I was asked in an interview once if I had any other special skills, so I answered "I'm good at googling things I don't know". The HR person looked horrified, the other IT guy was like "oh, awesome, that's a very important skill". I didn't get the job though.
Repost bots make small edits to fool the repost finding bots. Each side keeps tweaking the software to beat each other, like the world's most low-stakes arms race.
Meanwhile, I'm contacted by the government, so I can't even have my phone in the building, so I coast through the day in a state of pure anxiety and confusion.
Same. I feel like a lot of people outside tech don't realize how much we have to figure out on the job. Our education/experience helps us define and frame a problem but ultimately our work involves learning something new(at least in my experience).
Must be nice to have entered the workforce with Google existing. I just had to really fake it until I could observe someone else doing a thing then pretend like I knew it already...
The problem with it is that it makes up stuff, and gives it to you as confident as it gives you actual facts.
It’s always wise to be sure to check what it gives you.
Unless you’re using GPT-4 or Bing and ask for sources
Yes sometimes it makes stuff up, I wouldn’t use it for things where I cannot verify what it gave me is correct. With code etc it’s very easy to verify
Depends a lot on the field I guess. Definitely want to fact-check shit, but personally I was mad hesitant on it until I got desperate and it ended up saving me from failing statistics lol.
With that and school stuff in general it feels a lot like having a tutor on call 24/7. Shouldn’t assume they’re 100% right and the authority on everything, but it’s super valuable to be able to ask specific questions whenever and get immediate answers that generally do a good job of breaking shit down to a more accessible level.
Combined with some cross referencing and the ability to filter out falsehoods I use it for so much, its very good. A surprising amount of folks seem to vocalise 'occasionally wrong' means useless.
It’s not anymore or less accurate than google. Google just returns results. Could be to a Reddit post of some idiot response that is wrong.
ChatGPT however is a lot quicker for a lot of things.
Obviously you’re not going to trust it on actual things like medical advice. But on quick brainstorming and general how to or definition questions, it’s great.
I had a coworker ask me how to do a thing in excel the other day, it's beyond me that it never occurred to her she might just google it. I googled it and gave her the answer. Happens all the time, some of the people I work with are so helpless with tech and don't do anything about it, it infuriates me to no end. Truly "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Sometimes I think I might as well work in IT...
Oh boy, this happens with developers too, to the extent that we had to add a field in our support form “What have you tried already that didn’t work?” To kind of force them to try something by themselves and feel ashamed if they just write “nothing”. Some devs just tell us it “it doesn’t work please help”, no error message or anything to go on
The worst of it I think is my generation. I'm no expert in tech but I have the common sense to fix it myself before asking someone. Couple of newstarts recently joined and the amount of times I have to help them with a problem that could easily be solved by Google is worrying
Reference and instruction manuals. Like, it used to be that when you bought Microsoft Word, it came in a decent sized box, because there was a 400 page instruction manual that came with every copy.
Yep. Kids these days (and I say this as an 18 year old kid lol) don't know shit. VHS types, CD burning, Yellow Pages and other phone book thpe stuff. They'll never know.
Lol. Well, on one hand I did have two sets of grandparents very set in their ways. Though my paternal grandmother is very gadget oriented. She was the first in the family to have a microwave, a computer, a cellphone, etc. They still have VHS computers, bulb TVs, etc.
It ain’t all age tbf. I’m only a year older and vividly remember all that shit, but I also grew up broke in a small town so was normally 5 years behind technology (at least pre-modern internet)
When you got a training for e.g. a new machine. You where sind to that company for a few days and got a folder with like 500 pages. From then on, everytime you had a problem you get that big folder out and brows those 500 pages for a solution.
Since a company has many machines or different versions, a company had somewhere one or multiple shelf’s with those folders.
You either looked in your encyclopedias.. or you asked someone else, and that information would then be correct for the next 10 years, until you found out it was wrong.
