No political posturing.
I’m really good at finding flaws in things. It’s not that I’m trying, I guess I just use things differently. A colleague of mine told me I should be a tester for product development to help find the problems when I asked him why some software worked the way it did. He just said, “I don’t do it that way.”
Consequently, I’m excellent at writing manuals because I always write them in such a way that no one will make the mistakes I did. The real bummer is I HATE WRITING MANUALS.
I am this way. People think i’m being negative, but i don’t mean to be. Problems just jump out at me. Luckily, I found a job where this tendency is valuable.
People who write good documentation never know how much they are appreciated.
Oh god i would honestly be so good at writing manuals. I absolutely hate most manuals i read, because you can often tell that the guy who wrote it was also part of the team that build the thing, so often they explain it in a way that makes sense to him and his team, but not the end user.
I often write short manuals for my sisters for a lot of her appliances. So at least she appreciates my talents.
Exactly. They skip steps or refer to a part that’s not named or have inconsistent naming. All kinds of things.
Empathy. Some people just have a brain for math and understand numbers in ways other people just never will. Others, like myself, have brains that are really good at understanding others, and we perceive and understand others with a facility some other people just can’t. It sounds pompous to say, because all human beings are at least somewhat skilled in this area, due to our species being highly social, but it’s still a cognitive speciality and some of us are innately better at it than others.
It can be frustrating too, because when other people don’t understand what you see in someone else, they question your decisions about them, and it can be hard to see why other people don’t see what you find obvious sometimes. It’s a bit of an extreme example, but I know people who can’t see that Donald Trump is a highly transparent narcissist. Even ones who didn’t vote for him and hate him for all the obvious reasons can’t see the personality disorder in him, and I find it so glaringly obvious that I sometimes just can’t fathom how anyone could miss it. But, if I really think about it, and I imagine what it might be like for a person who doesn’t have a natural talent for empathy, I can see how they just might not connect the dots and just see a bombastic, arrogant asshole, rather than the much more complex pattern of malignant narcissism that underlies that comparatively superficial persona.
Doing basic research on the people I vote for.
STEM back in school. That’s how I make a living now.
Living below my means. Moving somewhere where pay to living cost is better helped.
Spotting fake BS on the internet. It just seems so obvious to me when someone is making up a story for clout, or to plug a GoFundMe scam, or to push an obvious narrative of hate toward a group of people. And then I go into the comments and want to fucking scream.
And then, when you point out that something is fake, half the time people get all defensive about it. “Who cares? It’s still a good story” or “Well, it might be fake THIS time, but I can imagine people actually doing this, so I’m going to internalize this as more proof for my biases.”
I don’t get it, how is it so hard for people to spot? Like, yea, there’s the occasional one that’s done so well that it’s easy to fall for, but 99% of these kinds of posts and videos are so blatantly fake that I worry about the level of critical thinking skills the average person has. I thought the explosion of AI shit would make people be a bit more skeptical with the things they read and watch, but it feels like it’s going the other direction.
They are stupid and take everything at face value and their brain things the world is as it appears. They think marketing is real.
You are skeptical. The other thing is skepticism… is mental work… and most people are incredibly lazy mentally.
Two things to keep in mind here.
Firstly, the toupee fallacy: all toupees look fake. You may be able to spot all bad toupees but the good ones fly under your radar and thus you can’t ever know how good you’re actually at spotting them.
Also the assumption-as-fact bias. You think a story is false but did you ever get confirmation that you were right or are you treating your assumption as a fact?
Yeah, this is just confirmation bias at work. Nobody is immune to propaganda, because our brains are biologically hardwired to initially reject data that contradicts our worldview.
There are levels of utility to identifying such things though. Like the amI<insert adjective> subreddits, in fact who gives a shit if that’s made up? Its entertaining. But for news, yes, critical thought is useful.
The thing is, on places like AITA, those made up posts may seem benign and just entertaining, but I encourage you to look with a more critical eye. Well over half the time, there is usually someone in the story specifically acting unreasonable or idiotic or “bad” in some way or form, and they tend to belong to some group or another that the poster is relying on biases of to try and make more convincing. It’s not usually minorities exactly, but things like bosses, or in-laws, or tourists, or women in general. Just some group that people often have preconceived biases against. And then people read the made up story and go “Yea, those people really ARE like that!” and even though it’s completely fake, there is now mental support for those biases; and the world gets just a tiny bit more unfriendly and a tiny bit more isolating.
Another common defense I see is “the same thing happens in all forms of fiction, but I don’t see you complaining about movies or books!” which completely ignores that other forms of fiction aren’t trying to pass themselves off as something that actually, really happened, for real; with real people, that actually exist and act like that. And that’s the difference between telling a story for entertainment, and just fucking lying.
