382 Comments
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Andrew White's avatar

I had to start operating like Wildman for my own sanity some years back.

I'm gonna go make a linkedin if you guys are all having fun fucking with people over there.

Recently I had a "cheap suits and a big ring of keys" type middle manager tell me I needed a "Project Manager Certification" if I were going to continue being considered for ghost writing projects at X pub house. I looked into it and it's that "I can look at another monitor where I play Gorf while the lectures happen fully muted on my end." type thing.

Conversely, some years back a manufacturing product was moved from Asheville to (undisclosed location) China to manufacture a widget with original tooling. My friend who did that remarked 1. How the Chinese men worked their asses off to get it set up and running in short order and 2. How their was no layer, or layers, of useless functionaries with dopey certs running around like some priest class fucking up efficiency. It was a factory with enough managers and enough workers to crank shit out.

I've seen that with motorcycle manufacturers over the last couple of decades when I used to go to those useless "launch" things. There began to be these make work layers of bureaucracy mostly founded by mark ass tricks who, like our warrant officer who let his wife lead him around by the nose, needed a work mommy to tell them what to do. They get to work and have no idea how to function without a feminine energy. And the whole industry's enchilada has cooled, sagged like a Dali watch, and begun to draw flies as a result of these priest class layers.

One of the things I really like about rallies like Sturgis and Daytona and Dirty Myrtle are that they are bastions of male culture from 40 years ago when a lineman would go buy a square body, a Harley, and an atomic ranch. And if you ran your mouth at him you were gonna get knocked on your ass. You never know where you stand with this fem workplace energy, which is by design, and it makes for a good power grab and pink slip of Damocles hanging over you all the time.

You need that insurance. You need that job security. All you want to do is your role description. But the things dragging the entire industry down are the key speed bumps in every meeting, interaction, and TPS report. Not the job. Not the role description. Not the things that make money.

Anyway, we all know this.

I'm just mad about it.

Probably soon I'll get a P(i)MP just to say I have it. But it makes my fucking skin crawl that I have to be beholden to any of these under achiever morons. I am seriously considering just buying a fucking tractor with a front loader and back hoe and getting into grade/landscape stuff so I can age into a job where I change hydraulic hoses and play with a joystick instead of answering dumb questions from redundant morons.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Well said. The only thing worse than a mark ass trick is a trick ass mark. There is a difference.

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soberD's avatar

skeezers, skanks and skig-skags are up there

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Ice Age's avatar

And hoolihoos. Never forget the hoolihoos.

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Andrew White's avatar

Never forget. But sometimes you gotta tell the Hoolihoos to skat, skittle, skabobble. Boundaries, Nephew.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Has anyone ever seen any benefit for anyone getting a PMC/PMP/??? cert? I see lots of those abbreviations in signature lines but the people with them seem to be just as completely incapable of making plans and decisions. The only result of those certs I see is more time wasted on MSProject files that are completely useless or worse.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

If you become an agile release train conductor they give you a cool hat and a train whistle. That’s a big benefit to some.

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Speed's avatar

you mean you get both a hat and also a train whistle

im in

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Eric L.'s avatar

They don't have those roles in Canada, Speed. Only the US, and very exclusive parts of Europe, has enough waste to afford them. Your equivalent is probably someone in the Canadian federal government tasked with counting stalks of wheat in Alberta to apply a land-use tax to pay damages to anyone claiming to be a long lost descendant of the first people to walk the land 1000 years ago.

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Speed's avatar

i dont like how accurate this is

aside from being saskatchewan instead of alberta its dead on

also dont underestimate the govts capability to waste money as this year alone we went over budget by 60 billion

man i hate the natives and how the govt reveres them

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Eric L.'s avatar

I have enough vague knowledge about Canada to land that half joke!? You've made my day. <3

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sgeffe's avatar

The government reveres anything NON-Canadian now, apparently.

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sgeffe's avatar

“Agile?”

Anything but!

Stick it up your sprinty scrum, FFS!

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sgeffe's avatar

I’ve seen that before, and now I’m probably going to spend the evening binge-reading that blog! 😁😂

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Fat Baby Driver's avatar

There’s a lot worse ways to spend your time!

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Steve Ward's avatar

so I had to Google ARTC as fortunately I don't have to swim in that agile swamp, and this popped up: "Definition: The Release Train Engineer (RTE) is a servant leader ..." which seems to explain a lot. "servant leader"?? WTF?

the whole Agile thingy seems to be a giant black hole that sucks in every buzz word and inane term ever invented and mixes them up in random strings.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

If you really want to delve into something PM related that’s worthwhile, read The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt. I reference it frequently, even more so now that I support a production plant.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Isn't 99% of PM/Operations just common sense coupled with basic knowledge of what happens in the factory?

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Pretty much. But also, you have to actually talk to the guy on the line and his team lead/supervisor. Controls engineer too. The shitty PMs are the ones who sit in the office all day and don’t bother with this.

Full disclosure: I am not a PM and go out of my way to do anything resembling PM work. If I need something fixed, I round up Controls Engineer and we go directly to the supervisor. The guys are more willing to help you if they know you’re not some jerkoff do nothing that sits in his office all day.

