I know exactly the fix for the ill that el gato malo describes - it's called "learning a skilled trade" - and then being employed it it. It produces a radical transformation in thought, ideology, and politics, from what I've seen. BTW, gender appropriate trades - no male nurses... I knew a guy who went to art school - a good art school - and like 99% of his class, the only job he could get was manual unskilled labor. And he had a horrendous college debt, despite the scholarship he got (which, I am now convinced, was just another part of the confidence trick played on him...) - and he could work all of the rest of his life, and if he lived to collect Social Security - if it still existed, which is debatable - he'd be making loan payments out of the Social Security money. And he was a raging Communist - a Stalinist, a "tankie". And in conversation with him, I found out that his degree was in Sculpture - and that all Sculpture students had a welding certificate - he knew how to do all sorts of welding... So I told him to check out the local community college courses in sheet metal fabrication - that welding certificate was precisely the ticket he needed to get in the door. Maybe $3000 more for the first year - the second year was a paid apprenticeship, and when he got out he had a well-paying job, within 3 years he'd paid off all of his student loans and was on the way to buying a house - and he was turning rapidly conservative. He lost all of his punk-rock commie friends, they now hated him because they were stuck in their lousy jobs, but they wouldn't be subjected to the shame of actually becoming part of the working class - the class of skilled labor, which the university educated feel themselves to be superior to, both intellectually and morally... So skilled trades are the cure for this malaise, at least here in the US. It might be different in Ukraine.
PS - When I see weapons actually move to Ukraine from the US, I'll begin to think that he's finally cottoned on to the truth of the matter - that he was being catfished, being treated as a big dumb idiot by Vlad and his rat-faced friend, Peskov. Maybe that will piss off Trump even more - and he'll take appropriate action, maybe use the Defense Production Act to make more weapons like he used the same Act to produce ventilators in the latter part of his first term...
The wife and I often discuss to what our son might turn his hands. I rather believe that there will be immense opportunities in Ukraine for skilled workers, once the current unpleasantness is over. Yet he still fantasizes that game testing could be a going concern. There in Germany, he has the opportunity to become a very skilled tradesman, all while earning the rent. Or, time will tell if he is accepted to the Technisches Gymnasium for Informatik studies. Funny, it all hinges on the outcome of his orals in German today. Based upon his study habits, I am not overly concerned. Most of his time is spent playing games rather than studying.
Informatik is going to get killed by AI and cheap foreign labor - you can't do that to skilled trades, especially not German skilled trades, where they just don't screw around at all...
Don't bet too much on AI. We've been here before. I made myself an expert in CASE - Computer Automated Systems Engineering - thirty years ago. It was supposed to put programmers out of business. Wrong. The issue is one of conceiving the problem to be solved and describing it accurately. Not that easily done.
Just this week I wrote a scathing letter to Toastmasters International about their automated systems. The systems largely work as designed. They were designed by idiots, to solve problems we don't have, in the most convoluted ways possible.
I can't disagree with you. My wages have fallen by over 50% in the past 10 years due to cheap (mostly incompetent) Indian labor. Ai is just smarter search engines, and it's going to have to get a lot smarter to replace skilled people. Companies insist upon outsourcing the management of their most important asset, their confidential data to the lowest bidding data management companies, and then seem surprised when it is stolen. I work for one of those data management companies and I won't do anything but the absolute minimum work for those cheapskate companies who have laid off countless professionals like me. When I have to cajole some customer to spend an extra 20 Euros a month to extnd a database that is running out of space, I give absolutely no F*ck if that system crashes because he was a cheapskate. To hell with all of them. I need to go ahead and retire anyway, and when the kids finish high school, that is exactly what I am going to do.
Nice idea, but large corporate clients, and especially the government, simply do not recognize quality when they see it. It is much easier to compute the hourly pay of an H1B than to measure his (lack of) productivity.
Since government is a cost-plus operation, and most large business is a matter of cartels that prefer to do business with other cartels, the small guy is screwed. It was far better fifty years ago when I followed exactly the advice you give here.
I'll never forgive Biden for slow-rolling arms to the Ukraine, and Trump is escaping my wrath for supporting Putler the Palooka for so long. Slava Ukraine!
About your former family (and my ex-wfe) hating you (and me), it is precisely described by the old adage: Living well is the best revenge. I rather doubt that my ex would have predicted that my "mail order" bride would have been my faithful partner and lover for over 26 years. My sons have told me that any attempts to hold out an olive branch to her have been resoundingly rejected.
Exactly. Mary Ann said as we were getting divorced that I would be the "Best ex-husband ever." I'm sure she had in mind the model of the broken ex-husbands of her friends, mooching around with no sense of direction, on call in emergencies.
"Living well" is the precise description of my crime. Fifteen years and three delightful children. Mary Ann's children are (1) out of work the last decade, (2) two years dead from the Covid vax, and (3) overseas and out of touch. Just what they were programmed for, per el gato malo.
