
The Humanities Marketplace as a Circle of Hell - animo
https://berthamasonsattic.wordpress.com/2018/10/12/i-applied-to-200-jobs-and-all-i-got-was-this-moderate-severe-depression/?src=longreads
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burnThemAll

      Okay, fam, I know how 
      to use Excel. I can 
      answer a multi-line 
      phone. I can greet 
      customers. Please. 
      Just put me to work.
    

This is the software development technical interview cycle in a nutshell,
except replace " _Excel_ " with almost any technology you want. SQL, NoSQL, C,
Lisp, whatever.

In most cases, the technical interviewer demands that you paint the Mona Lisa
in ten minutes, only to offer a stern frown and furrowed brow when ten minutes
gets perhaps a stick figure or a smiley face.

The truth, however, has two competing versions.

From the interviewer's perspective, they've asked for something perfectly
reasonable. They've been looking at the same challenge problem for weeks or
months, they have the answer, they've watched ten people fail in ten different
ways, and the ones that had the answer still couldn't perfectly refine the
problem's follow-up questions. Surely Cindarella exists, and we will know it's
her, when the glass slipper fits.

From the candidate's perspective, cartwheels and backflips are well understood
to be possible for some people to perform, but even being asked to use a hula
hoop is slightly degrading. Nevermind that none of us will actually ever
perform backflips or hula hoops in production. It's mostly jumping jacks and
push ups, so why the all elite high performance tests?

The truth though is that first impressions and introductions are a class of
human activity, and as a singleton event in the history of interaction between
two parties, they happen once and only once, and unfold according to their own
rules. First dates, roommates, a new doctor, buying a puppy. All of these
things have a certain pattern of realization, exposition and gut instinct to
follow through on.

The ritual is actually an arbitrary dousing rod disconnected from the
subliminal conceptual formulation of whether the two parties actually like
each other on a superficial level, regardless of talent, skill or capability.

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holografix
Thank you for writing this, I enjoyed reading it very much.

You seem like a thoughtful, sensitive person, I believe I have a somewhat
similar personality so I can relate.

Silly question but have you tried an employment agency? Considered
immigration? Fairly certain you’d live a very decent life teaching English to
foreign students in Australia.

------
cafard
Well, if she would name the bookstore, I'd be happy not to visit it next time
I'm in Corvallis.

More seriously, yes, I see the appeal of staying in the university world, or
anyway in a university town. Unfortunately, the appeal of the life means that
there are always plenty of people willing to take entry-level jobs there for
poor wages. As for the bookstore, I'm sorry about the wages--and sorrier about
the customers--but the difference between a high school senior and a published
Ph.D. is probably not substantial when the job is shelving books, running the
register, answering questions.

