I picked the one engineering discipline most useful to society and not dedicated to the sole purpose of treat making…..
I WAS TOLD I’D BE A FUCKING BEAVER BUILDING DAMS BUT I’M MORE LIKE A FUCKING BUREAUCRAT EDITING WORD DOCUMENTS FOR TYPOS WHAT THE FUCK
EVERYWHERE I GO, ITS A BULLSHIT JOB. ENGINEERING IS THE MOST USELESS LIB INCREMENTALIST BULLSHIT OUT THERE.
KILL EVERYONE WHO SAYS ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN USEFUL DEGREE IF U WANTED MEANINGFUL WORK AND HIGH PAY.’
PROGRAMMING GATCHA GAMES IS NOT USEFUL U FUCKING NERD
Leave it to capitalism to turn arguably the most important role in a modern society's infrastructure into something useless.
Holy shit I feel that though. I gave up on a computer science degree twice, and finally put it behind me the second time after realizing I can't think of a tech job (that I could get anywhere near) which even serves a purpose beyond "process data in an office to help another office process their own data, etc etc etc." Any job opportunity I saw was about 3 steps removed from having any coherent purpose you could explain to the average person. It's endlessly fucking frustrating that thousands of young people, in search of a meaningful life, are tricked into wasting their talents on serving that worthless industry instead of using them for something worthwhile.
Now I've switched to an applied arts program where I do alternating terms at uni and a craft college. I know exactly what the typical reaction to that is, but I'm not falling for that guilt-tripping bait just to waste years working towards abstract fucking IT field "accomplishments" that no one will ever benefit from. That illusion of success only works if you still believe the fullness of your life should be measured by how much value you've produced, not to mention in a closed corporate system which ironically loses any real-world significance the moment you step outside of it. I do think hard work is often necessary to truly succeed in life, but the kind of work that must be done to save this society won't be found there. I'll probably have to find it myself, learning from others along the way.
IDK what I'l end up doing in the long run. Who knows. But the least I can do is tell the world some stories to help others make sense of life, or find a way to turn my beliefs into politically-charged art as unapologetically as possible (ideally through graphic novels or 2D animation). Even though the platform for an aspiring radical artist is pretty much guaranteed to be smaller than I'd hope, I want to give it everything I have and reach as many people as possible.
I find comfort in knowing that if change is really coming, then someday it won't be this hard.
:juche-WPK:
This hits hard. I’m an accountant though and work in systems and project management. Equally unintelligible work to explain to the average person.
It would help if the projects being managed under capitalism actually meant something. I feel like the ideal takeaway from this thread is that many of these jobs could be useful or at least satisfying, but never will be until the current system is gone and dealt with. Accounting is a great example imo.
Right. Making sure data is correct and can be used for decision making is as needed for a large company as it is for a planned economy. The type of work I’ve done in my career has been more nakedly in service of the owners than anything else. At my current company “shareholder value” is part of the credo
I'm getting major office space vibes. Torch the cubicle farm. Embrace the hard hat. :blob-no-thoughts:
Yet, when you meet someone for the first time what’s the first question they ask after learning your name?“and what do you do?” every single time, and nobody can explain their jobs to anyone else because they’re all bullshit so I just say something to move the conversation along
The whole purpose of that question is, “where in the class hierarchy in my head should I place you?”
They’re so many levels abstracted from anything concrete coupled with their own jargon that the average person correctly assumes you’re just shuffling (digital) papers around all day which is entirely true.
I worked in e-commerce consulting for a while and it was draining my soul through my nostrils so I left to work at various startups making different kinds of treats. It might be equally meaningless in the long run but writing the firmware for a weed vape is a lot more satisfying than writing customer retention data crunching blah blah blah
Huh, I'm in the beginning stages of a job search and I had honestly more or less entirely written off startups. You've made me reconsider slightly. I'm just worried about stability, you know?
Yeah we're going into a recession so I might be fucked, but a startup that's done Series B is a lot more stable than one running on seed money