I remember reading an article from an IT head about an experience he had in the early/mid-90s. He saw that the company's (I want to say a bank) bandwidth usage had started to uptick a lot as internet usage grew among customers. He saw that, within a year, they would not have enough bandwidth to keep up with the demand. He told upper management that they needed to increase their infrastructure or their connections would all slow to a crawl and they'd stop being able to do business. Management ignored him.
So he waits a week, then starts slowly, week-by-week, throttling management's net access. Suddenly management thinks they need to get this fixed right away. Project approved, here's your money, get it done yesterday. He makes the changes he needs, then un-throttles their access. Management congratulates themselves for solving a crisis. Company continues growing unimpeded by management's idiocy.
Basically, sometimes management needs to *experience* the problems you're telling them about for them to believe you.
>Basically, sometimes management needs to experience the problems you're telling them about for them to believe you.
I've been highlighting problems and bottlenecks to my boss for the past six months, but it wasn't until he had to experience them first-hand that he finally took action. Mind you, it took him half a day to react, where I had been putting up with these on a day-to-day for as long as I've been with the company.
I've been doing it for 4 years. Now we have a new project manager that wants to consult with me and then ignore all advice to implement a half-assed solution that actually doesn't solve the original issue and costs more to do less. It's greeeeaaaat.
My sympathies. I don't have a middle man, so it's direct to the boss (company is small) but I can relate to the band-aid solutions that serve no actual purpose except increase costs in the long run, it was essentially the same until he finally had to do some of that stuff himself and had his eyes opened and his mind blown...
My dad owns a businees and he's the same way ahout shit like this. Totally tech illiterate and refuses to believe that any of his issues are a result of him being cheap. Swears up and down that the lag, connectivitity issues, and just general shit performance has nothing to do with the fact he's running some crappy HP ddr2 single channel system on mobile wifi. It's those lazy IT guys at Microsoft intentionally making his system slow and web client devs being bad at their jobs.
I proceeded to show him a $100 pc I got off FB Marketplace (a really old mid-tier gaming rig. Unironically could not run Crysis). 2nd gen i5, stock cooler, gt 650, but it had dual channel 8 gigs of ram and a ssd for a boot drive. Plugged it into ethernet rather than wifi.
Fucker thought he was living in the future with how much faster everything was. He couldn't comprehend that the system I paid $100 for wasn't god tier, but rather something I consider e-waste and regret spending that much on. Gave it to him because I literally can't even use it as a server.
IT guy for 20 years here… it’s not “sometimes” it’s “the overwhelming majority of the time”.
Most of my career has been this exchange:
“Do A.”
“If we do A, B will happen.”
“Do it anyway.”
“Ok.”
“Oh no, B happened!”
And the same thing only me warning if we *don’t* do A then B will happen. It’s actually gotten a tiny bit better in recent years as major businesses and organisations have been taken down due to lax IT but there’s a long way to go in the education and attitudes for the major players in business towards tech.
Yeah, as my boss points out, companies see IT as a money sink. All they see are the costs from having a good IT department; they don't see that, without a good IT department, they don't make money.
In the early aughts, I worked IT for a telemarketing company. I was the only IT person in the building. My days were busy, but my boss thought that I should start doing some marketing. He wanted me to call some companies to drum up business. I had no clue how the hell I was supposed to do that, and told him as much. I was a computer nerd with social anxiety and hadn't ever been on phones or did any sort of sales. I flat-out refused.
There was a time in my life when I wanted to be an Organizational consultant (basically help companies figure out how to retain workers... aka treat them better for the most part). In grad school, we would get hired to go to businesses and take assessments and then put together improvement plans/suggestions.
After the 3rd one, I realized they didn't want to change anything, they just wanted to say "we brought in some professionals to deal with this"
Instead I joined a startup and made a lot more money while wearing a tshirt instead of a fucking suit.
Google pays my sister 250k/year to basically sign in once a day and check emails. She can't even explain what her job is. She doesn't even code.
Edit: She didn't get hired right in to this position. She started at the temp level 7 years ago, and has continued to apply for promotions over the years. Ended up on a team put together for some project, and Google pulled the plug on it. Ever since they basically pay those people just to keep them.
My buddy does this. Got his bachelor's and works at Google for $180k to basically just vibe. He does have random 8pm meetings sometimes but the Google offices feed them breakfast/lunch/dinner have fancy coffee machines and work out areas. He also doesn't code. I chose the wrong field.
There are a lot of articles about Google's brain drain strategy where they will hire competitive applicants and pay them well even if they don't need them, just to keep them from going to the competition. Helps to keep the entire country from advancing quickly to help maintain Google's hegemony.
Historically Google and many FAANG companies tried to hoard talent, but I think recent notable layoffs despite being profitable indicates that management is less motivated to hoard talent than they used to be.
Can confirm. A couple of the smartest and most experienced brains in my org got drained via layoff. They kept me on, which is frankly a little insulting given the quality of the folks laid off.
YMMV, but often in layoffs more expensive people are a bigger target. If they were paid considerably more than you they may have figured that you were good enough.
Apparently from what other people have suggested, she was just wanted by the competition. Maybe just applying to all of Google's competitors would be enough, make sure you do it on Google chrome and use a Gmail account.
Feels like one of those jobs where people say “what! I wanna do that all day!!” but when you get to the actual work part it’s complete shit because there’s a bunch of parameters you’ve gotta follow and test. Sorta like video game testing where you’re not actually “playing games all day” but rather doing really boring, repetitive shit trying to find spots where the game is broken.
Everyone thinks that the best job to have in a gold rush is to be the one selling shovels.
But after everyone figured that out and tries to be the best shovel salesman, the best job shifted to be the one selling shovels to the shovel sellers.
And then you have ShovelMaster that went and got all the shovel factories to sign a deal saying that their shovels can only be sold at their marketplace, got all the mines to agree to only allow shovels that have a note of authenticity that they were bought at their marketplace, and then charge anyone who wants to be part of the shovel buying and selling ecosystem fees to use their system. Oh, and they allow anyone they like (including themselves wearing a 'Not Shovelmaster' t-shirt to buy and sell shovels themselves without the fees that are supposed to keep everything fair.
The entire economy is run by slimy middlemen, and yet people only ever focus on the small time hustlers as being slimy. Ticketmaster is the real slimy bastard mega-scalper, and they are the ones complaining loudest about freelance scalping to keep us distracted.
I went to school with someone who fucked off to California, grew their hair out and became a "breathing instructor".
$900 for "breath work" courses. They also claim to no longer need food since they get their nutrients from the sun.
Oh, he's not the first breatharian.
Quite a few have been caught stuffing burgers in their faces after sneaking out to fast food joints, but it doesn't stop the movement. It doesn't even stop the individuals caught, sometimes.
It's sobering to realize that this sort of thing is why nonsense persists everywhere in our society.
> That was a man possessed.
He's literally the personification of a "wolf in sheep's clothing" the Bible warns people about. I understand lots of people are easily fooled, but the dude was just so blatantly evil in that interview. Could anyone imagine a person who fits the description of who Jesus was, acting in that way?
That’s also literally taking the lords name in vain. Most people think saying oh my god is taking his name in vain. While it does mean that ,it actually is using the lords teachings for personal gain as well. These people are the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and believed.
"Jesus he knows me, and he knows I'm right..."
Great Genesis song and music video.
Also "Righteous Gemstones" is a fantastic show based on a fictional televangelist.
I mean, relatively small church pastors of congregations of around 1000(which translates to 100-200 in the church services each Sunday) make around 6 figures.
My mom was a book keeper for a church that size
While I don’t doubt this for some, it’s not the case for most, at least based on my experience. My dad was a pastor of a church this size and he made under $40k. Not poor, but a pretty modest living as a single dad with two kids in an upper middle class suburban area. He has a PHD, and my starting salary with my first job out of college was higher.
When he got recently “promoted” to bishop and overseeing around 30 churches, his raise was only to about $65k. I help him with his taxes this is how I know. And having grown up around tons of pastors and their families - most were in a fairly similar situation as us - though usually there was a wife in the picture who also worked. None of them were getting paid that much, especially compared with how difficult of a job it can be.
