[HN Gopher] Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity
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Work is not school: Surviving institutional stupidity
Author : sherilm
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-10-02 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leadingsapiens.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leadingsapiens.com)
| bitwize wrote:
| At work, data, metrics, and KPIs are great for "fishing
| expeditions"--looking for reasons to fire you in case you start
| to become too expensive to want to keep around, or if
| middle/upper management just doesn't like you.
|
| With that in mind, remember that corporate IT department knows
| everything you do on your work computer. Every email sent, every
| process started, every keystroke. Good luck!
| hobs wrote:
| "Study hard, get good grades, follow the formula and ultimately
| merit wins."
|
| That's really funny, I remember the day I watched a kid's femoral
| artery get slashed in a fight and watched my teacher use his belt
| as a tourniquet, thankfully the kid lived because of that.
|
| Most of my schools were taught by burnt out underpaid angry folks
| who wanted you to stay in line, that's it, any other behavior
| would be met with derision, verbal abuse, and targeted violence
| by other students.
|
| Meanwhile rich kids get into good schools because they can afford
| after school activities and tutors since birth.
| everyone wrote:
| Yeah, in work it's all about who you know. What your
| connections and background are. Everything is like that,
| including school, but I guess the person who wrote this article
| didnt realize that.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| > Meanwhile rich kids get into good schools because they can
| afford after school activities and tutors since birth.
|
| This is a myth - most non-legacy admissions kids getting into
| good colleges aren't spending on these things in the way that
| you think. They're getting there because they're actually smart
| and hard working and have a stable environment (like two
| parents). It doesn't take much to get a very high test score
| for example - most of them aren't even paying for group classes
| let alone tutors.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > This is a myth
|
| Citation?
| astrobe_ wrote:
| I want to see that too; because OP is saying between the
| lines that "public school kids" are lazy dorks by birth.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Based on personal experience I don't believe it has as much
| to do with smartness or willingess to work hard. A lot of
| poor kids have that too.
|
| The bigger difference is that successful parents are
| constantly acting as role models, giving their children cues
| to follow, and passing on important knowledge that schools
| don't whether they realize or not. Many poor kids miss out on
| those things entirely, and as a result end up spinning their
| wheels later in life due to misplaced efforts and fumbled
| attempts. They may eventually figure things out on their own,
| but it'll happen several years down the road, and while they
| can narrow the gap closing it entirely becomes more difficult
| the further they ascend (feels a bit like Zeno's Paradox).
| righthand wrote:
| > and have a stable environment
|
| For example, having a good supportive community with after
| school programs or other youth outreach programs.
|
| I was dining and eavesdropping a conversation at a table in a
| restaurant. It was a mother and 8 year old daughter talking
| about her future. They were talking about a career path to
| being a doctor, SAT scores and how she is studying right now
| for the SAT and other tests and the extra-curricular that
| would be required (whether the child naturally wanted this
| path is unknown). The mother remarked on another conversation
| with her daughter's friend; that she did not ask the
| daughter's friend about the career prospects, because she
| wasn't sure if the friend had any. She didn't want to have an
| awkward conversation. Notice that the supportive environment
| doesn't extend to the daughter's friend in any manner.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Damn. That's quite early to be teaching the test. And
| specializing in niche extra curriculars. Competition must
| be fierce.
| apwell23 wrote:
| it used to be that tech provided somewhat a safe space for
| autists like me to hide out. now its full of management ppl who
| would've gone into other industries but were lured in by high pay
| in tech.
|
| i miss the days where tech pay only slightly above average and
| ppl in tech were considered losers and dorks.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Someone downvoted you and it's against the spirit of HN to
| challenge this because it makes for boring reading but
|
| I AGREE
|
| PEOPLE tell me WHY you find this thought distasteful or
| disturbing
|
| tech used to be a safe hiding spot for geeks to, idk, hack on
| something with total disregard for social norms and personal
| hygiene; now we have assholes weaponizing this by promoting
| RTO, hustle culture and "hurrr we are all one family" but it's
| fucking fake performance theatre and noone cares about
| computers anymore, only about number go up.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| In the past computers affected only telephone lines. Now they
| affect drones, taxis, movie distribution etc so "noone cares
| about computers anymore" and "other industries" as GP said is
| hard to define.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Also in agreement, I miss the old days.
|
| I still find that environment somewhat over on the ops side
| of things (I'm a sysadmin, technically) as corporate IT is
| still the red-headed step child so I get left alone for the
| most part but its still pretty rough.
|
| We aren't immune over in ops land though either. Still
| getting newbies that are in it only for the money and I've
| worked with people who actively hated computers and didn't
| enjoy the work at all, only the paycheck.
| snozolli wrote:
| I've lamented that in the late 90s, it seemed like there were
| a lot of smaller companies hiring at good pay. I've seen job
| listings recently, looking for senior engineers with a
| laundry list of skills, and the pay is lower than I made in
| 1998 as a new grad, adjusted for inflation.
|
| However, I have to admit that maybe companies that engaged in
| this seemingly fair behavior went out of business because,
| ultimately, it's not good business. It seems like the only
| places paying well these days are FAANGs (or whatever it's
| mutated to) that will work you to the bone.
| linguae wrote:
| As someone who transitioned from industry to full-time teaching
| at a community college, I sympathize. The boom-driven influx of
| people in the industry who are not passionate about technology
| but are passionate about money has affected even those who are
| passionate about technology, because what happens when a
| company's management and executives are only motivated by money
| at all costs?
| rs186 wrote:
| > If you have to, blame stupidity not malice
|
| > No one is out to get you; they're just out to get through the
| week.
