motteburner123
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User ID: 1918
I was recently at drinks with colleagues after a work event, when one of the senior directors suggested we all go to a strip club. Actually, two sr. drs were really leading the rally, I was very worried about the stability of my position, and actually wanted to work in one of those Directors' divisions.
Nobody was forced to go, but when I declined, it was public, I was alone, it was to clear disappointment / loss of esteem of people I really depended on being liked by for the sake of my career. It made me upset and uncomfortable that I was even put in that position in a supposedly professional scenario. And hell, I even chewed on just saying yes, and justifying it for 'career reasons'.
I'm mid thirties and a male. I would not have had the moral fortitude to say no in my early 20s.
I am no shrinking progressive, but Me Too was right to figure out that a binary statement of consent are not enough to classify sexual misconduct by. People defending that line looked like foolish idealistic hippy liberals.
Culture is the key term here. Cancel culture is not defined or refuted by one particular instance, any more than Italian culture can be represented by a meatball.
Anyway, Louis CK is 'MeToo', not 'cancel culture', even if they are overlapping circles.
Celebrities receiving backlash for sexual misconduct is a fringe, non-central part of cancel culture. Louis CK, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby etc. are kind of part of this culture if you squint? mostly they are sex pests exposed in a period of changing social mores. Aziz Ansari straddles the line.
I'd call these things more typical, in descending order:
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when a normal person's social media post or video, gets coordinated attention, to pressure real world consequences like being fire (see Bodega bro, or some random kid loses a college scholarship because they sung along to rap)
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when an internet personality (large or small) is deplatformed, throttled, demonitized for holding or espousing views within the real-word overton window.
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when a celebrity is pressured to disassociate with an unpopular person(s), ideology, or organization.
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when a past offense of a celebrity is inorganically dug up and used to pressure a public groveling.
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when an organization is pressured to cuts ties with or deplatforms an person holding an unpopular ideology (see cancelled speaking engagements).
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when organizations, events, or physical objects are shut down, destroyed, renamed or removed.
And none of these things really has much to do with the eternal endurance of the cancellation, some expectation of being infinitely a persona non-grata across all demographics, or even the success of the campaign. Louis was thoroughly 'punished' by the culture and industry, and a years-later comeback is a non-sequitur objection anyway.
motteburner123
1yr ago
It's weird. Gender seems obviously more tied to biology than race, which is, in large part (oc not fully) mediated by cultural association.
A black man is more like a white man than a black women. Yet the progressive thinks he is more capable to become the latter than the former because reasons.
A middle class African American is more like his middle class American white neighbor than he is like a rural African farmer. Not just culturally, possibly genetically too through racial mixing. Yet we are to believe that their dominant skin tone represent an impenetrable, immutable, objective racial feature of more import and gravity, than the separation between males and females.
Oh well, freddy has always seemed like a joke to me. I even think his 'education' takes are quite lacking. It's just that the right leaners here are already don't apply any critical eye to those takes because they're too busy clapping.
motteburner123
1yr ago
Of course. And I'm not making a point about the objective morality of strip clubs or whether the folks I was among did anything wrong.
My story is simply an example of where 'they said yes, what's the problem' is far to binary to be a discussion ending heuristic.
Pressure to be liked / career advancement / social belonging (and yes drinks) , etc can all mitigate a yes enough that the person doing the asking should not have brought it up and did something wrong for some spectrum of degree.
If Louis says 'can I show you my penis'...
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on a date after the girl invited him up vs
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in a dressing room while on the road with an upcoming comedianne who wasn't expecting any sexual advances
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vs to a young saleswomen on a call who just confessed that she needs his business to hit her quota.
These are three different scenarios where acting on a no is certainly worse than on a yes... But a yes doesn't blanket make them all the same and make it ok for Louis to ask in the first place.
motteburner123
1yr ago
I can say I'm one who doesn't 'get it'. I like drinking, but not as much as the next guy I guess.
motteburner123
1yr ago
looking for career device.
i am a midlevel professional in my mid 30s, my work is essentially in business operations type roles in midsized organization. In addition to inflation kicking my butt this year, I have small children and will likely have more, whom I intend to send to private school. So I simply need to make more money. Right now, with school budgeted we're deep in the red. We spend more than we earn.
