I liked the star system, too. As the site grew in popularity, people just ended up 1 or 5 starring stuff.

For the same reason - the “useful content” and “not useful content” buttons were dumbed down to “agree” and “disagree” buttons on reddit.

Agree that you can’t really ask people to use a star system for message boards. Much less microblogs.

It’s always good to hear that there are still people who see fair treatment!

Your field can make a difference, but I think it really depends on the breadth of your skillset, timing, luck and location if you’re an office drone.

This happened to me several years ago, and the conditions weren’t the best because I had recently decided to change careers. I had low experience in my chosen field, but it ended up being worth the pain.

Doing well now, and the combination of career experience opened a lot of doors. Mom would be proud! :)

Appreciate your idealism, but this is the ugly new reality in the US if you’re not adequately situated to tell them to pound sand.

There are very few people in that position, and they gotta eat. The economy is bad, but it’s trending toward perpetual dogshit for an overwhelming majority.

The bigger the company, the more I find that they rely on desperation to keep costs low because they can take it a bit further than they used to.

Believe me… I once had the opportunity to take a year off. It was glorious, and I’lL f’N dO iT aGaIn.

No time to talk! I’m in latex now.

I unironically pondered this approach, but came to the realization that the background checkers would still see a gap. (And that it wouldn’t create intrigue as much as it would frustrate the interviewer.)

Appreciated. This happened many years ago, so I’m used to my new normal.

I posted this here because I was going through my exported posts/comments from reddit, and realized that I have a ton of intellectual property that I feel can be shared with others without their involvement.