

If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? - rlivsey
http://activevoice.charlesbivona.com/?p=165

======
run4yourlives
I'm 35. I'll try not to be too critical. Moral of the story:

Being educated doesn't say anything about you being smart.

Here's the rub. A college degree is a specialization. That's why you "major"
in something. It was never designed to be an extension of high school. So, you
should get a degree in something that you are both passionate about _and_ also
accept the limited career paths that come with that particular passion. If the
career paths are limited and/or not to your liking, assume that the degree
will not help you find a job. You may as well use the money to travel instead.

The further you deviate from the career paths that are attached to the degree
you obtain, the more worthless it becomes. Attempting even greater
specialization along this field of study only _enhances_ this effect; it will
not correct it.

So, Mr. Masters in English: Why are you not focusing your search on the career
paths that are attached to the degree that you have; assuming this is actually
a passion of yours, namely teaching and/or writing?

Applying for random positions because you figure your degree actually means
something is about as stupid as applying to the space program and for all the
same reasons. You do not have a catch all pre-requisite. You have specialized
training, and you receive little to no benefit over the random person on the
street when you are evaluated for suitability to this position if the training
isn't aligned with the job you are trying to get.

Not realizing this after years and years of education isn't very smart at all,
really. Sadly I know you aren't alone.

~~~
dstorrs
Personally, I have a BA in English with a minor in CS. Except for my first
year out of college (performance analyst at a pension consulting firm -- I had
applied to their computer department!), I've spent my entire career in
computers. I've ticked most of the boxes -- coding, junior DBA work, junior
sysadmin work, spec / doc writing, system architect, team lead, Director of
Programming, and now Co-Founder.

I am _incredibly_ glad that I majored in English and not CS or something "more
practical." English in particular and Humanities in general teach you the most
valuable skill there is: effective communication. Everything else you can
self-teach or hire, but it's really, really hard to find a more efficient
system for learning good communication than by writing 5-10 page papers 2-4
times a week for four years, while having to participate in class discussion
(frequently on things you haven't actually read but were supposed to, which
teaches you a lot about active and reflective listening).

~~~
run4yourlives
Be very careful though that you don't misinterpret what I said to mean that
there is no value whatsoever in your English major. While over the course of a
career you may draw on that experience - the same way, for example I draw on
my military experience - more than anything else, what got you employed in
this field was your CS minor, and what keeps you employed is your wealth of
experience.

Being a good communicator is a bonus, but - sadly perhaps - I've never seen
anyone get hired for their communications skills alone.

~~~
sharpn
You've really never seen anyone hired primarily for their communication
skills?

~~~
run4yourlives
Not without any other relevant experience to speak of, no. I've seen good
communicators beat out poor communicators, but there is almost always
something else that makes them attractive to the employer as well.

~~~
sharpn
There are many fields (for example media, PR, some civil service positions)
where communication is the primary skill being assessed - written in the CV &
spoken in the interview. If you have a non-maths written component to your
interview, you're being judged on your communication skills/literacy.

I agree there is often something else required too - but not always in a
'first' or 'graduate' position.

~~~
run4yourlives
To be honest, I thought it was rather obvious to those of us in this thread
that if the primary technical skill for the job is communication, then having
good communication skills _is_ having good technical skills.

I believe the topic however centred around communications skills as ancillary
to other technical skills that were part of job description.

Sorry if I caused confusion.

~~~
sharpn
No apology needed - thanks for the clarification.

------
edw519
Let's see now...

You took bad advice from the wrong person.

You dumbed yourself down.

You played the role of some other person, not yourself.

You played someone else's game without expressing what you were really
thinking.

You settled for an inappropriate job.

You're bored to death and wasting time in a dead end job for 6 months now.

And you call that "Damn Smart"?

[EDIT: The only smart thing you did (following up with a nice Thank You note)
is the only thing that got you the job. Please don't attribute your "success"
to anything else.]

~~~
ulf
I think the title was supposed to be the train of thoughts for everyone who
got his original application. They thought he was too smart to apply for that
given job, so they did not even invite him for the interview, since he would
have to be rich, if he was as smart as his application implied, in THEIR
opinion.

~~~
jqueryin
All I took out of reading this article is that he should have been looking for
higher level positions based on his qualifications. If he was so smart, he
should've set his sights a little higher for a more rewarding and/or
challenging position.

~~~
barkmadley
intelligent people tend to undervalue themselves while unintelligent people
tend to overvalue themselves.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>

------
JangoSteve
I expected this article to be something totally different. I think it was a
great article, though the title had little to do with the moral of the story.

But man I can relate. When I graduated with my Mechanical and Electrical
Engineering degrees, I thought the world was my oyster. I found a sweet job
called Marketing Engineer that required both a well-formed understanding of
engineering and a knack for marketing and communication (I had those!). Turned
out to be nothing more than a glorified technical support job (at least 6-7
hours of my work day). After 8 months, I was totally depressed, my side
startup was suffering because of it, and I had to quit. No amount of money was
worth that feeling all day, every day.

~~~
SMrF
I totally sympathize and if you are on the startup path it sounds like quiting
was the right move.

But I think your expectations for an entry level job are too high. One thing
newly minted adults would do well to realize is your first few years at any
job are going to be spent doing the grunt work. If you go into it expecting to
spend your days oscillating between mind numbing boredom and hectic days
filled with busy work, it's a lot easier to deal with. People with this
perspective know opportunities for better work will arise -- and seriously,
two or three years is just not that long.

~~~
lsc
>One thing newly minted adults would do well to realize is your first few
years at any job are going to be spent doing the grunt work.

Is this what most people experience?

The earliest bits of my career consisted of me getting thrown in to situations
for which I was in no way qualified, then being expected to sink or swim
without much help. Often nobody at the company really knew how to do the job I
was hired for.

Great fun, really; by the time I figured out how to "swim" I usually decided
it was about time for a new job.

I guess that's the thing... when there are problems... go solve them. If the
boss doesn't give you more work, go find some.

~~~
jbooth
I had something similar, but we're lucky. If you go to work for a "big
company" they'll have their whole dumbed down training program, you'll have to
learn to push paper around "their way", etc.

~~~
lsc
is this always so? when I was working for yahoo a few years back I got my
little brother a internship. He did a whole lot of useful work; on his resume
he brags that he replaced three temps, and he's not exaggerating... he really
was more productive than three dudes from a well-known technical body shop.

I mean, I think the difference is more in the person than in the job. At
yahoo, if my brother wanted to, he would have been able to skate by doing
almost no real work at all... but he didn't. well, part of that was me pushing
him a little... if I get you a job I expect you not to embarrass me. But I
think he would have done useful things anyhow.

In my experience, yeah, you aren't always expected to accomplish much... but
if you decide to do something useful anyhow, people almost never go out of
their way to stop you. (they might not help you... but they won't stop you if
you don't require anything of them.)

I remember my first programming job was littered with finished projects that
were never put into production because that would have been work. (I converted
our access billing system from a shared-file db that was crashing once a week
because 300 people accessed the file over a NT share at the same time to an
ODBC connected database... never implemented because the parent company was
going to replace it anyhow. We continued repairing the database for the rest
of the year I worked there.)

But enough of the shit I wrote had enough of an 'immediate need' (customer
impacting seemed to be the line) to get implemented that I was pretty happy
with the job.

Actually, that job was /really satisfying/ because so much was so obviously
broken that a few small fixes on my end (a three line patch to apache to make
dynamically configured mass virtual hosting work with our weird naming
scheme/directory layout, and a few lines of c to make our pop3 redirector use
a real db rather than a seperate file for each of our three million emails to
determine where to redirect the user) made some really dramatic improvements
to the service. Yeah, that was really, really fun. Honestly, I'm not sure I've
been quite as productive since.

Part of it might have been that nobody knew what to do with. I was hired up
from tech support (god, I sucked at phone tech support) to the NOC, but the
rest of the NOC were network guys and i was hired as a programmer. (Hah. that
was a laugh. I had read the white book in high school, and I taught myself
perl while I was on phone support at night.) and the boss was some leathery EE
who was great fun at first, then it was switched out to a MBA who wanted to be
my friend, but otherwise pretty much let me do what I wanted as long as I
didn't piss off the ops guys.

Funny story, I found one of the ops guys who worked with me at that job many
years later, after the .com crash... working in a deli, and I hired him.

~~~
jbooth
Depends on the company, and your manager. Y! is still fundamentally a tech
company and they've had a lot of really good people there over the years.

IBM or Lockheed Martin, probably quite a bit different. (I have in fact gotten
in trouble for implementing something useful at one particular job I briefly
held. It made people look bad, and I was written up for not staying in my
lane.)

~~~
lsc
hah. well, I've never seen that, but I imagine I have massive selection bias
(I mean, if you are a 'by the book' company, you are pretty much going to bin
my resume right off... there's no "education" section.)

The only time I've gotten in trouble for 'getting out of my lane' is when I
started to take over someone else's project, but didn't finish, which seems
reasonable to me.

------
michael_nielsen
I like the converse: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?"

It's attributed to MIT's Paul Cootner, supposedly as a comeback to a money
manager who asked him why, if Cootner was so smart, he wasn't rich?

~~~
shadowfox
That response didnt make much sense to me :(

~~~
jbooth
Who's smarter? Money manager guy who does a good job of getting paid in a
system that is universally regarded as broken and overpaying everyone involved
to do a crappy job, or the professor who reinvents some area of science but
only makes 90k?

Depends on your definition of smart.

~~~
Ardit20
Which definition are you using and what's the alternative definition and what
are the pros and cons, that way only I guess can we find if the rich guy or
the smart but relatively poorer guy is smarter.

------
rlivsey
I've never run into this myself (BSc Comp Sci, MSc Management), but that might
be because most jobs I've had have come through word of mouth / networking.
Plus, once you've got a bit of a career history, your education doesn't matter
much compared to your experience.

I've spoken to plenty of friends/employers who don't care about degrees at
all, but not many who would actively count that against applicants.

As other people have said, it most likely depends on the kind of jobs you're
applying for. Being massively over-qualified for the position you're going for
can certainly act against you as you're more likely to get bored and move on.

------
notahacker
The problem probably wasn't having the masters degree so much as having the
masters degree and applying for jobs with titles like "administrative
assistant"

moral of the story: don't trust "careers counselors"

~~~
akadruid
At least the counselor got him a job. What is strange is that he apparently
gave up on his job hunt despite being underemployed in his new position.

I wonder at some of these stories I read where people spend months looking for
work as if it were some kind of game. Do they not eat or live under a roof?
How do they pay for those letters and faxes?

When I left school, I temped in warehouses, factories, offices, whatever,
while I was hunting for a programming job. When I lost my programming job some
years later, I temped at a bank until I got another programming job.

~~~
slantyyz
I've learned something useful from every job I've had, whether I was
underemployed or not. He (the author of the article) can probably learn a lot
about organizational behaviour being an admin assistant. He can also take that
time to think about what he really wants to do as a career. Your first few
jobs (or the degree you have) don't define what you end up doing in the long
term. You really have to play it by ear.

------
jafran
i think the author of this post needs to drop his intense feelings of
superiority and entitlement as they are obviously not backed up by any real
world metrics. sorry, much of academia is completely disconnected from the
real world. just because you made marks doesn't mean the rest of the world
should bow before your superior intellect. sheesh, the nerve of some people...

~~~
mkramlich
The impression I've gotten is that what a Masters of English most prepares you
for is a PhD in English. A distant second and third would be editor and
writer. Then maybe a journalist.

------
lee
I read a lot of comments mentioning how the author is overqualified for the
jobs he's applying to.

But we've gotta consider two things:

1) We're currently in a depression/recession. Jobs are scarce out there.

2) He has a Masters degree in English! Compared to most of us on Hacker News,
we don't have experience job hunting with an arts degree.

~~~
jacquesm
One mans recession is another mans opportunity.

------
GBKS
Sounds like a situation he put himself in by having no goals and just looking
for anything that comes up.

Instead of doing that, he could have done research in what opportunities his
degree opens up for him and specifically target those areas in his job hunt.

~~~
toxicflavor
In an ideal world perhaps. In the real world, sometimes you just have to suck
it up to avoid an even more desperate situation. I think it's clear that's
what he did.

------
lhorie
I find the idea of paper degrees being somehow a synonym of "smarts" a bit
elitist.

As far as getting rich goes (at least in startupland), there's a _big_
difference between "so, what can you do?" and "so, what can do _to help me_ "?

If life isn't turning out quite like you expected, perhaps it'd be "smart" to
be a bit more proactive?

------
ThomPete
_"Life is too short to walk around reluctantly doing crap work"_ -Bruce
Sterling

~~~
toxicflavor
And life can be even shorter if you don't.

~~~
mahmud
That's a false dichotomy. The issue is not doing crap work, the issue is doing
it _reluctantly_. If you put a little effort into your work and think of the
big picture, even the stupidest job can be considered a success if you pair it
with a solid Plan-B and an exit strategy.

Work on crap, but also work on your dreams while at it. What do you have to
give up beside TV and idling? I bet this English graduate did nothing on his
spare time but read Walt Whitman. If he is so smart, why hasn't he reverse-
engineered human interaction and learned how to build rapport with people?
Hint: you meet people on their terms when you need them. Learn to mimic their
personalities and walk in lockstep with them.

~~~
toxicflavor
It's not a false dichotomy. It's not true to say that life is too short to
spend doing crap work because some people don't have the choice to make a
living in any other way, no matter how reluctant their decision is and no
matter how much it cuts against their dreams.

~~~
mahmud
It pains me to extrapolate data from an anecdote, really, but I think it's
just something worth sharing.

Few years ago there was a lady from East Africa who walked around my work
building and sold canned beverages out of a picnic cooler. I have watched her
come pester us during our lunch breaks and sell us coke for a $1. The vending
machine sold it for $1.25, but the lady had more variety in beverages. If you
said you didn't have change, she would put a cold drink on your desk and was
happy to collect her money the next day.

She then moved on to homemade sandwiches and coffee, eventually graduating to
a folding trolley.

I went to visit the building a few days ago to see the people I knew. She no
longer sells quick meals, but has her own office in the building where she
runs a convenience store / clothing store / dollar store. She will sell you
food, socks, deodorant, cigarettes and printer ink cartridges. Her son, now in
his teens, doubles as a delivery boy and runs errands for the whole building.

Everyday success story that you wont see in Mixergy (unless Andrew wants an
interview, and I will happily put my home-girl in the spot :-)

~~~
toxicflavor
Nice story. However, I think you are mistaken if you somehow believe this
anecdote somehow disproves the idea that some people don't have the choice to
make a living in any other way except through crap work, no matter how
reluctant their decision is and no matter how much it cuts against their
dreams. If we are to believe the statistics on small business failures then
for every enterpreneur who succeeds like the woman you have described, there
are dozens of others who fail. So I don't hold it against someone when they
choose not to gamble with their livelihood for a slim chance of success.

~~~
starkfist
What are you going on about? If someone's choice is to sell soda to nerds on
their lunch break or be unemployed, what are they gambling? Or do you mean the
soda lady should have been more realistic and taken a job in the salt mines,
because the snack business is too risky?

~~~
dhume
I'm not GP, but if I were, I think I'd have meant that she did, in fact, spend
time doing "crap work," albeit not the crappiest work out there.

------
mian2zi3
Dumbed himself down for a job he was over-qualified for and ends bored to
depression. Sounds about right.