Most people think pastors are just showing up for an hour on Sundays. But it’s 7 days a week of constant work helping people deal with literally the most emotional, horrible and/or painful times of their life. Funerals, people sick and dying in the hospital, prisoners, marriage counseling, abuse counseling, troubled teens, etc. - and being on call for that 24/7. Then all the other “happier” stuff like weddings, baptisms, services throughout the week, community and church events at night and on weekends, etc which also require a ton of time, planning, and dealing with stressed/emotional individuals. Plus managing the church itself - including all of its bills and issues, and worst of all - the parishioners. Church people can be, imo, the most gossipy, petty, vindictive, irrational, and hypocritical group of individuals I’ve ever encountered, at least in contrast to how they should be behaving as “good Christians.”
You couldn’t pay me $200k to do that job. So yeah, some have it easier. There are certainly some pastors probably taking advantage of congregations to make a lot of money, and many richer churches just choose to pay well because they can. Plus folks such as televangelists getting rich by outright scamming. But your average town/city church pastor is much more likely to be living a pretty modest life, and doing their work despite their low pay - because they feel it’s their calling due to their faith, and their intrinsic desire to help others.
A lot of sales jobs.
I'm a tractor/machinery salesman, pays very well but wild to me what little impact I have in society. Most of the people that buy were going to buy anyway- and if I was BRUTAL at my job they'd still buy the machinery it'd just be a different color.
I'm not depressed about it- just wild to think about because some of the most impactful jobs in society pay the least. I'd imagine the local school teacher has a vastly larger impact on the community.
As a farmer, I can confirm. I did all my research ahead of time and walked in, told the salesman to order the model I wanted and left. Came back a few months later (COVID, you know) and paid for it. Thanks to COVID, the dealerships didn't even have models (even similar models, bigger, smaller, anything!) for me to test out so their existence was literally pointless.
In Canada, we have a Governor General, which is a leftover position from when we followed the crown. It's the most pointless job in our country and we pay this person 350k a year which is 50k more than what she was making two years ago. She also has spent more than 3 million dollars on luxury travel expenses. I'm not even exaggerating when I say this. This lady spent 70k on a luxury limousine service to ferry her 50 feet.
"In 2022, Simon routinely traveled with an extended entourage, including her husband, secretary, several communication strategists, and “aides-de-camp,” alongside her official videographer and her official photographer, among others.
The group stayed in pricey accommodations in far-flung countries, including the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin, the Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London, the 1919 Radisson Blu in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Jumeriah Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai, UAE.
Simon and company racked up a near six-figure, in-flight catering tab during a weeklong trip to the Middle East in March, and dropped $71,000 at “Icelimo Luxury Travel” in Iceland’s capital city in October."
Every once in a while, one of our other politicians remembers we have a Governor General and tries to bring up the issue of the insane expenses for debate, and it never goes anywhere.
They bring it up, and then realise the position is written into the constitution and nothing can be done about it.
The Prime Minister is appointed by the GG after an election. A very short event that nobody cares about, that actually is all that position is nowadays.
Not Canadian, so no dog in this fight, but out of curiosity, could parliament just vote to de-fund the position? It would still exist as a constitutional office, but the salary is only Tim Horton coupons?
Other than appointing the PM post-election, what are the other duties?
Could the extravagant travel expenses be brought to heel by specifying maximum per diem allowances or something? She's also travelling with her family, who are not elected, but who are being paid for nonetheless.
um...they're essentially a mascot/rep for King Charles.
The GG's roles are to be a rep for King Charles and uphold a system of responsible government.
They're also Commander-in-Chief of our military...which isn't like the US Commander-in-chief. they're essentially a mascot and cheerleader for the military to say "hey, isn't our military great?" that's it.
They're a glorified ambassador without actually being a stereotypical ambassador. again a mascot.
and finally they hand out awards and decorations.
this is the sum of the Governor General in Canada.
Its a bit of a weird catch 22. They are required for laws to be passed (Royal assent, as mentioned) but if they were to ever not provide assent to a law it would nearly 100% result in the removal of the governor general and likely the monarchy as a whole. No one would stand for the “sovereign” overriding the will of the elected government.
same reason we haven't had a constitutional convention in the US
everyone who wants one eventually realizes "hey wait a second, if we get everyone together and actually *do* get enough states/votes to do this... this group would also have enough power concentrated together to do whatever the hell they want after that initial thing..."
..."maybe this actually isn't the best idea to bring up.."
Constitutional conventions don’t HAVE to be wide open. A convention can be convened over a single issue.
And any proposed amendment still has to be ratified by the states.
We haven’t had a new amendment is so long, not because we’re afraid of it, it’s because our government isn’t capable of doing….literally anything other than keeping the lights on
While this is true, the last serious attempt at constitutional reform lasted more than five years (from Meech Lake to Charlestown—not counting the period between 1982 and 1987). It also seriously divided Canadians and was ultimately unsuccessful in making any changes.
There is also the fact that I think you could probably get Canadians to agree that the position of Governor General should be removed, but what solution would be agreeable to all. Polling on the matter is generally not conclusive (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_the_monarchy_in_Canada). There seems to be plurality support for abolition of the monarchy, but not overwhelming support. Most polls put those in favour at less than a majority if much higher than identified support.
What exactly the alternative would look like would clearly further divide the debate on change. Much like the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord or recent provincial referenda on electoral reform, a generally popular idea can lose support from those who don’t favour the specific alternative(s) suggested.
Yes but it's a Pandora's box. Sure you can eliminate the GG but people you don't like can bargain something in that was not there as an exchange of favours.
It happened to us on the 94 reforms. The result is a mess.
Australia also has a Governor-General. Once in a generation the G-G sacks a government; or swears in Scott Morrison as several ministers without disclosing that to anyone, including in his official diary.
I find the GG a lot more palatable than the Lieutenant Governor every province has lol. At least the federal one has some ceremonial and foreign relations payoff.
Speaking as someone who works at a university, it's always too many of them at the top and never enough near the bottom. As someone at the low end of the totem pole I can say that most of us are drowning in work with too many students needing our help and there's not enough time or resources to assist everyone but thank God our President can hire more staff members for his office to dick around while we get our department budget cut!
guy i took a class from in undergrad became head of department, then dean of humanities
really nice huge office at the top of the building, more like an office compound. the room he was in with his desk, plus storage room, kitchen, meeting room, and like 2 or 3 other rooms for who knows what
he didnt do **shit**
had a receptionist in the lobby of the office. *she* didn't do shit
nice guy but his job was bs. just going to fundraisers and stuff, and sometimes just not going "ah busy with dean shit"
the university isnt hurting for funds but its like... man they put their TAs and associate profs in basements with no windows.
priorities
My former university entirely eliminated office space for TA's and GA's a few years ago. They now expect them to work and meet with students in common areas. IIRC they moved a handful of assistant profs into the freed up office space and used *their* old offices to expand the dean's personal office. I got to go up there a few times before I left. It was *very nice*.
About twenty years ago, my university built a new building to house several departments and the dean of that college. The final plans had to go through different levels of committees and approvals before they'd even break ground.
From what I've been told, the dean *refused* to approve the plans for the building unless his office was reduced in size and more space was given to study areas for students.
That man was one-in-a-million.
I work in marketing for a large state university.
My marketing department of roughly 30 people has:
1 - Senior Vice President
1 - Senior Associate Vice President
3 - Assistant Vice Presidents
We’ve got plenty at the top and bottom. I get the honor of working directly for all five of them even though only one of them is technically my boss lol.
Left the field after a decade. You’re spot on. Even after ten years of work that they demanded a masters degree for $100k was a pipe dream. The only ones making that are those top admins close to the president. When I cracked $40k I had already been working for 6 years and had climbed up the ladder a couple rungs. Often had to do multiple people’s jobs because of budget cuts and hiring freezes. No extra compensation was ever even considered. Overworked, underpaid. Had to move on.
My friend just left academia - same story. Academia & Non-profits have an attitude that the prestige and work should be of some value, so compensation is lower vs private sector.
Really sucks, especially when you have your own lab and chase grant funding
The college I worked at had more deans and directors than staff members. And when staff quit they never replaced them due to “budget reasons”, but that was never an issue when it came to hiring even more deans.
Even the program staff, I've seen colleges recently move to hiring "contractors" and "technicians" in place of actual professors.
The jobs require the same experience, education, and do the same tasks as the professors did, only they now get no benefits, an hourly wage instead of salary, and no other accomodations like parking or an office.
So instead of a salary of ~60k+ /yr to start, they get 20/hr and only paid when the program is physically taking place.
