We aren’t trying to screw you, the actual solutions (not bandaids) are just expensive (paying for knowledge, skill, equipment, and parts). That 5 min fix took years to know to look for and how to fix quickly, plus have the part on the truck for immediate installation. Typically a quick tech is a good tech if the problem is solved.
As a mathematician I will reiterate what my supervisor told me: Math is not hard, it is only we that suck at it (said in context of me complaining about having used way too much time on what I in retrospect found to be simple).
People think baked goods in stores are fresh, many are packaged and flash frozen then defrosted when it arrives at the store. Even fresh baked stuff is often proofed then flash frozen, baked from frozen. Nobody but expensive bakeries has actual bakers anymore.
That you can quickly pick up coding with a few courses.
Can you learn it? Sure why not. Just keep in mind that you’ll never stop learning, so it has to fit into your lifestyle.
Further, you’ll have to be patient and be able to deal with stress well. If you can’t adjust yourself to work in a team, you’ll have difficulty finding work.
Another misconception is that coders stay alone at home in a dark room all the time. Coding is just one part of your life and people do all sorts of stuff.
Yeah lots of people who aren’t in tech think of coding as a solitary job, but it’s a very social-skills-dependent job.
Social skills required to be a coder (at least; probably forgetting many):
Communicate complex concepts which have never been discussed before
Deliver things on time
Understand the tradeoffs of others’ jobs well enough to make good decisions about when it’s worth it NOT to deliver something on time (or be able to figure it out by communicating with whom you’re delivering to)
Know the balance between asking for help and trying to figure it out yourself, including the short- and long-term tradeoffs of the two approaches
Know whether a problem you’re encountering is your own lack of skill, your own lack of knowledge, your own lack of care, or someone else’s any of those, and then communicate with others on the basis of being unsure of this
Deal with antisocial coworkers who can hide their shenanigans in the complexity of the code. I.e. if they’re smart enough they can screw with your work, making you look bad, in a way that is extremely difficult to explain to non-technical management (and hence get support for)
Have the emotional stability and the hutzpah and the finesse to call things like this out when they do happen, and make those complicated explanations or deliver their abstract form
Understand and feel the pain of users when their systems break
As an autistic person, I struggled mightily with the social skill requirements of being a coder on a team. I ultimately failed. I’d like to go back and try again, after doing some really basic shit to improve my own character.
Some folks have noticed the service you get in the States is shit, unless the wait staff identify you as someone who will give a good tip. If you’re from an ethnic group notorious for bad tipping, you’re never going to get good service, and so you’re never going to tip well… Continuing the cycle. 🤷🏻♀️
It’s not that it’ll clean better, but an additional rinse can’t hurt - especially if a utensil might have been crowded or rushed through the wash. Or maybe the waitstaffs hands are a bit suspect.
I ask for no ice because pop is pretty cold when it comes out anyways and I hate watered down pop. Also if I take it home I can put it in the fridge … and it doesnt get watered down.
As an uber driver: that I know where building G is. Your housing complex is like ten acres of apartment buildings and speed bumps I have to go over while I search around for building G.
For anyone unaware, you can fine-tune the pickup point in the Uber app by holding and dragging the map.
You set the pickup point, then I meet you there. That’s my side of this job.
When I lost my credit card overseas I was issued an emergency replacement by MasterCard and it only had MasterCard branding. I guess sometimes they issue cards (unless they got a bank to print it without their branding).
That’s technically not a card issuance, which in CC terms only happens when the bank associates an account on their end with a new card profile from the CC company. No actual card needs to be issued either, a token in a digital wallet works the same way.
Deactivating a lost card and activating a replacement (temporary or otherwise) are just maintenance activities on an existing card profile. They get recorded to the original profile both for record-keeping and so that the bank doesn’t get billed extra for issuing a new one.
I did too! Turns out there’s a lot of weirdness and jargon that gets built into the system after 44 years of continuous operation, and of course the CC companies wanted to be able to bill separately for issuing new cards and printing replacements. XD
Myth: The job is mostly about delivering lessons and grading tests and assignments, so once you’ve done a course once, you can coast forever.
Reality: designing and delivering a lecture is just about the easiest thing in teaching. And also very ineffective teaching, so it’s not done very often.
Myth: School is the same as it was a generation ago, when parents were in school.
Reality: There have been huge shifts in education, with research-supported practices replacing a lot of old, ineffective strategies. The teachers who are “old school” are usually ignoring educational research out of arrogance and/or laziness.
Do you think education is generally moving in the right direction? I have a few people in my circle that trained to be teachers and left the profession because of the lack of support from admin when dealing with troubled students (and troubled parents). They described a staff that was upside down, similar to a hospital (everyone is an admin, a very small part of the staff is actually teachers, and they never make the rules).
On the other hand it sounds like the mechanics of disseminating knowledge have increased tremendously due to research supported practices. I just wonder if the next generation is doomed, I guess.
I can’t speak to the US, but that’s not what’s happening in Canada, generally. I hear the UK public system is having difficulties, too, but idk the details.
There are some places in Canada that are struggling, particularly in remote rural areas, Indigenous or not (but even moreso for Indigenous schools for historical inequity issues that we’re working on meaningfully addressing with national Truth and Reconciliation work.)
Not so much a professional field as a field of human experience, but being homeless.
People think the main things homeless people lack are:
food and drink
shelter
money
In actuality, most homeless people have at least some of that stuff. What they tend to totally lack, creating the difficulty in living a civilized life of dignity, are:
IT is actually a vast field with many many specialties similar to medicine. Asking the copier guy why your server is down is kinda like asking a podiatrist why you’re sad all the time.
I work with radio camera links. The number of people who get upset over the receivers is depressing. They can make the 5G conspiracy theorists look educated.
Receive equipment is incapable of radiating at all.
The part that radiates is completely safe!
Seriously, any danger would be at the camera end. I am happy to sit with it fully powered and the antenna between my legs. (It stops the camera getting knocked over). It can’t put out enough power to do any harm. It’s comparable to home WiFi and weak compared to the mobile phone you are happy to put to your head!
That I will ignore 30 years of accumulated knowledge and experience - and all the relevant laws - just because they really really really want me to build something their way, and that they tell me it’ll be fine. If an experienced professional says “no” there is a good reason for that… we’re not just being obstinate.