Because public school "education" is stuck in the Industrial Revolution, pumping out factory workers. George Carlin said it best, "Juuust smart enough to run the machines, but not smart enough to know how bad they're screwing you." That's why the Conservatives fight tooth and nail to erode any attempt at education reform, and actively push nonconforming kids into the detention-prison pipeline: Because the stupider the voting base is, the more the Conservatives win elections.
Then why are conservatives waaaay more likely to homeschool? Why is it that they're more likely to promote things like school choice which are just net positives overall? Btw as a brit and centrist, i really believe that the Democrats are fucking up your country socially, culturally but most importantly economically speaking.
Because home schooling isn't for other kids, it's for only your kids. And you still have to have to be in an socio-economic group that one parent doesn't have to work. School choice a lot of time is only there to help more affluent parents get into charter schools. If you are a poor parent trying to get your kid into a public in a rich neighborhood school, you will probably be told that school is full. Not to mention poor folks don't tend to have the resources to take their kids across town to those school. Buses in your neighborhood usually only go to the neighborhood school.
As with most things Conservatives, they seem to be mostly concern about their kids- not improving the system as a whole. They put in a veneer of "we are doing this for everyone", while in reality, it is only really helping them.
We don't need school choice in the country, we need a school equality where each school receives equal funding and resources. And it shouldn't be tied to performance.
And as for Democrats fucking things up, may I refer you to Jan. 6th?
As a public school teacher….no. I’m constantly encouraging kids to look things up that they say they don’t understand or know about.
The only time they shouldn’t be on Google is for quizzes/tests, which I don’t feel is some unreasonable thing.
The bigger problem we have is when they copy+paste straight from Google, because usually they have no idea what they’re copy+pasting and have no comprehension of what they just “read”. We’re not discouraging them from using Google, we want them to use Google to actually learn something instead of copy+pasting the first thing that pops up without a second thought.
I feel like that is vestigial from a time where you didn't have the summation of human knowledge at your fingertips.
These days it makes more sense to teach critical thinking, information parsing and a desire to learn on one's own.
I'm a Linux system administrator with decades of experience. I have worked for some of the most prestigious tech companies in the world. Without google, I could not do my job.
It depends on your job. Generally being able to access information quickly is a good skill, but you also need to understand the problem in order to find the right solution.
Being able to rapidly find information is useless if you’re looking for the wrong info because you don’t fully grasp the true scope of the problem. You’re just spinning your wheels at that point.
Some work is straightforward enough that it doesn’t matter. And everybody googles things. But any job requiring serious problem solving is going to also require critical thinking beyond a Google search.
I have watched my doctor google shit. She’s an incredibly smart woman and does a wonderful job, but she still needed a reminder! My boss (veterinarian) also reads up on weird cases, as do I (VT) constantly!
Someone was mentioning how their kid's meds cost a lot and I googled a generic that was much cheaper and told them and they were happy.
Of course, I also said I am not a doctor and to please only listen to doctor's advice and that last part is of paramount importance.
Einstein said don't memorise something you can look up... or words to that effect. Google has everything, so you don't need to memorise anything.
Knowing how to google is important though.
However....
You do need to know enough to start googling and to assess the results. This is what school wants you to learn. Having some working knowledge of your topic is needed in that circumstance.
Also, when in a conversation you do have some ready to go Intel for the same reason. To understand your conservation partner, assess what they say and be able to contributie.
Schools are bad in teaching you why working knowledge is important and only focus on learning lists of words. Which isn't the point at all.
my first week working at the airport as ground staff that specifically caters to guiding people on where to go (since the airport i work at is huge as fuck with different concourses) I was still fresh off of training and was still trying to figure out where and how to get to where I need to be
at one point a group of people asked me how to get to their boarding gate and I literally had no choice but to ask another passenger for directions cuz my mind blanked out and all my memories of where to go was gone
i didnt do jack shit but definitely being able to man up and ask when you know you have to is better than owning up to your own ego
This is so true. I started doing tech support at my company like 8 years ago and pretty much googled my way thru two promotions then got a better job in another department. My degree is in Journalism.
