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Not going to play this game. Enjoy your privilege.
Happy Saturday.
I am no doubt privileged in a lot of ways relative to others. For one, I had a loving family that provided me with a safe, loving environment in which to grow up in. I think this played a HUGE role in who I am today, and I won't pretend to deny that.
But that is not going to take away from all the of the hard work I also put in to be who I am today.
In high school, I couldn't even get through a public speech without choking up and turtling. I had pretty severe social anxiety that I worked on immensely. I worked on this through college and throughout my life by putting myself intentionally in uncomfortable situations. I'm still timid in a lot of ways, but I can hold a conversation pretty well in a small group setting.
I worked hard in high school and graduated near the top of my class. I put myself through a good college and I graduated with $50k in loans that I paid off myself. It took over a decade to achieve.
I bought my houses based on my savings and my credit worthiness. I made a lot of sacrifices, such as living in run down, dumpy Section 8 apartments on the outskirts of town when others my age were living in posh new build high-rises downtown.
I've put myself into debt with risky/poor financial decisions in the past, but I owned it and took care of it.
I've worked tremendously on my personality; being more sociable, likable, malleable. I've worked on impulsivity, and instead gear my decisions based on strategic thinking and planning. Yesterday, I was at a sports bar watching the NHL playoffs and some jackwad wanted to fight my friend because of some petty dispute. I stepped between them and reasoned with the guy that he didn't want to make a lifelong decision that would hamper his life over something so trivial. He was yelling "I don't care! I don't care!" right in my face. These are the types of people who will always struggle in life--no impulse control, poor decision making, not addressing anger management problems, etc.
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You can point to my privilege all you want. I'm not gonna pretend like none exists. But you're not gonna sweep under the rug what work I did put in to get to this point in my life.
If you are struggling with these things, then I hope this makes you feel uncomfortable. That's the point. Hopefully, it makes you look inward to address some of the issues you may have in your own life. Complaining on anonymous message boards about one's problems only makes the admins rich, I assure you.
You can't make me uncomfortable, but keep trying, if it pleases you to do so.
It's fascinating to me to watch all these relatively successful people share ideas about how they've achieved different success in life (for free!), while those on the outside looking in, hoping for a better tomorrow, turn their heads in defiance and say, "Nope, I refuse to do any of that!".
Swallow your pride, man. It clears that lump in your throat and makes the advice easier to digest.
Well you're participating on threads seeking advice in these areas. So if you're not seeking out advice yourself, then all I can assume is that you're here to throw a giant wrench into the discussion.
Thats not true. No one is going to refer you or hire you if you don't meet the qualifications for the position.
But they're not going to see skills until someone else has hired them, and they enforce the catch-22.
Quote:
Employers wouldn't encourage employees to refer people and sometimes give financial awards if skills didn't matter.
If skills mattered, the catch-22 would not be enforced.
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And no one is going to refer someone that isn't going to perform well because that would make them look bad.
That person wouldn't get the job. If a low-performer got a job because someone else referred them, that shows how little companies value skills. It proves that "who you know" is far more important than "what you know"
Networking is like a 30% bonus on your marketability as a candidate. If you already got a lot of marketability, e.g. you've got an in-demand skill set and tons of experience in a field where companies are hiring, then its usefulness won't stand out as much. If your marketability is marginal, it might be the difference between success and failure.
It's possible to build a decent career without networking for sure, it's not that skill and experience don't matter, but if you ever wonder why some people's careers seem to have a jetpack attached to them in spite of no notable qualifications or experience..it's almost certainly due to networking.
Networking does include family relations of course..after all family is the ultimate and oldest network. So it can certainly be unfair. Not everyone is equally equipped to network successfully. Background plays as big a role as personality.
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