|
| The author seems to be too naive. I don't have first-hand
| experience, but just hearing my friends who work at a certain
| company talking about what's happening, I know how terrible some
| people can be. And that's a widespread issue (otherwise I would
| not hear about similar things happening to people in different
| organizations).
|
| One example: people take credit for other people's work in front
| of higher management. You think someone would accidentally make a
| mistake and forget what they actually did themselves? Is that
| even possible? No, they know exactly what they are doing and why
| they are doing that. They are not trying to be friends with you.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Yeah I think "don't attribute to malice what can be explained
| be stupidity" is applied too broadly these days. There is
| absolutely malice behind some decisions/actions, and it's
| dangerous to just shrug it off. Even more concerning, often the
| malicious people will hide behind stupidity.
| andy99 wrote:
| > Even more concerning, often the malicious people will hide
| behind stupidity.
|
| yeah a lot of people that get ahead seem to be intentionally
| ignorant (to the point of fooling themselves) to provide a
| kind of plausible deniability. It's obviously put on because
| you see they are shrewd political operators and and "errors"
| are always in their favor. But there's this game of who can
| appear the most aloof and thus impossible to ascribe any
| malice to.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > But there's this game of who can appear the most aloof
| and thus impossible to ascribe any malice to.
|
| The people who are actually hard to ascribe any malice to
| are often politically very _inept_ , i.e.
|
| - (nearly) "everybody" knows these people are not malicious
|
| - but since people want to be manipulated, such people
| don't make any career
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| It is not mutually exclusive, as people can be both
| pernicious and stupid if they choose to be...
|
| https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-
| stupidi...
|
| Engagement is mostly derived from upset people, and thus
| algorithms or clowns behave in unsustainable ways to make
| millions of pennies.
|
| Academic bias arises from the ivory tower phenomena in a
| walled garden, and if some naive kid is often told they are
| the best-of-the-best special... they tend to truly believe
| the rhetoric as they slowly indenture themselves.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
|
| Most HR folks quickly tire of entitled peoples petulance, as
| no matter how conventionally "smart" a applicant may be... no
| office wants to deal with drama everyday. =3
| pixl97 wrote:
| This said, most HR folks are head deep in their own ass
| with their own drama, so there's that.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| External staffing agencies are a set of problems unto
| themselves.
|
| One usually exchanges Faustian contractual consistency
| with creative talent that drove initial success.
|
| Politics is rarely about the technology itself, and there
| are always skeletons next to pirate treasure boxes. lol
| =3
| BinaryIgor wrote:
| It's just it's stupidity or incompetence more often than
| malice; but, of course you should judge on the case-by-case
| basis and if somebody repeats certain (evil) behavior it's
| malice
| nick486 wrote:
| "sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from
| stupidity."
| righthand wrote:
| Agreed. For example, if 90% of C-Suite at corporation are only
| interested in extracting capital from their subordinates and
| riding trends, then it's malice, not incompetence.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| In general, some incentive structures allow managers to
| retain stock and 3% of unspent division budget as a year end
| bonus. Thus, they naturally cut every possible cost rather
| than risk growth liabilities.
|
| Perhaps someone will come up with a better incentive
| structure, but those people were fired years ago. As process-
| people often eventually win over creatives due to their
| singular focus. lol =3
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I don't take issue with the fact that he's naive or that his
| ignorance of corporate dysfunction has been shattered. You
| don't know what you don't know until you do.
|
| What I take serious issue with is that there's a whole
| ecosystem of not identical but comparable dysfunction in
| academia and yet he didn't spot it or is ignoring it. That to
| me is indicative of bigger problems.
| everdrive wrote:
| I would imagine that the author is young, very intelligent, and
| just really starting to pick up real-world career experience.
| What the author points out is true, but I cannot imagine most
| HN readers are thinking "I'm expecting my workplace to be
| totally fair and merit-based, just like school was."
|
| This statement is pretty interesting and revealing; school is
| very much not like that for a lot of people, and I suspect this
| means that the author was in a strict STEM curriculum where
| there can really be said to be correct vs. incorrect answers.
| (vs. something like English, social sciences, etc.) As noted,
| this likely also means that the author is just recently out of
| school, and is just figuring out how the real world works and
| how few people are capable of stepping back and judging
| objectively. (alternately, maybe the author has known this for
| years and is just writing for a younger audience)
| em-bee wrote:
| _" I'm expecting my workplace to be totally fair and merit-
| based"_
|
| i don't know where you worked, but i have been working for a
| few decades now, and i still expect exactly that. even more
| so than school was. the point is, even if my expectations do
| not match reality everywhere, not expecting that would be
| like giving up. instead, because of this expectation, i do my
| best to create a work environment where this is actually
| true, and i do not allow others unfair behavior deter me from
| my belief and expectation of fair treatment of everyone
| around me.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'll bet we agree more than you think. Understanding
| reality isn't the same as capitulating to it. Correct
| expectations can help you push back more effectively than
| constantly having your (overly-optimistic) hopes dashed.
| ie, I'm not just saying "everything sucks, be cynical."
| graemep wrote:
| It depends who you work for and what they are like.
|
| One of the nicest things a boss has done was when it looked
| like I was getting the blame for something was to email
| everyone connected with it saying he had done it, not me.
|
| I have worked with a lot of people like that too.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was my management philosophy.
|
| If things go good, the team gets the credit.
|
| If things go bad, it's my fault.
