Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
BENGHAZI 2
Oct 13, 2007

by Cyrano4747

GORDON posted:

3. Be a plumber. Be an electrician. Be an HVAC person. Your fingernails will be dirty, but your work will always be in demand, you'll charge $100/hour for your time with 3 years of experience, and you wont have crushing college debt.

it costs money to learn to do these things, assuming there's a trade school near you, and also people jumping to do these things in a lovely market has reduced the demand for new ones

speaking from a li'l bit of experience here

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

drans
Sep 1, 2016
Ramrod XTreme
I was a fat smelly NEET living with my parents after basically self imploding and dropping out of high school. It got pretty grim because i used to have a lot of friends by they all kind of disappeared. Eventually I got sick of playing grand strategy and drinking cheap wine and got a high school equivalency online. I ended up doing a bachelor of nursing on the other side of the country because I figured if I stayed at my parents I would have just been lazy and dropped out again. Now I'm a psychiatric nurse in an acute setting. I think you really have to just hit loving rock bottom. Like that one moment when you look in the mirror and say holy poo poo dude, what if I die like this.

Brainiac Five
Mar 28, 2016

by FactsAreUseless

Imaduck posted:

Oooh, :iceburn:.

But see, I'm comfortable with the "not being a dick part." It's the "fraudulently taking resources from social programs because I'd rather get high all day than work" part that doesn't really jive with my worldview. You're the one that justifies people like Mike Pence; I say I support social programs for people in need, and they point to someone like you and say it's easy to commit fraud and we're catering to a bunch of able-bodied drug addicts that just want to take money from them without working.

Since it fits the theme of the thread, I'll throw out there that while all this stuff is cute and fun when you're young and healthy, it gets a hell of a lot less cute when you're a sick old man and nobody wants to give you free rides, free places to crash, pocket change, or even look you in the eye anymore. Hospitals will do the bare minimum to keep you alive and then kick your rear end out the door to deal with your chronic health conditions on the streets.

But I'm sure you'll say "I know old folks who do it" or "the world will take care of me" or "whatever happens, happens" or whatever other bullshit to make yourself feel like you're on the right path and you've figured it all out. The truth is that even though you've lived broke and homeless, you've never truly been distressed or in the poo poo. Otherwise you'd take things like losing your free meals a little loving more seriously.

By the way, you're about 1% as interesting as you think you are.

It would actually be cheaper to directly kill people who fall out of the employment market for an extended period of time than just denying them benefits and hoping they starve to death, so your beliefs are obviously based more on your desire to torture people than even some murderous technocrat's yearning to kill the "useless" people.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted

Uglycat posted:

I'm kinda confused. What in my post led you to suggest I need mental health care? Another poster earlier suggested medication. I thought the post implied I need /food/. It's kind've insulting.

I think discussing some of your goals and expectations for yourself with a mental health professional would be a good idea. Bigger cities sometimes have free clinics or outreach centers where you can meet with a counselor (and hopefully trained social worker). They can also usually point you to other organizations that may help you for things like identifying shelters or food pantries. More transient individuals make use of those services as well and it might be a good networking opportunity. I'm sincerely not trying to be aggressive and I'm sorry if I come off that way.

Imaduck
Apr 16, 2007

the magnetorotational instability turns me on

Brainiac Five posted:

It would actually be cheaper to directly kill people who fall out of the employment market for an extended period of time than just denying them benefits and hoping they starve to death, so your beliefs are obviously based more on your desire to torture people than even some murderous technocrat's yearning to kill the "useless" people.
Look, I'm all for guaranteed minimum income and universal healthcare, and if we had those things I'd all be for people living the art lifestyle if that's what they want to do... but as it stands we're a long way off from both of those things in this country. In the meantime, this dude is choosing to abuse what limited resources we have, taking them away from other people who need them and don't have a choice in the matter, and he's encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.

And I do agree that at the very least, dude should talk to a professional just to talk through things and make sure he's all good.