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Sam's avatar
Jan 17Edited

They are tied closely together because with out the first it is hard to understand how critical the second part is to being successful. If I told you the percentage of site leaders I interact with, as customers, in the manufacturing space who have no idea how to make their product, or what the real issues are preventing them from hitting their production targets it would make you move into the woods and start writing a manifesto.

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Ice Age's avatar

I used to write resumes professionally. Wrote about 12,000 of the damned things. Amazing how many PMPs were out there.

Except sans the purple leisure suits and goldfish shoes and feathered zebra-print Shadow hats.

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Sam's avatar

My boss is big on it, so I got mine, but no I did not become gods gift to Project Management as a result. Most of the people with them that I have interacted with have been underwhelming in their roles.

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CLN's avatar

"priest class"

"pink slip of Damocles"

I'm stealing both, thanks!!!

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Ice Age's avatar

"Gorf" is a great name for a video game I'd rather be playing than work.

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Andrew White's avatar

It's a much more interesting alternative to Space Invaders thanks to more dynamic sprites and a more compelling backstory. Between Gorf, Q-bert, and Pitfall, I could probably get a black belt PhD in agile synergy logistic co-working from Harvard with very little angst on my part.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

I remember playing it for the first time, as a young programmer, thinking HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET SO MANY GAME MODES IN THIS THING

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Sam's avatar

Getting my PMP was transformational, the certificate in the cheapest frame I could find was the missing link to complete the appropriate aesthetic of my office...

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tresmonos's avatar

Holy shit you put my workplace frustration into words I could never scribe. RIP NC hard tooled excellence. I still fight to keep blue collared low margin shit state side, priest class be damned.

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Speed's avatar

oh the 200tw tire in the sky keeps on turning

it may be possible to qualify tires themselves fi you were to enlist a company like calspan who actually test tires to some degree but that would add a ton of cost but the idea is to create either a standardization or a trusted third party that can effectively grade tires by treadwear

the dyno thing isnt a bad idea but everyone knows those can be faked pretty well

mandating one set of tires per race might help some but you could wind up with guys coasting on a set until they blitz by everyone at the last second

easy solution is to mandate one tire model and hope that everyone can obtain the right size becuase tire wars are silly expensive becuase of how important the round black things are to overall lap time

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Morgan's avatar

I fucking *hate* spec tire series, but it may be the way.

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Speed's avatar

its either get everyone on the same tire which might be crap or in the wrong size or test literally every option you have if you want to be competitive

fine if youve got the budget and time for that

if not you better figure out a way to get another 40hp and drop 200lbs or whatever it takes to drag about 4 seconds out of your neon

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Valino 200tw are popular in drifting, I bet they would work fairly well for road racing too. Most drift comps at my level are 300tw+ and a max nominal width of 245. The Kenda 300tw is basically the "meta" for those series, although the IronMan iMove gen 2 (380tw) is also very popular. My car is happiest on a 215 wide 400tw at 50-75psi depending on track surface.

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Speed's avatar

i bet they would too

if the grip isnt that much better than any of the other options and it lasts reasonable long i think it should be allowed to run

as soon as any limitation is placed on a metric that cant be measured or controlled we get a treadwear tire war and it wont matter what the number is

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Yeah that's exactly what happened in ChampCar. Doesn't really happen in grassroots drifting though because if someone takes it THAT seriously they usually get crowned so badly they don't come back. It's not that serious!

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Shit, I meant CLOWNED

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

I don’t understand why they depend upon the whole tread wear rating to begin with. Why not set a spec for minimum tire durometer and tread depth?

As for that new Vittour tire. I see that there’s a 305 30 15. The idiot project car part of my brain wants to see a full-tilt 1Gen Neon running these. The wheels required to do so would be cost more than the car.

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Speed's avatar

ive seen those 305s on a miata and its great lol and 949racing makes a cast 15x12 i think and so does jongbloed if you prefer wheels that dont crack

my understanding is that the treadwear was supposed to be a proxy for grip and life but thats not quite how it shook out

not sure that durometer can work for that given how much the tread compound can change based on which temp its measured at and its possible to change the compound within a tire like on a bridgestone blizzak

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Good point. I think the 195 Toyos were coveted because they had softer rubber down to the cords vs. for only half of the tread or whatever.

I don’t know how effectively these leagues could police durometer without barcoding tires and checking them at random. Then again, they seem to have the most annoying tech inspections possible so what’s a few more people?

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Speed's avatar

heres another fun thing i just thought of regarding that

the durometer could also be influenced by the heat cycle of the tire and not just that but the manufacturer will also produce tires with a variation in durometer so that would need to be accounted for somehow

all of this also assumes that durometer has a strong measurable impact on laptime as well

i really should track down a tire engineer for this kind of thing lol

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

This is a very good point.

Bringing it back to drifting again cause that's what I know, most tires last longer if you run 2 or 3 hot laps when they're new, then let them cool completely while breaking in another set. After that first heat cycle, my tires last far longer. I once killed a fresh set of Zeetex HP1000 tires in 7 laps cause I didn't heat cycle them. I was simply having too much fun!

