I didn’t find the recruiters I worked with to be lazy. They got me my only post graduate job a bunch of interviews and they were good about returning messages. At least until after 2 years when the main firm cut me off, probably because they deemed me hopeless. My brother also worked hard enough as a recruiter to become a middle manager.
The settlement thing I posted above took 2 minutes to fill out. Think of it as your way of hurting Facebook for Illinois and maybe Cali peeps.
What settings? I don’t have an account because I “permanently” deleted it.
Might be newish if you deleted it years ago. I know that I choose to make myself available to recruiters. When I stopped doing that, I stopped getting messages from them.
More annoying on social media are people who complain about petty inconveniences because of covid. A girl I had a brief encounter with lives a nomadic life (somewhat similar to me in my 20s) and is bitching from Australia about not being able to travel to Europe. Apparently, everybody’s travelling in Europe now. Guess the 80% decline in tourist revenue in Prague is bullshit.
So immature. Like yeah it sucks but unlike the 1 million people who died of covid, she’ll have decades to see the world.
The most basic and probably least evil version of this is the way companies can rake in money off of freemium games by knowing exactly how much to give a person playing a game for free and then forever tease them into spending that extra dollar on the premium item.
Surely there is some way to just destroy this platform.
Top 99th percentile? Not humble? I like your sense of solidarity.
I’ve interacted with a few hundred other recruiters, and there have only been a handful that I thought executed better than I did.
A large part of that is because most recruiters work within large organizations, so their managers track them using KPIs like # of dials/day, or hours spent on the phone/week. Those correlate with success, but don’t necessarily cause success.
The real name of the game is building rapport and relationships, and being able to close business without seeming smarmy or transactional.
Sales is art, not science. When I’ve worked in a “bullpen” situation where multiple sales people are all on the phone and can hear each other, coworkers will tell me: when you’re on a high level call or closing a deal, we stop what we’re doing and listen to you.
Like I said, it doesn’t sound humble, but all my coworkers know that I’ll gladly talk strategy and tactics with them, or review any proposals or scripts or emails that they are working on. I’m a team player.
I was being both not serious and dumb.
Damn it…that was my initial read, but then I second guessed myself…
Semi-serious question, and not trying to start any beef, but…
How do you reconcile your career and its role in our capitalist society when it seems like from your posting that you have pretty far left, possibly even Marxist politics?
For my part I’m a tech guy but I work in the public sector because I have no desire to help Bezos skim more off the working class so he can buy another yacht or whatever.
Editing to add: I should make it clear that I think your posts are often quite insightful and well written, and that I’m pretty much a lapsed revolutionary socialist myself.
It would take a mass boycott on a world wide scale. Maybe get everyone overseas that wants the US to return to normal to boycott.
I suppose that I’m left by any common usage of that label, but I would not self-identify as Marxist.
“Defining myself,
Is like confining myself.
So I undefined myself
To find myself” - In-Q
Your’s is a fair question to ask, and an important one to reflect on. Reconciling being a cog in the machine, while feeling that the machine is opposed to my core values–that is existential angst. Not sure how else to describe it.
I have a BA in Communication, but joke that it’s actually a BS in Hustleology. I have not always been a recruiter, but other than poker and a few years in the service industry all of my adult work experience has been in 100% commissioned sales. It’s what I know how to do, but I don’t find it particularly mentally stimulating or rewarding for the most part. I’d ditch it in a heart beat if the alternative was something other than middle management drone or gig economy work.
In the past I’ve worked in sales jobs that literally made me sick to the point of having to seek medical care and eventually quit. At least with recruiting I’m connecting highly skilled engineering and operations professionals with jobs that help advance their careers and the clients I recruit for do work in some semi-interesting niche spaces.
Through my 20s I was somewhere between apolitical or lolibertarian, so my current political views were formed mid career. Commissioned sales work has allowed me to avoid having traditional 9-5 and boss/employee relationships. This has provided me with some flexibility and time to devote to causes and organizations that align with my values–although not as much time as I should, with not as much to show for it as I wish.
You have piqued my curiosity, so if you’re open to sharing about your perspective and life experience when it comes to career/life path vs “lapsed revolutionary socialist”, please do.
Keeping it brief, since this is the “delete Facebook” thread, not the “my political journey” thread…
I kind of backed into tech as a career; it was something I was into and had fun with, and it was the path of least resistance to a job that would pay my bills. I ended up at a place where I can plausibly connect what I do with people’s well-being (which is fortunate because after 20 years I am completely sick of computer stuff).
Politically I got activated after 9/11 and all of the GW administration’s atrocities. During that time I spent a lot of time with people in the local ISO (International Socialist Organization) chapter and learned a lot about (their version of) Marxist theory.
I found, and still find, that it has a lot of explanatory power and matches up well with what I see in the world around me. Where it comes up short for me is in predictive power. I think the revolution of the workers followed by the reorganization of the economy into worker-owned-and-led collectives is a highly unlikely outcome.
I guess that’s where the “lapsed” comes from. I haven’t replaced that idea with anything better though–I haven’t come across any theory that adequately deals with the reality that humans are just naked apes who have created powerful technology they don’t have the capacity to deeply understand or control.
As far as playing a role in a system that’s opposed to my values, to avoid going into Johnny Truant-like spasms of self-flagellation, or ending up at the logical end point of living in a shack in the woods, I think it’s important to realize we live in a capitalist society. You can’t escape it.
It’s up to us individually to decide how much to participate, how much to resist, organize, protest, etc. I do what I feel like I reasonably can (Facebook thread tie-in: I only have a “stub” account with no friends because I have to admin a page for work), but I do still order some stuff from Amazon, etc.
Maybe it’s a rationalization, but even though the things I do are infinitesimally small and have minimal impact, I comfort myself by asking, “if everyone did this the way I do, would the world be a better place or a worse place?” If I think the answer is “better” I keep doing it, if it’s “worse” I try to do it less.
[Oops, that got long. Sorry to the other posters following this thread. MC, if you want to keep discussing we can take it to PM.]
I am with you on this. The quote is from Tristan Harris, who was also in the Social Dilemma movie. I noticed both in his interview with Wired and in the movie that he avoided assigning agency to anyone regarding the issue of AI/algorithm manipulation of humans.
For example in the movie Harris said something to the effect of “nobody wants this” when talking about algorithms that prioritize people spending time on the site vs people’s well being. I guess if he’s saying that in a generalized sense that humans shouldn’t want that outcome, OK. But it sure seems like a disservice to the audience to portray yourself as an expert in the field, yet be unable to point out that actually people like Zuckerberg apparently do want this to happen, and that is who we are fighting against.
… and this is why it’s time for the federal government to delete facebook. Such a disaster for humanity.