Tales of the Competency Crisis - How do I into anything?

[The Hardest R]

Do you work where I do? I also have a funny related story, my boss got passed up for promotion due to politics, being the #1 of a VP that got sacked. So he just stopped giving a shit about his job and the company.
No one is getting fired as well as we are all in specialized positions that are really hard to replace, so no one is getting fired, no one is getting promoted. So there is a lack of caring right now.

I think many businesses are in our spot right now. There is a big freeze where nobody is getting fired, hired, or promoted. Morale is at zero and people are doing just enough not to get fired. “Quiet quitting” is being done by just about everyone right now.

Meanwhile we are working on long term capital and O&M forecasts by business unit and the CXOs get angry if you don’t have headcount reductions scoped in. Yet growth targets are unaffected by this or pushed higher. I totally get why people do just enough to get by. This is a business that makes billions of dollars in net income, by the way.

Otherwise I find them pleasant. One of the few nons that will do you a good turn and try to include you in their social circles.

They definitely are pleasant, I’ll give them that.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Yet more fresh Clown World hell: "cognitive foreclosure", where children do not develop thinking skills because "ChatGPT" or some other LLM does all the "thinking" for them.

 

[Mad as a Swan]

Get message for a position for registered nurse don't have a. Nursing. I'm not a registered nurse. Nothing in any of my resumes say I'm a registered nurse. Go to the interview just because I'm bored and have nothing to do on a Friday. The woman says I am an excellent fit for the emergency room nurse position. Explain to her that I am not a registered nurse several times.
Invites me to a second round interview. Nearly offers me the job. The supervisor eventually steps in and says this man is not a registered nurse. And I tell him, yeah, I've been trying to explain that to your hiring manager for. 4 weeks.
Gets angry 'cause he realizes I've been fucking with this person for the better point of. The last four weeks.
Now I have to find something else to do while driving between job sites.

What? That sounds like a fun conversation. I love talking to psychotic. Creepy. Weird people. Especially the weird crackhead who works at my local gas station who I've repeatedly see smoking crack. Behind the building.
He forgets to add. Items. To the till constantly. And I swear that the guy just literally doesn't care anymore about life. And just wants to go in the back and smoke crack.

I also bet. He adds punctuation randomly. And. Without reason!

Wahat a fucking. Madman!

 

[MajorKurewsky]

Millions spent on upper management updating software, policy and procedures, etc to roll out and implement the changes needed to let us go paperless. Want to know the new procedure? We now print everything, sign it with a physical pen and annotate as needed, scan it, and shred it. And even after a week or two of that, we had to go back to continuing to file and pay for physical retention of all documentation regardless anyway, because it turned out the workforce of 95% incompetent pajeet retards are too fucking lazy and stupid to scan it and ensure it gets electronically filed correctly. Extra work, extra cost, and extra paper. Jesus fucking wept.

Pajeet has easy chill life while you work like stupid bull on a wheel for a company, that only cares about getting from you as much as possible for as little as possible.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

This may sound "racist", but what is it with people from India always coming up with "solutions" to problems which are not solutions at all?* When you look at infrastructure in India, you can see there's a tendency to not fix problems. And the more India turns a Not India into India, things could get more dysfunctional in the (former) Not India.

* For example, I've mentioned that the usual "solution" for the "Error 153" BS with YT embeds is to "click on those three dots" and "clear the cache" in "Google Chrome" on a "smartphone" -- the apparent consensus of all those "tutorial" videos (with a thick India accent narration), which seem to be the only results on how to fix such a BS error.

 

[Waffle Iron]

This may sound "racist", but what is it with people from India always coming up with "solutions" to problems which are not solutions at all?* When you look at infrastructure in India, you can see there's a tendency to not fix problems. And the more India turns a Not India into India, things could get more dysfunctional in the (former) Not India.

it's called jugaad. See also the india menace thread.

Basically, it's seen as clever in their culture to jury rig things. If putting a tarp over the hole of your roof lets you avoid paying a roofer to fix your roof, you are smart.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

it's called jugaad. See also the india menace thread.

