more on ideology than competence. For example, do you believe that working in the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing requires thinking logically?

lovich 3y ago
Do you believe that so many government jobs that would completely ignore results exist that will absorb our entire society’s yearly group of young adults entering the job market or do you maybe think that’s an extremely niche situation even if we accept at face value that they target ideology over all results?

achenet 3y ago

> The market judges everyone’s skills, and barring nepotism, the market will pay everyone what they are worth, which is sadly not much for a lot of people. false in the general case, you're basically invoking a just world hypothesis without actual proof for it. For a counter example, please see slavery - slaves were not paid anything, despite obviously producing something of worth. Furthermore, there was no difference in the salaries between slaves, despite there presumably being differences in output. For another counter example, you can look into the variation in programmer salaries based on country, or more generally location. The same job will pay anywhere from $180k in SF to $8k in India, due to differences in cost of living, which have a priori zero effect on programmer 'worth', which I presume would be how good the programmer is at writing code and delivering business value. It is true that at a certain point, 'real skills' matter - eventually, if you're working as a software engineer, you need to write code. However, it is false to assume there is anything besides a maybe a very mild correlation, if any, in the salaries of software engineers and their ability. You can have a Polish dev with 15 years of experience making less than a new grad in California, and that has nothing to do with skill, but everything to do with regional differences in salary.

TimTheTinker 3y ago
You're missing the point. OP is generally right. It's a hard world out there, and you have to be educated to succeed at anything more than a trade or service industry job.
- achenet 3y ago
  > It's a hard world out there, and you have to be educated to succeed at anything more than a trade or service industry job. this is true. The market isn't fair however, nor does it pay everyone what they are worth, and I would rather correct that common falsehood when I see it.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    The market pays what their skills are worth given the demand for their skills in that location. That's all. If someone is in India they will not be paid a SF salary for many reasons. But the market sorts all of it into a quantifiable price for labor. If you want to voluntarily pay more than what the market demands, that's more akin to charity.