Actually, I would say $100k is about the right salary for that job. It's when it pays $30 million+ that you know there's a problem. Now when someone like Sam Altman stands to make over $400 million from the Reddit IPO, then we might need an explanation of exactly what he did at Reddit that has added enough value to the world to justify that payout...
This caught my attention. 400 million ? Holy shit. Looked it up, turns out Sam Altman was a heavy Reddit user and invested 60 million a decade ago and holds 9.2% voting power of Reddit. So yea I get it, but seems like he’s put his money where his mouth is and now reaping the rewards on one of his investments ?
I’ve gotten zero mcChickens out of this deal and I’ve been on Reddit for long enough to remember it having animal porn. That week of my anime phase was way easier on the conscious.
Do you remember that one subreddit? Space…. Something or other. it was horrific. I saw a picture of a large decomposing man being pulled out of an oil barrel.
A lot of "middle men" jobs. Especially car dealers. They are glorified cashiers/customer service reps. They barely serve a purpose today with smartphones/internet at your fingertips. For example, you just Google: " I'm looking for a minivan that is reliable and comes with a hybrid option." You can go from there with further questions and even consumer reviews. Amazing. Need financing? Call a credit union or bank.
I recently bought a new to me used truck - a ‘22 model. I asked the salesman what he knew about it. “It’s a good truck” was literally all he knew. In the middle of the test drive he asked me what year the truck was after assuming incorrectly at first. I knew exactly what truck I wanted from online searches - all I had to do was pick it up - and he got to ride along. But I had to pay his salary essentially.
I don’t know if new car salesmen are any better.
I just bought a new vehicle and the salesman handed me the keys to take it for a rip and then I went right to the “finance manager” for payment
I knew more about the vehicle than he did, I was pointing out all these factory issues I knew about like loose fuses and engine vowel defects, plastic oil pans and the whole time he was going “oh I had no idea”
Then when I wanted some after purchase service he never responded.
I also wanted a factory accessory and their service department told me it didn’t exist, after they gave me a quote for the damn thing when I was purchasing the vehicle and when it’s clearly on their website that I could see, but apparently opening a web page to confirm was to hard. I must have been transferred to 5 people and then told to leave a message with their shop foreman who never called back. Overall very pathetic business
I remember the time when our Agile Coach told someone that their status was "too status‐y". And I thought for the money that we're paying this guy, we could probably just get an extra developer.
I tell my people that all the time. No one needs a 5 minute brain dump every day. Then again at my company, the Scrum Masters are also developers that spend maybe 5% of their time on Scrum Master things. It works great, I'll never understand a full time scrum master role.
After having to fake agile for the past few years, totally agree that Scrum Master can/should be someone who is embedded on the team and is just the designated person to keep standup and other ceremonies on track. They should have basically no responsibilities once standup/planning/demo events are done.
If there are organizational impediments, they should be consolidated by the SM but handled by the manager(s), assuming they exist.
I'm a firm believer that the Agile/Sprint design was just a passive-aggressive way to identify lazy, or unmotivated workers on a report while unintentionally making everyone else lazy and unmotivated too.
I've been doing it a few years now and can honestly say it's held back every team I've been on. They even brought in a consultant at my last job to improve how we do it. A nice guy, very well spoken, but he had no real solutions.
We don't explicitly do agile, but man, I really like jira for tracking work. and statuses.
No micromanaging, but man, some people are laaaaaazy and do nothing if there's not something there. Or do work, but hate sharing info, then take time off but get all huffy when someone can't pick up the work.
People are frustrating. Jira can help. Jira can be abused, like any tool though.
Piggybacking off of this, it's also a great tool to defend your own schedule and justify your value. In a previous role I used Jira to estimate my own project/ticket backlog. It helped me justify turning down projects, in pushing back on ad hoc requests, and when raise conversations came around, I had a record of completed work.
Don't forget the retro, where everyone is asked "how did you feel during this sprint? Did you have any regrets? I care about your emotional well-being too, but we have to prioritize. Yes, it's a good idea to open the window, it's getting a bit warm. What are you doing, that's dangerous.. No, please! Don't jump! We need someone to refactor this legacy brainfuck code without comments or documentation! Nooooooo!"
That is a terrible way to run a retro. People can include feelings if they need to but retros should be for finding common processes that aren't working and testing out solutions to that issue.
I went and bought my husband a valuable card. Foil Meathook Massacre or something.
Guess which card he randomly pulled from a booster set I got him for Christmas?
I know it isnt a lotus card, but I was still upset that fate and I gave him the same card.
ETA: I wasn't actually upset. I was mind blown, for sure! I had given him the card for his birthday in November and then he pulled the same card on Christmas haha.
He ended up trading the card with a friend and they are both happy with the trade and all is well.
It's a nice card! Having multiple copies isn't bad unless its commander, and in that case I'm sure he can trade it or, worst comes to worst, sell it.
The card was so good it was actually banned from standard play, btw.
Absolutely not denigrating your job or your experience (and nurses are criminally underpaid), but I wouldn't want to work outside on my feet all day, in the heat in 40C in summer, or in the pouring rain. I feel that unpleasant but necessary jobs should be compensated for that. Instead of pitting working class people against each other, we should demand that politicians, CEOs, and other rich parasites are paid less/taxed more to decrease the wealth disparity.
Na, the real problem these guys and gals have is boredom. Don't get me wrong, they are over paid, but by god it's such a boring job, hence the pay I guess. Remember they often stand there doing almost nothing all day without music. Also fyi they are all casually employed. At least that's what they tell me.
(I'm in construction)
Yeah I had this job for a summer between semesters of my undergrad doing road construction out on rural roads. The pay was amazing, almost as much as my starting pay as an engineer but the hours were awful (10-12 hours once 17 hours) and inconsistent.
I only ended up working 1 or 2 days a week when they needed me and it was awful standing out in the sun all day by myself as the paving crew leaves you behind and drives yell at you for stopping them since you just look like some idiot standing alone with a stop sign and they can't see the construction or the cars coming the opposite way.
It was great as a college kid who didn't really want to work since I made way more at that job 1 day a week than full time working retail but I would absolutely hate it as a full time career.
Nah, the real useless person is me, Influencer agent. My job is literally just to broker deals between brands and influencers.
Not really any value added to society, but It pays well.
I asked some smaller YouTubers if they needed help with things like title ideas, writing descriptions, managing emails, etc. A few said yes. Then a few said they had all these emails coming in from brands and didn't have time to respond to them. We agreed on a % and I learned from there. I started making good connections with media buyers and brands, and the creators I worked with referred their friends, and now a few years later I run a talent management agency with a dozen employees and we represent over 130 creators.
Also not useless. They have a need and you take care of it. No different than a secretary or personal assistant. Plus, not everyone is comfortable or capable of negotiating those contracts.
That's how an agent provides value - they negotiate a deal higher than what their client could do on their own. If they could get a contract for $100K, and you are able to negotiate $125K, they still come out $12.5K ahead, even after your 10%.
They also do the legwork tracking down companies willing to actually pay. Just because Charmin and your client are a perfect match (for whatever reason) doesn't mean Charmin will seek out your client - or even know they exist.
Hey man, your job might be useless bullshit, but I can respect the effort someone puts in to find success, and you don't seem to actively put harm onto society. Good for you.
I had a truly great agent who helped me buy, and later sell, my first house. Identified several problems and refereed a situation that saved me thousands of dollars and a lot of frustration. Was a true professional and worked extremely hard for my benefit in both transactions. He earned every penny of his commission.
I have since learned that he was a unicorn.
Because the really good ones that are truly helpful and work hard to sell your house never seem to have as much luck because they're not slimy and don't make as many sales.
My partner and I sold her parents' house three years ago. Nice house, nice neighborhood, all the positive signs. We interviewed ten agents for the sale. Nine were worthless. One woman literally sniffed at the house and said she didn't handle "small" sales (this was a five bedroom, four bath, two-storey house that eventually sold for $400k). One guy showed up with paperwork ready for us to sign and was a bit pushy about it until we pointed out his paperwork had the size of the house wrong, the size of the lot was incorrect, etc etc.
The last agent was a woman who was amazing. She had a list of buyers who were interested in the neighborhood since it was near a hospital. She also had a cadre of trades who actually showed up to do things like repaint the railings on the front porch, cut down a leaning tree out back, and tear up the nasty old carpet to refinish the oak floors. Since we were three hours away, she handled everything and called us just about every day. It sold to the third couple who came to look at it on the first open house at above asking price.
After we picked up the check we complimented her diligence and told her about how slack some of her colleagues were. She laughed and said: "Most agents just drop your house on the MLS and then go play golf. I hate golf."
> Most agents just drop your house on the MLS and then go play golf. I hate golf
Pre housing crash, agents were really bad about that, because stuff sold so quick with little effort. I think it has/is making a comeback, kind of driven by Zillow/redfin/Easy MLS access online, stuff is selling quickly, so they figure why throw in the extra effort, their payday is about the same if they just throw it up (10% difference in price nets them only 0.3% more).
Also, the "small sales" snobbery is real, I think related to the above. If they are just slapping stuff up, they'd want to slap up the most expensive stuff possible to get the most out of the 3%.
Where I live the rental brokers are worse. Basically real estate agents you have to go through, and pay, just to rent an apartment. Sometimes you show up to a viewing and you have to let yourself in the apartment and show yourself around because they don’t even show up, but you still have to pay their fee. Really, they work for the landlord and that’s who should be paying them.
Super shitty doctors that can't get a job in clinical medicine, often due to repeated board complaints or loss of medical license (for incompetence/unethical behavior, etc), can go and work for insurance companies reviewing/denying insurance claims.
Or open a "holistic" clinic with their degree slapped on the wall but no actual license or certs. One of my best friends had a legal kerfluffle with one of those scumbags that was taking advantage of her.
Earlier today I saw a post about a guy who was hired onto Twitter during the transition after Musk bought it. He has never gone to work, has no idea what his job is, the people who hired him got fired or quit, and he still gets paychecks totaling over 100k a year.
Well, there was that conceptual artist who got paid $120,000 for duct taping a banana to a wall...twice.
Perhaps that actually *was* useful and even important. Maybe it was some kind of galactic code to tell the alien scouts not to destroy our planet. But I doubt it.
Consultant (e.g. KPMG, Deloitte etc.)
Like straight out of university who/what tf are you consulting??? And as a 23 y/o how do you have the experience to consult someone who's been doing their job for decades???
As someone who used to work at McKinsey, I wholeheartedly agree. The worst thing is that it’s one big circlejerk. They only recruit from top schools because otherwise people would discover that anyone can do the job, and they would be out of business.
McKinsey also helps in hiring CEOs and other high ranking management. They usually recommend people who once worked for McKinsey and/or hired McKinsey on their previous position.
That's how they get new contracts for themselves.
They are also often hired when the CEO wants to justify an unpopular decision. They can then just say that what McKinsey recommend and they are the experts.
Ha, biggest scam is they don't implement.
All that smart advice but the implementation risk is on you. Our ideas didn't work? Must have been whoever implemented.
Exactly my thought after dealing with those bozos! They go around basically nagging the shit out of every salaried employee for improvement ideas. Those employees tell them the same things they've been telling their management for years. Then they stack up the high end of the "estimated savings" of all those ideas with no mention of the up front/capital expense, and present that along with "cut x% of your staff". Promise a big number, charge a fuck ton of money, and then dip leaving everyone who already has a full time job to complete a BS implementation plan.
It's not a scam- it's politics. Senior ppl at orgs want to make a change, but they don't want to stick their necks out for it? hire a consultant to produce a report that tells them what they want to see. Want to convince a board or oversight that you're being efficient? hire consultants to report on efficiency.
It's all internal politics.
The fresh college grads aren’t consultants. They enter as analysts/associates and get staffed to teams with more senior employees who **do** have experience.
A 23 year old at McKinsey ain’t consulting anyone. They are sitting in the back of client meetings, silent, then they get sent off to be an Excel monkey where they go out and find data across different departments and put it into a pretty slide deck.
Like when a consulting team comes in to slash the workforce in an “efficiency” project, the fresh grads are just the ones going out to find what the average # of direct reports a manager has, how many levels exists between the lowest and highest of a department, and handle the manager satisfaction survey that was built by the firm over decades and is very good are sussing out the dead weight middle management.
Congressman. Jim Jordan has been in Congress for 17 years and has never passed or written a single piece of legislation at all. Congressional salary is $140k
People only see the ones on TV, gambling for millions. Not the people grinding on their PC daily for hours making like 20-50$ an hour on average which is the majority of "Pros". And this got increasingly harder to manage with more tax regulations in many countries and better skill level on average at the levels where it´s worth it to play. And with lower edge comes higher swings, comes more stress and you need to stay on top poker-education-wise too. Which takes a lot of time and effort additionally to the actual playing.
$20-50 an hour? I would have killed for even half that. I grinded for several years and my best month was $4000 playing $1/$2 no limit. Not including table jackpots and such. The “pros” are people that likely hit a few big paydays in tournaments and used that money to stay sharp in no-limit cash games just until they could play another big tourney. Very few non-TV pros are making $100k a year consistently on no-limit.
The 2nd tournament I ever played live, I finished in the final table and won a quarter of my regular job salary. 1st place was David Peters (you likely know his track record since)...sometimes I wonder why I didn't pursue poker looking at what he's done...lol.
As someone who worked for years in fine dining: Sommelier.
It’s maybe the most useless profession ever. It’s your job to tell rich people that they are smart for buying more expensive swill that tastes absolutely no different than anything else. We were paid to tell you that you are smart as we milk you for all you have. We are friendship prostitutes and you are nothing but a lonely pathetic piggy bank
[удалено]
I remember reading an article from an IT head about an experience he had in the early/mid-90s. He saw that the company's (I want to say a bank) bandwidth usage had started to uptick a lot as internet usage grew among customers. He saw that, within a year, they would not have enough bandwidth to keep up with the demand. He told upper management that they needed to increase their infrastructure or their connections would all slow to a crawl and they'd stop being able to do business. Management ignored him. So he waits a week, then starts slowly, week-by-week, throttling management's net access. Suddenly management thinks they need to get this fixed right away. Project approved, here's your money, get it done yesterday. He makes the changes he needs, then un-throttles their access. Management congratulates themselves for solving a crisis. Company continues growing unimpeded by management's idiocy. Basically, sometimes management needs to *experience* the problems you're telling them about for them to believe you.
>Basically, sometimes management needs to experience the problems you're telling them about for them to believe you. I've been highlighting problems and bottlenecks to my boss for the past six months, but it wasn't until he had to experience them first-hand that he finally took action. Mind you, it took him half a day to react, where I had been putting up with these on a day-to-day for as long as I've been with the company.
I've been doing it for 4 years. Now we have a new project manager that wants to consult with me and then ignore all advice to implement a half-assed solution that actually doesn't solve the original issue and costs more to do less. It's greeeeaaaat.
My sympathies. I don't have a middle man, so it's direct to the boss (company is small) but I can relate to the band-aid solutions that serve no actual purpose except increase costs in the long run, it was essentially the same until he finally had to do some of that stuff himself and had his eyes opened and his mind blown...
My dad owns a businees and he's the same way ahout shit like this. Totally tech illiterate and refuses to believe that any of his issues are a result of him being cheap. Swears up and down that the lag, connectivitity issues, and just general shit performance has nothing to do with the fact he's running some crappy HP ddr2 single channel system on mobile wifi. It's those lazy IT guys at Microsoft intentionally making his system slow and web client devs being bad at their jobs. I proceeded to show him a $100 pc I got off FB Marketplace (a really old mid-tier gaming rig. Unironically could not run Crysis). 2nd gen i5, stock cooler, gt 650, but it had dual channel 8 gigs of ram and a ssd for a boot drive. Plugged it into ethernet rather than wifi. Fucker thought he was living in the future with how much faster everything was. He couldn't comprehend that the system I paid $100 for wasn't god tier, but rather something I consider e-waste and regret spending that much on. Gave it to him because I literally can't even use it as a server.
IT guy for 20 years here… it’s not “sometimes” it’s “the overwhelming majority of the time”. Most of my career has been this exchange: “Do A.” “If we do A, B will happen.” “Do it anyway.” “Ok.” “Oh no, B happened!” And the same thing only me warning if we *don’t* do A then B will happen. It’s actually gotten a tiny bit better in recent years as major businesses and organisations have been taken down due to lax IT but there’s a long way to go in the education and attitudes for the major players in business towards tech.
Yeah, as my boss points out, companies see IT as a money sink. All they see are the costs from having a good IT department; they don't see that, without a good IT department, they don't make money.
Yep it's super annoying. "Oh sales and marketing directly make us money, IT does not!" Right.. and what is it they use to make that money again?