Nuclear power plants were brought up over there. Can you imagine "jugad" or "izzat" being used to run one of them?

 

[Betonhaus]

Nuclear power plants were brought up over there. Can you imagine "jugad" or "izzat" being used to run one of them?

It shouldn’t be that bad because it probably won’t even fire up. There’s basically no risk of it exploding and spreading radiation across the continent because it won’t even achieve fission.if they manage to fire it up and at stays up I’ll be worried.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

if they manage to fire it up and at stays up I’ll be worried

Could the Indians get non-Indians to build it, then the Indians run it?

 

[Betonhaus]

Could the Indians get non-Indians to build it, then the Indians run it?

In which case the fail-safes will work. And trying to bypass the fail safes will render the reactor an expensive and inert art piece.

 

[Betonhaus]

It's been five years, how the hell is it still unprecedented demand when they put you on hold for over an hour?

 

[HTTP Error 404]

My current "fun" thing is that I've had multiple clients that have had users that are NOT in IT loop us in on email chains where they have set up entire business relationships with AI firms...

...without ever including IT.

First is someone asking for permission to use some AI app that will scrape all their HIPAA patient PII and let them do basic bitch reports so they don't have to, which I'm pretty sure they've already been using, which was approved by some middle manager without involving IT, only at some point someone must have blocked the website or service becuase holy fuck. So now they're saying "but my manager [not in IT] okayed this, so it's BEEN approved." Yeah, by your manager, not by mine, guess who I listen to, Ramadesh?

Second is someone casually asking what the status is of us setting up SSO integration so they can login to some AI service after what appears to be multiple tech demos and sales meetings with this company. I check and the user isn't in IT, they're not even a fucking employee, they're a management level consultant from fucking India, of course. Better yet, they had a ticket already in about this when they finally CCed us about it when the AI firm was like "ok so you just need to set up SSO integration here, have your IT meet with us here and we'll" yadda yadda yadda. Client's IT Security replied -- work notes blocked -- but the ticket resolution was "This is NOT approved and this MUST be sent to the AI commitee for review and approval before we even consider this." Which, since the user's Elite Human Capital, was promptly ignored and a few days later he just submitted a new ticket wondering why it hadn't been done yet.

Both these clients are healthcare, and they're basically begging to let a 3rd party AI firm have access to HIPAA, PII and Research data. And I'm pretty sure they're, you know, just doing it without asking in some cases, and we're only finding out when the filters block them, IT Security catches on and blocks it, or they get creative and try to set up single sign on or the like.

What's the tech equivalent of the sweet meteor of death? Cause I'm praying for it every day.

 

[Nameless One]

>finally ready to return to the workforce this June
>getting lots of interviews because my skills are in demand
>interview for a job yesterday
>the place is hiring fast and expanding fast
>'I'm sending specific instructions for reaching our office'
>it's just a street address
>interviewer is late for own interview
>front desk is empty
>none of the staff knows where she is
>no messages stating she will be late
>start my "give 'er twenty minutes, then bounce" timer
>lady walks in fifteen minutes later
>walks past me to office
>emerges from office five minutes later
>'Hi, are you Asbestos? I'm [the interviewer]'
>no apology for being late
>starts asking boilerplate bullshit
>has no technical knowledge, can't answer any of my technical questions
>twenty minute face-to-face that could've been done over the phone
>keeps saying 'we value patience here' because I stated the interview was for one o'clock
>at end of interview, states all round one interviews go through her before actual management gets involved
>IOW they made her the gatekeeper, meaning my future technical manager doesn't get to choose his own staff.

I understand there's a whole psychology to treating applicants this way, but you only do that if you're screening for desperate people - not when the company itself is desperate for warm bodies. Twenty minutes isn't that bad normally - but for first impressions it is terrible. The bitch made it very clear that she thinks she owns anyone who signs with her. Real 'you will obey every rule and I will skirt every rule' energy. It's a buyer's market rn, retard, I decide whether to work with you, not the other way around.