|
| Management 101. It's shocking how few managers know this
| simple motivational technique. The team appreciates it,
| because they know you have their back, and your managers
| appreciate it, because it's easy to fix the blame, and they
| [may] respect you, for doing it.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| He's got a program to sell you, he's focused on the problem he
| addresses.
|
| He's not helping people solve toxic workplaces, he's helping
| people shift their thinking as they move higher in org
| lumost wrote:
| That kind of behavior is far less successful than many would
| expect. Higher ups are pretty aware of who does what, at least
| at 1 year+ time frames.
|
| That being said, I've seen many outrun their own incompetence.
| Getting incentives right in large organizations is difficult.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Being aware is totally irrelevant. Their incentives are not
| about rewarding the right person. Their incentives always are
| to protect themselves at all costs.
|
| You are screwed if a higher up perceives you as threat. real
| or imaginary. you won't even know about your status till you
| get laidoff.
| dboreham wrote:
| Some people get through the week by abusing other people.
| apwell23 wrote:
| One of my coworkers made up a totally bogus story about me to
| show her "management potential" about how she managed a
| situation with uncooperative team member on a project.
|
| ofcourse our middle manager knew that it was bs but she was
| the one mentoring this person so she ran with it.
|
| i didnt even know about this when all of a sudden i saw it my
| review with hr.
|
| i considered this person my friend and we even hung out with
| each others families over holidays.
|
| i was totally shaken by the whole situation.
| bawolff wrote:
| Both stupidity and malice happen. It can often be difficult to
| tell the difference as we arent as objective as we think we
| are.
|
| However, accidentaly attributing stupidity to what is malice is
| generally not too bad. If its malice it will happen again and
| you can revise your opinion.
|
| Accidentally attribute malice to what is stupidity is an easy
| way to start grudges. This can blow back on you and turn
| someone who just made a mistake into someone who does actually
| hate you, and make third party observers think you are
| unreasonable.
|
| So erring on the side of assuming stupidity is generally a good
| call.
| superfrank wrote:
| I don't know. I agree with the advice even if they are not 100%
| correct.
|
| Yes, there are shitty people at work who take action out of
| malice and actually are out to get you, but in my experience,
| that's a small minority of the time. It's fundamental
| attribution error.
| geocrasher wrote:
| My experience with school wasn't that different from work life.
| Lessons that I learned in school that followed:
|
| 1) I am a dork, embrace it
|
| 2) Avoid Math
|
| 3) Scientific method = troubleshooting with purpose. Use it.
|
| 4) People in charge can be total idiots, but they're still in
| charge
|
| 5) Popularity and Competence are not related
|
| 6) Competence and compensation are not related
|
| 7) If you stay focused and just do you, you'll succeed despite
| other people's drama and your personal pains
|
| 8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything about
| it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your life.
|
| 9) People who believe in you are right. Ignore the rest and allow
| yourself to thrive despite them.
|
| School sucked.
| BinaryIgor wrote:
| 5) Yes - but even if not popular, competent people are always
| respected 6) I would say that there's correlation, but it's not
| 1.0, more something like 0.5 - 0.7; other factors matter as
| well.
|
| Sometimes these do not hold true, but then you have a truly
| toxic organization - one that you should run from, as fast as
| possible
| geocrasher wrote:
| High school was toxic, and so were my first few jobs. Lessons
| learned the hard way.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I'm with you except for 2. Knowing math is great.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Math is amazing, and I'm becoming interested in it after
| being out of school for over 30 years. But, my own
| incompetence with numbers meant gravitating away from them,
| for me. I am not dyslexic, but I think my ADHD does with
| numbers what dyslexia does to words and letters.
| pixl97 wrote:
| dyscalculia is it's own thing too.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Wow. I have never heard of this. Thank you. I just
| Googled it and while not all of the symptoms fit, a good
| number of them do. It's rather interesting, I know how to
| use numbers- I've done several types of analyses over the
| years, professionally. And my own budget/savings is done
| in my own self-designed spreadsheet, calculated/balanced
| down to the cent.
|
| But ask me to do subtraction? Forget it.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| I _want_ to disagree with 2, but OTOH it 's also so easy to
| do that I've just accidentally done it my whole life.
|
| 20 year programming career and I've never engaged with math
| beyond approximately Algebra II, in the real world. Hell, I
| go years at a time not needing anything trickier than Algebra
| I.
|
| Nearly all of the math I actually use I learned in the 6th
| grade or earlier, overwhelmingly elementary school arithmetic
| --mostly the "bad" kind I got from memorization-based
| practice that mathematicians seem to hate even though it's a
| contender for the best bang-for-buck of almost my entire
| educational career, plus a lot of fractions-related stuff
| (so, so very many people are terrible at this, can't even do
| basic things, IME it's where an awful lot of people
| permanently fall off the math-train, way back in like 3rd
| grade), basic arithmetic, and pre-algebra-tier simple
| variable substitution.
|
| Every now and then I get a bug up my ass to try to expand my
| math abilities, but 1) I'm so goddamn rusty at this point
| _because I never use any of it_ that I have to start back at
| brushing up on high school stuff, which is discouraging, and
| 2) I 'm not even really sure what I'm going to do with it
| (long experience suggests: nothing) so the motivation fades
| fast.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I do agree high level math isn't as useful for dev work. I
| have a masters in math and started working as a data
| analyst. I moved to programming years ago and I basically
| never really need to use the math stuff I know anymore.
|
| Weirdly my math background is actually more useful as a
| 'soft' skill in my current work. I am the go to person for
| talking to the data analysts in my company, and having a
| statistics background is pretty helpful for interfacing
| with managers or people outside the dev department.