I get hit and screamed at a lot…just as a part of my job, and it doesn’t seem to phase me other than the mild inconveniences of injury. I’m sure my brain is a bit wonky. I do take summers off, and I get so bored.
WTH do you do for a living?
Bouncer, nurse, special education, or law enforcement are the ones that come to mind for me. The summers off part especially makes me think education.
100% first thought that came to mind was CNA (Certified Nursing Aid) for an alzheimer/dementia unit before seeing rhey got summers off.
Situational awareness.
Being open to learning new things which may contradict previously held beliefs. I enjoy becoming more informed and having my ignorance diminished, but I find for the bulk of humanity most people do not want to know things - they want to be continually assured the things they hold true are true, regardless of the validity.
Before every 3rd annual review I set out getting competitive wages from competitors to bring to my review for my current employer to match or else I accept the competing offer and my current employer can use my annual review as my 2 week notice.
Has worked 5 out of 5 times accross 3 different companies over my 20 year work span.
Do you go through the whole interview process or do you just reach out to competitors and ask what they’d pay for someone with your resume?
Ive done both but always go to the first interview. It all depends on how the interview goes. If they seem desperate for help and seem to have high hopes they found their guy, ill flat out tell them that I will be allowing my current employer to match their offer. Thats only happened a couple times over the 5 times I’ve done this. I try to bring no less than 3 offers to the table for my employer to match. So even some of the shittiest companies I had zero intentions of committing to, will still be used.
The two biggest cards in my deck tho, in my opinion, are 1. That most people who work with me know that I dont balk at much. If I say im guna do something, I make sure I do everything in my power to make sure it happens. 2. Im 37 year old male unmarried and childless, my risk management allowance is muuuuuuuuuch wider than most people I compete with on the job market. If my current employer doesnt match someday, then I have no problem jumping ship and changing course.
The key is that your employer knows you would jump ship if it comes down to it. At rhe same time, you need to know what your value is for your employer and the cost they will pay to train ypur replacement so they know they aren’t only retaining a valuable asset of their company bit theyre doing it at a lower operating cost than it will cost them to train someone compleyely new to get them up to your current work load.
Fixing things. Repair. Assembly. Construction. Diagnosis. It always surprises me how many people are incapable of understanding how something works or what needs done to repair it.
From engines to furnaces to plumbing, computers, electronics, whatever, I do it all myself. And it’s not even remotely connected to me career. Repairmen hate me!
I struggle with mechanical jobs, but I try anyway. About everything I can repair, upgrade, repurpose, etc. I but almost nothing new. If everyone had those habits and knowledge, the economy would collapse.
Repairmen hate me!
No I don’t. I sometimes even give free tips to my customers on how to do something themselves so that they don’t need to pay for me to do it for them.
Climbing, I see a path and just take it. Pretty crazy how many people are afraid of heights. I’ve been climbing towers for over 20 years and have seen a lot of people not make it through the day.
I work at hight and one of my secrets is that I am afraid of heights, I am just really good at turning off the part of my brain that says what I’m doing is a terrible idea.
Been scared shitless of heights since I was a child. If I’m secured in any way, no problem. I can zip line, it’s the tower climb that makes me nervous.
Used to be a cable and satellite installer. Still never got over it.
Writing with my left hand.
Designated Southpaw.
I was playing a drinking card game with some friends a couple weeks ago and got to make a rule that you drank when you broke. I picked only use your left hand. There was a lot more drinking after that.
I am pretty shit at writing with my left hand, but I am even worse at writing with my right hand. I know at school once I had a teacher that made me write with my right hand for a while and it was also terrible but also uncomfortable and incredibly slow.
Computers just work around me. Steady the software and programs. I’m not in the tech or it field. I’m in retail management.
The amount of times people call me over only to say “well now it’s working but before it took me to some other screen”
“Glad I could help”
My husband is this way. I take advantage of it regularly. I used to consider myself tech savvy but I went into the arts and the tech world left me behind. I used to try and muddle through it, but eventually I just stopped trying because I’d be doing everything “right” without success and then my husband would look over my shoulder and suddenly it would work. So now I swallow my pride and ask him sooner.
I’ve never felt existential dread while contemplating life or death or the scale of the universe so being comfortable with mortality I guess.
Actually getting annoyed by ads to the point I do what I can to block them. I work with IT and yet a good number of my coworkers don’t use any adblock at fucking all
I use them at home, at work its my employers time I am wasting.
Pretty sure there are more constructive things you could do with the time you’re wasting rather than watching ads. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be constructive, there are more entertaining things you could do.
Yes, like look at memes while the advert plays.