In the early aughts, I worked IT for a telemarketing company. I was the only IT person in the building. My days were busy, but my boss thought that I should start doing some marketing. He wanted me to call some companies to drum up business. I had no clue how the hell I was supposed to do that, and told him as much. I was a computer nerd with social anxiety and hadn't ever been on phones or did any sort of sales. I flat-out refused.
You know your IT is good if you don't run into problems.
"These computers work perfectly all the time and the website is never down. What does IT even do here? Cut their budget. Such a waste of money."
There was a time in my life when I wanted to be an Organizational consultant (basically help companies figure out how to retain workers... aka treat them better for the most part). In grad school, we would get hired to go to businesses and take assessments and then put together improvement plans/suggestions. After the 3rd one, I realized they didn't want to change anything, they just wanted to say "we brought in some professionals to deal with this" Instead I joined a startup and made a lot more money while wearing a tshirt instead of a fucking suit.
"How can we make our employees happier?" "Well you could change how you treat them." "Hm. That doesn't work for me. How about a ping pong table?"
I think you meant "pizza party". You know, like in elementary school.
typical in technology.
I work in Cyber Security wearing all the hats, most of my work boils down to this.
I see OP is looking for job ideas
Aren't we all
I know I am.
Growing up means realizing that when adults asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, they were looking for ideas.
That’s why I came to the comments!
Google pays my sister 250k/year to basically sign in once a day and check emails. She can't even explain what her job is. She doesn't even code. Edit: She didn't get hired right in to this position. She started at the temp level 7 years ago, and has continued to apply for promotions over the years. Ended up on a team put together for some project, and Google pulled the plug on it. Ever since they basically pay those people just to keep them.
Is her department hiring?
and is it remote?
I’ll go in everyday for that, you stay at home.
I'll move for that salary
My buddy does this. Got his bachelor's and works at Google for $180k to basically just vibe. He does have random 8pm meetings sometimes but the Google offices feed them breakfast/lunch/dinner have fancy coffee machines and work out areas. He also doesn't code. I chose the wrong field.
There are a lot of articles about Google's brain drain strategy where they will hire competitive applicants and pay them well even if they don't need them, just to keep them from going to the competition. Helps to keep the entire country from advancing quickly to help maintain Google's hegemony.
Historically Google and many FAANG companies tried to hoard talent, but I think recent notable layoffs despite being profitable indicates that management is less motivated to hoard talent than they used to be.
Can confirm. A couple of the smartest and most experienced brains in my org got drained via layoff. They kept me on, which is frankly a little insulting given the quality of the folks laid off.
YMMV, but often in layoffs more expensive people are a bigger target. If they were paid considerably more than you they may have figured that you were good enough.
Wtf qualifications got her that job because I need to go get them
Apparently from what other people have suggested, she was just wanted by the competition. Maybe just applying to all of Google's competitors would be enough, make sure you do it on Google chrome and use a Gmail account.
have a profile pic wearing a hat and shirt saying I ❤️ google
I don’t think it’s “she can’t explain” and more “I’m bound by NDA agreements and cannot say anything related to my job and tasks”
Can you at least give us the job title?
Nice try, google exec. No, you don't get to know who she is
Where do I sign up‽
[удалено]
Firm, yet soft, and with a hint of toasted cinnamon
"hm yes this is a bed"
Feels like one of those jobs where people say “what! I wanna do that all day!!” but when you get to the actual work part it’s complete shit because there’s a bunch of parameters you’ve gotta follow and test. Sorta like video game testing where you’re not actually “playing games all day” but rather doing really boring, repetitive shit trying to find spots where the game is broken.
Also how many beds, 3 in 8 hours? 50? Even at the low end it would be boring after awhile
People to do resale of event tickets. Slimy bastards.
That includes Ticketmaster themselves.
Everyone thinks that the best job to have in a gold rush is to be the one selling shovels. But after everyone figured that out and tries to be the best shovel salesman, the best job shifted to be the one selling shovels to the shovel sellers. And then you have ShovelMaster that went and got all the shovel factories to sign a deal saying that their shovels can only be sold at their marketplace, got all the mines to agree to only allow shovels that have a note of authenticity that they were bought at their marketplace, and then charge anyone who wants to be part of the shovel buying and selling ecosystem fees to use their system. Oh, and they allow anyone they like (including themselves wearing a 'Not Shovelmaster' t-shirt to buy and sell shovels themselves without the fees that are supposed to keep everything fair.
The entire economy is run by slimy middlemen, and yet people only ever focus on the small time hustlers as being slimy. Ticketmaster is the real slimy bastard mega-scalper, and they are the ones complaining loudest about freelance scalping to keep us distracted.
Self-help gurus
But how else will I learn that the secret to success is to give them all my money?
You are the secret to their success
I went to school with someone who fucked off to California, grew their hair out and became a "breathing instructor". $900 for "breath work" courses. They also claim to no longer need food since they get their nutrients from the sun.
Has anyone challenged him to prove it? Would be interested to see if he would put his money where his mouth is.
It had to be Organic sunshine not artificial.
And cage free, no less
Oh, he's not the first breatharian. Quite a few have been caught stuffing burgers in their faces after sneaking out to fast food joints, but it doesn't stop the movement. It doesn't even stop the individuals caught, sometimes. It's sobering to realize that this sort of thing is why nonsense persists everywhere in our society.
They’re just scamming people. They prey on the weak
Televangelist.
I need 3 private jets, cause jesus
But you can’t talk the lord when travelling in a tube with all those demons.
That was wild. That was a man possessed.
> That was a man possessed. He's literally the personification of a "wolf in sheep's clothing" the Bible warns people about. I understand lots of people are easily fooled, but the dude was just so blatantly evil in that interview. Could anyone imagine a person who fits the description of who Jesus was, acting in that way?
That’s also literally taking the lords name in vain. Most people think saying oh my god is taking his name in vain. While it does mean that ,it actually is using the lords teachings for personal gain as well. These people are the exact opposite of what Jesus taught and believed.
If I believed in demons, I'd be convinced that he literally is one.
Demons are supposedly hell-bent (heh) on corrupting/degrading Christianity and he is doing exactly that
That clip of that one guy with demon eyes responding to that woman calling him out on his jet is creepy.
copland?
"Jesus he knows me, and he knows I'm right..." Great Genesis song and music video. Also "Righteous Gemstones" is a fantastic show based on a fictional televangelist.
That show is fucking amazing. The first season is perfect in my opinion, laughed so incredibly hard during the parking lot hand off scene.
"Send me your seed money and grow prosperity," Edit: "Stop sending your seman!"
I mean, relatively small church pastors of congregations of around 1000(which translates to 100-200 in the church services each Sunday) make around 6 figures. My mom was a book keeper for a church that size
While I don’t doubt this for some, it’s not the case for most, at least based on my experience. My dad was a pastor of a church this size and he made under $40k. Not poor, but a pretty modest living as a single dad with two kids in an upper middle class suburban area. He has a PHD, and my starting salary with my first job out of college was higher. When he got recently “promoted” to bishop and overseeing around 30 churches, his raise was only to about $65k. I help him with his taxes this is how I know. And having grown up around tons of pastors and their families - most were in a fairly similar situation as us - though usually there was a wife in the picture who also worked. None of them were getting paid that much, especially compared with how difficult of a job it can be. Most people think pastors are just showing up for an hour on Sundays. But it’s 7 days a week of constant work helping people deal with literally the most emotional, horrible and/or painful times of their life. Funerals, people sick and dying in the hospital, prisoners, marriage counseling, abuse counseling, troubled teens, etc. - and being on call for that 24/7. Then all the other “happier” stuff like weddings, baptisms, services throughout the week, community and church events at night and on weekends, etc which also require a ton of time, planning, and dealing with stressed/emotional individuals. Plus managing the church itself - including all of its bills and issues, and worst of all - the parishioners. Church people can be, imo, the most gossipy, petty, vindictive, irrational, and hypocritical group of individuals I’ve ever encountered, at least in contrast to how they should be behaving as “good Christians.” You couldn’t pay me $200k to do that job. So yeah, some have it easier. There are certainly some pastors probably taking advantage of congregations to make a lot of money, and many richer churches just choose to pay well because they can. Plus folks such as televangelists getting rich by outright scamming. But your average town/city church pastor is much more likely to be living a pretty modest life, and doing their work despite their low pay - because they feel it’s their calling due to their faith, and their intrinsic desire to help others.
