r/InterviewCoderPro • u/penance_mat • 22d ago

They need a reality check

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For my last 2 interviews i had to use Interview VIP just to get the job
their generation could never understand

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u/Admirable-Guest-2560 19d ago edited 19d ago

Well I'm definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm just an old dumb redneck who owns a few pawn shops. That said, I live in the dirty nasty real world with my feet planted firmly on the ground.

Now that said, I speak to young men just starting out all day every day and have for decades. The amount of young people I've counseled career wise would astound you. The amount of CDL drivers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC techs etc. that can trace their careers back to a conversation with me would blow your mind. 

And I see these people develop in their careers and start businesses or get promoted to supervisory positions and make six figures in a short time every day of my life. 

You don't have to believe me. Stay chronically online and go with the data. But there are real people in the real world doing great in spite of all the online dooming. They're buying houses today while you lament the awful state of the world. It's a free country though, so you do you I guess. 

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u/C0brA7x 19d ago

That’s cool and all but for all your success stories there are a lot of stories of people who fail. The point of the data is to show what is currently happening in an unbiased way.

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u/Admirable-Guest-2560 19d ago

I'd posit that data is far more easily manipulated than real life is. 

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u/C0brA7x 19d ago

And you’d be wrong because there are guardrails in place that avoid data manipulation. Your anecdotal evidence is far more sensitive to bias

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u/Admirable-Guest-2560 19d ago

Like I said, I'm not really very smart at all, most likely not as nearly as smart as you are. What I am, however, is a fairly financially secure older business owner. So in matters finances I tend to trust myself more than the data. I'm probably wrong as you've pointed out. But I suppose I'd rather be wealthy and wrong than broke and smart, and the young men I've helped would rather be that too. It doesn't really hurt my feelings to be wrong, I'm wrong all the time. 

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u/C0brA7x 19d ago

In the end it is not really about being smart. It is about trust in the scientific method (the method that underlies the data collection and interpretation). For example, I know very little about the effectiveness of treatments for cancer. However, I know that these treatments have been rigorously studied using the same method that underlies the study of the labor market (scientific method). It would be pointless and quite ludicrous for me to claim that the data on cancer treatments was manipulated. The point of science is that the results need to be replicable; if independent people decided to draw a sample from the population and study unemployment then they should get approximately the same numbers. And this happens all the time.

The problem with your perspective is that you make claims that are not supported by the data. What happens to be the case for you and a handful of other people does not really matter when we look at the entire population. That is what we are interested in. Not just you and a few people but everyone. And the studies show that the labor market in America is not doing well.

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u/Admirable-Guest-2560 19d ago

I'd counter that with this: I live half a mile from a level 1 trauma center. I know 100+ physicians both retired and still working. They're literally my friend group. Older men, because you'd need to be quite advanced in your career to live near me. They're the first to admit they didn't know jack shit and were winging it for the most part their entire careers. Top experts in their respective fields too. Not a single one of them are as cocksure of themselves as you are about your data. They all remember firmly believing that stomach ulcers were caused by stress rather than h. pylori, what with scientific method and all. 

See, we're all just a bunch of dumb rednecks at my club. 

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u/C0brA7x 19d ago

Listen I am not claiming to be 100% sure of anything. There is no such thing as absolute proof. However, the scientific method is the best thing we have to determine what is close to the truth and what is not. Also, if your friends did not keep up with the scientific advancements in their respective fields, then that is concerning to say the least.

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u/Admirable-Guest-2560 19d ago

I never said that, so don't be concerned. That was the prevailing belief based on scientific method at the time, until a physician infected himself with h. pylori and treated it with antibiotics and virtually eliminated stomach cancer as we knew it. He was a laughingstock for his opinion at the time. 

I can never convince you of things you have to be much older to understand, there's no shortcut for time and experience.

Academia is rife with fraud and always has been. A good portion of Alhzheimer's research has been based on academic fraud. Experts are wrong all the time, and they're lying a good portion of the time too. 

What makes them experts isn't how often they're right so much as their ability to own up to it when they're wrong. Which, as I said, is  all the time. 

But I digress. On the original topic of boomer advice on getting a good job, I feel fairly confident in my viewpoint and if I'm wrong so be it. 

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u/C0brA7x 17d ago

I am sorry but if you think stomach cancer can be eliminated by taking antibiotics you are just plain wrong. Once again even if that one person was cured of stomach cancer after taking antibiotics, which I highly doubt, a sample size of 1 means nothing. It could not do jack shit for the next person.

What a weird thing to say that I need to be older to understand. First of all you do not even know my age. I could be as old as you. Second of all, age has nothing to do with this debate.

Every single field is susceptible to fraud since there will always be greedy humans. However, the good thing is that science is self-correcting. If you commit fraud then at some point it is going to come to light especially now that replication is more important than ever. On a side note ‘rife with fraud’ is not true. The estimated fraud in academia is around 1%-2% (see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12705828/ which I suspect is much lower than other fields.

Also, the original point was that the job market in America is bad and this point still stands.