~~~
toxicflavor
Do you have a better suggestion?

~~~
mian2zi3
Yeah. Learn how to get a satisfying job instead of taking bad advice from an
incompetent career counselor.

Maybe doing 3hrs worth of data entry this the most economic value this guy can
provide. In that case, he better learn to settle.

The answer is right there in the article. “I learned all I needed to know in
high school, ya know,” he argued. “I wanted to make money." The way to get a
job is to convince your boss you can make him money. This is why businesses
hire. Instead of trying to impress potential employers with yours smarts, or
relate to them like a frat boy, impress them with your understanding of the
value you provide and how you add to their bottom line. Then you'll get hired.

Nick A. Corcodilos talks about this in Reinventing the Interview:

[http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Headhunter-Reinventing-
Interview-W...](http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Headhunter-Reinventing-Interview-
Win/dp/0452278015)

(Great book, but probably not worth buying. If memory serves, it is a little
repetitive, but it is short and you can read it in a bookstore in one
sitting.) Or go read back articles from Ask the Headhunter.

~~~
starkfist
I've had a lot of success relating to the employer like a frat boy. It's way
easier to get hired this way than actually knowing how to do something.

------
espinchi
I really hope there's a good deal of fantasy into this story.

Gladwell, in his great book Outliers, argues that IQ is only related to
success to some extent: above the intelligence level that allows you to get a
MSc without great difficulties (this is obviously a fuzzy metric), adding much
more doesn't have a big impact. Other factors (was programming your hobby at
16 and you got access to a workstation when it was not common?) make the
difference.

~~~
slantyyz
Good point.

Brains can only take you so far. Passion, skills, experience, luck, timing,
instinct... those elements are also in the success/riches equation.

------
lispm
If You're So Incredible Rich, Why Aren't You Happy?

------
boredguy8
Because I'm smart.

Money certainly has utility, but it's not the be-all and end-all of my
existence. It enables freedom in choices but doesn't become the reason I make
choices.

And it certainly has let me chose not to work with someone who is impressed by
'dumbing down'.

~~~
toxicflavor
_It enables freedom in choices but doesn't become the reason I make choices._

Well isn't that nice for you? Too bad it's not true for everyone.

~~~
boredguy8
It is true for everyone that money enables freedom in choices.

My point is that it's worth avoiding reaching a point that you _need_ to be
rich for some reason like "more = better".

------
rwhitman
Considering I've spent my career in the opposite position, I've never fully
understood this mentality.

But America is littered with over-educated, under-employed people for some
reason. I recall working service jobs as a student with unhappy coworkers -
career waiters, cooks or store clerks - in their mid 30's with Masters degrees
and that was back when there was no recession to use as an excuse.

I'd attribute it to entitlement, maybe just a personal disposition of not
being very driven, and the fact there are many people who's only real talent
is excelling at school...

------
dooshydoo
A polarizing article not meant to entertain or educate, but to gain traffic
from those searching for 'smart and rich'. If the story were true, I’d feel
sorry for him; creating an ideology based on the corner of a puzzle piece
makes you horse-headed and ultimately miserable.

Fortunately, it’s not, and he has successfully brought attention to his
personal site, which, because of the content, is pleasantly ironic. My left-
handed compliments to the chef.

------
mathgladiator
If you're so damn smart, why don't you start a company and then consult?

I've seen the pattern that internally many companies work the way the article
noted. That is, insecurity and ass-kissing go way down to the bowels of the
company.

However, I have found that the problems created by ass-kissing are solved when
you sell yourself not as an employee but as a consulting expert/guru. Then,
intelligence and other awesome qualities are then marketing tools.

------
marklubi
Am I the only one that read the article and thought that part of the problem
had to do with the fact that he was sending out "thousands of resumes" in the
last two months?

I really expected to come to the comments on this post and see a lot of
responses about that. It doesn't sound at all like he was trying to target his
market at all. It sounds as though his plan was to simply spam his way to
finding a job.

------
reynolds
I don't get the mentality of sending out thousands of resumes. I sent out one
to get my current job because I wanted to work there.

