As a software engineer I often think about how laughably useless my skillset would be in any kind of survival or societal reset sort of situation.
You’re a software engineer. You at least know the very basics of digital electronics, and can probably work your way backward to rudimentary power supplies.
You are far from fucked.
Mathematicians though? Oof I worry about them, if they did anything too practical they’d be physicists.
That’s where you’re wrong bucko!
I’m a software engineer skilled in devops, Linux and web applications! I spent much of today making Jira tickets and drawing diagrams!
I’m so fucked
You know I can’t remember for the life of me if the CS students at my college had to take Digital Electronics or Microcontrollers.
I was in computer engineering, so those classes were required.
We did microcontrollers in college. But it was like understanding advanced algebra, where I studied enough to pass the test. So it’s real far back in my brain.
If you put a piece of green carpet and a microcontroller in front of me, there’s a 50/50 chance I won’t know the difference.
Hey, on the bright side, manpower is manpower.
At this point, you’re just mocking us IT people for or lack in upper body strength. :D
Guys I’ve figured out the solution to our food problem! First, assume the pantry is full…
Yeah, and in my case I can’t even claim to be particularly good at math, logic, or problem solving (except in the narrow domain of technical problems). All my skills are geared at turning the handle at the bullshit machine. But without that machine I don’t have a whole lot going on…
Which is quite sad when you think of it. I wish I could contribute meaningfully to my larger community while also supporting my family financially.
you would just be able to repurpose the way you think logically into something else. I’d say you would be more ahead than a lot of others in a catastrophic scenario!
I find it amazing that finance, sales, etc are held in such high regard when it’s science and technology that advance society.
Most scientific and engineering skills would also be useless if civilization collapses. For example, I am a scientific software developer. Most of my work has been for medical research, which is something people tend to respect. However, I wouldn’t be able to do anything useful with numerical modelling in a survival situation. My limited skills as an amateur home renovator would be far more relevant.
I agree with the rebuilding civilization from scratch part, but it’s still what advances society.
*In this case, what will advance society is farming equipment. Machining science.
It’s a bit like Maslows hierarchy of needs. First we need food and water and plumbing. When we are secure in those needs, society can take the next step. But the basis of security must be there before advancement
I would say we need hygiene, which is different than plumbing. Plumbing comes into play when we have cities large enough that we can’t rely on outhouses.
“Oh no, all the scum-masters are gone, who will annoy us with their inane babbling now?”
scum-masters
Best typo ever.
Oh it was not a mistake, trust me.
One once tried showing me a slideshow on what it is they actually do, because the sauna we had for that evening was from their company.
Guy couldn’t fuckin read the room though and actually went through with his PowerPoint presentation. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how someone could ignore so many social cues from us, the people who had nothing to do with his work, his company, or any work at all. Purely recreational night and dude starts it with that.
Yuck yuck yuck
There are two types of scrum masters. Those who are true believers in agility, and those who think it’s just a fancy bullshit name for “project manager”. The latter tend to be the the fucking worst, unfortunately they’re the most common breed.
Truth is, a real “scrum master” (or “agile coach” for SAFe 6 people) is at best a part time job, and has only two purposes. With experience and knowledge, help the team towards making their job easier/faster/more interesting/more predictable/more serene through continuous improvement using agile methods as a toolbox (and NOT a fucking dogma), and
tell idiotic managers who can’t fucking anticipate a fucking deadline more than 3 days in advance to fuck off and stop being fucking moronsteach managers to respect agile principles and have a clear short- and medium-term vision so their needs can comfortably fit the team’s backlog without jeopardizing the team, other priorities or the deadlines.The other breed are fucking corporate yes-men who shove work over capacity onto the team and play make-believe-scrum by focusing exclusively on bullshit rituals that serve no actual fucking purpose.
When all the billionaires are dead and there’s no one to create our jobs for us. :(
Also not pictured: project managers
A few competent project managers would probably help things quite a bit, actually.
Having a single point of contact for several disparate teams of people doing real work so that they can actually do that work, instead of spending extra time in endless meetings arguing over the best way to implement something that requires multiple people’s input is a valuable tool to have.