|
| Every once in a while I remember an algorithm for doing
| something I can include in our app and feel like a God,
| lol.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| > Every once in a while I remember an algorithm for doing
| something I can include in our app and feel like a God,
| lol.
|
| I can distinctly remember the three times this happened
| for a team I was on, in my couple decades of doing this,
| because everyone involved kinda got a thrill out of the
| extreme novelty of doing something resembling actual math
| of even a lower-end-of-undergrad level. Lasted all of a
| few minutes to perhaps a few hours, but still.
| dkarl wrote:
| You're probably using math without knowing it. Debugging
| through a piece of code is the same as finding a hole in a
| proof. "This method HAS to return the right value because
| C. C is always true because B. B is true because A. Ohh...
| but A isn't true if the record passed in is for a legacy
| user with no org manager. The method needs to be changed to
| work for inputs that don't satisfy the current
| assumptions."
|
| It's not the math facts you learn so much as getting lots
| of practice with that kind of reasoning.
| codingdave wrote:
| I sit here, pondering whether that type of logic is math
| or philosophy. Most likely, it is the intersection of the
| two. Of course, spending even a few minutes pondering
| such things tells me that I personally need to avoid the
| math and embrace the philosophy.
| dkarl wrote:
| Philosophy includes the study of mathematical reasoning,
| but you don't get practice at it while you're studying
| it. It's like taking a music theory class versus learning
| to play an instrument.
| codingdave wrote:
| Hm. When I was studying philosophy, we did have logic
| classes, and did diagram out the logic of arguments. It
| was a critical component for success in later courses, so
| I'd say we absolutely practiced it.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| I own a modal logic textbook used by a course in a
| philosophy department, and on any given page it looks an
| awful lot like a math textbook except that the
| presentation is far friendlier and the explanations are
| better than are in 99% of math books.
|
| It contains lots and lots of exercises.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| OK, but I've never been anything but complete shit at
| proofs, and I'm really good at debugging. They don't feel
| like the same activity to me at all.
|
| This "well actually you're doing math!" stuff feels like
| some kind of rhetorical trick, when the "math" I'm doing
| doesn't seem strongly related to _or to require being any
| good at_ the math-thing it supposedly is. It 's not quite
| the same thing nor _quite_ so far off the mark, but it
| seems at least in the same ballpark (ha, ha) as claiming
| that professional sports players use lots and lots of
| complicated trigonometry. Sort-of yes, going by something
| like unfair riddle-logic, I guess? But in reality, no, of
| course they don 't.
|
| I don't see any daylight between this claim and,
| "diagnosing a funny noise in an engine is math," and if
| that's true then I think we're heading into territory
| where we've rendered the term "math" so broad that it's
| no longer useful.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| > If you stay focused and just do you, you'll succeed despite
| other people's drama and your personal pains
|
| Can't agree, I know people who got more work because they
| focused and did the work
| geocrasher wrote:
| These weren't universal truths, they were my personal truths.
| flybrand wrote:
| > 8) Abuse is abuse, and people negligent in doing anything
| about it are participating in it. Get toxicity out of your
| life.
|
| This needs to be taught more actively in school. Negligence in
| stopping abuse, or fostering abuse = just as immoral as abuse.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Exactly. I left high school over abuse. Another student spent
| the whole period sitting next to me staring at me muttering
| about how he was going to tie me up in the middle of the
| desert, and all the things he was going to shove up my ass,
| serious serial killer vibes, and the teacher just acted
| helpless, despite seeing everything. When they started
| stalking me after school, and it started getting physical,
| and the school did nothing, I left.
|
| Thankfully that level of toxicity did not follow into the
| workplace, but I did have a car vandalized by a coworker.
|
| Truth be told I was a bit of a punk, and had a knack for
| pissing off the wrong people. We all have our flaws, but
| nobody deserved what I went through. I'm a man now, not the
| insecure boy who tried to act like he was better than others
| to compensate, and I reject toxicity immediately. No room for
| it. Hard lessons to learn when you grew up with abuse.
| everdrive wrote:
| I was quite surprised how different work was from school. There
| are a few specific considerations I never really see discussed:
| - In school you can fail the entire class, (ie, all the students)
| which is less true at work. At work, you're just hiring your
| "section" of the bell curve, and insofar as being "successful"
| means "doing well at your job and not getting fired" then a C or
| D student can potentially be happily and gainfully employed
| indefinitely. They might have to take a less prestigious job, but
| they can find their niche and their place. This one really
| surprised me. You just don't have freedom of movement in school
| the way you do at work, and so anyone who is observant and hard
| working can pivot to a relatively-good situation for themselves.
| This just is not true at school. - You get nearly
| endless chances to fail at work, and you usually have a PIP
| period of weeks or months to parachute to another job if you
| actually encounter failure. I know some people who have been
| failures for an entire 30-40 year career. - If you're
| bad at writing essays in school, it doesn't matter; you simply
| need to write essays and getting better or worse at writing
| essays won't modify the number of essays you need to write. With
| work on the other hand you can specialize and minimize your
| weaknesses and play to your strengths. Yes, you can more easily
| change positions to accomplish this, but even within a single
| position you can just find ways to focus on the parts of the job
| you're best at and and excel at that area. - Very,
| very few jobs have anything which resembles testing. In the real
| world you must understand _why_ certain things need to be done,
| but almost everyone has the opportunity to pause and look up the
| details via references. Testing really does not represent this
| whatsoever. It's also the case that some tasks at work will be
| done over and over again, and in real depth, and via this depth
| and repetition you will actually memorize things via real
| behavioral reward mechanisms that are just not possible in a
| classroom environment. - You can always seek more
| clarification in the real world, and can even negotiate your own
| limitations. Your boss has asked you to do something? Have a
| conversation with them and explain the limitations in the
| approach and what sort of partial approach you think might work.