Imaduck fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 2, 2016

Avshalom
Feb 14, 2012

by Lowtax
i died and was reborn a hot-shot litigator

Brainiac Five
Mar 28, 2016

by FactsAreUseless

Imaduck posted:

Look, I'm all for guaranteed minimum income and universal healthcare, and if we had those things I'd all be for people living the art lifestyle if that's what they want to do... but as it stands we're a long way off from both of those things in this country. In the meantime, this dude is choosing to take abuse what limited resources we have, taking them away from other people who need them and don't have a choice in the matter, and he's encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.

And I do agree that at the very least, dude should talk to a professional just to talk through things and make sure he's all good.

"Take abuse"? Been a long time since Business English, huh?

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

Brainiac Five posted:

"Take abuse"? Been a long time since Business English, huh?

You're being an rear end for no discernible reason, here.

BarbarianElephant
Feb 12, 2015
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.
Is UglyCat crazy, or is he just a common or garden crust punk? Plenty of them out there, just visit Portland or Tompkin's Square Park in Manhattan.

tbp
Mar 1, 2008

DU WIRST NIEMALS ALLEINE MARSCHIEREN
real talk, as a millenial i cant really take anyone of the older generation talking poo poo all that serious bc ive seen first hand how agnostic economic reward is to ppl who "deserve it" or not. typically tho when someone writes posts like this they come from the other side of the fence so older folks who think they've "made it" find it easy to dismiss saying like "ooh if u work hard (get ur fingernails dirty! plumbing owns!) you will succeed" etc.

i was a relatively average student in HS and college, lucked into a job working w/ exotic financial products due to the fact that i joined a fraternity and have leveraged that for the past few years where now im working in venture capital flying around the world outearning nearly all of my colleagues and peers, those that worked harder than me and those that didn't. if i ended up staying at my first job out of school (which was in utilities) i'd have a good amount of debt still and be probably below-average compared to them. basically if i went on the advice of some of the old ppl in this thread and others, i'd have worked in gasoline to pay myself through school and then would still be working there, being on the straight and narrow etc.

effort level, ingenuity, cleverness, etc. is such a small part of what i have seen makes a person succeed. i'd genuinely consider myself dead-average in both work ethic and in intelligence yet i've gotten a huge degree of luck over and over that have led to where i am now. it's a really skewed distribution of effort to reward, sure those that work harder probably have some degree of a higher chance to get better jobs, bigger house, etc. but it's like a million parts to one, it really doesn't make sense.

i think a lot of where ppl end up in life has to just do with the conditions they are born in and then strokes of luck from there. the older generations had more stable markets and could participate in more functional economies. that isnt the case for most of my peers and then you get put on a wack track trying to "go higher". like if you work odd jobs out of school for ages it's not really too easy to move into a "career" as ppl make it seem, there's been a few times i was biting my fingernails but at this juncture my resume has gotten robust enough that i'm not super worried - but what about my friends who didn't have that stroke of luck? it's super weird.

guys like that tony montana dude make me laugh a bit as well. because the perspective about what runs the world is all skewed up. he's talking about how ppl my age dont wanna do mundane jobs etc. and that's what is making them have a rough time economically. even putting aside the fact that on a statistical scale that's a pretty silly thought to have all together, i hardly consider most ppl w/ those mundane jobs having "made it". like for example in the next few days im closing a deal to buy a company staffed primarily by dudes in their 30s or 40s who work on their hands and knees doing hard labor quite often. they worked really hard and had no preconceptions about what they were owed by society at large and yet by sheer luck of the draw im in a wildly advantageous position compared to them, i get to sit in an air conditioned office, do a few excel sheets and make a few phone calls and outearn them to a super high degree. but if only they were okay with having mundane jobs and not being rock stars! it's a silly way to think that, IMO.

luckily, from what i can tell, the country that i live in now is a bit more forgiving to people who try to make a living some way or another (just moved to australia). but frankly i'd be in favor of more and more, i'm under no illusion that i dont "deserve" the money i'm making so if i were to put it back into the country that's letting me live and work here than i'd be more than glad to. it's funny how the ire of many ppl goes toward those making nothing and taking nothing from the state, and ppl like me get to skate by because we wear suits to work and can do a pivot loving table, it's all useless crap but somehow an entire generation of middle aged folks have been conditioned to be mad at teenagers and 20 year olds because they saw facebook memes about trigger warnings or participation trophies.

