Tales of the Competency Crisis - How do I into anything?

[Otterly]

Maybe not entirely related to the topic at hand but it shocks me how helpless people around my age (millenial/zoomer cusper) and younger are when it comes to navigation. I'm not saying you need to become the next Lewis & Clark but you should at least be able to get around your town without constantly needing to have the GPS up. I know someone my age who needs the GPS to get to work every single day, at a place he's been working at for YEARS. This learned helplessness and unwillingness to learn is part of what's contributing to the competency crisis.

I have a hilariously bad sense if direction if I’m not concentrating but the thought of needing GPS to get to the place ive been going to for years is alarming. Maybe he’s got face blindness and the associated navigation blindness

 

[Betonhaus]

I have a hilariously bad sense if direction if I’m not concentrating but the thought of needing GPS to get to the place ive been going to for years is alarming. Maybe he’s got face blindness and the associated navigation blindness

It might depend on the route. If there's like one or two main drags you have to take every time then you should pick it up eventually. But if it's like a densely packed city center where you would take a different street each time because Google tries to avoid congestion then you will be super lost.

 

[I'm using tilt controls!]

Maybe not entirely related to the topic at hand but it shocks me how helpless people around my age (millenial/zoomer cusper) and younger are when it comes to navigation. I'm not saying you need to become the next Lewis & Clark but you should at least be able to get around your town without constantly needing to have the GPS up. I know someone my age who needs the GPS to get to work every single day, at a place he's been working at for YEARS. This learned helplessness and unwillingness to learn is part of what's contributing to the competency crisis.

I encountered a zoomer in a restaurant who wore a crown of flowers around his head in former Chicago, now little Mexico. Zoomers show that they don't hate directions (they just want to be hand held), especially considering that doing the same in another restaurant would get you murdered I believe.

 

[Otterly]

I’ve had one today.
I’m working with a client, portfolio of work in the hundred million range, cast of thousands, blah blah.
They have ‘consultants’ on their team. Think big four that kind of company. It’s four people in their twenties from what I can see and they seem to rotate them through every month or two so they never stick around.
Anyway. they’re stuck on doing the project this specific very odd way and today I’ve spent three whole hours on the phone with forty people trying to ask them why. It turns out that the way they want to do it and their reasoning for that is so off it shows they don’t understand how it all works at all. Their plan is so off it would basically tank the project entirely.
We aren’t building a bridge but I’ll use it as an analogy.
They’re saying we need to construct the span in three parts and hover them over the water, then build the supports and afterwards do the contracting for metal and concrete over the next five years. It’s that level of retarded. Everyone in my side has been pitching up totally freaked out because these are the supposed big boy genius contractor consultants and we’ve assumed that they have a reason for retarded plan but talking to them today it ‘simply felt like how we should do it.’
I will bet you that this team is paid multiples of what I am. They have not thought, or strategised, or even understood how bridges work (balance a span on supports level of understanding.) they are incapable of thinking ahead, or thinking how their remit fits in with the wider work.
And when everyone in my side realised this they were aghast, because they’ve been told these guys are ‘masters of the universe’ types. We have had a lot of my ego soothing voice and a lot of senior people telling me ‘thanks Otterly I couldn’t have done that without causing a scene.’
It’s been quite astonishing to me to see how low a level of thinking is going on at what’s supposed to be a serious strategic job. I don’t know whether to chuckle or be horrified or apply for a job there

 

[cybertoaster]

We have had a lot of my ego soothing voice and a lot of senior people telling me ‘thanks Otterly I couldn’t have done that without causing a scene.’

So what happened? did they rescind the contract? fire those posers?

or apply for a job there

Maybe, if they pay so much and the barrier is so low.

 

[Otterly]

So what happened? did they rescind the contract? fire those posers?

Maybe, if they pay so much and the barrier is so low.

They have signed the contract a while back so we are stuck with the contractors. The outcome was that they did a lot of petulant sighing and insisting they couldn’t possibly have seen that and the client decided to do it mmmmmmyyyyyyy waaaaaaay. Win for everyone really because it should work using the tried and tested process we use constantly .
That’s just the thing, it’s NOT easy to get into. I know people from uni who went to work for this kind of company. They demand decent grades and they work you like a dog. these are supposed to be the elite masters of the universe consultants you pay top dollar for to optimise your processes.
I discreetly asked on our side if it was just this current rotation who were ‘challenged by the process’ and was told very bluntly that they’ve all been the same and are a menace .
A real eye opening day.

