Worst book I’ve quit is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. What a horrible book!
Worst I’ve finished is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, immediately followed by Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I’ll throw in a special mention for The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. All terrible books that I finished only because they were required reading in school.
Thanks, I’m guessing the benefit of subscribing is to create that persistent relationship. The free version from MS that I’m using times out after a while. I definitely get the problem of it making up experience for me when it encounters something in a job description that isn’t referenced anywhere in my info. Honestly, I’d probably get more interviews if I just let it make up stuff, but I’m guessing that might become a problem for me later. :)
I interviewed for a job recently and asked why the position was vacant. They said the previous person died. I didn’t have the courage to ask if the death was work-related though.
Can you share a bit about how you used it? I’ve used Copilot a bit to try the same thing, but it makes so many errors that I spend too much time editing and fixing them. Also, after running quite a few cover letters, I found that the text was repetitive and unnatural in a way that made it really obvious that it was an LLM writing the letter and not a person.
When I was in the office, always metal. At home I’m more likely to listen to classical, but still metal if I need to be totally focused.
I put on music, preferably with full coverage noise canceling headphones to block as much outside stimulus as I can. Depending on the mood, I might put on something soothing (listening to Sean Townsend on YouTube right now) or I might go with metal.
If you are in US K-12 education and have a diagnosed condition (depression, anxiety, autism, etc.), you can have your parents request a 504 plan with the school. This requires the school to make reasonable accommodations for someone with a disability or illness that makes it difficult to be successful otherwise. When my daughter was suffering with anxiety and panic attacks, we worked with the administrators to setup safe places where she could go to calm down. The teachers were required to let her go any time she needed a break from the classroom.
I have the opposite problem. I have a dead PS3 and a bunch of games that I can’t play anymore because Sony refuses to offer backwards compatibility. I would love to be able to play those games on my PS4 or PC, but so far I haven’t been able to get an emulator working for that.
Same, I actually use a french press and then pour the coffee into the insulated carafe from my dead coffee machine to keep it hot until I finish it.
I’ve noticed this with my kids’ schools. Many kids are open about who they are - LGBT+, neurodivergent, mental illnesses, etc. - and people are generally accepting of that. When I was a kid, people were bullied relentlessly for showing any form of difference from “normal”. It makes me happy to hear them talk about things like that like its no big deal…because it shouldn’t be.
This site usually has some good stories worth checking out.
I’ve been curious about this too, but haven’t been able to find anything that puts a real price (including future profit margin) on GenAI. For example, having a chat conversation with a customer service agent in India might cost about $2-3. Is a GenAI bot truly cheaper than that once you factor in the energy & water costs, hardware, training, profits, etc.? It might be, but I’m skeptical.
I recently took a voluntary lay off from my job after almost 20 years with the company. I found out my dept was going to be reorganized and I was not very happy about the direction things were going, so I put myself on the severance list. I had been planning to look for a new role this year anyway, though I originally thought I would be looking for something in the same company.
It has been a couple of months now and I’m getting fewer interviews than I expected. I still have plenty of time to find something, so I’m not too worried yet, but I do question if I made a bad decision. Of course, I expect more layoffs within the next year, so it was reasonably likely that I would have been laid off eventually anyway.
Last year’s reorg for my dept, they broke into two rounds, the first round mostly got rid of supervisors and managers and kept more analysts than were needed long-term to get through all the work changes. Then, in December, they came back and laid off the extra staff. They knew that was the plan when everything was announced in April. They actually discussed telling people up front so they would have 8 months notice + severance, but decided not to at the last minute. I’m guessing they were worried those people would leave or not work hard enough through the transition.
Long before Covid, the company I worked for started trialing work from home for some call center agents. They had a whole list of requirements for an acceptable work from home space: dedicated work area with a desk, locking file drawer (why??? I don’t know), first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. Someone would actually go out to physically inspect the space to make sure every box was checked.
My guess is someone from legal wrote up the requirements from a workplace safety standpoint. They probably could have just had the employee sign a statement agreeing that they met all of the requirements, but someone in the middle got overzealous about their role. During Covid, everyone got sent home permanently without any regard to any of those rules, so clearly they weren’t that important in the first place.
We only feed dry food.
My answers below, but for your current issue, put in a complaint with the FCC or email the CEO of the company directly. Most major companies have a process to resolve issues that normal agents can’t access if you can get to the right level. Emailing the CEO works with many companies, but telecom companies are sensitive to FCC oversight and would rather fix your issue than deal with the FCC.
Yes, the agent agreed with me that the company owed me money, but told me they couldn’t do anything about it. I told them I understood, but please put in a ticket to someone that could do something about it. They just kept telling me they couldn’t help until I got mad. They eventually relented and put in a ticket, which was then denied without reason a month later. I resolved the issue by circumventing the call center entirely and getting directly to an escalation team similar to what I recommended above.
That would be a lucky outcome for Intel, they can’t compete with AMD’s current fab (TSMC).
I’ve been applying similar thinking to my job search. When I see AI listed in a job description, I immediately put the company into one of 3 categories:
A company in the first two categories would need to pay a lot to entice me and I would not value their equity offering. The third category is understandable, especially if the success of AI would threaten their business.
Any fitness physique you see on Instagram (male or female) took a ton of effort to achieve (and possibly some pharmaceutical or surgical assistance). You can pick any routine in the world and you are not at risk of looking like that unless you are really dedicated to it.
Research your professional value and have the courage to go after it if you are not being paid what you are worth.
I worked 17 years for the same company. I was promoted 4 times during those years and received a few extra pay increases along the way, but I was underpaid as soon as I took the first promotion and the gap increased with each additional promotion. I probably walked away from more than $100k in lifetime earnings, plus interest, by sticking with the company.
I should have changed companies at least once and probably twice. You don’t have to be on a promotion path to run into this. It could be you were underpaid on day 1, but you needed the job or you didn’t have experience. That’s fine, but once you have the experience and have proven yourself, find out what the market rate is for your role and ask for it, be ready to show your research. If you don’t get it, start applying for other jobs.
Don’t be afraid to talk to your peers about salary. If you are making less, you know there is a gap you can go after (just don’t name your coworker when you ask for more, do market research and make it impersonal/just business). If you are making more, pass this advice on to your coworker.
If you are being paid fairly for the work you are doing, but know you can do more, start looking into what it takes to make a move. For example, you might be the best fast food or retail worker the world has ever had, but the job only pays so much. What else might you be good at? You could look for training in a trade or try to find an entry level role in a company that has a wider set of tasks available that offers a growth path.
I agree with a lot of the comments here about saving and investing and keeping expenses down, but growing your earnings is typically easier than shrinking your rent. It still isn’t easy though, especially if you need to relocate to earn more.
If you use this equipment frequently, try to quantify them on your resume to show you have experience. You can ask chatgpt for better wording, but you might have something like “unload 20-30 trailers per week using an electric pallet jack.”
Create a list starting out of everything you might want to tell a future potential employer. The original list can be messy and have awkward wording, but try to list all of the useful skills you have and wherever possible, quantify your impact. Once you have that, then go to your AI of choice and practice some different prompts to see what kind of results you get. You’re not going to get a great or even necessarily accurate resume on your first try, you have to put in some effort to edit and re-prompt for improvements. Here are some possible prompts to play with starting out:
“You are an experienced recruiter helping me craft a resume to get a job in a warehouse. Review this list of experiences and recommend better wording to show that I have the skills to be an effective warehouse employee.” <paste your list that you created>
“For this experience, recommend how I can quantify my impact to show that I added value.” <paste a bullet that you want to improve>
If you find a job description that represents the kind of job you want, you can also provide that to your AI friend to get even better results. Something like this:
Once you’re done editing your resume to fix any errors the AI gave you or to change the wording to be a better reflection of your writing, you can paste the resume in again and ask for a final review.
The first time you do this, you’ll probably think “wow, this is so much better than what I started with” or possibly, “this is garbage, it’s making things up that aren’t even true.” Either way, if you keep playing with it, you’ll start to get a feel for a good balance of words that reflect your experience, but also connect well with job descriptions for jobs you’re interested in. Or maybe you’ll get lucky and get a job offer right away and not have to think about it again for years!
Some bonus prompts for when you get an interview:
You can take it another step and provide your resume and ask it for suggested answers to the question. Careful here though because you don’t want to try to memorize the answers. And finally, you should always ask questions in an interview (ALWAYS), try this:
Good luck with your job search!