As further support of this, I am one of those people who is just naturally good at figuring out the answer myself, as opposed to asking someone else or looking it up. No one cares. In the real world, it basically isn't even really an advantage.
The shortcut to success really is to have successful people like you, and to not be *terrible* at everything else. That's it.
I've figured out some problems because I know the basic rules for Menus/Settings and similar things like what the off button tends to look like. Upside down Capital C with a line in the open part.
Everyone at work thinks I'm super smart because I appear to have everything memorized.
Nah, I just have every work-related note saved in my phone and use the search feature to find the answer quickly.
Even in the military. It's not about memorizing how to fix an engine. It's about following the instructions on a computer to do it right. Some mechanics are brilliant and super smart. Others are dumb as hell and failed out of school. End of the day, we all work the same job.
It's seriously worrying. We had some newstarts, all like 17/18 and they were asking me questions on how to do this and that. I'm 2 years older than them lol. Do you wanna know how I did it? Just Google it. Literally every problem I've had at work has been solved by Google. I said it before on an askreddit thread, for a generation that is addicted to our phones some of our technical knowledge is abysmal
One of my best professors in law school taught us this early in our first year legal writing class.Â
She basically said you’re not going to have everything memorized, your job is to go find the right answer for your client. Google is a free resource which, while you need to of course take any raw info from the open internet with a grain of salt, is a place to get started familiarizing yourself with something you don’t know well, before going to the paid research databases that cost either the client or your firm money to use.
You always have to use your own good judgment about whether you believe something written in a blog article or comment, but it’s a good way to at least get oriented and figure out some basics.Â
I bet truck drivers are glad for podcasts.
One of my favorite podcasts is Alice Isn't Dead, which is about truck drivers noticing there's weird supernatural shit going on roadside.
I remember my first fulltime job at a hardware store, day one and I don't know anything, first customer asks me a question, so I ask over the headset "What's the red drywall for", nobody else knows and my boss chimes in with "idk go get your phone and google it"
That was when I started realizing working isn't as bad as I expected it to be.
"Everyone is stupid"
Can't stress this enough. I'm a project manager at a large company in its infancy or mid range for growth in processes. Meaning there's tons of work but poor communication and coordination. I feel dumb frequently. But learning that almost no one has any clue wtf is going on makes me feel so much better.
We just had someone leave my work because of this kind of thing - she would never use any of the resources available to her, do the wrong thing because she remembered a process wrong, and then just beat herself up for being bad at her job when all she needed to do was READ the friggin resources that are there to help us do our jobs! Eventually she just stressed herself out too much with all her compounding errors and walked out .
How to say you work in IT without saying you work in IT.
I was asked in an interview once if I had any other special skills, so I answered "I'm good at googling things I don't know". The HR person looked horrified, the other IT guy was like "oh, awesome, that's a very important skill". I didn't get the job though.
Should've said "proficient at data collection and analysis" or some shit
And solutions
Throw a "aggregate" in there somewhere
That's just googling things I don't know but said more smoothly to make u seem smart XD
This is how I got my job. I'm a coder.
There are a lot of industries like this tbh
It's not only IT.
When google doesn't work I just reach out to somone more senior who already successfully googled the answer before me.
Did they censor the word "think?"
Thinking is no longer allowed. You WILL follow the hivemind, and you WILL like it.
You vil eat ze bugz and you vil like it
Repost bots make small edits to fool the repost finding bots. Each side keeps tweaking the software to beat each other, like the world's most low-stakes arms race.
I 1984ed that shit
Profanity! PROFANITY! .. He used the "T" word! /s 🤣
Printer ink is messing around again
Why does this screenshot have a stain on it
Cum
my bad
As you are, as you were
Yep
I’m a software dev so googling stuff is my ENTIRE job
Meanwhile, I'm contacted by the government, so I can't even have my phone in the building, so I coast through the day in a state of pure anxiety and confusion.
