I believe you have to be involuntarially let go (ie, fired or downsized) in order to collect unemployment. If you depart of your own decision, including them talking you into doing so, you do not get to collect unemployment.
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Excellent advice. I would also suggest reading the book “Your money or your life” by Vicki Robbin about achieving financial independence as early as possible.
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the taxonomy of jobs that most people have in their minds is extremely simple (doctor, lawyer, teacher, builder, engineer, window cleaner, garbage collector, astronaut, …) and is mostly based on a grade-school understanding of what kind of jobs people do. But the reality is that there are millions (of) **************************************************************** (types) ********************************************************* of jobs, with incredible variety and specialisms, and the real content of a job is rarely captured in a job title.
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Not only that, but the incredible depth of pretty much every field. Not every practitioner dives deep, but the masters of any job leave me speechless.
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I worked a stint in fast food. I thoroughly underestimated the skill ceiling. Everything from burger wrapping, cleaning, taking orders and inventory could be optimized for time. It took almost a year before I was comfortable and by then I was doing things quickly, consistently and a few at the same time.
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Having worked filling shelves in a supermarket, I disagree that it applies to every field.
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Supermarket logistics, which (or seems to me) system is built to put things on shelves in the way that creates most profit, is surely one of the essential defining advances in the last few decades of retail? I’m thinking short logistics chains and JIT?
Not my field, but perhaps you need to widen your view a little.
I’ll bet there was someone at your store who was the Shiva of Stacking too?
I only worked checkouts (pre barcode scanning, other stores had it).
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Having worked with filling shelves, that job felt sometimes a lot more complex than my development job nowadays. The store I worked for did in general allow anything extra to be stored in the warehouse. This lead to the filling load sometimes having excess products that you had to fit somewhere. I really enjoyed making space by moving and rearranging products on the shelves. The products came in wrapped in big rollers that contained random products so looking at the roller product list and how they were packaged you had a puzzle to find a nice path that visited all the correct shelves. Occasionally you would have campaigns and such where you could be quite creative in setup and arrangement. It was the job I have been most satisfied with in my working life. However, I did only do it for 8 months for 6 hours a day. Maybe in the long run it gets more boring.
The variety between shelf filling between different store brands and even different stores of the same brand made me really think no two jobs are the same.
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I used to have a job in the back warehouse of a white goods store. I was moving around fridges all day long. It was a really good job. The best part was I couldn’t take any fridges home with me in the evenings. I’d get home and my fridge would be already where it’s meant to be. Also no one wanted me to do a fridge moving side project in the evenings.
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When I had my pickup truck, friends would ask me for help in moving fridges when moving between rentals. Typical payment was beer and pizza so not too bad.
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I would imagine the depth there is in determining. what goes where on the shelf. You as shelf-filler probably did not get to make this decision though. **************************************************** **************************************************************************************
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there is a “science” behind shelf placement. decisions and it has to do with height, location on the aisle, colors, lights, and of course the “fee” that the outlet asks for the premium spots. Someone who just fills shelfs (I’ve done that for a toystore a few decades ago, for aa couple of months). Depends whether someone gets to just fill the shelf as per plan or has the curiosity to ask “WHY”, noticing why X things fly off the shelf why Y things two shelves lower stay there forever. This curiosity builds the critical thinking ‘muscle’ and can motivate a shelf-filler to switch into marketing (hypothetical scenario has to do with a yo working part time and then deciding to studio marketing) ((I did not study marketing):) ***********************************************************************************************************************************
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People can master nearly anything and stand out; boring physical labor is actually one where there are obvious things to be amazing it. It may not earn people a pay raise, but there will be a noticeable and impressive difference between an expert shelf-stacker and someone killing time for money.
That being said there are a lot of jobs where I have difficulty imagining what mastery looks like; say in an automated, low choice style field like bus driving. I couldn’t recognize an expert bus driver from a relative novice. But that probably only reflect my lack of knowledge about bus driving.
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When driving a car, I tend to optimize (my wife would say overoptimise) for everyone’s efficiency, and I am sure a lot of that can be applied to bus driving – for instance, many of them will stop too close to a red traffic light, so cars in adjacent lanes can’t see them when they are only on the that side of the street. **************************
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Having dated someone who specialized in developing and enforcing visual merchandising guidelines for an international cosmetics brand, I have to suggest that it just might.