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Ice Age's avatar

15 x 12? That's a roll of toilet paper.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

I did a quick google search on this. This size definitely exists in JDM and drag wheels.

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Ronnie Schreiber's avatar

When I brought the rear brake drums from my brother's '63 Mini Cooper, which has 10" wheels, to Grand Schafer North to have them turned, Mr. Bensky said to me, "What are those, off of some kind of go-kart?"

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Speed's avatar

not that far from the truth i think lol

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

305/30r15? That's hilarious!

*emails Weldcraft Wheels about widening my Dakota wheels*

Measuring durometer is an extra step to the tech process. Would you measure when new and cold or make everyone come to pit for a warm measurement? I do agree with the principle of actually measuring tires though.

I wanna put Longchamps on a Neon so bad.

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CLN's avatar

If that's Weldcraft in Livonia, MI, then I highly recommend them.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Indeed! They fixed one of my friend's Work wheel after it suffered a broken lip, looks like nothing ever happened

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gt's avatar

When I briefly participated in paved oval racing at the Indy Speedrome, the tire rules to keep speeds down on the factory fwd class of cars was that the tires needed to be a street legal 70 series sidewall and up. So everyone was running stock sized donuts on their Honda/Acura products, as were we on our Neon. But even there there seemed to be better and worse brands, we went with a Maxxis all season with as soft of a compound as I could get. But beyond that, there seemed to be all kinds of tricks with shaving tires down, etc. Once I realized all the fast guys had (nominally not permitted) built Type R motors I lost interest.

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Speed's avatar

the tryhards can make any competitive event frustrating

shaving the tread at an angle is neat and can be advantageous but isnt legal pretty much anywhere

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Sherman McCoy's avatar

0-My mother refers to shoes of that Stacy Adams ilk as “platypus shoes.”

1-Looking forward to the day I delete LinkedIn.

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G. K.'s avatar

I deleted mine in protest last year, and don't plan on creating another (even though the co-founder of my startup is pushing for me to do so). I think it's an absolutely absurd platform, and I think it's even more absurd that it's become an expectation of anyone working in Corporate America™. It also stopped delivering anything other than weird recruiters who want to charge their clients my full rate, and then take half off the top...*and* they're W2 contracts, which aren't tax-optimal for my particular situation.

I do get a good kick out of the subreddit r/LinkedinLunatics. It's a bunch of people selling steaming crocks of shit, mining meaningless data or brown-nosing into the void, and it's hilarious.

Also, would y'all quit it with the zero-indexed lists?! :P

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Sherman McCoy's avatar

I do like to see what friends and former co-workers are up to, ‘creep’ on strangers, etc.

But I can’t deal with the slop, the notifications, etc.

Biggest LinkedIn flexes in order:

0-Not having one

1-No picture, limited info; just position(s) and school

.

.

.

Infinity-Power user cringe account replete with certifications, etc.

Also, I assume anyone who uses the phrase “demonstrated history” on their page is a moron.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

My LinkedIn picture is an over-the-shoulder selfie (back to camera) looking at my BMW and the freshly removed engine on my cherry picker in my driveway. Banner picture is me standing against my 64 Imperial at the Pontiac Transportation Museum.

The contract house recruiters have slowed way down!

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John Van Stry's avatar

My linked in picture is the same image here. My banner picture is the pet cougar I used to have, back when I worked in bleeding edge.

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JPDFR's avatar

Pet cougar? Please explain…

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John Van Stry's avatar

I used to have a pet Mountain Lion. I like big cats.

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Scout_Number_4's avatar

I’m holding a meatloaf I just pulled out of the oven in my LinkedIn picture.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Hell yeah

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Chuck S's avatar

you, sir, win LinkedIn

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Rick T.'s avatar

I want this.

I need this.

There ain't no way I'm ever gonna love this.

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Henry C.'s avatar

Two out of three ain't bad.

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MD Streeter's avatar

LinkedIn sends me emails about people searching for me specifically. I feel very proud when 4 or 5 people out there find me there. Thank you for those emails, LinkedIn.

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Sam's avatar

I'd say 1 - Having your prior position be something like , Chief Design Engineer Boston Scientific - Marlborough MA, and your current position is Lawn Mower JFK Elementary - Anywhere USA.

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gt's avatar

This is unironically what I want to do sooner than later.

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Sam's avatar

Me too, lots of people will think it means I've fallen on hard times, but there will be a few who get what it really means.

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gt's avatar

Your post this morning had me pulling up the job listing's in my kindergartener's school district. Bus driver, bus mechanic were two that stood out. Grounds keeper or handy-man sounds nice too.

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John Van Stry's avatar

It has turned into this weird facebook kinda clone with a whole lot of stupid crap.

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Dave Ryan's avatar

I tried to fight the battle of starting lists with “zero” here a long time ago. My comment was rife with sarcasm and logic. If I think about it a while I’m sure I could come up with all of it; but the one thing that stands out to me is:

If someone asks you for your top (bottom) five smart-assed ACF readers, shouldn’t the list end with number 5?

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Josh Arakes's avatar

A buddy of mine has a 2 year old boy. Like any good computer scientist, he decided his son needed to learn to count by starting at 0. I thought that was pretty cool.