Azuth0667
Sep 20, 2011

By the word of Zoroaster, no business decision is poor when it involves Ahura Mazda.

-Blackadder- posted:

What kinds of new problems do you guys feel like young people face today that may not have been around in previous years?

I have a few friends who struggle with addiction problems of various sorts to varying degrees. Interestingly enough even though I know plenty of people into drinking and drugs, none of them are really struggling with massive life ruining addiction from those particular things. On the other hand I know a few people who struggle with much newer issues like Online Game/Internet addiction. It's fascinating just how subtly technology has crept its way into our lives and massively altered our behavior. I wonder if the rise in extreme sedentary couch potato lifestyle is primarily tech driven, particularly as a result of the Internet.

Reminds of this crazy pro-read article I read some years back.

Idiotic HR people that have no idea what they are trying to hire for. The job market is hard enough as it is but, these people make it worse. To top it all off they have the audacity to complain that "oh there are so many applications we can't sort them all." I don't know about anyone else but, when I complained about doing my job before people told me to suck it up and do my job. I don't know why these HR people think they should be special snowflakes and exempt from that.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about :

Lab tech:

Job Description: The guy that makes microbiological media and cooks stuff in an autoclave.
Job Requirements: 5 years experience in an industrial or research setting involving microbiology.

This might seem reasonable to the untrained eye but, anyone that can follow a simple cookbook recipe can do this.

or

Lab tech:

Job Description: The guy that does thin-layer chromatography.
Job Requiremetns: 5 years experience in this random experiment technique that was published in 2015.

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

tbp posted:

the older generations had more stable markets and could participate in more functional economies

You should read up some if you think the economy was more functional in the past. There was a recession in the 80s that's much worse than what we've seen this century.

But what do I know, I'm just old and have life experience.

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

chemosh6969 posted:

You should read up some if you think the economy was more functional in the past. There was a recession in the 80s that's much worse than what we've seen this century.

But what do I know, I'm just old and have life experience.
Read the last four pages. When you graduated from college you had no debt and your graduation gift was a $50k/yr job with a bow wrapped around it. You didn't put in any effort and one day your lovely apartment turned into a four bedroom house. Now you're vice president (you didn't earn it, it was handed to you, you were lucky) and totally incompetent and just holding that spot full so that some poor mistreated millennial can't get a job.

Also, don't lie about the 80's, they've read about how great it was.

Azuth0667
Sep 20, 2011

By the word of Zoroaster, no business decision is poor when it involves Ahura Mazda.

photomikey posted:

Read the last four pages. When you graduated from college you had no debt and your graduation gift was a $50k/yr job with a bow wrapped around it. You didn't put in any effort and one day your lovely apartment turned into a four bedroom house. Now you're vice president (you didn't earn it, it was handed to you, you were lucky) and totally incompetent and just holding that spot full so that some poor mistreated millennial can't get a job.

Also, don't lie about the 80's, they've read about how great it was.

I'm confused here are you legitimately angry or making fun of people?

Uglycat
Dec 4, 2000
MORE INDISPUTABLE PROOF I AM BAD AT POSTING
---------------->

Azuth0667 posted:

I'm confused here are you legitimately angry or making fun of people?

I think he's taking on the Just World Hypothesis, which has reared its head in this thread recently and which is used to blame poor people for being poor and alleviate in the rich any feelings of guilt.

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

chemosh6969 posted:

You should read up some if you think the economy was more functional in the past. There was a recession in the 80s that's much worse than what we've seen this century.

Unless that was a typo and you meant '30's, you're completely full of poo poo.

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

JnnyThndrs posted:

Unless that was a typo and you meant '30's, you're completely full of poo poo.

Whatever you say, Corky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/business/economy/21leonhardt.html

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Maybe if you were older and had more life experience you would realise that an article from the start of 2009 is not actually a very good guide to the severity of a recession that was a) not even over by that point and b) was characterised by a particularly slow recovery.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

tbp posted:

i'd genuinely consider myself dead-average in both work ethic and in intelligence yet i've gotten a huge degree of luck over and over that have led to where i am now.
You probably suffer from imposter syndrome. It may sound cliche, but luck is often just the intersection of preparation and opportunity. While there is often some element of randomness to opportunity, 'dumb luck' is often credited where it should not. The fact is you had something in you that someone else saw and you attribute that to luck. Stop selling yourself short and feel good about the fact that you made some good choices in life.

JnnyThndrs posted:

Unless that was a typo and you meant '30's, you're completely full of poo poo.
The early 80's sucked rear end with very high interest rates, high unemployment, high inflation, and no economic growth. Google 'stagflation'.

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

Azuth0667 posted:

I'm confused here are you legitimately angry or making fun of people?
I was spewing the crap I expected the angry underemployed to start spewing. 2016 is a hard time to get a job straight out of school. So was 2008, 2005, 2000, 1995, 1985, 1980.... there was never a good time to get a first job. They always want to hand you a broom and have you do poo poo they won't do. That's life.

Jeb Bush 2012
Apr 4, 2007

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

adorai posted:

You probably suffer from imposter syndrome. It may sound cliche, but luck is often just the intersection of preparation and opportunity. While there is often some element of randomness to opportunity, 'dumb luck' is often credited where it should not. The fact is you had something in you that someone else saw and you attribute that to luck. Stop selling yourself short and feel good about the fact that you made some good choices in life.
Imposter syndrome is a thing, and tbp is probably underrating themself a bit, but no, luck is far more important than people (especially successful wealthy people) acknowledge. It's good to know that at least one person in finance isn't deluding themselves into thinking that their success comes from being a genius übermensch.

adorai posted:

The early 80's sucked rear end with very high interest rates, high unemployment, high inflation, and no economic growth. Google 'stagflation'.

The last recession was substantially more severe than the 1980s recession, this isn't even a close-run thing.

photomikey posted:

I was spewing the crap I expected the angry underemployed to start spewing. 2016 is a hard time to get a job straight out of school. So was 2008, 2005, 2000, 1995, 1985, 1980.... there was never a good time to get a first job. They always want to hand you a broom and have you do poo poo they won't do. That's life.

you show those unemployed fuckers, champ

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

The last recession was substantially more severe than the 1980s recession, this isn't even a close-run thing.

What would you know? You're Jeb Bush.

BarbarianElephant
Feb 12, 2015
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Jeb Bush 2012 posted:

Imposter syndrome is a thing, and tbp is probably underrating themself a bit, but no, luck is far more important than people (especially successful wealthy people) acknowledge. It's good to know that at least one person in finance isn't deluding themselves into thinking that their success comes from being a genius übermensch.

Knowing how to take advantage of luck is a huge skill. Some people can throw away a lot of luck.

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

adorai posted:

The early 80's sucked rear end with very high interest rates, high unemployment, high inflation, and no economic growth. Google 'stagflation'.

I don't have to Google it, I lived it and it really sucked, especially for people on fixed incomes. I had to find my first job in '81.

That said, the 'stagflation' period started quite a bit earlier(the term, I believe was coined by Ford's economic advisors) and really kicked into top gear during the Second Energy Crisis, the one everybody forgets about, in 1979, after the Iran/hostage bullshit. It certainly continued through Reagan's first term, but the economy picked up pretty well by '83 and inflation declined throughout the '80's. There was the stock market fart in '86, but the next real deep recession didn't hit 'til '90 or '91(Bush 1 and 'it's the economy, stupid')

There's a good reason the '08 economic catastrophe is called 'the Great Recession', and that's because in terms of the average American, nothing's hit as bad as that since the '30's, because it wasn't just 'Daddy lost his job', it was 'we lost our house'. An big chunk of an entire generation of people saw their dreams and wealth evaporate overnight, then blow into the hands of the investor classes. Many of these people will die, still renting.