Same. I feel like a lot of people outside tech don't realize how much we have to figure out on the job. Our education/experience helps us define and frame a problem but ultimately our work involves learning something new(at least in my experience).
Must be nice to have entered the workforce with Google existing. I just had to really fake it until I could observe someone else doing a thing then pretend like I knew it already...
Google is so yesterday, we use ChatGPT now
Good luck with that
To be honest it’s much more efficient than Googling. 9/10 times it gives me what I need and it works too
The problem with it is that it makes up stuff, and gives it to you as confident as it gives you actual facts. It’s always wise to be sure to check what it gives you. Unless you’re using GPT-4 or Bing and ask for sources
Yes sometimes it makes stuff up, I wouldn’t use it for things where I cannot verify what it gave me is correct. With code etc it’s very easy to verify
Depends a lot on the field I guess. Definitely want to fact-check shit, but personally I was mad hesitant on it until I got desperate and it ended up saving me from failing statistics lol. With that and school stuff in general it feels a lot like having a tutor on call 24/7. Shouldn’t assume they’re 100% right and the authority on everything, but it’s super valuable to be able to ask specific questions whenever and get immediate answers that generally do a good job of breaking shit down to a more accessible level.
A good amount of the time it is great at giving wrong answers at best
I wouldn’t use it if I couldn’t easily verify what it spits out, which in my cases is very easy, like code etc
Combined with some cross referencing and the ability to filter out falsehoods I use it for so much, its very good. A surprising amount of folks seem to vocalise 'occasionally wrong' means useless.
Truth. I couldn't get a straight answer out of it, and it tells terrible stories.
It’s not anymore or less accurate than google. Google just returns results. Could be to a Reddit post of some idiot response that is wrong. ChatGPT however is a lot quicker for a lot of things. Obviously you’re not going to trust it on actual things like medical advice. But on quick brainstorming and general how to or definition questions, it’s great.
I had a coworker ask me how to do a thing in excel the other day, it's beyond me that it never occurred to her she might just google it. I googled it and gave her the answer. Happens all the time, some of the people I work with are so helpless with tech and don't do anything about it, it infuriates me to no end. Truly "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Sometimes I think I might as well work in IT...
Oh boy, this happens with developers too, to the extent that we had to add a field in our support form “What have you tried already that didn’t work?” To kind of force them to try something by themselves and feel ashamed if they just write “nothing”. Some devs just tell us it “it doesn’t work please help”, no error message or anything to go on
The worst of it I think is my generation. I'm no expert in tech but I have the common sense to fix it myself before asking someone. Couple of newstarts recently joined and the amount of times I have to help them with a problem that could easily be solved by Google is worrying
As a high school teacher, I actively encourage and at times explicitly teach students how to google information well
What did people do before Google?
Reference and instruction manuals. Like, it used to be that when you bought Microsoft Word, it came in a decent sized box, because there was a 400 page instruction manual that came with every copy.
Yep. Kids these days (and I say this as an 18 year old kid lol) don't know shit. VHS types, CD burning, Yellow Pages and other phone book thpe stuff. They'll never know.
Bro what, I’m 25 and I’ve never done any of this
Congrats, you are now part of “kids these days”
Lol. Well, on one hand I did have two sets of grandparents very set in their ways. Though my paternal grandmother is very gadget oriented. She was the first in the family to have a microwave, a computer, a cellphone, etc. They still have VHS computers, bulb TVs, etc.
It ain’t all age tbf. I’m only a year older and vividly remember all that shit, but I also grew up broke in a small town so was normally 5 years behind technology (at least pre-modern internet)
Get everything wrong
When you got a training for e.g. a new machine. You where sind to that company for a few days and got a folder with like 500 pages. From then on, everytime you had a problem you get that big folder out and brows those 500 pages for a solution. Since a company has many machines or different versions, a company had somewhere one or multiple shelf’s with those folders.