~~~
cparedes
I don't get it, either.

Most of the jobs I've applied for after I've graduated college, I was able to
get at least an in person interview, and several times, was able to juggle
between several offers; I've only applied to roughly five or six jobs in my
whole career so far. Why? Because I actually took the time to look at their
website, see if it was something I was interested in, and even come up with
work-related questions that I could ask them in my cover letter.

Though, I would still say that it's a numbers game, but you still have to make
a decent effort for each job you apply for. It's almost like dating, in a way.

~~~
kd0amg
_I was able to get at least an in person interview, and several times, was
able to juggle between several offers_

This alone suggests you were in a somewhat different situation than that of
the author. Resume carpet-bombing is what people seem to eventually do when
they aren't getting offers.

------
mquander
If this story is trying to convince me that it makes sense to dumb down
credentials ("at least I was employed") it was not successful. He apparently
sent out his resume to roughly every business he saw on the street. Perhaps if
he had represented himself better on it, he would have gotten a different job
that doesn't suck.

~~~
sabat
You haven't been out on the market lately, I suspect. People don't read
resumes anymore, so there's no real chance to impress anyone. They scan
keywords. If you try to represent yourself well, chances are you won't be
keyword-rich enough to get attention.

------
asimjalis
What was your graduate degree in? Could you apply that to create value
somehow?

~~~
toxicflavor
Staying alive and being able to pay the rent is creating value too.

~~~
mian2zi3
No, that's consuming value.

~~~
toxicflavor
Then we disagree on the value of staying alive irrespective of one's
productivity level.

~~~
mquander
You're being intentionally ignorant of the way everyone else uses the term
"creating value," which describes work that improves the world around you, not
just work that happens to keep you alive.

~~~
toxicflavor
Except my point is that you can still improve the world around you (create
value) even if your work does not do so. In that sense, maintaining your own
survival is also a means of creating value. On the other hand, you seem to
define "creating value" in excessively narrow terms by accepting whatever
preconceived notion you insist it is defined by.

~~~
Ardit20
That is creating value to himself! The original point was about creating
values to others.

How on earth can you be smart and not realise the rules of engagement in the
world? Not you personally, but the guy who claimed he was super smart.

------
seis6
Clearly the story is not about being Smart. More in the lines of: you can get
a dog job if you learn to bark. But then don't complain if you are not a dog,
don't ask for meat and eat the bones that a dog eat.

------
LiveTheDream
OP should have simply done something interesting in the extra 5 hours per day
that his employer was paying him to do nothing. Read a book, write memoirs,
work on a side business...

------
vox
Because money isn't my primary aim in life.

------
zavulon
The 'dumbing yourself down' skill comes very handy when talking to most girls
at bars/clubs.

~~~
iron_ball
Because you want to date the girls who can't keep up with you intellectually?
Whatever floats your boat, man.

~~~
nandemo
I though that what zavulon is saying was common sense. I assume people who are
downvoting him don't hang out in bars and clubs much, or aren't going there to
pick up girls.

------
klochner
Are hard to read font colors a new trend or something?

#666666 for body text makes my eyes bleed

~~~
sliverstorm
That's because #666666 is the color of The Beast.

