Like… Literally any of it. I’m a software engineer and my degree didn’t have anything to do with software or engineering.
I’d have to really stretch to something like “time management” or “active listening” to find any connection, lol.
Computer Science was great dont get me wrong, but I totally agree. Comp Sci helped with some of the basics, but didnt prepare you at all on the soft skills that get you ahead, nor why task management, version control, and other such concepts are so important.
My university created an entirely new school because while the computer science graduates could do computer science they couldn’t write an email or contribute to a meeting.
It’s crazy that someone can go through college for comp sci and never touch things like VSC or PuTTY until they’re in the workforce.
Meanwhile a programming boot camp or IT Security Analyst boot camp will have you digging into the tools of the trade immediately.
Heh yeah. Lots of fresh grads don’t even really know anything about application development. Like they have a handful of sorting algorithms memorised and can explain what a compiler does (and are thinking about writing one some day) but can’t actually build anything.
Often, they can pick it up quickly, whatever the “it” is… But it doesn’t give them that much of a head start compared to someone who did a shorter program or self-taught.
I’ve never used PuTTY either, tbh… Is that just what Windows users use for SSH stuff?
Not anymore, it’s a terminal emulator but most have transitioned to just using Poweshell to SSH into things. I like multi-tabbed putty and use it heavily when configuring network appliances.
It’s also not a Windows thing lol you can install it natively in Debian, Fedora, and Arch that I know of with the basic package manager of each.
Oh lol TIL. I just read “PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform” on putty.org.
I wonder how many of the people I work with have used it before. Maybe I’m an outlier for never encountering it.
I’ve never used Linux in an Enterprise environment so I don’t know if there’s an easier way to store servers/switches as objects and access them via the standard terminal than MTPuTTY, but yeah I’m not surprised it was originally created for windows and then ported at some later time.
How frequently business leaders will ignore advice from experts and “go with their gut” instead.
Look buddy this business is run on vibes and vibes alone
Mostly the human factor in working in IT. It shows you have to manage systems and the larger concepts so that you can keep yourself up-to-date, but they don’t prepare you for how bad some people can be.
IT, at almost every level and position, is 50% psychology, 40% reading, and 10% working with technology.
Honestly, I think it would be better if we had actual trained councilors / therapists to take some tickets, maybe as a different department that was trained on taking or working with the same ticketing system but also handling confidentiality correctly. The people who contact IT just to talk or to bitch about the current state of the world as seen through a technology lens, or those who are overstressed about tech… I’m not really a people person, I’m a tech person, hence why I didn’t go into social services or the like.
Meetings, managing email/chat, valuing the team over your personal grade where all shocks when I first started.
Working a deckade in retail prepared me for that.
How long it lasts. Year after year after year. No end in sight. No summer, winter or spring breaks. One vacation a year and a few sick days.
American? 🫤🫂
You get a yearly vacation and sick days?
Most of it. I went to college for Funeral Directing. School will tell you it’s an ancient and honourable job of serving people in a time of need. 50% of school is learning “the art” of embalming and the other 50% is rules and regulations.
In real life, embalming is becoming a rare option, so most funeral homes have one or two directors on staff who can easily do every embalming the business gets. The other directors are essentially just salespeople. Most funeral homes are now owned by a few large corporations who don’t run it like an honourable service but rather like a used car lot. These corporations have found every trick to skirt regulations meant to protect consumers and drive up prices while lowering quality of service.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the consumers, who will take out their anger and frustrations on the overworked and underpaid funeral director who are not in on the take. Directors are typically paid for 40 hours a week but are required to take on all clients who call. It’s rare that a director can handle every client a week in just 40 hours. All places I worked were severely understaffed and burnout was incredibly common.
I eventually got burnt out myself and switched jobs. I would not recommend funeral directing to anyone. College acts like you’ll be treated like a doctor or lawyer but they must just mean the gruelling hours because funeral directors get none of the pay or respect.
Are people embalming less because cremation is increasing in popularity?
Yes. The places I worked had about 80% of clients choosing cremation. I assume it’s mostly a cost decision. Cremation does not require a casket or a cemetery plot, which are two very expensive items.
Even if I could afford it I’d feel bad taking up the land.
Understanding benefits packages and basic labor laws.