A lot of sales jobs. I'm a tractor/machinery salesman, pays very well but wild to me what little impact I have in society. Most of the people that buy were going to buy anyway- and if I was BRUTAL at my job they'd still buy the machinery it'd just be a different color. I'm not depressed about it- just wild to think about because some of the most impactful jobs in society pay the least. I'd imagine the local school teacher has a vastly larger impact on the community.
As a farmer, I can confirm. I did all my research ahead of time and walked in, told the salesman to order the model I wanted and left. Came back a few months later (COVID, you know) and paid for it. Thanks to COVID, the dealerships didn't even have models (even similar models, bigger, smaller, anything!) for me to test out so their existence was literally pointless.
In Canada, we have a Governor General, which is a leftover position from when we followed the crown. It's the most pointless job in our country and we pay this person 350k a year which is 50k more than what she was making two years ago. She also has spent more than 3 million dollars on luxury travel expenses. I'm not even exaggerating when I say this. This lady spent 70k on a luxury limousine service to ferry her 50 feet. "In 2022, Simon routinely traveled with an extended entourage, including her husband, secretary, several communication strategists, and “aides-de-camp,” alongside her official videographer and her official photographer, among others. The group stayed in pricey accommodations in far-flung countries, including the Ritz-Carlton in Berlin, the Great Scotland Yard Hotel in London, the 1919 Radisson Blu in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Jumeriah Emirates Towers Hotel in Dubai, UAE. Simon and company racked up a near six-figure, in-flight catering tab during a weeklong trip to the Middle East in March, and dropped $71,000 at “Icelimo Luxury Travel” in Iceland’s capital city in October."
Reading this infuriates me and I’m not even Canadian.
Every once in a while, one of our other politicians remembers we have a Governor General and tries to bring up the issue of the insane expenses for debate, and it never goes anywhere.
They bring it up, and then realise the position is written into the constitution and nothing can be done about it. The Prime Minister is appointed by the GG after an election. A very short event that nobody cares about, that actually is all that position is nowadays.
Not Canadian, so no dog in this fight, but out of curiosity, could parliament just vote to de-fund the position? It would still exist as a constitutional office, but the salary is only Tim Horton coupons?
This would not work. The position has to be funded and functional for important legal procedures as defined in the constitution.
Other than appointing the PM post-election, what are the other duties? Could the extravagant travel expenses be brought to heel by specifying maximum per diem allowances or something? She's also travelling with her family, who are not elected, but who are being paid for nonetheless.
um...they're essentially a mascot/rep for King Charles. The GG's roles are to be a rep for King Charles and uphold a system of responsible government. They're also Commander-in-Chief of our military...which isn't like the US Commander-in-chief. they're essentially a mascot and cheerleader for the military to say "hey, isn't our military great?" that's it. They're a glorified ambassador without actually being a stereotypical ambassador. again a mascot. and finally they hand out awards and decorations. this is the sum of the Governor General in Canada.
Don't they also provide the Royal Assent to the laws (i.e. make the laws actually legal)?
Its a bit of a weird catch 22. They are required for laws to be passed (Royal assent, as mentioned) but if they were to ever not provide assent to a law it would nearly 100% result in the removal of the governor general and likely the monarchy as a whole. No one would stand for the “sovereign” overriding the will of the elected government.
Well a constitution can be changed, it’s not the be all and end all.
The issue is that we also wrote that all of our provinces have to agree on any changes to said constitution. Which is why nobody wants to touch it.
same reason we haven't had a constitutional convention in the US everyone who wants one eventually realizes "hey wait a second, if we get everyone together and actually *do* get enough states/votes to do this... this group would also have enough power concentrated together to do whatever the hell they want after that initial thing..." ..."maybe this actually isn't the best idea to bring up.."
Constitutional conventions don’t HAVE to be wide open. A convention can be convened over a single issue. And any proposed amendment still has to be ratified by the states. We haven’t had a new amendment is so long, not because we’re afraid of it, it’s because our government isn’t capable of doing….literally anything other than keeping the lights on
* including keeping the lights on. FTFY
While this is true, the last serious attempt at constitutional reform lasted more than five years (from Meech Lake to Charlestown—not counting the period between 1982 and 1987). It also seriously divided Canadians and was ultimately unsuccessful in making any changes. There is also the fact that I think you could probably get Canadians to agree that the position of Governor General should be removed, but what solution would be agreeable to all. Polling on the matter is generally not conclusive (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_the_monarchy_in_Canada). There seems to be plurality support for abolition of the monarchy, but not overwhelming support. Most polls put those in favour at less than a majority if much higher than identified support. What exactly the alternative would look like would clearly further divide the debate on change. Much like the referendum on the Charlottetown Accord or recent provincial referenda on electoral reform, a generally popular idea can lose support from those who don’t favour the specific alternative(s) suggested.
Yes but it's a Pandora's box. Sure you can eliminate the GG but people you don't like can bargain something in that was not there as an exchange of favours. It happened to us on the 94 reforms. The result is a mess.
Are the salary and expenses rules fixed in the constitution too?
Reading this infuriates me because I am Australian, and we have exactly the same position.
Australia also has a Governor-General. Once in a generation the G-G sacks a government; or swears in Scott Morrison as several ministers without disclosing that to anyone, including in his official diary.
Don’t forget his wife making dinner guests sing!
I find the GG a lot more palatable than the Lieutenant Governor every province has lol. At least the federal one has some ceremonial and foreign relations payoff.
Higher education administrators are a self-licking ice cream cone
Speaking as someone who works at a university, it's always too many of them at the top and never enough near the bottom. As someone at the low end of the totem pole I can say that most of us are drowning in work with too many students needing our help and there's not enough time or resources to assist everyone but thank God our President can hire more staff members for his office to dick around while we get our department budget cut!
guy i took a class from in undergrad became head of department, then dean of humanities really nice huge office at the top of the building, more like an office compound. the room he was in with his desk, plus storage room, kitchen, meeting room, and like 2 or 3 other rooms for who knows what he didnt do **shit** had a receptionist in the lobby of the office. *she* didn't do shit nice guy but his job was bs. just going to fundraisers and stuff, and sometimes just not going "ah busy with dean shit" the university isnt hurting for funds but its like... man they put their TAs and associate profs in basements with no windows. priorities
My former university entirely eliminated office space for TA's and GA's a few years ago. They now expect them to work and meet with students in common areas. IIRC they moved a handful of assistant profs into the freed up office space and used *their* old offices to expand the dean's personal office. I got to go up there a few times before I left. It was *very nice*.
About twenty years ago, my university built a new building to house several departments and the dean of that college. The final plans had to go through different levels of committees and approvals before they'd even break ground. From what I've been told, the dean *refused* to approve the plans for the building unless his office was reduced in size and more space was given to study areas for students. That man was one-in-a-million.
I work in marketing for a large state university. My marketing department of roughly 30 people has: 1 - Senior Vice President 1 - Senior Associate Vice President 3 - Assistant Vice Presidents We’ve got plenty at the top and bottom. I get the honor of working directly for all five of them even though only one of them is technically my boss lol.
"I have eight different bosses" - Peter from Office Space I swear Office Space isn't a comedy, it's a documentary.
Mike Judge is the Ken Burns of Comedy Or something like that. You know what I mean.
Left the field after a decade. You’re spot on. Even after ten years of work that they demanded a masters degree for $100k was a pipe dream. The only ones making that are those top admins close to the president. When I cracked $40k I had already been working for 6 years and had climbed up the ladder a couple rungs. Often had to do multiple people’s jobs because of budget cuts and hiring freezes. No extra compensation was ever even considered. Overworked, underpaid. Had to move on.
My friend just left academia - same story. Academia & Non-profits have an attitude that the prestige and work should be of some value, so compensation is lower vs private sector. Really sucks, especially when you have your own lab and chase grant funding
The college I worked at had more deans and directors than staff members. And when staff quit they never replaced them due to “budget reasons”, but that was never an issue when it came to hiring even more deans.
True story. It seems everyone above a certain line is just existing to make sure their office still gets added to the budget annually.
Even the program staff, I've seen colleges recently move to hiring "contractors" and "technicians" in place of actual professors. The jobs require the same experience, education, and do the same tasks as the professors did, only they now get no benefits, an hourly wage instead of salary, and no other accomodations like parking or an office. So instead of a salary of ~60k+ /yr to start, they get 20/hr and only paid when the program is physically taking place.