 

[cybertoaster]

They have signed the contract a while back so we are stuck with the contractors.

Wouldn't this be a breach of contract tho?

and the client decided to do it mmmmmmyyyyyyy waaaaaaay

Wait, they are the client? not your end?

They demand decent grades and they work you like a dog. these are supposed to be the elite masters of the universe consultants you pay top dollar for to optimise your processes.

Sounds more like another nepo depot where the only ones being asked for good grades are the people whose parents don't have connections.

 

[Otterly]

Wait, they are the client? not your end?

Client is big pharma. They outsource most of the work for legal reasons. The contractors are their vendor. I guess I’m another vendor as well, but we are running the portfolio management side. There are multiple subcontractors- maybe thirty or so doing various specialised things. I suppose in bridge terms it’d be like a state saying ‘we want a bridge’ and hiring me ‘engineeri g giant’ but also hiring some consultants for some u fathomable reason.

 

[TJT]

I am a staff level software engineer. This past week I have been helping another team interview candidates with a strict technical requirement. Meaning that the hire must absolutely be able to perform some basic programming skills specifically in Python and SQL. If this is not your area it doesn't matter. Suffice to say the need of the team is someone they do not have time to teach these things in addition to teaching them the actual job of applying them.

So I spent 15 minutes writing 6 interview questions. 3 SQL and 3 Python. I interviewed three candidates. Two of them were recent computer science graduates from a well known Texas university and the third was a guy with a background in data analysis and a few years work experience. None of them were Indian immigrants.

Guess how many could even answer one basic question? If you guessed 0 well...

 

[pippy]

I worked retail as a young adult, and I truly believe it's meant to drive regular, hard working people completely insane. Here are some fun snippets from my experiences working retail.

• boss at a fast food chain I worked part time once at suffered a stroke or something similar mid-shift and fell down. Then he proceeded to get back up and insist he keep working. The same boss once had to grab a pen and paper to work out 7x13, and it still took him a few minutes. He had been with the company 17 years.
• department lead at one store cut his finger halfway off with a saw and then proceeded to go to the morning meeting holding his half-severed finger with some paper towels and waited until the end of the meeting to ask what to do about it, then insisted he would come back to work and that I didn't need to clean the saw covered in his blood (???).
• department lead telling me he was making 17/hr despite being there for 30 YEARS and that they actually had to accept a dollar pay cut the previous year
• the high school cashiers struggling to mop a floor because they had absolutely no confidence in doing anything without it being instructed step by step
• some 45 year old Jewish bitch mixing bleach and ammonia because she thought she could make something better than the premixed floor cleaner we had an endless supply of
• new manager comes in and is a completely useless old white woman with zero practical skills at all; it took her 4 hours to help out and make 3 trays of chocolate covered strawberries for Valentines Day.
• My former boss being a literal former meth whore with her assistant being a current coke whore who then almost died at work and got brain damage because she drank like 5 energy drinks while coked up at the age of like 40.
• coworkers not knowing basic words like "poach" or "livid" and then getting mad at me like I'm trying to show off to them

A common issue with retail is a lot of manager pay is based off of their yearly bonus, which can be affected heavily by overtime and shrink and whatever else costs the store money, so they're heavily incentivized to have a horde of desperate part time retards who can't do any better than a solid team of 4-5 full timers and to let everything in the store decay until it's literally falling apart. Broken coolers, broken carts, and promotions are almost always just given to whoever the manager likes the most personally. Also, the reason why sometimes these jobs get posted online but they don't bite is because they already have someone in mind from inside the company but are obligated to keep the job posted publicly for a week, OR they keep it posted so 4 months from now when someone walks out, they have a whole list of people waiting. Most of these positions really don't want anything beyond a high school diploma because someone with options can't work like a little mong slave for $8/hr. No benefits also come in any time we want, 7 days a week. I worked in a position that would travel from store to store, and I saw 3 different Walmart managers in a year. Keep in mind the position pays well over 200k/yr at most stores here, and the best people they can apparently find are 400lb, room temp iq black people.

 

[オプセック]

I worked retail as a young adult, and I truly believe it's meant to drive regular, hard working people completely insane. Here are some fun snippets from my experiences working retail.