Office politics. I was a 4.0 student who was given an award by the faculty as best computer science student two years in a row. Despite being talented, extra hard working and driven, I had no idea how to play the game and my career stalled almost immediately. I watched others with weaker skills get promotions and raises because they knew the right people and served on the right committees. Being slightly autistic, I never realized the rules of the game. I quit after 8 years and started my own business, went back as a contractor getting 4x the pay, and it was awesome. There should be a class for people called “sucking up to management and gaming performance reviews.”
Yep, it is mostly apparent in big companies I would say. I could go on and on, but basically your work is so disconnected from the final output that what end up actually “mattering” is a bunch of made-up bullshit. Putting in quality work and improving your product/service does not benefit most of the people you interact with directly, unless of course you’re working on the popular thing that will get people promoted.
Anyways, I also left the corporate world to start my own business. Life is so much easier when all you need to care about is the quality of your work and not political points. I like my hard work to rewards me, and not just some guy spending his days in meetings claiming credit for “his” “initiatives”. Some of those folks would never survive a job that isn’t a mega corp paying them to improv all day in meetings.
Senior citizens being the outright meanest demographic. Not by frequency, but by intensity. The amount of stubbornness, entitlement, and just absolute resentment for everything around them shocks me. The way they react to things not going exactly how they think they should go is astounding. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of them are pleasant and wonderful. But when an old person is mean, it’s on its own level. I’d say middle aged people are more likely to be difficult, but they never even come close to the tantrums that seniors will throw. Part of this could be chalked up to mental decline, but the main part is entitlement. Plenty of people experience mental decline, and dont become vitriolic assholes. They truly think they’re special and should get whatever they want at all times. Its exhausting explaining to an adult why I can’t do something for them that our organization is literally unable to do.
How crappy leadership destroys culture and employee’s mental health.
Office politics and networking.
How often my patience is tested by corporate platitudes and meaningless work.
The high level of sheer incompetence at all levels, but especially in management. I’m lucky to work with competent folks directly, but the sheer amount of work created by stupidity outside of my department is soul-crushing. I can present definitive proof of systemic failures all day long, and no one is interested in doing a damned thing if the people or departments in question are politically powerful within the organization. Neither I nor my immediate colleagues are perfect, but we acknowledge our failures and try to create solutions. So many others, though, seem so invested in the status quo beyond all reason.
I basically double majored in international affairs and economics but ultimately became a software engineer. I actually think both my courses of study were valuable. I’m basically self-taught as a developer (though I had mentors) and other than Comp Sci or Physics, there’s probably no other majors I’d pick as a base.
For international relations, it’s just always good to know about diplomacy and history. We had courses where we studied successful negotiations. The military history wasn’t so useful but there’s way more history made without guns than with them.
Econ is a good default major for a lot of fields. You learn to make statistical models and there’s strong math requirements with more of a focus on practical math than theoretical. (There’s even a little coding involved.) There’s classes on how businesses are run at a high level. Behavioral econ is helpful in small, but important ways (like designing little user interface nudges and prompts).
If I could redesign college, I’d make everyone in STEM majors do a minor in one of the humanities (and vise versa). We’d all be better off.
The military history wasn’t so useful but there’s way more history made without guns than with them.
I’d argue that a lot of people have found Sun Tzu useful way outside of a military context, but also it’s useful IMO to see where force fails or succeeds, and not just militarily. I might argue (as just an armchair person) that hostile takeovers etc might have some analogs. Stuff like comparing how various empires handled integrating conquests might sort of apply to mergers (though maybe that’s not exactly military)… Even just the importance and limitations of morale in sprints etc.
Corporate “motivational” nonsense. Leave the woodpile higher, write everything in pencil, drink your most expensive wine first. Some companies base - quite literally - everything on these nonsense blurbs.
That, and the way many [past] jobs tried to cover up the lack of compensation opportunities and bumps by things like basketball courts, restaurants on “campus” (sigh), goat yoga… I can’t feed my family with a basketball court at the office. I guess I could feed them a yoga goat but I surmise it would be frowned upon.
Thank goodness for WFH. Never going back.
Drink the expensive/good stuff first is generally good, though. I’ll appreciate the good stuff more while I’m still sober/buzzed, and once I’m drunk the cheap stuff is easier to drink.
That assumes they’re having more than one drink. I took it a different way, basically don’t delay gratification you’ve earned.
They never told me I couldn’t get a job as a programmer. I just reset passwords all day.
I’m sorry to hear that mate. Hope you find something better soon.