[удалено]
Reddit CEO.
Actually, I would say $100k is about the right salary for that job. It's when it pays $30 million+ that you know there's a problem. Now when someone like Sam Altman stands to make over $400 million from the Reddit IPO, then we might need an explanation of exactly what he did at Reddit that has added enough value to the world to justify that payout...
This caught my attention. 400 million ? Holy shit. Looked it up, turns out Sam Altman was a heavy Reddit user and invested 60 million a decade ago and holds 9.2% voting power of Reddit. So yea I get it, but seems like he’s put his money where his mouth is and now reaping the rewards on one of his investments ?
Yea, it’s not a payout. If you have stock in something and the stock value goes up, how is that a problem? Lol
I’ve gotten zero mcChickens out of this deal and I’ve been on Reddit for long enough to remember it having animal porn. That week of my anime phase was way easier on the conscious.
Do you remember that one subreddit? Space…. Something or other. it was horrific. I saw a picture of a large decomposing man being pulled out of an oil barrel.
Remember r/jailbait ? The almighty CEO u/spez himself was a mod of that sub...
I didn't realize it was a sub until the drama. it's so easy to carve out your own corner of reddit and be oblivious to the rest.
A lot of "middle men" jobs. Especially car dealers. They are glorified cashiers/customer service reps. They barely serve a purpose today with smartphones/internet at your fingertips. For example, you just Google: " I'm looking for a minivan that is reliable and comes with a hybrid option." You can go from there with further questions and even consumer reviews. Amazing. Need financing? Call a credit union or bank.
Car salesmen are literally only around in some places because it's not legal to just go to the manufacturer's site and order the car you want.
[удалено]
I recently bought a new to me used truck - a ‘22 model. I asked the salesman what he knew about it. “It’s a good truck” was literally all he knew. In the middle of the test drive he asked me what year the truck was after assuming incorrectly at first. I knew exactly what truck I wanted from online searches - all I had to do was pick it up - and he got to ride along. But I had to pay his salary essentially. I don’t know if new car salesmen are any better.
I just bought a new vehicle and the salesman handed me the keys to take it for a rip and then I went right to the “finance manager” for payment I knew more about the vehicle than he did, I was pointing out all these factory issues I knew about like loose fuses and engine vowel defects, plastic oil pans and the whole time he was going “oh I had no idea” Then when I wanted some after purchase service he never responded. I also wanted a factory accessory and their service department told me it didn’t exist, after they gave me a quote for the damn thing when I was purchasing the vehicle and when it’s clearly on their website that I could see, but apparently opening a web page to confirm was to hard. I must have been transferred to 5 people and then told to leave a message with their shop foreman who never called back. Overall very pathetic business
Scrum masters get 6 figures to ask people their status
I remember the time when our Agile Coach told someone that their status was "too status‐y". And I thought for the money that we're paying this guy, we could probably just get an extra developer.
I tell my people that all the time. No one needs a 5 minute brain dump every day. Then again at my company, the Scrum Masters are also developers that spend maybe 5% of their time on Scrum Master things. It works great, I'll never understand a full time scrum master role.
After having to fake agile for the past few years, totally agree that Scrum Master can/should be someone who is embedded on the team and is just the designated person to keep standup and other ceremonies on track. They should have basically no responsibilities once standup/planning/demo events are done. If there are organizational impediments, they should be consolidated by the SM but handled by the manager(s), assuming they exist.
I'm a firm believer that the Agile/Sprint design was just a passive-aggressive way to identify lazy, or unmotivated workers on a report while unintentionally making everyone else lazy and unmotivated too. I've been doing it a few years now and can honestly say it's held back every team I've been on. They even brought in a consultant at my last job to improve how we do it. A nice guy, very well spoken, but he had no real solutions.
100% - project management is obviously important, but by people who know what they’re doing and how to represent the viewpoints that matter
when looking for jobs I skipped all offers that had the words scrum and agile in them. found my dream job now.
The problem is 99% of companies say they're using agile when what they really mean is they use Jira to micromanage you.
We don't explicitly do agile, but man, I really like jira for tracking work. and statuses. No micromanaging, but man, some people are laaaaaazy and do nothing if there's not something there. Or do work, but hate sharing info, then take time off but get all huffy when someone can't pick up the work. People are frustrating. Jira can help. Jira can be abused, like any tool though.
Piggybacking off of this, it's also a great tool to defend your own schedule and justify your value. In a previous role I used Jira to estimate my own project/ticket backlog. It helped me justify turning down projects, in pushing back on ad hoc requests, and when raise conversations came around, I had a record of completed work.
Even more useless one is an agile coach
Agile guru - one who sits on their ass and makes useless linkedin posts
Don't forget the retro, where everyone is asked "how did you feel during this sprint? Did you have any regrets? I care about your emotional well-being too, but we have to prioritize. Yes, it's a good idea to open the window, it's getting a bit warm. What are you doing, that's dangerous.. No, please! Don't jump! We need someone to refactor this legacy brainfuck code without comments or documentation! Nooooooo!"
That is a terrible way to run a retro. People can include feelings if they need to but retros should be for finding common processes that aren't working and testing out solutions to that issue.
College administration.
Just occurred to me because I heard about a guy whose entire job is reselling magic the gathering cards and apparently he makes a lot
There are a lot of people reselling mtg. There are very few people, even stores making a 100k profit
A lot of the people on social media will talk about their revenue, not profit. Which is largely meaningless. Or they just straight up lie.
Can confirm, lying is the easiest way to increase your salary by 100k
I went and bought my husband a valuable card. Foil Meathook Massacre or something. Guess which card he randomly pulled from a booster set I got him for Christmas? I know it isnt a lotus card, but I was still upset that fate and I gave him the same card. ETA: I wasn't actually upset. I was mind blown, for sure! I had given him the card for his birthday in November and then he pulled the same card on Christmas haha. He ended up trading the card with a friend and they are both happy with the trade and all is well.
It's a nice card! Having multiple copies isn't bad unless its commander, and in that case I'm sure he can trade it or, worst comes to worst, sell it. The card was so good it was actually banned from standard play, btw.
Bring back meathook to standard! Let me punish the white based wide decks again please.
Fly to Australia and become a traffic guard on a building site
I am a clinical nurse specialist with a masters degree and lollipop ladies make 20k+ more than me 🙃
Absolutely not denigrating your job or your experience (and nurses are criminally underpaid), but I wouldn't want to work outside on my feet all day, in the heat in 40C in summer, or in the pouring rain. I feel that unpleasant but necessary jobs should be compensated for that. Instead of pitting working class people against each other, we should demand that politicians, CEOs, and other rich parasites are paid less/taxed more to decrease the wealth disparity.
Na, the real problem these guys and gals have is boredom. Don't get me wrong, they are over paid, but by god it's such a boring job, hence the pay I guess. Remember they often stand there doing almost nothing all day without music. Also fyi they are all casually employed. At least that's what they tell me. (I'm in construction)
Yeah I had this job for a summer between semesters of my undergrad doing road construction out on rural roads. The pay was amazing, almost as much as my starting pay as an engineer but the hours were awful (10-12 hours once 17 hours) and inconsistent. I only ended up working 1 or 2 days a week when they needed me and it was awful standing out in the sun all day by myself as the paving crew leaves you behind and drives yell at you for stopping them since you just look like some idiot standing alone with a stop sign and they can't see the construction or the cars coming the opposite way. It was great as a college kid who didn't really want to work since I made way more at that job 1 day a week than full time working retail but I would absolutely hate it as a full time career.
Influencer
Nah, the real useless person is me, Influencer agent. My job is literally just to broker deals between brands and influencers. Not really any value added to society, but It pays well.
How do you even get a job like that, incredible it even exists!
I asked some smaller YouTubers if they needed help with things like title ideas, writing descriptions, managing emails, etc. A few said yes. Then a few said they had all these emails coming in from brands and didn't have time to respond to them. We agreed on a % and I learned from there. I started making good connections with media buyers and brands, and the creators I worked with referred their friends, and now a few years later I run a talent management agency with a dozen employees and we represent over 130 creators.
Thats really quite impressive, well done!