To see his counting skills in person, I asked him once how many people were in the room. He pointed at me and counted zero. Then he pointed at his dad and said one. Finally, he pointed at himself and said two. "There are two people in the room!"

Oops.

Like any good parent, I've undoubtedly inflicted trauma on my kids. Glad counting from zero isn't one of them!

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sgeffe's avatar

10 types of people in the world..those who know binary, and those who don’t!

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Adam 12's avatar

Why am I laughing uncontrollably at this?

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Eric L.'s avatar

Your question doesn't make any sense. The list has five numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. Unless you asked a question in Lua.

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sgeffe's avatar

1. 😂😂 I don’t have notifications turned on for much of anything, and DEFINITELY not for any of the social media junk!

2. I have a bare-bones LinkedIn presence, and don’t recall the last time I actually signed in to look at anything.

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Rick T.'s avatar

I have a profile instead of a resume so I can just refer potential clients to it. And no one or two pages in length trauma.

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JasonS's avatar

About 10 years ago when I was looking for a job, everyone was on it. It really, at that time, seemed to be somewhat career focused. Then people seemed to lose their minds over there over just about anything. I gave up on it.

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Luke Holmes's avatar

I keep LinkedIn so I can watch Jack troll Mark in the place where it's most embarrassing for Mark

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John Van Stry's avatar

I pulled all of my work experience, my resume, all of that off. I just put up that I'm a writer now.

And doing better than all of my ex-bosses :-)

Yeah, I'm being a dick, but it's fun! :-D

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Dave Ryan's avatar

A Client asked me to give him a review on LinkedIn years ago after he was laid off (late 90’s/early 2000’s), I didn’t even know what it was. After that I never looked at it until I got thrown out of my career in ‘18. Actually perfect timing for me, as the place had turned to shit after a merger (buy out); and I was financially prepared to retire. Anyway, there was a plan to take away the “Managing Director” title away from those like me that had it— but I got bounced before it happened. So, in a middle finger to them; I went on LinkedIn and called myself a former Managing Director. I also updated everything (including inflating my post career doings) and began to “like” most all things Ducati related. It’s the only social media I’m on; and I don’t really count it. It is a source of bemusement for me. Especially the strange contact requests.

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John Van Stry's avatar

I went on there early 2000's because some guys I was working with in the Bay area told me I should try it out. It was helpful in reaching out to some folks and keeping in touch with a few others.

But I think I got more jobs thru DICE.com than I ever got through linkedin (if any). I pulled my resume down off of both, because even though I said I wasn't looking for work, I was still getting constant recruiting calls.

I haven't worked in Industry in over a decade now, and I still get emails from Indian job-shops about a dozen times a week. I guess I'm in their 'database'. No clue where they're getting my resume from.

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AK47isthetool's avatar

As Sherman pointed out “demonstrated history” is the most overused clown phrase on there, so if you are out of the game you can say something like "demonstrated history of getting this paper" or “demonstrated history of burning up Duc' tires"

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Dave Ryan's avatar

You know, the main reason I was thrown out of that job is because I had a “demonstrated history” of sharing my knowledge of the history of the company (and how we always treated clients) with carpetbaggers whose only concern was cost cutting. “Nobody likes the history guy” became one of my favorite refrains.

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Frank White's avatar

I deleted mine a few weeks ago. It had been there since the very beginning. It's just as creepy as the facebag now. Actually; its more creepy, since it is clinging to the illusion of being work related.

I now have no 'social media' presence.

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John's avatar

Kinda off topic but is upinthevalley gone? I tried to look him up for his take on the fires, which I am sure are really good.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

He is on Instagram. Basically he was doxxed off the internet.

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Dan's avatar

This is a shame, I really appreciated his writing

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Mikal's avatar

What was so wrong that he wrote that required doxxing? I miss that blog.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

Whatever he wrote was too radical for the school at which his wife taught, i think.

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Ice Age's avatar

Or not radical enough.

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S2kChris's avatar

For whatever reason this reminds me of something my wife’s company (a large Chicago area tech company you’ve probably heard of if you watch sports) did recently. Their HR department sent a dedicated email to let everyone know that the phrase “all-hands meeting” was ableist and potentially offensive to people who didn’t have all of their hands. I said it was a damned good thing I didn’t work there because I would have found it irresistible to replay all with “just how many Captain Hooks do we have working here???”

This is a company that’s torched about $9B in shareholder value over the last 12 months and fired their COO, you’d think they had bigger fish to fry.

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MD Streeter's avatar

It's real hard to fix $9B in losses, but it's fairly easy to send out scold-y emails about potentially offensive language!

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Ice Age's avatar

Sounds like the email Scott Adams described where a woman named Patricia was all distraught and crying because at a videoconference call, the company CEO made it very clear that nobody at the company could "stand pat."

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sgeffe's avatar

God, what does someone named Karen think about being called one in the modern idiom?

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linearphase's avatar

Thanks for the tip. Even if he's not writing at least I can see his photography again.