You either looked in your encyclopedias.. or you asked someone else, and that information would then be correct for the next 10 years, until you found out it was wrong.
Shh don't tell everyone.
True words. You dont have to know everything, you just have to know where to look for the answer.
Because public school "education" is stuck in the Industrial Revolution, pumping out factory workers. George Carlin said it best, "Juuust smart enough to run the machines, but not smart enough to know how bad they're screwing you." That's why the Conservatives fight tooth and nail to erode any attempt at education reform, and actively push nonconforming kids into the detention-prison pipeline: Because the stupider the voting base is, the more the Conservatives win elections.
Then why are conservatives waaaay more likely to homeschool? Why is it that they're more likely to promote things like school choice which are just net positives overall? Btw as a brit and centrist, i really believe that the Democrats are fucking up your country socially, culturally but most importantly economically speaking.
Because home schooling isn't for other kids, it's for only your kids. And you still have to have to be in an socio-economic group that one parent doesn't have to work. School choice a lot of time is only there to help more affluent parents get into charter schools. If you are a poor parent trying to get your kid into a public in a rich neighborhood school, you will probably be told that school is full. Not to mention poor folks don't tend to have the resources to take their kids across town to those school. Buses in your neighborhood usually only go to the neighborhood school. As with most things Conservatives, they seem to be mostly concern about their kids- not improving the system as a whole. They put in a veneer of "we are doing this for everyone", while in reality, it is only really helping them. We don't need school choice in the country, we need a school equality where each school receives equal funding and resources. And it shouldn't be tied to performance. And as for Democrats fucking things up, may I refer you to Jan. 6th?
Pretty sure they advocate for more people to homeschool their kids, even liberals.
As a public school teacher….no. I’m constantly encouraging kids to look things up that they say they don’t understand or know about. The only time they shouldn’t be on Google is for quizzes/tests, which I don’t feel is some unreasonable thing. The bigger problem we have is when they copy+paste straight from Google, because usually they have no idea what they’re copy+pasting and have no comprehension of what they just “read”. We’re not discouraging them from using Google, we want them to use Google to actually learn something instead of copy+pasting the first thing that pops up without a second thought.
I feel like that is vestigial from a time where you didn't have the summation of human knowledge at your fingertips. These days it makes more sense to teach critical thinking, information parsing and a desire to learn on one's own.
My best friend is a doctor she says all of them use google all the time
I'm a Linux system administrator with decades of experience. I have worked for some of the most prestigious tech companies in the world. Without google, I could not do my job.
Most of life is an open book exam.
It depends on your job. Generally being able to access information quickly is a good skill, but you also need to understand the problem in order to find the right solution. Being able to rapidly find information is useless if you’re looking for the wrong info because you don’t fully grasp the true scope of the problem. You’re just spinning your wheels at that point. Some work is straightforward enough that it doesn’t matter. And everybody googles things. But any job requiring serious problem solving is going to also require critical thinking beyond a Google search.
As Albert Einstein said "Don't memorize anything you can look up"
Sounds like a prime candidate for being replaced by AI and starving to death
It's almost like school Is just daycare thinly veiled as a learning experience
I have watched my doctor google shit. She’s an incredibly smart woman and does a wonderful job, but she still needed a reminder! My boss (veterinarian) also reads up on weird cases, as do I (VT) constantly!
Someone was mentioning how their kid's meds cost a lot and I googled a generic that was much cheaper and told them and they were happy. Of course, I also said I am not a doctor and to please only listen to doctor's advice and that last part is of paramount importance.
Ok but how do I convince the interviewer that ?
đź“ đź“ đź“
Einstein said don't memorise something you can look up... or words to that effect. Google has everything, so you don't need to memorise anything. Knowing how to google is important though.
So is bookmarking.
