I find it amazing that finance, sales, etc are held in such high regard when it’s science and technology that advance society.
I mention farming below. Plumbing, well depends on population. We can shit in the field like we did for millennia. It’s just fertilizer.
Also a Cholera breeding ground. Which is why for centuries more people died in cities than were born, despite having no access to contraception.
Most scientific and engineering skills would also be useless if civilization collapses. For example, I am a scientific software developer. Most of my work has been for medical research, which is something people tend to respect. However, I wouldn’t be able to do anything useful with numerical modelling in a survival situation. My limited skills as an amateur home renovator would be far more relevant.
I agree with the rebuilding civilization from scratch part, but it’s still what advances society.
*In this case, what will advance society is farming equipment. Machining science.
It’s a bit like Maslows hierarchy of needs. First we need food and water and plumbing. When we are secure in those needs, society can take the next step. But the basis of security must be there before advancement
To be fair, most professions that would be needed to survive in an apocalypse or rebuild society, aren’t things that an already functioning modern society can support everyone doing anyway. We need farmers and carpenters and such, but we don’t need so many as to have openings for a majority of the population to be them, these days.
Yes, but then it doesn’t seem fair to pick on the executive international sales and marketing analyst.
As a software engineer I often think about how laughably useless my skillset would be in any kind of survival or societal reset sort of situation.
At least you can analyze problems logically and break down complex procedures into small, manageable steps.
SharePoint admins are really fucked.
Anyone building a system that’s similar to what they’re used to, in a post-apocalyptic society, would be laughed at, then shot.
You’re a software engineer. You at least know the very basics of digital electronics, and can probably work your way backward to rudimentary power supplies.
You are far from fucked.
Mathematicians though? Oof I worry about them, if they did anything too practical they’d be physicists.
That’s where you’re wrong bucko!
I’m a software engineer skilled in devops, Linux and web applications! I spent much of today making Jira tickets and drawing diagrams!
I’m so fucked
You know I can’t remember for the life of me if the CS students at my college had to take Digital Electronics or Microcontrollers.
I was in computer engineering, so those classes were required.
Yeah, and in my case I can’t even claim to be particularly good at math, logic, or problem solving (except in the narrow domain of technical problems). All my skills are geared at turning the handle at the bullshit machine. But without that machine I don’t have a whole lot going on…
Which is quite sad when you think of it. I wish I could contribute meaningfully to my larger community while also supporting my family financially.
you would just be able to repurpose the way you think logically into something else. I’d say you would be more ahead than a lot of others in a catastrophic scenario!
“Honey, the water is about to shut off. Can you file a JIRA ticket to fill out bathtubs? I should be able to get to it next sprint”
Yeah I guess? Is that your only skillset though cause I do tech work, but I also do a lot cheap large batch cooking, grow my own produce and can provide immediate first aid and medical care, all of which, I think, makes me pretty useful.
Plus a minor hobby in botany specifically poisonous plants makes me somewhat useful for what not to eat.
You are more than just your work.
“Oh no, all the scum-masters are gone, who will annoy us with their inane babbling now?”
Oh it was not a mistake, trust me.
One once tried showing me a slideshow on what it is they actually do, because the sauna we had for that evening was from their company.
Guy couldn’t fuckin read the room though and actually went through with his PowerPoint presentation. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how someone could ignore so many social cues from us, the people who had nothing to do with his work, his company, or any work at all. Purely recreational night and dude starts it with that.
Yuck yuck yuck
There are two types of scrum masters. Those who are true believers in agility, and those who think it’s just a fancy bullshit name for “project manager”. The latter tend to be the the fucking worst, unfortunately they’re the most common breed.
Truth is, a real “scrum master” (or “agile coach” for SAFe 6 people) is at best a part time job, and has only two purposes. With experience and knowledge, help the team towards making their job easier/faster/more interesting/more predictable/more serene through continuous improvement using agile methods as a toolbox (and NOT a fucking dogma), and tell idiotic managers who can’t fucking anticipate a fucking deadline more than 3 days in advance to fuck off and stop being fucking morons teach managers to respect agile principles and have a clear short- and medium-term vision so their needs can comfortably fit the team’s backlog without jeopardizing the team, other priorities or the deadlines.
The other breed are fucking corporate yes-men who shove work over capacity onto the team and play make-believe-scrum by focusing exclusively on bullshit rituals that serve no actual fucking purpose.
I think that’s probably a good joke, but I haven’t had to suffer corporate culture enough in recent years to understand that.
Or maybe I’m just too high to be able to
When all the billionaires are dead and there’s no one to create our jobs for us. :(
Also not pictured: project managers
A few competent project managers would probably help things quite a bit, actually.
Having a single point of contact for several disparate teams of people doing real work so that they can actually do that work, instead of spending extra time in endless meetings arguing over the best way to implement something that requires multiple people’s input is a valuable tool to have.
Think of them like a tank in an RPG, taking all the meeting hits that would otherwise decimate the effectiveness of people actually putting the real work in.
Valid. Competent is the key word. I’m lucky, in that most of the ones I work with are actually really good, but the ones my colleagues work with (in the same company, different division) might as well have gotten their PMMP certificate out of a cereal box.
What? You won’t pay me to be impatient? That’s bullshit.
Just get more people working on it and it will get done on time, I’m sure the resources are there, just look at the chart, we cannot afford to delay schedule!
