I think this is just a trend everywhere but I've been very frustrated this week by how much admin work is being outsourced to me as the patient/customer.
My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.
The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.
I feel like at a certain point these constant fetch quests become unreasonable?? Is it too much to expect these groups to communicate with each other instead of making me run back and forth between them???
Made this post and then the new property manager (who started on Monday and only finally emailed us today because I sent a vaguely professionally hostile email to her boss because I hadn't heard anything and was not convinced she existed) asked for a list of open action items which her predecessor should have had but apparently wasn't keeping track of, which I learned when I met her boss and provided her with the list of open action items, which I guess tragically died in a fire in the last 2 weeks since she was sitting at my kitchen table, being menaced by the skull. How many people's jobs am I doing now
#I have several frustrations with the 'executive function theft' framework that I haven't been able to articulate#Like it's absolutely extremely a real phenomenon I think framing it that way points in the wrong direction #And I think 'outsourcing admin work to nowhere' actually gets a lot closer.
#Everyone has massively cut their support staff everwhere.#supposedly automation makes up for this gap except that it literally doesn't at all#You can fire 90% of your office staff and replace them with a phone tree#And all that happens is everyone hates it and it sucks and it makes your service completely unnavigable#But like. Who is going to stop you?
#Everyone has done this in every industry and field. There is no alternative you can turn to preferentially because they actually staff thei#phones. No one does!!#Let alone any means of communication outside of phone calling. Which remains the absolute bottom line of getting any info out of anywhere#You can cut your office hours because everything is on the website! Which you haven't updated in 5 years and the plugin broke and
#Basically the same principle we're seeing now in the rollout of AI has already been the status quo. The idea that you can just get rid of#all human support services. Replace them with some automated function.
#On the corporate side the logic is clear: once you have a monopoly (and who doesnt) the only way to increase profits is to cut costs#which means fire people. And if the quality of service tanks who cares because everyone's stuck with you anyway.
#on the government services side it's a bit more opaque.... I guess it probably mostly comes back to cost-cutting again.#Budget pressure. Reforms designed to strangle services.#Plus the longtime practice of throttling government support by making the logistical burden too onerous to handle#By way of wretched clauses about eligibility and the proving therof and etc
#And there's a very real and brutal class component also.#Everyone making these firing calls is totally insulated from the effects of their decisions because they have personal assistants.#Meanwhile the people dealing with the most of this shit are anyone trying to access social services of any sort#or even just do or get things cheaply.
via @screambirdscreaming
(reformatted into paragraphs for easier reading) these tags get to the root of the problem in a way I'd like to see more people acknowledging, honestly.
I saw a post the other day that was pointing out how people selling AI frame AI as some genius worksaving innovation or as a tool based on whether they want to cater to the ego of middle management types whose entire job is answering emails, because obviously the people whose jobs are most able to be replaced by AI are middle management email answering jobs.
I think what is missing from the understanding that "middle management types who answer emails can easily have their jobs replaced by AI" thought is that while they are being paid to answer emails, their jobs actually consist of a bunch of soft skills which they are not getting acknowledgment or payment for, in a lot of cases due to this work being done by women and other marginalized people for whom this work is the only thing allowing them to achieve middle class status. The DEI purge happening in the American federal government is happening on the devaluation of soft skills that communication based jobs need to be done well, because the job can be automated to be done badly by moving the actual work of that job to the "customer".
"Creatives deserve to be paid" and "We desperately need community spaces for creatives that aren't focused on trying to make money or advance careers where we're allowed to make connections and experiment" are two statements that can and should coexist.
As you may or may not know, I was laid off about a year ago. I still don't have full-time employment, but things are getting less bad. Here are some things I have learned that may help people in the same situation.
Something I need you to understand right now
The market is very very bad. The last time I remember it being this terrible was right after the mortgage busts in 2008-10. It might honestly be worse. The last time I looked for a job was three years ago and it has changed completely.
The number of people applying to available jobs is w i l d. The stats coming out of this r/recruitinghell thread are nuts. 2000 applications, even after screening out the obviously unsuited they still went through 900. There's no way to screen all of them. It is, unfortunately, mostly a numbers game.
I'm not telling you this to scare you or discourage you. But it will be hard, because so much is tied up into work, labor, and our senses of self. And if you're going to get through this, you need to understand what you're up against.
I hope the stuff below the jump will help you do that.
(If you need to contact me hmu on Bluesky or via pearwaldorf at gmail. I have messaging and asks turned off because spam and because I'm not on Tumblr much)
If you've just been laid off or are going to be
If you still have access to your old work's systems, grab what you need.