This quote becomes more bold and relevant each passing day the enshittification continues and worsens.

 

[Betonhaus]

My current "fun" thing is that I've had multiple clients that have had users that are NOT in IT loop us in on email chains where they have set up entire business relationships with AI firms...

...without ever including IT.

First is someone asking for permission to use some AI app that will scrape all their HIPAA patient PII and let them do basic bitch reports so they don't have to, which I'm pretty sure they've already been using, which was approved by some middle manager without involving IT, only at some point someone must have blocked the website or service becuase holy fuck. So now they're saying "but my manager [not in IT] okayed this, so it's BEEN approved." Yeah, by your manager, not by mine, guess who I listen to, Ramadesh?

Second is someone casually asking what the status is of us setting up SSO integration so they can login to some AI service after what appears to be multiple tech demos and sales meetings with this company. I check and the user isn't in IT, they're not even a fucking employee, they're a management level consultant from fucking India, of course. Better yet, they had a ticket already in about this when they finally CCed us about it when the AI firm was like "ok so you just need to set up SSO integration here, have your IT meet with us here and we'll" yadda yadda yadda. Client's IT Security replied -- work notes blocked -- but the ticket resolution was "This is NOT approved and this MUST be sent to the AI commitee for review and approval before we even consider this." Which, since the user's Elite Human Capital, was promptly ignored and a few days later he just submitted a new ticket wondering why it hadn't been done yet.

Both these clients are healthcare, and they're basically begging to let a 3rd party AI firm have access to HIPAA, PII and Research data. And I'm pretty sure they're, you know, just doing it without asking in some cases, and we're only finding out when the filters block them, IT Security catches on and blocks it, or they get creative and try to set up single sign on or the like.

What's the tech equivalent of the sweet meteor of death? Cause I'm praying for it every day.

Would a good power move be looping in Legal for stuff that would blatantly get you sued?

 

[HTTP Error 404]

Would a good power move be looping in Legal for stuff that would blatantly get you sued?

Oh, we just loop the senior teams involved at each client, like the AI Cabal (client's term for the team, not ours) or "Employee Tech Experience" (L2 as named by a woman using IT as an adult day care service). They almost definitely have legal involved and are almost always a bunch of increasingly annoyed as fuck white guys trying to hold it together until the collapse.

 

[Nameless One]

Oh, we just loop the senior teams involved at each client, like the AI Cabal (client's term for the team, not ours) or "Employee Tech Experience" (L2 as named by a woman using IT as an adult day care service). They almost definitely have legal involved and are almost always a bunch of increasingly annoyed as fuck white guys trying to hold it together until the collapse.

How about we lynch then?

 

[DavidS877]

Teams with Legal/Regulatory/Compliance in their names tend to not be amused when they find out what's going on. Less so if you're working in a regulated industry like health or finance.

The last several clients I've been on-boarded at I've had to sit through a new "Here's our AI policy" training, which is obvious why they have to do that.

The training is usually: Here's our approved vendors, nothing marked confidential or higher, no PII, no PHI, no other AIs, no direct publishing of anything an AI has written. If you don't like this then come talk to the AI team, yes we are doing in-house testing for things in our regulated business units, please talk to the AI team.

 

[Legalize Asbestos]

It's been five years, how the hell is it still unprecedented demand when they put you on hold for over an hour?

LISTEN CLOSELY, AS THE OPTIONS MENU HAS RECENTLY CHANGED

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It's been five years, how the hell is it still unprecedented demand when they put you on hold for over an hour?

Recently a number of numbers may even tell you "due to extremely high call volume we cannot take your call", and they hang up.

How the hell can there even be that "extremely high call volume" crap, if no one can call the line in the first place anyways?

 

[Waffle Iron]

Nuclear power plants were brought up over there. Can you imagine "jugad" or "izzat" being used to run one of them?

Look up bhopal.

Modern nuclear plants are designed to have plenty of failsafes, but I trust the indians to manage to cook up their own plant and with zero safety features and melt it down.