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G. K.'s avatar

I'm the same way you are, on this one. I never thought of "Hi" messages as weaponized asynchrony, but that's exactly what they are. I'm sitting there at least mildly inconvenienced and waiting for the ask. I hate the animated ellipsis that appears when someone is typing on just about any messaging platform; it's so passive aggressive. And I especially hate "got a sec?" messages, particularly when they come from a supervisor or client. "got a sec?" can mean anything from "What would you like for lunch?" to "You're being fired." Don't send me a greeting with no follow-up or call-to-action. Whether it's a boss, my mother, or that booty-call from 2017 who somehow still has my number in their iMessages contacts...please get right to the point.

Sadly, there are some lizard people who really thrive on all of the expectations corporate America places upon today's workers. They love the mandatory meetings and the constant IMs with "Hi" messages and the public-presence kiss-assery because it's something you can *appear* to be reasonably successful at, as long as you're willing to conform. Those same people are generally shocked and alarmed when someone manages to have a successful career without all of that rigamarole, as with the woman in your story. "What do you *mean* you didn't do any meaningless certifications this year and then post them prominently on your LinkedIn, for yet another circlejerk of congratulations from people you don't know?"

When did it not become enough to just do our jobs and do them well? And why do we have to pretend the vast majority of us don't work purely for the sake of money?

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Jeff Winks's avatar

Had a colleague who would do the hi how are you doing? I’d just say fine what do you want?

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G. K.'s avatar

I do that, too. In a prior workplace, I got branded as "spicy" for my candor. I wished my colleagues--many of were extremely out-of-touch--could have seen my behavior for what it was, which was pointed, deliberate rudeness.

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Jeff Winks's avatar

Fortunately I’m in the asshole division

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Ataraxis's avatar

When a friend of mine would be told “have a nice day!”, he would respond with “don’t tell me what to do”.

He always delivered his line with a stone face, but since he was a big kidder, he would break out into a big smile after the “have a nice day” person was visibly deflated, then share a laugh with that person.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

When someone asks me how I'm doing at 8:25am I say "I don't know yet." Depending on how tells me "good morning," I like to say, "yep, it's morning. We won't know if it was good or not until lunch, though!"

And I like to say "slowly" when asked "how's it going?" That usually gets a genuine chuckle!

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Sorry, depending on *WHO*

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Ataraxis's avatar

Good stuff. My response at work to “how’s it going” was usually “another day in paradise”.

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MD Streeter's avatar

I did that to my boss once. She hasn't told me to have a good weekend since.

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sgeffe's avatar

Other Person: “What’s up?”

Me: “The sky. The ceiling.”

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Steve Ward's avatar

When did it not become enough to just do our jobs and do them well? > I think about the time PowerPoint was invented. I call that the greatest anti-productivity tool ever.

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G. K.'s avatar

If I have to compose a PowerPoint---which is scarcely, these days--I make it as boring and as anti-design as possible. Out of protest.

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Steve Ward's avatar

you mean you don't use the latest theme with animations and music and flashing text? you heretic, how will you ever get promoted?

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G. K.'s avatar

OMG, do people still do that shit? I thought that, even among the people who *do* put effort into their PowerPoints, the animations were considered dépassé.

That's sad...

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Sherman McCoy's avatar

Trust me, they are so passe!

I am creating - or, thoroughly fixing an existing - one over the next few days.

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MD Streeter's avatar

The State of Michigan requires anyone with an assessing license who wishes to keep said license into the next year to take 16 hours of continuing education, 8 of which must be done in person. These continuing education classes are always festive, animated powerpoint slogs. The ones you can do at your desk the STC puts online are at least just words on white panels. That, at least, we can be thankful for.

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danio's avatar

I recently sat through an exec review of personnel performance and one manager categorized their worker as high potential because they created a complicated recurring report...in excel.

My data guy laughed in BI.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

The best thing about working at a VERY regimented company is that there’s exactly ONE accepted PowerPoint template.

Edit - That reminds me. Intern story from this summer. I tasked her with building some RaspberryPis into Honeypots that we can throw up on the network.

The first step was having her put together a project proposal to present to the relevant stakeholders (me, infrastructure, networking, controls engineers).

Instead of seeking out the corporate template or otherwise asking any questions about formatting, she took it upon herself to download a bee themed template form the bowels of the Internet. The next two weeks were more or less countless iterations of “pls fix.”

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Sherman McCoy's avatar

Of course it should be that way.

NB - Investment bankers are really just very highly paid copy editors who know a little bit of algebra.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

When the Snowden leaks happened, I made fun of how terrible the NSA’s decks looked. Today I edited a few slides that looked about as bad. They even used the same icons.

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BKbroiler's avatar

There is 1/2 a floor at 200 West that just does the night shift for PowerPoints...

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Nick H's avatar

I've been on the exec team in a stinky corner of the heavy industrial universe and its a point of pride I've never once used the corporate slide template. No bees or goofy shit, though. Just a solid color background, a few words, and the only thing PPT should be used for IMO, charts/graphs/photos.

If I've got something complex to cover, I'll (gasp) write a memo and distribute it a day before the meeting and if they ever hand me firing authority over other execs, I'd frogmarch out anyone who starts a presentation with "sorry for the eye chart".