Get yourself the Laid Off/Let Go Checklist from Never Search Alone. Even if you don't sign up for NSA, this is helpful.
Never Search Alone is a mutual support group for job hunting that is supposed to help you figure out your alignment and purpose (Job Search Council). It feels very silly that we do not run these things in general, because it was actually extremely helpful when I found my JSC.
If you feel like you're spinning your wheels and trying to figure out what's next, this might be helpful for you. It's a lot of work, but I think if you put it in it will help you.
(I joined a JSC that kinda fizzled out so if you have questions, happy to answer them. Also if you want to do a JSC but don't have the money for the book, I can help you with that.)
I found Overqualified through a promoted post on LinkedIn (lol) and it has been useful small bites of information about things I don't want to think about much (like AI in hiring and marketing yourself on LinkedIn). The videos are short (under 5 minutes) and still helpful even if they're a little... yeah.
Give yourself a little bit of time to decompress if you can. You’re probably suffering at least a little bit of burnout.
**MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHEN YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT IS RUNNING OUT.** (This totally didn't happen to me. Nope.)
The Actual Hunt
Sites to use
Hiring.cafe is an aggregation searcher built by Redditors that allows you to filter by lots of parameters, including ease of application, tech stack, cognitive load on the job, mobility, and physical labor required. It has a robust Boolean search that allows you to exclude companies you don't want to work with.
Welcome to the Jungle is for jobs with startups/smaller companies funded by VC (defined extremely broadly: Khan Academy is considered one). This is good if you have a tech stack and/or skill set you're proficient in.
Indeed is what I've been using because it allows you to filter on actually important things, like whether or not a job has a posted salary and allows you to hide companies/positions you're never going to apply for. Also locations that are too goddamn far despite trying to properly dial in what a reasonable communitng distance is. (Ahem.)
Flexjobs is a site that has fully remote positions with people who vet them and make sure they're real. To support this, the site is pay to access. Try the cheap version first--it might not have enough of the types of jobs you're looking for.
The best thing to do if you really want to be considered is to apply on the company's website if possible. Yes, I know it sucks and is way harder than just clicking a couple buttons. But that's a calculation you have to make about effort vs convenience.
Sites to avoid
I have an anti-rec for LinkedIn because it gets so much traffic and you can't exclude companies. Also the jobs get stale really quick because they get so many applications.
Lensa and Wiraa are weird scammy reposters that I have never been able to figure out. Do not sign up or click on links from them.
Pay
You're never going to remember hourly > salary conversions. Keep a note on your computer or a sticky note with relevant numbers:
Minimum wage in your state
When you're applying to remote positions (which vary wildly in pay) you do not want to aim for anything less.
Minimum wage in the biggest city close to you (if it's within commuting distance)
The reason I say this is because there can be a HUGE difference. Washington state minimum wage is ~$16 but varies greatly by locale. You don't want to concentrate on jobs in places that pay $4 less an hour if you could commute to a place that has to pay way more.
The hourly equivalent of your unemployment benefits
Don't even bother applying for anything lower than this if you still have them.
Hourly > salary conversions for round numbers (like $50K, $60K)
This might just be me but it was helpful to see the equivalents
Posted salaries
Personally I never apply to anything without a stated pay rate. In my state (Washington) it's illegal to post a job listing without one if your company has more than 15 employees. Lots of places will attempt to weasel around this by posting pay ranges that encompass whole-ass tax brackets. It sucks and those companies should go on your shit list.
Be aware of your rights regarding soliciting salary histories. It's illegal in Washington to ask for that, but may not be in your state. Some state labor and industries departments also have databases of businesses who have been cited for violating wage laws by employees.
You will quickly learn to feel in your bones Chris Rock's commentary about minimum wage.
Ghost jobs
Some companies leave job listings up for ages and/or aren't actually hiring. These are called ghost jobs and they suck. You'll learn to spot these as you become familiar with what's normal for your market. This list compiles some companies that do the ghost job thing. Which is not to say they're all fake, but this aligns with my experience.
(There are many legit reasons for posting jobs that may not actually be hiring, but we're not dealing with those here.)
Networking
I have a whole post about networking for introverts here. I think it is applicable to even those of you who are not. It also contains a bit of stuff about how to tweak your LinkedIn profile.
Resumes
If you need Word (or other Office apps), you can use it online for free. The only annoying thing is you can't save .doc/x files to your computer, so get used to putting everything in PDF or ODT.
Layout should be barebones. Do not buy the cute little templates from Etsy. I recommend finding any random ATS-friendly template and making sure it degrades gracefully. No columns, minimal formatting (bold and italic, font sizes). Or make a plain-text version.