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Someone working in the very bottom rung of a field not having to deal with any of the complexity of that particular field is not a valid negation.
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There is a massive differences between a well- stocked shelf and a poorly stocked shelf. The science behind the product decisions, brand placements, etc, is well-studied and practiced. The store-shelf-stockers themselves have a major impact with their level of detail-oriented work. I’m sure you could measure it financially, and that a nicely done shelf stock makes more money than a poorly done one.
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**** Very true. Therefore I always suggest people look at the organization more than the specific role and learn how to evolve the starting position.
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I fixed my mum’s computer a few years back (cleaned up some adware and other stuff that was making it awful to use) and did a bunch of virus scans and cleanup etc. After a while she asked “Is this what you do for a job?”
The conception of what happens inside our industry just isn’t present in the wider population, and I imagine we’re not unique in that.
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I’m a developer like many people here . One thing that people who don’t program don’t realize is that its a laborious job. It seems like its a fun job with lots of ‘hanging out’ but its more like 4-5 hours a day / 5 days week looking at a text editor and a terminal trying to focus and not be distracted. At the end of the day, I’m exhausted
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I’ve done all kinds of jobs. I’d take a 14 hour physical labor job over a 8 hour mental labor job anytime. Mental labor is painful … in the form that stalling the main thread of something is. But that’s data entry. Development is much less mental labor, and I’d agree with the 4-5 hours / day assessment.
Most people can’t actually do this, which is why a lot of people hate math. Math class is dealing with intense focus on a poorly documented thing. Development has little to do with it, but it’s the same soft skill.
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Related to that: On many people’s mental maps , programming seems to be closeby other things like installing a driver, changing configuration and such. That it is an powerful tool for anything that you do with your mind completely escapes the bystanders.
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I find the programming part Ok. It’s the meetings and constantly being interrupted by managers that sends me batty.
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That people sometimes do shitty things, make mistakes or let me down, and no matter what, if I squint – I can see myself.
That I’m not always right, or always better than Joe. And that: I’m not always wrong, and Bob is not always better than me.
That we might hit our deadline. And the world will still be there if we don’t.
That people do things I don’t understand, for reasons I will never see or be able to anticipate. And that’s simply the way it is.
Dark corners are found in, or emerge from all positives. Great things are found in, or emerge from all negatives. Nothing is black and white, despite it’s appearance. Everything is wishy-washy gray. What was right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow and vice versa.
Or, in summary: things are easier when I’m easier going
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(preface: I worked a string of manual labor jobs before and during college)
A lot of the (now) coveted trade jobs can seem like a very tempting alternative to crushing college debt and volatile job security, but truth be told, many of these trades are plagued with physical injuries, sudden unemployment, and what not.
Furthermore, you deal with A LOT more shady people (employers, customers / clients, suppliers, you name it) than you do in white-collar sectors.
I say this because for the past few years , I’ve seen an increase in people advocating for people to choose trade jobs over college-educated jobs, like it’s the most obvious and risk-free thing in the world.
It’s not, and I’d even go as far as arguing that the downsides of trade jobs can be worse than the downsides of a cushy white-collar job.
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The downside of trades is that most people are there only for the money. From this you can derive the rest.
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And unfortunately it’s difficult to scale your work. You get paid for the hours you put in, and there’s only so many hours. Of course, if you’re lightning fast you could increase volume, but that’s about it. I know lots of people in trade jobs that make a good salary, not too far away from what their company engineers make – but the downside is that they work hour days, 6 days a week to earn that kind of money. While the engineer has a cushy 8 hr workday, 5 days a week.
Work and overtime culture completely depends on the owner. I’ve been at shops where you were expected to work OT every single day. Start 7, mins lunch (*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************, ************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ min dinner around 3-4, then back to work and keep working until 7-8-9 in the evening. repeat. 6 days a week, sometimes 7.
It’s one of the few places where people have pissing matches over who’s worked the most. Guys would come in and brag about only getting 3 hours of sleep, or working 16 hr days the whole week. Weird culture.
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Guys would come in and brag about only getting 3 hours of sleep, or working 16 hr days the whole week. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |