Totally selected the wrong meme for the old title, but here we are.
I actually really like this. I suffer heavily from Imposter Syndrom, and one of the biggest realizations I had was that my new project manager manages to keep his job despite being absolutely horrible at it.
The one previous to him was worse.
Unfortunately it’s a “liars market” in that liars get “whatever” jobs they want, to hell with credentials.
Unfortunately I’m pretty much incapable of bullshitting, I’m honest to a gigantic fault. So many job listings with insane requirements and then people say “just apply anyway.” …no? They’re asking for a thing and I don’t have it. I’m not the kind of person to Google “how to do my job” after I’ve been hired.
I seriously need to get out of my job, but seeing all these “dog shit cleaners. Masters degree required. Pay: $2/hr” is insanely depressing…
You apply anyway because half the time the things jobs “require” is the same marketing fluff they add everywhere. Similarly to you I have a hard time bullshitting because I try to be honest about what I know and what I don’t, and for the first few years of my career I was incapable of bullshitting. Then my credentials were required for a project and I had to sit down with a sales person to “fix up” my resume. It went something like this:
“Was Power BI used in this project?”
“Well, yes, but I didn’t really use it. I opened it maybe once.”
“I’ll mark it down as experience with Power BI”
Really opened my eyes to how things get done. Some of what gets added as “requirements” tend to never come up. During an interview it’s always worthwhile to prod a bit at the requirements to see what is and isn’t bullshit, because I guarantee there is always some bullshit that you will never need.
Similarly don’t be afraid to bullshit a bit on your resume because you can’t know everything about everything. Bit of technical jargon but I’ll get to the point, I swear. My first job switch was for a position that required experience with microservices. This was in the early days when people were still figuring out what these mystical microservices are. I was then working on a project that was using a microservice architecture, but I never felt like the project was getting any real benefits from that decision and the applications didn’t feel “micro”. Nevertheless I put it down as experience and I rationalized it as it’s experience either way. If it’s done right and I see it done the same way in a different project then it does mean I have the experience. If it’s not done right then I’ll have the experience of how it could be done wrong which means I still have some experience. Kinda BS but it landed me the position. I then learned that my experience was both right and wrong, so I quickly learned from the mistakes of the previous project, learned how to do it right and applied them in the new project. In the end I was highly regarded in the project despite at first feeling like I bullshitted myself in. As long as you’re willing to put in the effort to overcome your shortcomings you’re allowed to bullshit a little, because nobody cares as long as things get done without huge issues. Just don’t sell yourself on things you know you can’t overcome.
Most jobs are terrible at distinguishing between requirements, responsibilities, and nice to haves. Most requirements are actually responsibilities which means you’ll need to learn those skills but don’t need to already know them. As long as you think you can pick them up you should be fine.
I would, but now there’s free LLM’s that can do what I do literally for free and 1000x faster.
Past that, I have no marketable skills that a modern LLM doesn’t also have, and better. I very much doubt I’m alone in this. Between now and say, two to five years tops, my employers will know it too.
File LLMs under “confidently doing it wrong”. They don’t know anything, they just parrot what was scraped off the internet
Funnily enough, that’s also what a large portion of people do too, just regurgitate stuff without comprehending its meaning.
Lots of people get
phdsmasters and bachelors while just being able to answer textbook questions, start questioning them to get them to apply that knowledge and it’s just air. It’s literally what people call “book smart” vs “street smart”.start questioning them to get them to apply that knowledge
That’s literally what people do to get a PhD, they defend their thesis by answering a bunch of questions from professors about it. That’s the point of a PhD.
It has nothing to do with “street smarts” unless the degree is from the “School of Hard Knocks”.
Sorry maybe not phds specifically, but masters and bachelors definitely. Lots of certificates and qualifications require just written tests, no practical testing.
Ok, but you specifically said “PhD”. Your comment sounds like you just don’t know what a doctorate is.
And I made a mistake, it happens and I even admitted it and provided the proper examples.
Very few qualifications require practical testing, if you want to circle a discussion on the one I made a mistake on in choosing that’s on you.
Ok, but you said “lots of people get PhDs” without being able to defend their ideas. It’s literally the opposite.
No one gets a PhD without being able to defend their ideas from very hard questions. You are 100% incorrect. Your dissertation defense did not go well and we cannot award you the degree of “Doctorate of Commenting”.
Saying things confidently incorrect is like my whole identity.
I will make sure to watch out for your other comments on this site ☠
Nice, preemptive block incoming. <3