The closest thing in terms of household destruction to '08 that I can think of is the Rust Belt phenomenon between ~1973 - mid/late '80's, where entire regions withered and died and nobody really gave a gently caress because they were just vestiges of the prior 'industrial revolution' and it's now the 'information age'.

I'm from blue-collar people but we avoided that fate because my father was smart and talented enough to get into ultra-precision semiconductor tooling at the dawn of the computer age, but there were a helluva lot of good people just cast aside when steel making and heavy manufacturing just didn't matter anymore because we could just buy poo poo overseas.

Even -that- wasn't as bad as '08. The reverberations from '08 aren't even over yet, and the statistical analysis of the resulting trends just keeps looking worse.

JnnyThndrs fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Sep 7, 2016

Lacedaemonius
Jan 18, 2015

Rub a dub dub
I don't have any stories to offer, but it seems there's a lot of judgement being passed on an entire group of people largely based on anecdotes and preconceptions.

I think the whole "parents' basement" thing closely correlates to the rising income inequity and phenomenon of the shrinking middle-class. My guess is that with the abundance of consumer goods and the consequent mentality that's formed that the SA generation (because let's be honest, we're pretty much all millennials here whether we like or not) is by want or necessity spending an inordinately high amount of income on non-essentials. Obviously this is nothing earth-shattering and--I would go so far as to say--expected from a generation that enjoys more material wealth than every previous period of history put together, but I think it goes a long way towards explaining the current ills.

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

To anyone that goes "hurr, that chart is from a comic blog", if you add "sources" to the end of the url, you can download a giant list of what was used.

Lampsacus
Oct 21, 2008

tbh all this thread has shown us is that there are some lovely older goons out there who have fallen into the whole 'back in my day' mentality trap. But thankfully, they are outnumbered. Cheers for that info graph. Putting real life stuff like money, income, time into graphics like that is always rather confronting.

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

Lampsacus posted:

tbh all this thread has shown us is that there are some lovely older goons out there who have fallen into the whole 'back in my day' mentality trap. But thankfully, they are outnumbered. Cheers for that info graph. Putting real life stuff like money, income, time into graphics like that is always rather confronting.

yeah, gently caress history. what's to learn from it

that graph came from an old guy too

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

Lampsacus posted:

tbh all this thread has shown us is that there are some lovely older goons out there who have fallen into the whole 'back in my day' mentality trap. But thankfully, they are outnumbered. Cheers for that info graph. Putting real life stuff like money, income, time into graphics like that is always rather confronting.
The graph just shows that labor has become a commodity and isn't rewarded the same way it once was. The people who provide in demand skills in the right locale are still paid well. We just don't need someone to assemble cars for $25/hr in illinois any more. Also, don't discount the fact that the 1965 production worker worked in terrible factory conditions compared to what you would find today.

yeah, I'm 36 and shouting at you loving kids to get off my lawn.

Lampsacus
Oct 21, 2008

adorai posted:

The graph just shows that labor has become a commodity and isn't rewarded the same way it once was. The people who provide in demand skills in the right locale are still paid well. We just don't need someone to assemble cars for $25/hr in illinois any more. Also, don't discount the fact that the 1965 production worker worked in terrible factory conditions compared to what you would find today.

yeah, I'm 36 and shouting at you loving kids to get off my lawn.
Yeah I gathered what the graph was about? What part of my post indicated I didn't? Or is this just an ironic shitpost like the post above it?

I don't feel this conversation is going anywhere productive.
edit: ugh

chemosh6969 posted:

yeah, gently caress history. what's to learn from it
yeah i'm referring to the whole 'pull your self up from your bootstraps' odor from some of the earlier posts in this thread, not 'gently caress history'.

Lampsacus fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Sep 15, 2016

Grognan
Jan 23, 2007

by Fluffdaddy
All I got from that is that some loving CEOs need capital punishment, given no one gets there out of skill rather than social connections. Hourly compensation for actual work is lagging severely behind the rewards reaped when you can convince the producers they have no other options.