Think of them like a tank in an RPG, taking all the meeting hits that would otherwise decimate the effectiveness of people actually putting the real work in.
Valid. Competent is the key word. I’m lucky, in that most of the ones I work with are actually really good, but the ones my colleagues work with (in the same company, different division) might as well have gotten their PMMP certificate out of a cereal box.
Oh yeah, Project management is one of those roles that is especially vulnerable to the Peter Principal.
In order to be a good one, you need to be part therapist and part hostage negotiator while also being one of those weirdos that enjoys meetings
You must have had a different kind of PM.
- recruitment agents
Telephone sanitizers.
Do you want our species to die from a disease spread from telephone receivers? Because that’s how you get our species to die from a disease spread from telephone receivers.
What? You won’t pay me to be impatient? That’s bullshit.
Just get more people working on it and it will get done on time, I’m sure the resources are there, just look at the chart, we cannot afford to delay schedule!
This is the kind of joke that takes a few minutes off your life
I make powerpoints.
City planner here:
“I say ‘No.’”
i am unemployed.
Of course they can’t find them.
They all shipped out on the (ever-important) Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.
The USA has a bs mythology that it was founded by ‘pioneers’ and that a wild wild west existed. The untold history of the USA is really the story of finance. Those that financed, the joint stock companies that helped to bring immigrants over. The land speculators, and recruiters that brought over Irish and other immigrants over in the 19th century, through money provided by rail and steam companies.
These type of post-apocalyptic memes perpetuate the stereotype of a self-made country. When in reality financiers from England were offshoring labor to a country with fewer regulations and no copyright/patent laws.A very USA-centric comment. While it is true that countries that were former colonies have their roots tied to those imperialist projects which definitely involved finance, this is not the case for countries that didn’t start as colonies. The sweat of the subsistence farmer or the feudal peasant/slave was what built the foundations of most countries.
In a truly post-apocalyptic setting there definitely would not be any need for finance of any sort. Job titles such as the one in the meme above are bullshit jobs that only exist to serve modern consumer capitalism. That is to say, they are not necessary. That’s what this meme is about in my opinion.
The Renaissance in Italy was paid for by the emerging banking industry, the Medici family is a good example of what happened. If you want large public works, and people like Leonardo da Vinci, then you also get families like the Medici. You can’t separate the two. So not just USA-centric.
“sweat of the subsistence farmer or the feudal peasant/slave was what built the foundations of most countries”, it was also access to different resources. Mining for silver in some areas, sheep and wool production in others, forestry in others … already by the 13th century the Hanseatic League had a large trade network in most of Europe (from the Mediterranean in N. Italy through Germany into the sea and along the coasts of the North sea and the Baltic sea to Norway Sweden Finland and Russia.
Ok sorry for the snide in that other comment. I think we’re talking slightly past one another. A society without banking or finance is a primitive one, but a society nonetheless. Now, all modern countries are advanced societies, but only current and former colonies started out that way.
I suppose the question comes down to whether the meme is talking about rebuilding complex society, or just society in general. You seem to be talking of the former, while I speak of the latter. I also think the meme was referring to the latter.
I’ll end by saying that while historical precedent is a very solid basis for how societies operate, I think it lacks imagination. Who knows what other ways there could be to build complex societies? I think that this is a powerful part of why people are fascinated with post-apocalyptic stories.
Societies did exist before the renaissance, and were a prerequisite for it. Societies existed before the Hanseatic league could conduct trade between them.
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No Social Media Coordinators? No regional PR reps? No “local small business” for them to inherit?
One of the ways I try to sell my trade to students, is telling them how important it is for the world. Machining, welding, plumbing, carpentry and so on. All of it would be primus motor to get society back.
Yes! The importance of craftsmen is hard to overstate😀 Along with a few others, of course!
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get them into gardening, its like a real life infinite food glitch.
🎵 I don’t want to set the world on fire 🎵
Systems Administrator.
I couldn’t find middle management in here either
oh this picture seems taken from fallout 1 or 2 :)