My goal has been to move up (or parallel with a reset inflation adjusted salary) in mid-level manager type roles within business /sales operations functions. (I have some management experience on my resume. I am technically a 'manager' now, but have no direct reports at the moment).
So i've recently been applying around (internally and externally) and gotten no luck. I realize that in business / sales roles, I am outcompeted by folks with field sales and sales management experience or MBAs. (I have a master's degree in something that gets me through initial hiring process gates, but isn't particularly an impressive competitive advantage).
In product or development management roles, I am not competitive because i don't have any technical experience on my resume.
So I basically have four options:
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Keep grinding through interviews until I get lucky
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Go get an MBA, take on a lot of debt, and hope to come out in a place to rapidly make it up.
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Jump down to field sales and climb back up through there back into business side/ management. My fear with this one is that I won't be competitive for any except pretty much entry level account executive roles. I'd essentially be starting over, but might see a big momentum gain /jump when I got back to the middle.
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Move into software dev. In school I was originally a CS major, I held a few programming internships, etc. before switching to a pipedream (long dead). Recently I've developed some React apps on my own, but I am not at a college grad level in terms of skill. I know both that I am capable of programming job, but also not a prodigy, and to invest back into this without a degree and with small kids to raise might be a barrier. Once again, I would have to start at the bottom, salary and level and work back up. But the upside here is better salary bands. (at a manager level, I currently make what devs from state U are coming in at).
Right now, I am just trying to maximize earning potential in the near, mid, and long term to take care of my family. Every single one of these seems like bad options. All of these come with a lot of sunk cost and uncertainty for a guy in the middle of the game.
But I am kind of at a loss and have about 0 months to make a plan so that I can afford to send my kids to school.
motteburner123
1yr ago
ideas:
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Mom-time employment: something like 15-25 hrs/week + benefits available only to partnered women with children under 10 yo. Companies who hire on this get substantial gov subsidy
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Undergrad is free for women who have children inside of a marriage.
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One time Free / substantially subsidized car for (in-tact) families with third child.
All three aimed to lessen the modernist opportunity cost for women having children younger. Women can get married and have kids before establishing a career. Moms with a career can keep working, and companies are incentivized to hire them. Counter carseat laws' birth control effects without sacrificing safety.
motteburner123
1yr ago
I posted a few months back about my career stallout and job search. As an update,
Since late October, Ive applied for about 80 jobs. Of those I've gotten about 14 recruiter conversations. Of those I withdrew once for salary, and got to about 7 full interviews.
I got rejected in all seven, and told explicitly in two that I was a close second.
These 80 are mostly lateralish role/title moves to a new company, of the ones that weren't, I never got a recruiter call.
my resume and experience are pretty much as good as could be, but somehow I am incapable of closing and pretty much dispairing my ability to improve my career.
I am getting enough response rate in each gate that I am hesitant that any drastic change will help. If I received zero response, I would know my resume is broken. If I never got an interview I would know I was missing recruiter expectations or salary requirements, etc.
Not really sure the best next step except going back to school and making a complete career pivot. Unfortunately I am mid 30s with a family.
motteburner123
1yr ago
agreed and my first thought, but I was trying to think of a way around bias toward safetyism. rolling back 'safety' laws seems less politically achievable to me than spending money
motteburner123
1yr ago
I read it as a cheeky backdoor response to Trump's ineffective call for support of McCarthy. Boebert was on hannity last night, giving really word-vomity double talk about how she loves Trump, but isn't listening to him on this. The MAGAs are stuck still paying lip service to Trump, but are spotlighting his waning influence.
I thought Gaetz' vote was intended similarly. A subtle, "ah-No Donald, you aren't part of this discussion", without having to suffer the backlash or brand-damage of publicly dissing him.
Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but that's how I initially read it - post-ironic - both a subtle dig and a performative bow to Donald's fading candle.
motteburner123
1yr ago
no, they share sex and they are the same species. what are you talking about? the distance between races is comparable to the distance between mammals and birds? damn u racist.
motteburner123
1yr ago
Isn't the idea that gender is more biological than race an argument in favor of transgender being acceptable and transracial not being acceptable?
it may be an argument, but it doesn't appear to be freddy's.
motteburner123
1yr ago
as a coda here, unfornately I don't actually hold a CS degree. I switched majors halfway through. Nor do I ahve prior sales experience.