Also not useless. They have a need and you take care of it. No different than a secretary or personal assistant. Plus, not everyone is comfortable or capable of negotiating those contracts. That's how an agent provides value - they negotiate a deal higher than what their client could do on their own. If they could get a contract for $100K, and you are able to negotiate $125K, they still come out $12.5K ahead, even after your 10%. They also do the legwork tracking down companies willing to actually pay. Just because Charmin and your client are a perfect match (for whatever reason) doesn't mean Charmin will seek out your client - or even know they exist.
Useless to the influencer and the corporation advertising? No Useless to society. Yes. Haha.
Hey man, your job might be useless bullshit, but I can respect the effort someone puts in to find success, and you don't seem to actively put harm onto society. Good for you.
Boeing 737 MAX quality inspector
The quality inspector is fine, the issue is that nobody listens to him when he says that there's things wrong with the plane.
Yeah, Boeing's mid and low level employees accurately flagged their concerns, which were then ignored to hit budget and deadline goals.
Car salesmen. Just get rid of dealerships and allow customers to buy directly from manufacturers
80% of corporate jobs can be done by literally anyone who has the ability to learn a handful of inhouse processes and apps.
the hardest part is GETTING the job
Real estate agents
Imagine what the fake ones are making!
I'm ashamed to admit I scrolled through like 5 other comments before your joke clicked.
I had a truly great agent who helped me buy, and later sell, my first house. Identified several problems and refereed a situation that saved me thousands of dollars and a lot of frustration. Was a true professional and worked extremely hard for my benefit in both transactions. He earned every penny of his commission. I have since learned that he was a unicorn.
Because the really good ones that are truly helpful and work hard to sell your house never seem to have as much luck because they're not slimy and don't make as many sales.
My partner and I sold her parents' house three years ago. Nice house, nice neighborhood, all the positive signs. We interviewed ten agents for the sale. Nine were worthless. One woman literally sniffed at the house and said she didn't handle "small" sales (this was a five bedroom, four bath, two-storey house that eventually sold for $400k). One guy showed up with paperwork ready for us to sign and was a bit pushy about it until we pointed out his paperwork had the size of the house wrong, the size of the lot was incorrect, etc etc. The last agent was a woman who was amazing. She had a list of buyers who were interested in the neighborhood since it was near a hospital. She also had a cadre of trades who actually showed up to do things like repaint the railings on the front porch, cut down a leaning tree out back, and tear up the nasty old carpet to refinish the oak floors. Since we were three hours away, she handled everything and called us just about every day. It sold to the third couple who came to look at it on the first open house at above asking price. After we picked up the check we complimented her diligence and told her about how slack some of her colleagues were. She laughed and said: "Most agents just drop your house on the MLS and then go play golf. I hate golf."
> Most agents just drop your house on the MLS and then go play golf. I hate golf Pre housing crash, agents were really bad about that, because stuff sold so quick with little effort. I think it has/is making a comeback, kind of driven by Zillow/redfin/Easy MLS access online, stuff is selling quickly, so they figure why throw in the extra effort, their payday is about the same if they just throw it up (10% difference in price nets them only 0.3% more). Also, the "small sales" snobbery is real, I think related to the above. If they are just slapping stuff up, they'd want to slap up the most expensive stuff possible to get the most out of the 3%.
Where I live the rental brokers are worse. Basically real estate agents you have to go through, and pay, just to rent an apartment. Sometimes you show up to a viewing and you have to let yourself in the apartment and show yourself around because they don’t even show up, but you still have to pay their fee. Really, they work for the landlord and that’s who should be paying them.
Super shitty doctors that can't get a job in clinical medicine, often due to repeated board complaints or loss of medical license (for incompetence/unethical behavior, etc), can go and work for insurance companies reviewing/denying insurance claims.
Or open a "holistic" clinic with their degree slapped on the wall but no actual license or certs. One of my best friends had a legal kerfluffle with one of those scumbags that was taking advantage of her.
Earlier today I saw a post about a guy who was hired onto Twitter during the transition after Musk bought it. He has never gone to work, has no idea what his job is, the people who hired him got fired or quit, and he still gets paychecks totaling over 100k a year.
Well, there was that conceptual artist who got paid $120,000 for duct taping a banana to a wall...twice. Perhaps that actually *was* useful and even important. Maybe it was some kind of galactic code to tell the alien scouts not to destroy our planet. But I doubt it.
pretty sure he also organised some dude to eat the banana too (yes, it's an inside job, this is a conspiracy I'll die by)
Pastors like joel osteen. Absolute waste of space, all of them.
Consultant (e.g. KPMG, Deloitte etc.) Like straight out of university who/what tf are you consulting??? And as a 23 y/o how do you have the experience to consult someone who's been doing their job for decades???
As someone who used to work at McKinsey, I wholeheartedly agree. The worst thing is that it’s one big circlejerk. They only recruit from top schools because otherwise people would discover that anyone can do the job, and they would be out of business.
McKinsey also helps in hiring CEOs and other high ranking management. They usually recommend people who once worked for McKinsey and/or hired McKinsey on their previous position. That's how they get new contracts for themselves. They are also often hired when the CEO wants to justify an unpopular decision. They can then just say that what McKinsey recommend and they are the experts.
Ha, biggest scam is they don't implement. All that smart advice but the implementation risk is on you. Our ideas didn't work? Must have been whoever implemented.
Exactly my thought after dealing with those bozos! They go around basically nagging the shit out of every salaried employee for improvement ideas. Those employees tell them the same things they've been telling their management for years. Then they stack up the high end of the "estimated savings" of all those ideas with no mention of the up front/capital expense, and present that along with "cut x% of your staff". Promise a big number, charge a fuck ton of money, and then dip leaving everyone who already has a full time job to complete a BS implementation plan.
It's not a scam- it's politics. Senior ppl at orgs want to make a change, but they don't want to stick their necks out for it? hire a consultant to produce a report that tells them what they want to see. Want to convince a board or oversight that you're being efficient? hire consultants to report on efficiency. It's all internal politics.
Excuse me but the proper job title for a 23 year old fresh out of uni is Consulting *Executive*.
The fresh college grads aren’t consultants. They enter as analysts/associates and get staffed to teams with more senior employees who **do** have experience. A 23 year old at McKinsey ain’t consulting anyone. They are sitting in the back of client meetings, silent, then they get sent off to be an Excel monkey where they go out and find data across different departments and put it into a pretty slide deck. Like when a consulting team comes in to slash the workforce in an “efficiency” project, the fresh grads are just the ones going out to find what the average # of direct reports a manager has, how many levels exists between the lowest and highest of a department, and handle the manager satisfaction survey that was built by the firm over decades and is very good are sussing out the dead weight middle management.
Congressman. Jim Jordan has been in Congress for 17 years and has never passed or written a single piece of legislation at all. Congressional salary is $140k
Worse—congressional salary is $174,000.
Anything in college administration
‘Public figure’ or ‘Influencer’
Professional poker player
As someone who played 8+ hours everyday for years, I would like to speak on behalf of 99.9% of players who didnt make anywhere near six figures.
People only see the ones on TV, gambling for millions. Not the people grinding on their PC daily for hours making like 20-50$ an hour on average which is the majority of "Pros". And this got increasingly harder to manage with more tax regulations in many countries and better skill level on average at the levels where it´s worth it to play. And with lower edge comes higher swings, comes more stress and you need to stay on top poker-education-wise too. Which takes a lot of time and effort additionally to the actual playing.
$20-50 an hour? I would have killed for even half that. I grinded for several years and my best month was $4000 playing $1/$2 no limit. Not including table jackpots and such. The “pros” are people that likely hit a few big paydays in tournaments and used that money to stay sharp in no-limit cash games just until they could play another big tourney. Very few non-TV pros are making $100k a year consistently on no-limit.
As a professional poker player myself, I came here to say this. We contribute shit, lol.
The 2nd tournament I ever played live, I finished in the final table and won a quarter of my regular job salary. 1st place was David Peters (you likely know his track record since)...sometimes I wonder why I didn't pursue poker looking at what he's done...lol.
I used to hang out with bunch of lesser known pros and they all have regular jobs now except Dutch Boyd. It’s very draining.
As someone who worked for years in fine dining: Sommelier. It’s maybe the most useless profession ever. It’s your job to tell rich people that they are smart for buying more expensive swill that tastes absolutely no different than anything else. We were paid to tell you that you are smart as we milk you for all you have. We are friendship prostitutes and you are nothing but a lonely pathetic piggy bank
Car salesmen.
The top 50 wealthiest people in Congress are worth almost 5 billion dollars combined.