It's day care or what some now call a bullshit job. That's why it is what it is.

some 45 year old Jewish bitch mixing bleach and ammonia because she thought she could make something better than the premixed floor cleaner we had an endless supply of

Trench-warfare pilled.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

I am a staff level software engineer. This past week I have been helping another team interview candidates with a strict technical requirement. Meaning that the hire must absolutely be able to perform some basic programming skills specifically in Python and SQL. If this is not your area it doesn't matter. Suffice to say the need of the team is someone they do not have time to teach these things in addition to teaching them the actual job of applying them.

So I spent 15 minutes writing 6 interview questions. 3 SQL and 3 Python. I interviewed three candidates. Two of them were recent computer science graduates from a well known Texas university and the third was a guy with a background in data analysis and a few years work experience. None of them were Indian immigrants.

Guess how many could even answer one basic question? If you guessed 0 well...

Chat GPT and it's consequences have been a disaster for mankind.

some 45 year old Jewish bitch mixing bleach and ammonia because she thought she could make something better than the premixed floor cleaner we had an endless supply of

The yenta was fishing for a lawsuit. "Oi vey McDonalds tried to gas me"

 

[regalterry]

boss at a fast food chain I worked part time once at suffered a stroke or something similar mid-shift and fell down. Then he proceeded to get back up and insist he keep working

That's Stockholm syndrome levels of workaholicism.

 

[regalterry]

I'm sure most of you here are at least tangentially aware of the New Zealand dyke wonderkid that managed to sink a 60-million navy vessel.

Well, they finally released the report about the incident. Here's a short-ish video about it:

a tl;dr of events:
- the autopilot was on the whole time
- the autopilot lets the crew increase or decrease the speed of the ship, but blocks off steering controls until it is shut off
- crew being unaware that the autopilot was on made the situation worse by attempting to go in reverse
- since they had no steering control this just made the ship go faster
- nobody on the bridge knew the standard procedure for emergency situations, where "check if the pilot is on" is #1 on the checklist
- it took them 10 minutes after the ship crashed to figure out the autopilot was on

Other highlights:
- the dyke captain had no clue about how the ship worked, having to ask one of her equally retarded underlings (who also didn't know)
- by that point she had been in command of the ship for 2 years
- during evacuation she tells the crew to go to the bathroom before boarding the lifeboats
- rescinds that order when she realizes there might be some degree of urgency necessary when evacuating a sinking ship

People, rightfully, joke that the Chinese military is rife with nepotism and corruption, but are Western armies any better? Over the past decade I've noticed an increasing number of ships with (minority or lesbian) female officers in charge colliding with each other or running aground and other increasingly retarded and embarrassing incidents, mostly involving non-Whites and women.

I don't think enough emphasis is being placed on the competency crisis in Western armies.

 

[NerdShamer]

People, rightfully, joke that the Chinese military is rife with nepotism and corruption, but are Western armies any better?

Indians almost sank one of their new subs simply by leaving the hatch open. The Brits more or less have an Admiral for every frontline warship. As with America, we haven't exactly fell to the DEI plague. But we're slowly getting there

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Applied for what would basically be a no-brainer promotion at work. They gave it to someone who after 3 months and several courses and workshops literally quit out of inability to just.. learn things. But hey, they got seniority so fuck me right? Really underlined how unfair the world generally is and how everything is 70% RNG.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Applied for what would basically be a no-brainer promotion at work. They gave it to someone who after 3 months and several courses and workshops literally quit out of inability to just.. learn things. But hey, they got seniority so fuck me right? Really underlined how unfair the world generally is and how everything is 70% RNG.

"You're just too valuable for us to pay more!" - Corpologic

 

[Male Idiot]

some 45 year old Jewish bitch mixing bleach and ammonia because she thought she could make something better than the premixed floor cleaner we had an endless supply of

Aaaaaw she was just missing the Zyklon Ben. Or trying to return the favour in the most retarded way possible.

 

[Otterly]

during evacuation she tells the crew to go to the bathroom before boarding the lifeboats

I’m not sure why but this really amuses me. Maybe because it’s such a Mum thing to say.
GO PEE BEFORE WE GET IN THE CAR TO GRANDMA’s ABANDON SHIP!

 

[NerdShamer]

I’m not sure why but this really amuses me. Maybe because it’s such a Mum thing to say.
GO PEE BEFORE WE GET IN THE CAR TO GRANDMA’s ABANDON SHIP!

Might be an Kiwi thing to be overly polite and inoffensive. Up to the point where you can't ask your co-workers if they actually knew how to do their jobs, apparently.