| This works great in the real world but is much, much more limited
| in a classroom environment.
|
| I could go on, but I was honestly shocked when I got my first job
| and I was actually a pretty good employee. This has been true
| ever since, but I was screwing up in school all the time.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| Seconding all this.
|
| I'm worry that somewhere out there there are kids hearing
| adults go "high school has to do [shitty thing] to get you
| ready for the 'real world', which is even harder!" (LOL no it
| fucking isn't) or "enjoy it, these are the best days of your
| life, adult life is so much harder" (what the actual shit are
| they smoking? Harder stuff than weed, for sure)
|
| I had a _relatively good_ high school experience, and even so,
| if people saying that stuff had been correct I 'd have surely
| killed myself by now, probably before age 30. There is no
| possible way I could have tolerated _decades_ more of life as
| unpleasant as high school, let alone worse. Harsh and short
| deadlines, general inflexibility of expectations, begging to be
| allowed to take a piss, the equivalent of multiple hour-long
| presentation meetings _every single day_ , very-early starts,
| lots of rooms with shitty lighting and no windows, terrible
| seating that you're in all day long, complete assholes common
| and you're just stuck with them, they're not gonna get kicked
| out (this goes for teachers and students alike), and _no_
| realistic ability to leave and find something better.
|
| Luckily, I had a part-time tech job in high school (I did later
| work a couple very-low-paid non-tech jobs for a while, so I'm
| not writing this "no really high school is far worse than adult
| life" perspective from an _entirely_ privileged perspective)
| and could see that something was wonky about what these people
| were saying. Then I go to college and it 's like a _goddamn
| vacation_. On to the "real world" and there are hard times but
| it's nothing like the 4-year marathon rigid-schedule grind of
| high school. Those tend to be more like, oh this _week_ is
| rough, or this _month_ , or perhaps this _quarter_. And I have
| so very much more freedom of action to fix things that aren 't
| going well.
|
| Adult life is far easier than high school. High school is
| _insane_. Like it 's an actually-crazy thing to subject kids
| to.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Now try grad school when you run out of money.
| aio2 wrote:
| on god
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Adult life is far easier than high school. High school is
| insane. Like it's an actually-crazy thing to subject kids to.
|
| This is probably not universally true. It certainly matches
| my life experience, but I have to admit that a life that gets
| easier and easier as time goes on is something that
| relatively few privileged people experience.
|
| For me, school was a prison full of torturing peers, strict
| teachers with no flexibility, and ultra-high-stakes tests
| that to a large extent determined your future. Whereas work
| is a paradise and a breeze in comparison. And as life goes
| on, I make more money, can optimize my way further and
| further up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and things get better
| and better. _This is an ultra privileged scenario though, and
| we have to admit that._
|
| For many (most?) people, school was lower stakes and less
| pressure. You fail a test? No problem. You get a B or C on
| your report card? Not the end of the world. You don't get
| into Harvard? I wasn't trying anyway... Then you start
| adulting, and the pressure is on! You gotta gets some kind of
| job now and make some money every week so you can avoid
| homelessness and starvation. You've got a boss on your ass
| and threatening to fire you (or worse) every day. Your family
| can't help you anymore, and you're on your own to figure out
| the world. I know a lot of people who just can't deal with
| adulthood and hate it, and wish they were back in high
| school.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| There's perhaps more pressure in a way because you're now
| responsible for fixing any problems, but kids are exposed
| to the exact same _risks_ of adult life and employment via
| their parents, plus some extra ones that adults aren 't
| subject to (parents can be abusive, for one thing--adults
| can abuse other adults in their household, but getting out
| is a lot easier for an adult than a kid, especially young
| kids).
|
| That's one factor that's lower-pressure (sort-of... plenty
| of kids end up working to help support the household, in
| addition to school) but still offering up similar risk &
| worries, on one side, and then all the bad stuff of high
| school and of not yet having the freedom of an adult on the
| other side, increasing pressure. I still think in the
| typical case, being a high schooler's a ton worse.
|
| Add to this that the pressure on you in high school is in
| part to perform well _so you don 't fail at adult life_.
| That adult life pressure, and the concerns about e.g. lack
| of employability or homelessness, are is already present in
| high school. The harm is in the future, but the pressure is
| _already there_.
|
| Though, yes, one absolutely can "fail" badly at adult life.
| I don't mean to suggest it's entirely easy street. It's
| just a whole lot less unpleasant or difficult _on average_
| than high school.
|
| I mean, truly, if adult life were anywhere near as harsh as
| high school, assuming I hadn't offed myself, I'd definitely
| have "failed" by now and be living on the street or
| something. Expectations are just... comically low, most of
| the time, not much-higher as so many suggested when I was
| in school, so it's pretty easy to do alright provided you
| don't get hit by bad luck (which exact same bad luck
| potential, again, high schoolers are exposed to via their
| parents anyway).
| svachalek wrote:
| Are you a young adult who is not responsible for anyone
| but themselves, perhaps? Many adults have to take care of
| children or their own parents, manage teams, work jobs
| with serious consequences on other people's lives, deal
| with having cancer, etc. High school was tough in its own
| way but I think mostly due to everyone being young and
| having no life skills yet.
| rockercoaster wrote:
| Solidly in middle age, three kids, plenty of other
| problems.
|
| Still way easier than high school.