~~~
Ardit20
and it is not optimal contrast with the white background, nor black for that
matter.

~~~
sliverstorm
Ah, but it is even less optimal with a background of #777777

------
known
I'm smarter than Obama, why I'm not President of America?

------
adnam
Quote: '“This letter is too well written.” He fiddle [sic] with the pen as he
read.'

------
ergo98
While I think this story is largely fictitious, when someone argues that
they're downtrodden and victimized because they sound smart -- in verbal or
written form -- they're often missing the forest for the trees.

Unless you're debating esoterica of a specialized domain, the smartest people
manage to communicate in a simple, effective manner(1). The person accused of
using too many syllables, in contrast, tends to be someone who isn't actually
terribly smart at all, and the compensation is a verbal find/replace of
commonplace words with a cargo cult collection of "smart" words, because
that's what they think smart people do.

When someone says "you're too smart", or "you sound too smart" or "try to dumb
yourself down", most of the time they're not _really_ saying that you're too
smart. They're saying "can the act."

(1) - The best example of this, I think, was Richard Feynman. He never tried
to sell the idea that he was smart -- anyone who needed to know that already
knew it -- but instead managed to communicate the most incredible ideas
clearly and effectively.

~~~
amohr
I know it's hard to believe, but there are people who legitimately enjoy
finding the exact right word. This is like trashing someone for working on an
open source project - they're just doing something they love the best they
know how. In this case it's not strategically optimal and finding that out was
a (perhaps overdue) shock.

~~~
jiganti
You are operating from the perspective that the "right word" is the one that
the dictionary defines as the most accurate based on the context. If the
people you are communicating to will receive the message better if you choose
alternative, less correct as far as dictionaries are concerned words, the
message will be better received.

I see people make this mistake all the time; it's important to recognize that
the ultimate goal of language is to communicate.

------
TotlolRon
Yep. Self-induced lobotomy is a very useful skill.

------
Ardit20
Rubish.

And I'll say what I like because this is the internet and I will care about
you as much as you cared about my five minutes.

Your tone is patronising. You are shouting at me, I feel like a little child
in a very dark room with a very tall man shouting at me and I have watery eyes
and will any moment start crying.

First, English Literature. That is arts. Arts and business are two different
things. With english lit you write the subjective rubish you did and make me
feel very bad for no reason whatever.

Second, is this all fiction?

Third, how old are you? - just to say I didnt read it all, I didnt wanna cry
and didnt like the darkness.

Fourth, it is not smart to study English Literature, you read book instead.

Fifth, it is not smart to apply to jobs you are not qualified for.

Sixth, get a proper degree!

Seventh. Are you saying that someone who went to Harvard would be looked down
compared to someone who went to, well I dont know about there in the US, but a
rubish university by reputation, unless you were appying to be a bin
collector?

Or are you saying that really employers do not want smart people - smart by
the standards of reality - that is great university reputation and numbers or
letters in your paper- when applying for the jobs which kinda - if not in
reality than perception - require a lot of responsibility and someone's
intellect you can trust when making far reaching decisions?

To Conclude, I don't like you, whoever that wrote it. It is grim, it is
shouting at me, at no point, as far as I read anyway, and if you were so smart
you would have made my reading pleasurable and I would have finished reading
it, did I think that you showed any reason for me to think that you are smart,
your article is full of generalisation, opinions,

You know, perhaps if you are smart enough you will understand this, you
article gives those same emotions as - and this is brutal - as those articles
written by journalists in populous newspapers did when they were arguing for
invading Iraq. I do not say it is of that grave scale, it gives those same
emotions.

So god let me pray that you do not become a journalist and so too god I pray
that your articles, if of the same kind, do not find their way to HN again.

------
debt
I'm lazy as fuck. That's why.

------
avar
It would appear that you talk like a fag, and that your shit's all retarded.

~~~
Aaronontheweb
Why are you voting this guy down? It's a quote from Idiocracy.

~~~
run4yourlives
1\. Because this isn't reddit. Random quotes add little to the discussion.

2\. Because it misses the point, in that the problem is the author, not
everyone else being stupid.

~~~
Aaronontheweb
No humor allowed. Got it. Thanks.

~~~
run4yourlives
I said nothing regarding humour.