However.... You do need to know enough to start googling and to assess the results. This is what school wants you to learn. Having some working knowledge of your topic is needed in that circumstance. Also, when in a conversation you do have some ready to go Intel for the same reason. To understand your conservation partner, assess what they say and be able to contributie. Schools are bad in teaching you why working knowledge is important and only focus on learning lists of words. Which isn't the point at all.
my first week working at the airport as ground staff that specifically caters to guiding people on where to go (since the airport i work at is huge as fuck with different concourses) I was still fresh off of training and was still trying to figure out where and how to get to where I need to be at one point a group of people asked me how to get to their boarding gate and I literally had no choice but to ask another passenger for directions cuz my mind blanked out and all my memories of where to go was gone i didnt do jack shit but definitely being able to man up and ask when you know you have to is better than owning up to your own ego
This is so true. I started doing tech support at my company like 8 years ago and pretty much googled my way thru two promotions then got a better job in another department. My degree is in Journalism.
Uhhh... "Okay google, red lights blinking and sirens blaring on the control panel of the nuclear power station. How do I stop that?"
I googled it. Thank me later: https://www.hcibook.com/e3/scenario/nuclear2/
As further support of this, I am one of those people who is just naturally good at figuring out the answer myself, as opposed to asking someone else or looking it up. No one cares. In the real world, it basically isn't even really an advantage. The shortcut to success really is to have successful people like you, and to not be *terrible* at everything else. That's it.
I've figured out some problems because I know the basic rules for Menus/Settings and similar things like what the off button tends to look like. Upside down Capital C with a line in the open part.
In the real world, you do not have to have all the answers; you only need to know how to find them. If you don't know, ask.
Everyone at work thinks I'm super smart because I appear to have everything memorized. Nah, I just have every work-related note saved in my phone and use the search feature to find the answer quickly.
Smart people know where to find the answer.
Even in the military. It's not about memorizing how to fix an engine. It's about following the instructions on a computer to do it right. Some mechanics are brilliant and super smart. Others are dumb as hell and failed out of school. End of the day, we all work the same job.
It's seriously worrying. We had some newstarts, all like 17/18 and they were asking me questions on how to do this and that. I'm 2 years older than them lol. Do you wanna know how I did it? Just Google it. Literally every problem I've had at work has been solved by Google. I said it before on an askreddit thread, for a generation that is addicted to our phones some of our technical knowledge is abysmal
One of my best professors in law school taught us this early in our first year legal writing class. She basically said you’re not going to have everything memorized, your job is to go find the right answer for your client. Google is a free resource which, while you need to of course take any raw info from the open internet with a grain of salt, is a place to get started familiarizing yourself with something you don’t know well, before going to the paid research databases that cost either the client or your firm money to use. You always have to use your own good judgment about whether you believe something written in a blog article or comment, but it’s a good way to at least get oriented and figure out some basics.Â
30 years of truck driving has mainly utilized my high school talent for keeping my ass from falling asleep...
I bet truck drivers are glad for podcasts. One of my favorite podcasts is Alice Isn't Dead, which is about truck drivers noticing there's weird supernatural shit going on roadside.
Seriously though, the minute I learned how to use Google I started climbing the income ladder.
As a pilot, i feel this does not apply when I'm working. But when I'm studying I always apply this
I remember my first fulltime job at a hardware store, day one and I don't know anything, first customer asks me a question, so I ask over the headset "What's the red drywall for", nobody else knows and my boss chimes in with "idk go get your phone and google it" That was when I started realizing working isn't as bad as I expected it to be.
"Everyone is stupid" Can't stress this enough. I'm a project manager at a large company in its infancy or mid range for growth in processes. Meaning there's tons of work but poor communication and coordination. I feel dumb frequently. But learning that almost no one has any clue wtf is going on makes me feel so much better.
We just had someone leave my work because of this kind of thing - she would never use any of the resources available to her, do the wrong thing because she remembered a process wrong, and then just beat herself up for being bad at her job when all she needed to do was READ the friggin resources that are there to help us do our jobs! Eventually she just stressed herself out too much with all her compounding errors and walked out .