|
| If next week the world went topsy-turvy and providing for
| my kids now (for some reason) depended on my attending
| and doing tolerably well at high school for the remaining
| decade or so that my kids are at home, no other options,
| _but also_ I 'm somehow relieved from all the hard parts
| of taking care of them and such... frankly, I dunno if
| I'd make it. High school was incredibly stressful (even
| after I threw myself a life line and deliberately stopped
| giving as much of a fuck about grades) and, quite
| literally, depressing, as in it _gave me_ seasonal
| depression that took most of my 20s to stop cycling
| through, and recurring nightmares that didn 't end until
| my early 30s, _and I wasn 't even bullied or anything_.
| The whole institution's a mental-health catastrophe in a
| way that _nothing_ I 've seen in adult life compares to
| (perhaps prison does, I, fortunately, am not in a
| position to compare them)
|
| (Separately, yes, I'm sure--very sure, having seen it up
| close enough times now--that old age health problems and
| the process of dying are going to be extremely, perhaps
| incomparably, bad, but I don't think that's what people
| were talking about when they said schools had to be
| shitty in order to prepare me for even-shittier adult
| life, I think they meant work and paying bills and
| parent-teacher conferences and stuff)
| pixl97 wrote:
| >school was a prison full of torturing peers,
|
| This can be quite true. My mother worked in the justice
| system and had kept track of the students in and around my
| grade. A significant portion of them ended up incarcerated
| a short few years after graduation. Being under 18 had
| protected them somewhat from the bullshit they had pulled
| in school.
| balamatom wrote:
| "Teacher, will we ever use this in real life?" "You won't
| even get to ask that question in real life."
|
| You may enjoy https://humaniterations.net/2018/10/24/the-
| first-prison
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I have the same experience, but would like to clarify that
| almost everything on this list is mostly only true of middle
| class employment. You absolutely can "fail" if you are on the
| bottom rung of the political-economic ladder -- this looks like
| a life in and out of prison, homelessness, despair, and an
| early death. You don't get endless chances from your landlord
| or your parole officer. If your area of weakness is "money"
| (earning enough of it, knowing how much to spend and how much
| to save, etc.), then you are still fucked. To someone with a
| poor education, filling out a job or EBT or WIC application is
| indeed a high-stakes test with disastrous consequences for
| failing. Your boss in the restaurant kitchen does not want you
| to question their methods of dishwashing -- he will fire you
| instead for being lippy if you try to negotiate around it.
| everdrive wrote:
| That's a fair point. My first job was retail, and I was
| accidentally late for a shift _once_ and I got put on
| probation for weeks and wasn't even allowed to take sick
| leave during the probationary period. The better the job the
| less you're treated like trash. People float all sorts of
| explanations for why this would be, but I think fundamentally
| people just don't know how to move away from class hierarchy.
| I think it's built into us.
| orisho wrote:
| I believe it's because if you are easily replaceable, then
| screwing up means you're not worth the trouble. If you
| aren't easily replaceable (whether it's because you have
| demonstrated you're a good employee or you're working a
| high-demand role), you are worth the trouble and you'll get
| more chances. There are other reasons too, such as
| jurisdictions where suing after being laid off is more
| common, which makes more chances, PIP and severance
| packages more likely.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >I believe it's because if you are easily replaceable,
| then screwing up means you're not worth the trouble.
|
| These ideas work great when you have a large/growing
| labor population, we're seeing it start to fall apart in
| a tight/shrinking labor population. "nobody wants to
| work" is the drum beat of the employers that used to burn
| employes.
| rmah wrote:
| Well, then they're not easily replaceable. Which implies
| those workers have other options. And thus employers that
| treat workers worse than other employers will see workers
| leave and/or find it harder or more expensive to hire. So
| it all works out.
| array_key_first wrote:
| It all works out, unless everyone is doing it, and then
| entire swaths of the economy just burn down.
|
| In lower level jobs like retail and food service, nobody
| can retain workers.
|
| You would _think_ then "oh, labor market, the cost of
| labor goes up"
|
| But no. Everyone is greedy, stubborn, and stupid.
|
| Instead, you just run your business with half the labor.
| Does it work? Not really.
|
| So then you think, "oh, well free market dynamics. These
| companies will go out of business because their product
| or service sucks"
|
| But no! Because everyone is doing it! And now everything
| just sucks!
| rgblambda wrote:
| Often I hear "I wouldn't take a higher paying job. It's not
| worth the stress". But I find the opposite to be true. The
| better paid the job, the less that's expected of you.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Most of the examples you gave seem focused on life outside of
| work aside from the last one, so I'm curious which of them
| you'd say don't also apply to lower-income jobs. There are
| lots of ways for middle-class people to "fail" too outside of
| work.
|
| Personally, I worked in food service for a decade (mostly as
| a line cook of some sort) and most of these rules still
| applied, maybe to a slightly lesser degree.
|
| Even with dishwashing, if you have some way of dishwashing
| that halves utility costs, someone would listen to you.
|
| The answer might also be "who cares, get back to work" but
| that's also true of a lot of middle-class employment. Your
| manager won't give a shit if you think the expense reporting
| system sucks. Amazon's famous for "disagree and commit" which
| is just a corporate way of saying the same thing.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| That's fair, but I don't totally agree that there is a
| "work sphere" that is different from the "life sphere" in
| this regard. That distinction between politics and
| economics is a synthetic big-L Liberal one that only goes
| back to approximately Napoleon. The fact that some people
| have worse jobs, worse working conditions, and worse pay is
| fundamentally related to the fact that they rent, struggle
| with money, and have a poor education. Our society has
| bucketed them into this life, which is a package deal, just
| like the middle class package is.