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Steve Ward's avatar

Yeah, but do they change the template every 6 months? and make everyone update their files? because, you know, the Exec Director of Useless Communication Standards and Effectiveness needs to somehow justify their existence.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

One of my friends once had to make a slide show about valve springs and hydraulic lash adjusters. He found a picture of a broken spring and put sad little eyes on it for fun... he decided not to put the poor guy into the final version.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

We had to put some slides together for new hire orientations. My boss insisted on including a Dilbert comic for the lulz. This opened the door for any number of Scott Adams jokes. It’s the little things really.

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Ronnie Schreiber's avatar

Is anyone currently in IT old enough to get a "This page left intentionally blank" slide?

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

My desktop background is “It’s now safe to turn off your computer.”

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Fat Baby Driver's avatar

And now, a word from my spiritual advisor https://youtu.be/U15t043DLj0?si=WRTPzvjr03n2p4Eo

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

Knew it before I hit the link. Love that guy

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Fat Baby Driver's avatar

I saw him at the Houston Improv. Laughed until my face hurt.

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MD Streeter's avatar

I had to sit through a state-mandated continuing education class earlier this week: an animated powerpoint. The woman teaching the class spoke at length with my boss about the excel spreadsheets they use and how as soon as we broke for lunch they were going to get on their computers and exchange them. Every time someone says I need to make a spreadsheet about something I die a little inside.

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Christo's avatar

Powerpoint has destroyed business communications.

Instead of writing out a cogent argument, people now figure they can put a few bullet points onto a slide and call it a day.

Worse is when you ask someone for documentation and they hand you a Powerpoint deck instead

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Jeff Winks's avatar

💯we have apps that crap out at the worst times and the developers in India always want to be happy chatty and I’m just like “fix the damn software!”.

My company gave North Face coats this year which is odd because NF hates our industry. I said no to the coat. I just want money and some family time.

LinkedIn is a circle of hell. I’d have to re read Dante to know which one.

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Ice Age's avatar

Good Lord, I hate dealing with Indians. They're so fucking obsequious. Somebody got my debit card number and bought almost a thousand bucks worth of stuff, so I called my bank to report it. Three different Indian women thanked me profusely for telling them my name and birthdate, as if I'd just offered to pay off their mortgages to prevent foreclosure.

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Ronnie Schreiber's avatar

I admit to using the phrase, "Do the needful thing!" when on the phone with offshore support based in the subcontinent.

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sgeffe's avatar

I usually don’t get beyond “asking” for them to connect me with someone in MY hemisphere whose English I can actually understand—in a volume loud enough that I can be heard three blocks away! (Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with that shit at work—yet!)

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

You got North Face because Patagonia hates every industry and as such you can’t order their stuff through Merchology.

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Jeff Winks's avatar

Yeah they’re worse even though they manufacture for the defense industry

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Ha, exactly. I used to love their stuff when it was USA-made. In fact, I still have my R4 fleece. Not only do they virtue signal about using sustainable slave labor, the real reason that they started making shit overseas was to milk government contracts.

I respect actual defense companies more, at least they’re up front about their business.

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JPDFR's avatar

I have branded Patagonia gear from a Canadian oil and gas company. I love the dissonance.

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Steve Ward's avatar

re “Jim Wildman rules” - those have been my thoughts EXACTLY for a long time! I don't need a) Training b) a Perf Review c) a Manager d) any Recognition "awards" or "rah-rah stuff". Just get out of my way and let me get things done. I'm going to copy his quote for future use.

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sgeffe's avatar

I pretty much have that sort of arrangement.

Fortunately I’m about to get some relief in the form of a couple analysts in my department who will be getting aggressive training on our tax software, as, for whatever reason, the flow of issues has been very heavy in the past year.

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Steve Ward's avatar

THIS: "Half of this stuff can be best described as Awards For Having A Vagina. Another quarter of it falls under the Degrees That Are Probably Taught Better At DeVry, with the last quarter being Certs You Can Get Online While Using Another Monitor Out Of The View Of Your Zoom Camera. " has to be one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, and its completely spot on.

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Ice Age's avatar

Yup.

You go, girlboss!

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MD Streeter's avatar

"Certs You Can Get Online While Using Another Monitor Out Of The View Of Your Zoom Camera"

I had to virtually attend a day-long meeting in early December, so I set my laptop up on my coffee table and turned on the Qatar Grand Prix on my TV behind it and watched that instead.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

They make you turn your camera on? The horror. I’d rather be in a cubicle.

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Steve Ward's avatar

I completely refuse to be on camera for any online meetings. Don't care what people think; fortunate to be at the age where I can get away with that. If some nitwit tries to insist I'll tell them to pay me George Clooney/Brad Pitt rates.

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MD Streeter's avatar

It was one of the meetings to get continuing education hours for my assessing license. They want to make sure you're present, even if you're virtual. Now I have 12 "in-person" hours, I can take the online STC update and not worry about it for the rest of the year.

Usually those meetings (classes?) are a complete waste of time, but I was able to watch Practice 3, qualifying, and the GP itself so the time passed quick!

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Steve Ward's avatar

It would be tempting to set up a bobble head doll in view of the camera and see if anyone complains.

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sgeffe's avatar

I don’t turn the camera on either.

