Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
I almost missed this one. YES, that's the boggling part. I cannot believe the adamancy around this, that we're all just Sheeples, and that they are "in the know." It's...gasp-worthy.
I think I've said this before, but...for most of my career, I was incredibly lucky. I worked with a ton of gifted, highly-successful people. (Of course, truth be told, in RE Development, only the gifted, hard-working survive. The mediocre sink to the bottom and go bankrupt quickly.) That includes amazing architects, engineers, even landscape architects, you name it. On Fridays, when other folks would go out drinking, we'd all hang out at charettes, coming up with creative solutions for various development-related problems. We enjoyed problem-solving--that was recreation for us.
So...even though I always knew that not everyone in the world was a genius, I think that I truly underestimated just how bad it is "out here" in the rest of the world, and the advent of the Net has increasingly brought it home to me. And the more I see it, the more upset I get about it. I realize it's dumb--there's nothing to be done, and god knows, you can't force education or even any type of rational or logical thinking onto people, but I do believe that in a mere 15 years, it's gotten much, much worse--and that, I think, is largely down to smartphones.
I recall reading that one of the forums that I used to find amusing to read, TVWOP (TV Without Pity), which used to host these hilarious TV episode recaps, was nuked by Bravo (which was the final owner), because that sort of "long form communication isn't done any longer." I mean...what?
It's not bad enough that people think that they can actually communicate, in 140 characters, or enjoy the banality of Facebook; that a blog post longer than 300 words is nowadays too long for the typical person's attention span; that SAT scores are routinely in the 300's, but now, a bloody forum post is considered "long form communication?"
Christ, no wonder people can't think and that it's easy for the easily-swayed to find like-minded groups of dolts, to inculcate into FE theories and other faux "science."
I realize, there's no going back, but I often wonder now if anyone is noticing the serious slippery slope of "dumbing down" that seems to be accelerating like a giant damn Downhill Racer snowball. Is it me? I mean, really, have I reached that point where I'm officially old, and have started yammering about the "good old days?" I don't think that is it, but...what I see is truly scary.
I keep hoping that I was just insulated. That my luck also kept me from seeing it everywhere before, and that the Net has indeed become the great electonic melting pot, and so, I'm able/forced to see the hordes of Sheeples that don't think about anything. That don't think beyond 140 characters, or what a Kardashian is wearing, or what game is on the TV tonight, and so forth. I guess that IRL, we only hang out with people who are largely our intellectual equivalents--it just sort of happens that way--but on the Net, we see everything. We're exposed to it all. I hope that's right, and that it's not genuinely getting so much worse. I really do.
FLAT EARTH. Man, I still can't even type it without thinking that somehow, I'm being punked and pranked. How can that be real? I mean, the movement, obviously, not the bloody FLAT EARTH. Jesus.
Sorry for going on at such length. TY for putting up with it.
/rant
Hitch
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oh, there was a Flat Earth conference in the Netherlands just a few weeks ago, by the way. It was full of people who insisted that at least 95% of science was a lie, and Einstein had never existed.
Also, stupid people... I had a job interview earlier this week. Second one, same company.
In the first one, the development/software engineering team was overjoyed with finally finding someone who could do basically EVERYTHING they ever needed: design and write software for micro-controllers in C, for PLC's in Structured Text, and even create web-interfaces in PHP and HTML/CSS/JQuery. Talked about software engineering and architecture for over two hours. They even invited me for the second interview before I was out the door; didn't need to wait for a phone call or an e-mail.
Yesterday I had the second interview with a manager from HR... the most standard and bland interview you could ever imagine. Irrelevant questions about if I was married / had a GF, if she'd move if I moved for this job, if I liked the master I was doing (no, moron, I always study stuff I hate...), if I knew version control (entirely missing the fact there are four systems mentioned in the CV) and so on.
Today I got the message I won't be made an offer because "he wasn't feeling the vibe."
When do fools like them get this? Engineers don't blabber around making small talk or talking about their girlfriends or whatever you need to 'feel it the vibe'. They want to use the stuff they know to CREATE LOGICAL, WORKING SYSTEMS.
Idiot. And in a few weeks, he'll be screaming at the top of his lungs that he 'can't find good, qualified people,' just like all the other CEO's and HR dudes.