|
| Anyway, in this context I was mostly addressing the idea
| that these "lessons" from high school don't hold in the
| "real world". To me, the "real world" includes your
| landlord, the cop on your street, etc., just as much as it
| does your job.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Sure, but these are all true of middle-class employees as
| well:
|
| 1) _Many_ middle-class families rent and their landlords
| aren't necessarily any more understanding.
|
| 2) Not to be too political, but many middle-class
| employees don't enjoy a friendly relationship with police
| either and similarly can easily "fail".
|
| If your argument is that being wealthy affords you a lot
| of leeway to fail in life, I mostly agree (though again,
| there are plenty of minority groups who would disagree
| that wealth always affords that privilege), but "middle
| class" encompasses a very wide swath of people which this
| doesn't apply to. Many middle-class employees in the US
| are a paycheck or two away from being pretty destitute.
|
| Maybe you meant "professional" or "upper class" instead?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| We can quibble about where to draw the markers, but my
| point is that these "lessons" that people in these
| comments are decrying as mostly not true about the "real
| world", are in fact true for some people, likely even
| some of the people that you went to school with. You and
| I heard our asshole math teacher say "It's not gonna be
| this easy in the real world, cats and kittens!" and
| probably now regard that as the opposite of true. Many
| others wish life was as easy as high school. Thanks for
| the engagement but I don't see any point in "arguing"
| this point -- that we appear to both agree on -- any
| further.
| BoxFour wrote:
| I don't think we do agree, but fair enough. I'll
| "disagree and commit".
| taeric wrote:
| Worth probably underlining in heavy ink that if you find that
| any of these points are not accurate where you are, then you
| are likely in a bad place.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Maybe mandatory schools and merging education with
| certification need to change.
| godelski wrote:
| I also find really interesting how we frequently talk about how
| different the two are yet also reinforce the divergence.
| What you learn in school doesn't apply to the job Yet
| we still: - fixate on GPA instead of having a
| sufficient threshold. E.g instead of considering anyone above a
| 3.0 we prefer a 4.0 student over a 3.8 student. - we
| prefer hiring students with prestigious pedigrees
|
| I'm not saying what you learn in school doesn't matter (I think
| it does. It forms the foundation) but we often talk as if the
| knowledge is completely disjoint and then hire using academic
| pedigrees as the primary signal. I had an interview last week
| where a guy was saying "this is an engineering role. It's very
| different from academia" and then was fixated on my publication
| record. This seems quite common. We test
| applicants based on leetcode and academic like problems
|
| This was clearly originally inspired by the traditional
| engineering interview but it's become optimized where all we do
| is study these problems. Instead of building more things and
| expanding our portfolios. Maybe we should go back to whiteboard
| interviews and in person. It'll put the focus back on
| evaluating how a candidate thinks and you can't use GPT on the
| whiteboard (without easily being caught)
|
| But I think we like to say things and act a different way.
| Academia has lots of politics, but so does work. Navigating
| these is something I find challenging and exhausting.
|
| My last job my boss told me "this isn't academia, we care if
| things work." I was confused, because in my academic research
| the primary goal was to make things work. Just at a more
| fundamental level. I also used that knowledge to 20x the
| performance of one of their systems. They left the PR on read
| as it wasn't as flashy as the larger more complex model that I
| out performed.
|
| Honestly, I think just no one knows what they're doing and
| we're all trying to figure it out. But we're talking
| confidently about causality and then don't walk the walk. I
| mean the first part is fine, the world is complex, but do we
| need to pretend that things are so easy? Maybe if we didn't
| they'd actually become a bit easier. Instead of having the
| complexity of the world and the complexity of (business and
| cultural) politics and navigating all the double speak we would
| just have the complexity of the world. Idk, I feel like half
| our problems (or more) are created because we want to pretend
| things are easier than they are, because not knowing is scary?
| BinaryIgor wrote:
| _" Meanwhile, subjective decisions are constantly happening
| behind the scenes. The decisions about who to trust, or who gets
| a shot are made through informal reputations and shared stories
| about your value. Then the "data" is used to justify them in
| retrospect."_
|
| True; as long as humans are humans, this will remain to be the
| case.
| saltysalt wrote:
| This is great advice:
|
| "It also means that staying the course when things don't go your
| way isn't just a virtue but a practice. To play the long game,
| you have to keep showing up even after crushing disappointment
| without getting cynical of the process. Put differently, you need
| high levels of frustration tolerance."
|
| Stoicism helps, or any form of resilience training. Leaders need
| high frustration thresholds to reach the top, because the view
| from up there doesn't get any better.
| SilentM68 wrote:
| Hmm, this does not sound like an accurate interpretation of work
| culture. Perhaps this is true in an ideal job environment. The
| word "Work" says it all. It's work, labor, hard stuff, not fun
| and stressful. There is no actual way to manager that kind of
| stress unless your work is what you normally do for fun, and you
| enjoy. This does not describe the average work environment.
|
| In my experience, everybody that I've worked with has been
| stressed, by the job, the managers, co-workers, and their client
| base. The worse the economy is, the higher the likelihood of
| people getting let go, so of course everyone is weary of
| everybody else and making sure that if somebody's head is heading
| for the shopping block, it's not themselves.
| jongjong wrote:
| I always assume malice until otherwise proven and I let my
| enemies believe that I'm well-intentioned towards them.
| mayhemducks wrote:
| What a load of dung.
| not_that_d wrote:
| I have seen really inept people given manager positions because
| they were out going and then crash after six months in the
| position and expecting that we fix all the management issues for
| some reason.