This guy used to do recruiting for Google and has lots of excellent advice.
This is how you should construct your resume. Nobody gives a shit about the things you did, but rather what you accomplished while you were there.
Construct bullet points in this way, so they flow together and create a coherent picture of what you did. This is also a great place to keyword stuff.
The wait
Honestly I would not expect to hear back. Some people keep track of the number of applications > declines > interviews > offers, but I think that will drive you batty. I have found that if people want you to interview, you'll find out within a couple weeks or not at all.
The thing I was super surprised by? The lower-paying jobs like retail and food service are the ones I hear back from the least. If I'm lucky they eventually close the position and I get notified that way.
The grind. The fucking grind.
You will get a lot of rejections. Try not to take it personally, although I know it's easier said than done.
Like, I got turned down for a job that I was approached for, in that an HR person forwarded my resume to this other person, we talked for 90 minutes and I had an interview, and I still didn't get picked. That was kinda rough.
You will also run across a lot of entitled bullshit in job postings. You do not need to do a video interview or write a goddamn essay to stand out. This is how they identify the desperate.
Please leave time for processing all this, with or without a JSC. You cannot hunt well if you're all up in your head about how much something sucks, and it does suck.
That being said, come up with some boilerplate answers for common questions on applications like "Why do you want to work here?" It will make you feel less like dying of pure resentment when you already have an answer.
Do not be tempted to halt all searching if you get an interview. It fucks your momentum and makes it more difficult to pick back up if you get rejected (and you will).
A lot of feelings and attitudes will come up about how you perceive work, class, and "skilled" labor. Do not shy away from these, because examining this stuff is how we break down and interrogate how we come by these beliefs. Try and be a little dispassionate about it--you can't think clearly if you feel ashamed about having this stuff in your head.
Interviews
(I don't have a lot to say about this because I haven't had enough numerically to see if they're different from the usual advice.)
This is a conversation. You're just getting to know someone new for 20-30 minutes.
But also, STAR, STAR, STAR. You need to be able to think of times in your past where you have demonstrated qualities hiring people think you need to succeed in this job.
Interviews are farces, but that doesn't mean you get to opt out of them. Put on that jobsona, practice it until it feels more realistic. If you have a career center or unemployment office available, ask to mock interview there or with your friends.
I think one of the most important things to do is to ask questions of your own (lots more good lists at the bottom). Not only does it make you look engaged, it also gives you so much information about how the person sees the company and their role in it.
For example, a question I always ask is "What do you like about working here, and what would you change?" If somebody can't answer something as simple as that, it tells you a lot. I interviewed twice at a company with a dress code. Neither person went for the easy answer about abolishing the dress code, instead addressing a more substantiative issue that affected their work. I also interviewed with a consulting firm where the recruiter couldn't figure out a goddamn thing about what she'd change at the company.
Other random things:
It doesn't hurt to ask ideal timelines
Be a little wary of processes that seem to move too quickly
Misc advice
Keep doing it, be consistent, show up.
If you think you're being annoying, you're probably not the type of person who is actually being annoying.
Wherever you stop, that's probably a place you need to ask for help.
FIN
OK that was very long. Here is a picture of a bulldog in a stroller for scrolling to the end.
hey wait! i know you! we used to be chained next to each other in the cave! wow, so good to see you, how are ya? man. remember how we used to talk about the shadows on the wall together. gosh that was a long time ago. but hey. sure is one heck of a sun out here, right? it's good to see you.
i wrote this post with happy tears in my eyes sitting in a parking lot after getting coffee for 3 hours with someone i did youth shakespeare with when we were teenagers and hadn't seen in 15 years, in which time we both transitioned, got into nerd shit, found a job that feels good, found people to spend our gay little lives with, and coincidentally moved to the same city. this is exactly how it felt. never ever ever kill yourself
Absolutely loving all the stories and videos of football (soccer) fans coming to Canada, Mexico, and the USA and experiencing each country and its cultures in the some of the best ways possible.
The fact that the Scots showed up and cleared multiple bars of all their beer is amazing. They tripled St. Patrick's day sales. In fuckin Boston.
Watching people experience Southern BBQ, TexMex, Mexican food, and so many other styles has been great.
I've seen so many European football fans go "we get it now" in regards to Big Gulps because its so hot here in comparison and you need a Big Drink.
Not to mention how states are welcoming Freddy and other accounts that are vlogging their experiences.
I'm hoping this energy and goodwill maintains.
@stuff-that-happens-sometimes - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