Doing my best Jerry Seinfeld-esque thing, what is it with some people who sit with their faces TWO INCHES from their fucking webcams!! I call them “close cammers!”

I don’t need to see your nose hairs in the left half of the Teams window, FFS!

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

To be fair to the LinkedIn grifter, the CISSP is proctored at PearsonVue. I know because it took me longer to drive to their facility than it did to pass the exam. That exam illustrates that you have a minimal level of understanding within the field, it’s not worth bragging about.

I empathize with Whitman. I don’t want to go to a team building off-site during working hours. Planned after-hours events are a strict no unless it’s on a business trip. I’m paid to unfuck things and keep things from getting fucked, not to win friends and influence people.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Sounds like we are paid for the same things. Sigh. Had to do both in meetings this morning. Oh, and I'm also paid to make decisions for people that should be making them but are too clueless/scared/whatever to make them.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Most of my “problems” (to be fair, they’re company’s problems) are because someone thought that they were too special to follow an established process and/or got into bed with some idiot vendor.

And you’re right. I get tasked with telling people no because the appropriate parties (procurement, infrastructure, etc.) are too afraid to say anything.

All of this sounds like complaining, I’m really not. My predecessor said no to everything because he was in over his head and didn’t understand things. People initially started to argue with me, but eventually they learned that I’m a straight shooter. If anything, it’s made the job more enjoyable.

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Ice Age's avatar

Most of the problems at my job are because somebody thought they had to modify the process to address some weird one-off scenario.

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Steve Ward's avatar

So you end up with a whole pile of non-standard customized processes. Perfect! Not. Rule number 1 should be “don’t fuck with it”. Rule 2 is “see Rule 1”.

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Ice Age's avatar

Yep, and NOBODY knows all of them and NOBODY can tell you more than a few ways around the "fix."

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MrFixit1599's avatar

I don't know Jim Wildman, but I completely agree with him. Was supposed to go to the company Christmas dinner a few weeks ago. I declined, as getting work done, then going home seemed a lot more sensible to me. Excellent advice. Pay me and let me do my job. The rest is all bullshit.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Needing multiple chiropractic adjustments per week is a get out of jail free card for these types of events if you do not work in a permissive environment.

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Ice Nine's avatar

I absolutely agree with Mr Wildman. However, the last job I had where I worked as an employee (a commercial construction company)the two owners of the company would have a spring trip out to one owner’s remote cabin 75 miles off the road system. The other owner had a Suoer Cub and he would fly a crap ton of gas out there along with food and beer. We would then ride snowmachines (snowmobiles) out to the cabin (really a medium sized house), and then proceed to burn a few hundred gallons of gasoline and associated two stroke oil riding our asses off. Then drink beer all night. These would be 4-5 night trips.

That’s the only type of company social gathering I can support.

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Ice Age's avatar

Can I just have the cash value of the award?

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

What is the cash value of nominal?

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Jack Baruth's avatar

Ive been 1099ed 200 bucks for a company branded thermos.

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Ice Age's avatar

"The drink is complementary, sir. It complements the room. It's not free."

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Sam's avatar

I won a $15 itunes gift card door prize at a holiday Christmas party, and my next paycheck had extra income tax taken out for the fucking thing.

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Scott A's avatar

And to think, they could've given you a turkey tax free.

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JasonS's avatar

At my work, supposedly missing out on some volunteer work function, like a christmas luncheon, especially if it is during work hours, is looked down upon. Managers have some passive aggressive BS issues.

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Boom's avatar

I don't think the F1 rules of the 1980s for engine displacement vs turbocharging were wise, and neither is it a good idea to do so in 2025 club racing.

When you look at the bimbo in question Jack decided to pick on, why people who show up on these shores feel 'overconfident' in their abilities... If this is all they have to beat, they've won before the day has begun.

People like Jim that you describe don't exist any more. I have had that wrung out of me. I had to go through rough patches with my wife where she felt I was unnecessarily abrasive - not with her, random strangers... I do think there are some subtle advantages to being less direct, but when flashing a set of knockers gets you much further, or claiming some sexual deviancy makes you valuable in social settings, ehh...

Also said Naval officer may also have a vagina.. if I were to guess.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Well I'm trying to hold up the Jim W philosophy to the bitter end. And I get the "you're too grumpy" complaint from my spouse. Oh well.

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Sherman McCoy's avatar

I will push back on Jack, Jim Wildman, and my father for their brusque workplace approach.

My father absolutely disdained “salesmen” of any kind. Georgia Tech chemistry major turned dentist. On the other hand, the only skills I have with which to make a living are what’s between my ears and who will return a call.

Politesse is important unless you always have the rest of the world by the balls, and to deny that fact is to leave money on the table, opportunities unmet, and ultimate potential unfulfilled.

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

I actually agree with points of the Wildman philosophy and of yours, Sherman. Sorry for the cliche, but I think it's probably best to find a balance between them.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

The Wildman philosophy as you put it is peak childish Boomer mentality. Any competent person wants things to be that way, but that’s not the reality that we live in.