|
| Honestly, I have no energy to be as social as the work life needs
| me to be, maybe that is ok. Maybe no.
| nadis wrote:
| > "When you assume stupidity instead of malice, you stay above
| the fray, stop taking slights personally, or turning misjudgments
| into betrayals. This way we retain agency and choice."
|
| I'd never thought of it this way explicitly, but it makes sense.
| octagons wrote:
| Wow, this is overall great advice.
|
| I am much later in my career than the audience I assume this is
| intended for, but I have struggled to mentor junior colleagues on
| many of the major bullet points here so succinctly.
|
| This should be recommended reading for new college grads entering
| a more traditional (I.e. non-startup) work environment.
| Definitely keeping a bookmark of this for that reason.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Sorry but I'd rather not play politics at work. If they don't
| value me, I'd rather just go where I'm valued for the time that
| I'm valued. I don't want to serve an undeserving organization.
| Playing politics at work implies avoiding adversity, which in
| turn means not actually growing transferable skills.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The drawing of the pyramid addresses something I've been saying
| to people for years on this topic:
|
| School is conveyor belt. Everyone can be educated, everyone can
| learn what they teach you in school. Depending on where you went,
| you can all be high quality or you can all be terrible. You can
| pretend to compete, but in the end, nobody is really stopping you
| from anything.
|
| Work, and by that I mean high-achievement work that is the type
| of thing that the top kids end up applying for, is a pyramid. You
| can have the cream of the crop starting a new analyst class,
| every single one of them a top 1% achiever in education. Most of
| them by far (like really far) will not be MD or CEO. Whether you
| are the guy who makes it rarely depends on anything you have
| control over.
|
| I need to tell people this, because if you go to a top uni,
| you've run into a lot of people who were studious, ambitious
| kids. They think "hey, if I put more effort in, I get rewarded".
| Which is true for these non-rivalrous things like science exams.
|
| Then they graduate, and if you were an ambitious kid there's a
| fair chance you gravitate towards certain careers. And in those
| careers, the game is different. If you think being a good kid
| will help you, you will be frustrated. Other young professionals
| have got the same plan, to stay up until the early hours working.
| Or spending time playing the politics game. IMO you can't really
| win at the pyramid game, even if you make it to the top there's a
| lot of sacrifice and a lot of nervousness about whether you get
| there and how long you can stay.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Is it weird that I have a totally different perspective on
| this? Then again I dropped out of college at 19 to start
| working in Big Tech (tm) after exiting my startup and have been
| there 15+ years now.
|
| It doesn't matter how fast you spin your wheels working on
| things unless those things are aligned with delivering value to
| actual paying customers. Politics also doesn't really matter.
| Well, it matters to idiots, there are certainly a lot of those
| out there, and there's some truth that if you piss off the
| wrong idiot you're likely to be kicked out to the curb. But at
| the end of the day the times I or anyone else I know has
| created real business value, it has been heavily rewarded with
| promotions, money, etc.
|
| The problem I see with a lot of academics is, like you
| mentioned, even if they are smart and spend a lot of time on
| interesting and hard problems, if they can't draw a straight
| line from their project to whatever business problem they are
| actually solving they don't last particularly long.
| bencornia wrote:
| > Assuming malice turns you into a cynic. In contrast, assuming
| stupidity keeps you curious.
|
| Curiosity is a superpower that you can leverage. It keeps you out
| of fight/flight and helps you reason when the stakes feel high.
| It demonstrates your willingness to collaborate instead of being
| reactive. Success at work comes from collaboration and
| communication.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I prefer just doing my job, while putting my limits in the energy
| and time I dedicate on it. And I just look for a new job when I
| get fed up and/or want a rise.
|
| This whole mastermind bullshit just seems mentally exhausting.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This is somewhat funny because many of my classes in school
| barely even managed a veneer of objectivity in scoring, and
| grades for many things were far more opaque than any annual
| review I've had at my job.
|
| - In general any class with subjective grading where the work was
| not anonymized, the name on top would affect the grade (sometimes
| significantly).
|
| - Some friends actually did an experiment once; person A said
| that the instructor was grading them harshly because they didn't
| like them. Person B said "surely not, maybe they just don't like
| your writing style." So they wrote papers and swapped their
| names. The paper written by person A, but with person B's name on
| it got an A, the other got a B-.
|
| - The most extreme case of this was when I pissed off my
| instructor and she took me aside and informed me that regardless
| of the quality of work I turned in, I would not be getting a
| grade higher than a C on any assignment, and I should expect a D
| for the class. In retrospect, I think the instructor was trying
| to get me to drop her class, but I was a freshman and didn't
| realize that was something you could do 4 weeks into the semester
| and I ended up with a D.
|
| - I once had a paper returned scored "56/100" the only comments
| on the paper were "Great Job!! Almost an A paper!" The cutoff for
| a passing grade in that class was 60%.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Yeah the idea i that school is somehow a bastion of meritocracy
| is misguided.
|
| Academia is better at setting clear requirements and measuring
| those goals, but whether these requirements have anything to do
| with being successful or useful in the real world is an
| entirely different matter.
|
| School isn't reality, its mostly not even trying to simulate
| reality. School breads a lot of "Why was I not rewarded? I did
| everything they said i should do" disappointment in the real
| world.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Once it's nice and cosy with a customer base that won't leave
| unless it's truly awful to them, a company no longer has to
| really do anything right.
|
| Plenty of dumb stuff can happen on the inside with no penalty.
|
| That's the game you're in.
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