GORDON
Jan 1, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

Lampsacus posted:


yeah i'm referring to the whole 'pull your self up from your bootstraps' odor from some of the earlier posts in this thread, not 'gently caress history'.

I once told a relative, WHEN HE ASKED MY ADVICE, that if he put down the bong now and then and left the house he would have an easier time finding a job. He just scoffed and called me a "bootstrapper." So yeah, that accusations means nothing any more.

James Garfield
May 5, 2012
Am I a manipulative abuser in real life, or do I just roleplay one on the Internet for fun? You decide!
one of my relatives likes to smoke weed
ergo everyone born after 1975 (except me) is lazy

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012
Yes... yes, that was GORDON's point. Good reading! Now pass the bong to your right.

Avshalom
Feb 14, 2012

by Lowtax
i am supported by the lord, who gives me jobs when i don't want them but i need them, and takes jobs away when i neither want or need them, and when i want a job... i've never wanted a job. nobody wants a job. now i work in a coal mine. the lord teaches me obliquely and subtly, i wish i could trust more easily, gently caress if i know what to do

Fried Watermelon
Dec 29, 2008


chemosh6969 posted:

yeah, gently caress history. what's to learn from it

that graph came from an old guy too

Maybe if you weren't a goddamn retard your life wouldn't be as hard.

If you actually look at the numbers in history and compare them today you can clearly see that the 2008 recession is and still is far worse than the 1980's.

We now have a generation of people who no longer will be able to afford a permanent home, and yet you still complain that it was hard in the 80s.

Your anecdotal evidence means nothing to sheer facts and data.

Maybe you should do some real work and actually look up evidence before you spout nonsense and blame people for your ignorance.

chemosh6969
Jul 3, 2004

code:
cat /dev/null > /etc/professionalism

I am in fact a massive asswagon.
Do not let me touch computer.

Fried Watermelon posted:

Maybe if you weren't a goddamn retard your life wouldn't be as hard.

If you actually look at the numbers in history and compare them today you can clearly see that the 2008 recession is and still is far worse than the 1980's.

We now have a generation of people who no longer will be able to afford a permanent home, and yet you still complain that it was hard in the 80s.

Your anecdotal evidence means nothing to sheer facts and data.

Maybe you should do some real work and actually look up evidence before you spout nonsense and blame people for your ignorance.

Thanks for the examples. You proved your point.

Lampsacus posted:

yeah i'm referring to the whole 'pull your self up from your bootstraps' odor from some of the earlier posts in this thread, not 'gently caress history'.

oops, sorry.

I know bootstraps gets you to a point but if you don't have luck or don't bother networking, it only gets you so far.

chemosh6969 fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 16, 2016

Emalde
May 3, 2007

Just a cage of bones, there's nothing inside.
E: this was not a productive post

Emalde fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Sep 20, 2016

The Dipshit
Dec 21, 2005

by FactsAreUseless

Azuth0667 posted:

I'm confused here are you legitimately angry or making fun of people?

I'm guessing from the charming wit and writing style, he's mid-to-late 40s, divorced and realizing that pretty young women aren't interested in touching his penis no matter the cash he splashes, thus all of the younger generation are assholes. So, put me down for guessing blue-balls angry.


As for me on the OP's question, I lucked into a fabulous job after I finished grad school after treading water doing a postdoc at a local university to be near my then-girlfriend, now wife. It was literally a case of my old professor being called up, asked "We need a U.S. citizen with knowledge of XYZ fields, and you do research in that field, graduate anyone recently who even remotely fits the bill, cause we needed somebody last year" and him recalling that yeah, I graduated last year and giving me a call. Before that call I was seriously considering turning into yet another semiconductor company chip-geek.

Now I work at a government lab more or less choosing projects I want to work on because they are supremely short staffed in pretty much every department here.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

Claverjoe posted:

I lucked into a fabulous job
Your description is spot on for luck simply being the intersection of preparation and opportunity. It wasn't dumb luck -- you were the right person for a unique opportunity that presented itself at the right time. If you had not done what you had done (which is get an education and make an impression on a professor) you would not have the job you got.

  • Locked thread