Just doin stuff

nickwitha_k (he/him)

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

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Have hobbies. Seriously, that's it. Stink at playing guitar or learning a foreign language like I do, but do it anyway.

VeganPizza69 Ⓥ

Ignotum

Jack of all trades, master of none, yet better than the master of one

sp3ctr4l

A jack of all trades
and master of none,
is often more useful
than a master of one.

A lot of people forget the second half of this old aphorism.

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Me, too.

However I am finding it hard to get a job. I got laid off in September. Employers want a square peg for a square hole. "Cisco engineer", for example. I know enough to get around Cisco, Fortigate and a few others. And project management. And servers. And a dozen other technologies. With 20+ years experience. But I don't find anyone paying enough for someone with a diverse skill set.

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Jack off all trades and master a nun, yet better than masterbering just one

pretty sure that's how it goes

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Perfect is the enemy of Skill, that's great!

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You don't need to be incredibly good at something either.

Often it's just being who they think about when they want something done. Be the person they know they can turn to or the only person that can do it and that's just as useful.

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It's tangential, but I often struggle to start things unless I can do it perfectly.

I have to remind myself "done is better than perfect".

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That's more the fault of the company than you. We are at a point where companies don't want to "waste money" waiting for a great employee to train up on their system and want drop in place cogs or to go for someone way cheaper abroad. My company is asking to only hire people that know our proprietary software or we hire people in the Philippines that aren't even trained.

Don't mistake the malice of the owning class as a personal failure for being multivaried, you would never be perfect in their eyes so don't look at yourself through their lens.

Luck and networking is what gets people jobs these days.

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And done 5 times is better every time, more or less.

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What is this, the Vitruvian Spider-Man?

Troy

"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" is one of my favourites.

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don't minmax your skills, kids. if you do you'll end up like me

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Same for 'a few rotten apples spoil a bunch'.

sp3ctr4l

Yeah, that one is also infuriating to hear people misuse.

The entire point is not that its a small problem, its that its a big problem.

Along the same lines:

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

This was originally written as an obviously impossible absurdity, a modern equivalent would be the 'plug the power strip into itself for infinite energy' memes.

Yet it is instead used to mean ... its time for you to do a lot of hard work, and then you'll be in a better place.

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I'm in an engineering field, and I can tell you this absolutely holds true.

I've been very average in my own specialty of electrical engineering, but because I've taken the time to deep dive into mechanical engineering and controls/automation, I've far surpassed my peers career wise.

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still means the same thing, just used incorrectly by dishonest and truly wretched people.