I know exactly the fix for the ill that el gato malo describes - it's called "learning a skilled trade" - and then being employed it it. It produces a radical transformation in thought, ideology, and politics, from what I've seen. BTW, gender appropriate trades - no male nurses... I knew a guy who went to art school - a good art school - and like 99% of his class, the only job he could get was manual unskilled labor. And he had a horrendous college debt, despite the scholarship he got (which, I am now convinced, was just another part of the confidence trick played on him...) - and he could work all of the rest of his life, and if he lived to collect Social Security - if it still existed, which is debatable - he'd be making loan payments out of the Social Security money. And he was a raging Communist - a Stalinist, a "tankie". And in conversation with him, I found out that his degree was in Sculpture - and that all Sculpture students had a welding certificate - he knew how to do all sorts of welding... So I told him to check out the local community college courses in sheet metal fabrication - that welding certificate was precisely the ticket he needed to get in the door. Maybe $3000 more for the first year - the second year was a paid apprenticeship, and when he got out he had a well-paying job, within 3 years he'd paid off all of his student loans and was on the way to buying a house - and he was turning rapidly conservative. He lost all of his punk-rock commie friends, they now hated him because they were stuck in their lousy jobs, but they wouldn't be subjected to the shame of actually becoming part of the working class - the class of skilled labor, which the university educated feel themselves to be superior to, both intellectually and morally... So skilled trades are the cure for this malaise, at least here in the US. It might be different in Ukraine.
PS - When I see weapons actually move to Ukraine from the US, I'll begin to think that he's finally cottoned on to the truth of the matter - that he was being catfished, being treated as a big dumb idiot by Vlad and his rat-faced friend, Peskov. Maybe that will piss off Trump even more - and he'll take appropriate action, maybe use the Defense Production Act to make more weapons like he used the same Act to produce ventilators in the latter part of his first term...
The wife and I often discuss to what our son might turn his hands. I rather believe that there will be immense opportunities in Ukraine for skilled workers, once the current unpleasantness is over. Yet he still fantasizes that game testing could be a going concern. There in Germany, he has the opportunity to become a very skilled tradesman, all while earning the rent. Or, time will tell if he is accepted to the Technisches Gymnasium for Informatik studies. Funny, it all hinges on the outcome of his orals in German today. Based upon his study habits, I am not overly concerned. Most of his time is spent playing games rather than studying.
Informatik is going to get killed by AI and cheap foreign labor - you can't do that to skilled trades, especially not German skilled trades, where they just don't screw around at all...
Don't bet too much on AI. We've been here before. I made myself an expert in CASE - Computer Automated Systems Engineering - thirty years ago. It was supposed to put programmers out of business. Wrong. The issue is one of conceiving the problem to be solved and describing it accurately. Not that easily done.
Just this week I wrote a scathing letter to Toastmasters International about their automated systems. The systems largely work as designed. They were designed by idiots, to solve problems we don't have, in the most convoluted ways possible.
AI won't fix stupid.
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Originally I thought this was a quote by Robert A Heinlein...
I can't disagree with you. My wages have fallen by over 50% in the past 10 years due to cheap (mostly incompetent) Indian labor. Ai is just smarter search engines, and it's going to have to get a lot smarter to replace skilled people. Companies insist upon outsourcing the management of their most important asset, their confidential data to the lowest bidding data management companies, and then seem surprised when it is stolen. I work for one of those data management companies and I won't do anything but the absolute minimum work for those cheapskate companies who have laid off countless professionals like me. When I have to cajole some customer to spend an extra 20 Euros a month to extnd a database that is running out of space, I give absolutely no F*ck if that system crashes because he was a cheapskate. To hell with all of them. I need to go ahead and retire anyway, and when the kids finish high school, that is exactly what I am going to do.
Start your own company, and take your dumb competitors to the woodshed...
Nice idea, but large corporate clients, and especially the government, simply do not recognize quality when they see it. It is much easier to compute the hourly pay of an H1B than to measure his (lack of) productivity.
Since government is a cost-plus operation, and most large business is a matter of cartels that prefer to do business with other cartels, the small guy is screwed. It was far better fifty years ago when I followed exactly the advice you give here.
If that wasn't the case with every other nuclear-armed country with huge debt overhang and unfunded welfare obligations, we'd be in trouble...
I'll never forgive Biden for slow-rolling arms to the Ukraine, and Trump is escaping my wrath for supporting Putler the Palooka for so long. Slava Ukraine!
Yeah. Mr. Autopen gets a pass because he wasn't actually there.
About your former family (and my ex-wfe) hating you (and me), it is precisely described by the old adage: Living well is the best revenge. I rather doubt that my ex would have predicted that my "mail order" bride would have been my faithful partner and lover for over 26 years. My sons have told me that any attempts to hold out an olive branch to her have been resoundingly rejected.
Exactly. Mary Ann said as we were getting divorced that I would be the "Best ex-husband ever." I'm sure she had in mind the model of the broken ex-husbands of her friends, mooching around with no sense of direction, on call in emergencies.
"Living well" is the precise description of my crime. Fifteen years and three delightful children. Mary Ann's children are (1) out of work the last decade, (2) two years dead from the Covid vax, and (3) overseas and out of touch. Just what they were programmed for, per el gato malo.