I am pretty confident, I could do (and enjoy) technical sales, as I peruse job listings, I am doubtful about getting to an initial interview with my background. I've put this to the test by applying to several, but I am not hopeful.
A path to Sales engineering looks like I'll have to come up through strategy 3 or 4 above anyway (entry level sales or entry level software dev). We'll see, I guess
motteburner123
1yr ago
This is something my wife has suggested. About four years ago I almost made the switch to get into this at my previous employer. I had gone as far as getting technical certifications for their product. But before I got an opening I was recruited away to my current role, doubling down on business operations stuff.
This is good to hear. Do you think sales engineering is hard to come into of you aren't already in the company / have experience with their solutions? What would get me looked at from the outside?
motteburner123
1yr ago
my wife doesn't work, but wants to go back when kids are a bit older and that will alleviate the money problem to some degree. Homeschooling might be the default choice if we can't make the budget work otherwise. perhaps, i gave too much circumstantial detail. What i am trying to get at is I'm looking for a way to kickstart my earning potential, but can't crater it in the short term to do so, and i'm not hung up on a lot of other "job satisfaction" criteria beyond balancing family life.
I'm willing to do extra work, but want to find a strategy that will pay off well.
My big fear with #1 above is that even if I find a modest improvement that I may have hit a plateau or ceiling and digging in will only lose more time as I'm already mid 30s. As far as I can tell, it will be a long time with no guarantees to hit director level title/salaries internally, and externally I'm not competitive enough to up-jump levels.
On the other end of the spectrum, my fear with #4 is that I'm too old and established to make a major restart even if its at the bottom of a more lucrative ladder.
Im most curious about folks here in software dev roles' thoughts. especially if you got into it later
#2 and #3 are somewhere in between, strategies that might set me back temporarily, but with the goal of kickstarting momentum in hopes of reaching escape velocity in my current track. The big risk here is that I waste a lot of slack adn resources in the near term only to not succeed or blow up on the launchpad.
motteburner123
1yr ago
Yeah, it sucks. I get that folks want to avoid lawsuits etc. But what ends up happening is that the folks who do give feedback are conscientious enough recruiters in opportunities that you made it far enough to develop a reportiore with them. Almost by definition these end up being the ones where the answer is good but not the best.
You never get told why you're screened early...
motteburner123
1yr ago
If I at least get screened by a recruiter, I'll ask for feedback. Most folks ghost or say they aren't allowed to share specific feedback, yadda yadda. Then they'll give a copypasta about how they were impressed with my credential but the other candidate for better, keep your resume on file, etc.
Of the folks who did give feedback:
Twice they said I was a solid number two and it was a tough decision. In the former, they said the other person emphasized some technical acumen (which I also had but oh well). In the latter, I was told she was a better culture fit. I looked her up and she had several years of working with the company's products as a user.
Another time I was told that I was strong, but the other guy had both a relevant to the role PhD in microbiology, an MBA and ten years of sales in the product category.
Finally, early in my search I was interviewing for a job two levels above me, and was told I didn't seem to have the enough experience for that level.
So... Not much for me to fix with the feedback Ive been given.
echoing @Lepidus below. just two days ago we read that Rohl Dalh is rewritten by sensitivity hacks and quietly pushed in the night. that story would have sounded like the babylon bee, even as blackface tv episodes were getting disappeared two years ago. like what the slippery-slope critics would have mocked. sure it got pushback on twitter, but not nearly the national coverage that the great tv-show scrubbing got.
If puritanical impulses are getting less attention, that's not a sign of their lessening. It's total saturation normal normalization.
there are two schools. one has a fight about once a month. it disrupts class, causes suspensions, causes a lot of gossip among, and handwringing from the faculty. They have messages to the parents, etc. the other one has daily fights that have become normalized. Administration is helpless to stop it, and has taken to ignoring all but the most severe violence. students at this school, don't really know what a school without lots of fights even looks like.
which school has a bigger violence problem? woke saturation is not the same as peak woke, the latter is a cope.
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