A jack of all trades in an age of specialists

[Parts]

Sometime I wonder If I was born 150 years too late anyone else in this situation?

[Scrapheap]

I wish I had been born about 1940. It would be 1978 and I'd be Top Fuel World Champ!!!

[Parts]

Know everybody wanted certificates and written proof you can do a job before hiring in the past it was easier you could prove you know things an unacceptable thing to bean counters

[Scrapheap]

Racing is still like that. The top crewchiefs have only their performance on track as their credentials. Since so much of what you need to know is "secret" there's no way you could have a certificate program in the first place.

['andersom']

Know everybody wanted certificates and written proof you can do a job before hiring in the past it was easier you could prove you know things an unacceptable thing to bean counters

Yup, I'm with you on this. They are not looking at skills, but at papers. And by the time you have managed to get the papers, they'll tell you your too old. 

Now they even want parents who babysit other kids than their own to get a certificate.

Tides do seem to turn a little. Some temp offices are now working with certificates of experience. Who knows, there maybe a glimmer of hope somewhere.

[El]

So many places want credentials and experience and billions of things like that that it's next to impossible to find someplace to work for fucking free (and no, I'm not exaggerating).  The level of education, experience and credentialing required for some jobs is utterly disproprotionate to the skill level (and income potential) for what follows. 

What gets really depressing is when you realize how little connection there is between credentialling, income (which follows from said credentialling), and competence.  Some education makes you stupider, some credentials enable you to do your job wrong (or at least to do things which are useless), and yet these education levels and credentials will take you father than ones which focus on actually making you good at what you'll be doing.

[Phlexor]

They usually want someone 16-17 years old with 10 years experience.

[El]

They usually want someone 16-17 years old with 10 years experience.

Or someone 30-40 years old who simultaneously has the wisdom and experience of having bootstrapped themselves and raised a family, but also has no current obligations other than work.

I legit get discriminated against because of how young I look.  Not majorly- at least not yet- but enough to know it's an issue, and enough to resent the hell out of it, particularly when it comes from folks who ought to know better.

[Parts]

They usually want someone 16-17 years old with 10 years experience.

Or someone 30-40 years old who simultaneously has the wisdom and experience of having bootstrapped themselves and raised a family, but also has no current obligations other than work.

I legit get discriminated against because of how young I look.  Not majorly- at least not yet- but enough to know it's an issue, and enough to resent the hell out of it, particularly when it comes from folks who ought to know better.

Yet they still want to pay you jack shit like you live at home with mommy

[El]

They usually want someone 16-17 years old with 10 years experience.

Or someone 30-40 years old who simultaneously has the wisdom and experience of having bootstrapped themselves and raised a family, but also has no current obligations other than work.

I legit get discriminated against because of how young I look.  Not majorly- at least not yet- but enough to know it's an issue, and enough to resent the hell out of it, particularly when it comes from folks who ought to know better.

Yet they still want to pay you jack shit like you live at home with mommy

...which they think I do and have done all my (sheltered) little life.

I actually had a supervisor tell me that it might be worth considering relocating while I was still young and before I got tied down with marriage and a kid and a house and dogs (I swear to god, the man menitoned dogs).  Yes, because there's no way that someone as young as I am could possibly have local ties that I don't want to sever.

Also implicit in that conversation, as well as some others, is the maddening undertone that on some level he thinks I'm a dumb kid who doesn't really know what she wants in life, and ought to live a little more and get exposed to life beyond my fishbowl before deciding on it.  I've probably lived more places and seen more bullshit in my twentysomething years than he has in his fiftysomething years, and more than he ever will.  You also don't get the jaded (but usually pretty damn accurate) view of things that I have at my age if you grew up in the cleaver family- and I'm pretty sure he (and the other folks who work with him and I) think I do have a pretty good head on my shoulders.  Yet, he looks at me, sees a kid, and can't totally discard that.   

...not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

[Scrapheap]

Also implicit in that conversation, as well as some others, is the maddening undertone that on some level he thinks I'm a dumb kid who doesn't really know what she wants in life, and ought to live a little more and get exposed to life beyond my fishbowl before deciding on it.  I've probably lived more places and seen more bullshit in my twentysomething years than he has in his fiftysomething years, and more than he ever will.  You also don't get the jaded (but usually pretty damn accurate) view of things that I have at my age if you grew up in the cleaver family- and I'm pretty sure he (and the other folks who work with him and I) think I do have a pretty good head on my shoulders.  Yet, he looks at me, sees a kid, and can't totally discard that.   

...not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

This sounds a lot like the typical bullshit you get from most bosses. They condescend and try to treat you like a kid in order to guage your response. The next time he does something like that, come back with a quip of some kind. That lets them know you're mentally tough and won't tollerate their shit for long. It usually works to get then to knock thier shit off.

[El]

Also implicit in that conversation, as well as some others, is the maddening undertone that on some level he thinks I'm a dumb kid who doesn't really know what she wants in life, and ought to live a little more and get exposed to life beyond my fishbowl before deciding on it.  I've probably lived more places and seen more bullshit in my twentysomething years than he has in his fiftysomething years, and more than he ever will.  You also don't get the jaded (but usually pretty damn accurate) view of things that I have at my age if you grew up in the cleaver family- and I'm pretty sure he (and the other folks who work with him and I) think I do have a pretty good head on my shoulders.  Yet, he looks at me, sees a kid, and can't totally discard that.   

...not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

This sounds a lot like the typical bullshit you get from most bosses. They condescend and try to treat you like a kid in order to guage your response. The next time he does something like that, come back with a quip of some kind. That lets them know you're mentally tough and won't tollerate their shit for long. It usually works to get then to knock thier shit off.

If I'm ever in a position where my boss doesn't *quiiite* have so much power over me, I may well do that.  I think he was less paying mind games and more being kinda distracted, trying to be nice, and inadvertantly being a douche, though.

[Blasted]

I wish I had been born in 1920's Paris or Berlin.

[TheoK]

Born in Paris or Berlin in 1920 would mean your country would be going to war when you were 19.

Born 1820 in America by not too poor parents might have been good. Maybe.

[McGiver]

true dat.