We once had a meeting for a large project where the Director of Infrastructure said something like “I don’t care about how we log in, I just want to build trucks.” He was 200% right but also sounded like a 12 year old.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

Let us not dissuade ourselves from WANTING to return to a Boomer era life of doing good work and that being enough.

We can understand that such a thing is unlikely in The Current Year, but let's not teach ourselves not to want.

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Luke Holmes's avatar

You have to earn your right to be a Jim Wildman.

New reps tell me they'd never dare do what I do. They're right, I'd have never dared do those things even 2 years into the job, but now I have 13 years of successes and failures and perspective from a different industry to back me up.

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Adam's avatar

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, sell.

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Ice Age's avatar

Or get jobs in government.

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MD Streeter's avatar

Hey, that's me!

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Ice Age's avatar

No it's not.

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sgeffe's avatar

Me too!

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Scout_Number_4's avatar

That’s me! However, the fact that sales guys made much more money than the engineers factored in.

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Ice Age's avatar

Chemistry major turned dentist?

Sounds like my brother. Chiropractor turned US Navy Fire Controlman.

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Nplus1's avatar

That’s a very common major for someone going on to professional school for some sort of medicine related thing.

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Drunkonunleaded's avatar

Not uncommon. My best friend has the same credentials. His wife similar, but she’s a Pharmacist.

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JasonS's avatar

"Yet I do, and also every year the programmers on these hippo-ass, API-cluttered projects get even worse".

This hurts my soul. I see and drown in this every day.

I was an embedded programmer for 12 years for a company doing audio and video switching. This ranged from Linux drivers to old ThreadX builds from 20 years ago to my own basic operating system. I then went off and decided to do middleware on windows machines. I'm no Jim Wildman, but I sure he'll know that most of the yucks above and management me sure as hell aren't, and this was for both companies I've worked for.

Just last week I had to listen to some douch with an MBA who's never programmed or delt with a computer in their life tell me how to do computer engineering with a side of systems administration.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

What did he say more: devops or ci/cd

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

If I have something to ask of someone I include it in the same chat bubble as my greeting to them, but they never seem to understand why because they still send me a "good morning," or "hello Wyatt," and nothing else. I literally ignore them until they say what they want from me, which sometimes is a question about a test spec that THEY WROTE THEMSELVES YEARS BEFORE I STARTED HERE!

Sorry for my outburst, it's just cathartic to learn my best friends, boss, and myself aren't the only people annoyed by this practice.

I mentioned this in a reply to Speed already, but the Valino 200tw tires might be worth a shot for the ChampCar crowd. They are becoming popular in shoot-out and pro-am drifting because they have a fair grip/life balance. The Kenda 200tw is the OG and still very popular but Valino has really ramped up the last few years. Neither will match that Vitour cheater tire, though. I wonder if that was the same tire they late-entered into FD last year? I noticed a few cars (including Kentucky Cadillac Cowboy Johnathan Hurst) switch from GT Radial -or some other tire that can't keep up with Nitto- to Vitour, and those guys were WAY faster and were actually able to keep up with the big Nitto cars if they drove well.

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Jeff Winks's avatar

I have a few things to say about the 360 reviews!

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Steve Ward's avatar

The less said the better.

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Ice Age's avatar

360 reviews. Mutually Assured Destruction.

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Ron's avatar

It's been a while, but I have made two different female supervisors cry over my 360 review of their performance.

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danio's avatar

Many women are very bad at taking any criticism aren't they?

I had a woman recently try and escalate a trivial issue directly to me, the head of a large department.

I asked her if the issue was submitted to the appropriate team's assistance channels.

"No. I thought you should know so you can be aware of what's going on and I want our users to feel like they have a good relationship with management."

Me, "The fastest way to get their issues resolved is to send them to the team responsible to fix it. We issue track those channels so if there is an emerging issue I'll know about it."

She wouldn't let it go that she wanted to literally tell me directly via phone or email about any little issue. I just stopped responding to this conversation.

She went around telling people she doesn't know what to do for support because I'm mean and won't help her 🤣. Sorry princess, but this ain't how it works.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Do any of you get the meeting notices with subject "Kickoff Meeting for XYZ Team" which is for something you have never heard of before, and when you are dumb enough to attend, find out that the meeting starts with "Thanks for attending this kickoff meeting; our first task to write the mission statement for the team". ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!! I usually just leave then.

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Luke Holmes's avatar

Hello........

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Speed's avatar

is it me youre looking for

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Luke Holmes's avatar

This one's from the otherside

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Wyatt LCB's avatar

No

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Luke Holmes's avatar

I have to say, after Jack's post yesterday, I was very happy to see some solid anger today and know that he was not being held hostage.

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Jack Baruth's avatar

I'm here, brother, and angrier than EVER.

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CLN's avatar

Hi!

<immediately sets online status to "presenting, do not disturb">

there are ways to fight back!

Before the internet, I made sure to never answer my work phone after 3pm or so, and NEVER on a Friday afternoon.

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Steve Ward's avatar

Long ago, in the era of wired desk phones, one day I got tired of the phone constantly ringing so I turned it over and pushed the ringer switch off. Then managed to forget that I did that for like two weeks or so, until one day I realized, "hmmm, wonder why I haven't got any calls recently?" Ooops!

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