One thing I have noticed is how prevalent the hustle culture has become among Millennials. LinkedIn is a hotbed of narcissism, and Twitter has a ton of self-proclaimed business superstars who have made money by having companies entirely dependent on using foreign labor and providing shitty service for customers. It's quite appalling how often you hear fellow Millennials go on and on boasting about their own "successes" or try to sell themselves without an ounce of honesty.
The hustle of creating "passive income" means that we are going to see a lot of sociopaths becoming landlords and doing the bare-minimum for those who rent from them, and the quality of services will continue to decline across all companies as there is no value in providing a good service, merely making money. The decline of quality we have seen from the boomer generation onward (yes, that includes you, Generation X, you aren't exempt from being self-destructive narcissists like your parents and your children) is going to ramp up significantly.
Some people will say, "blame the system, not the person," but for god's sake, eventually someone has to stand up and refuse to operate as basically a scam artist. For as many supposed "leftists" there are among Millennials, they sure have no qualms about taking the worst aspects of human greed and using that as their core business model.
Am I over-exaggerating here?
Unfortunately that's because narcissism is what gets rewarded in the labor market. Having powerful friends, err I'm sorry, networking is the be all end all of getting work these days, because fuck having skills. Narcissism just makes it easier to obtain what really matters.
Most networking is pretty useless. The only time networking helps is if a family member knows someone. Networking with random strangers is absolutely useless.
That's not how that works, and that's why it's useless. You actually have to build a genuine relationship with people who will then present you with opportunities because of your metaphysical connection, rather than your material one. This would not be an issue in a parochial community because you would know this person and his family because they live down the road.
Instead, you have to actively socialize and befriend these people into a proper social network that most modern Americans do not know how to do.
If you're networking with strangers then you're doing it wrong. I see a lot of discussion online that straight up doesn't get it. There's this notion going around that you shouldn't make friends at work, that your colleagues can't be people you develop strong social connections with. You know how you build a professional network that's going to result in people setting you up with future work? You simply have to not be a complete sperg and allow yourself to make some friends. Because of that I've been able to both set people up with jobs when they needed them as well as had opportunities handed to me on a silver platter.
Just embrace the fact that humans are social animals instead of subscribing to the unhealthy idea that you have to always keep everyone at arm's length at the workplace.
This is even more important now than it ever was, since the "lifelong employee" concept is dead. So all those friends you make at work are going to fly out into dozens of other jobs and fields, leaving you an in to follow them if need or desire be.
No offense, but the replies are correct on this one. Besides your own skills, networking is the most valuable commodity both in school and in work. The best opportunities spread by word of mouth, not public notices that anybody can read on the internet.
If you're in college, work through problems with other kids as much as possible. This is a top method to succeed. Even if they're slower than you sometimes, you still firm up your knowledge by teaching it to others and do people favors that will pay off later.
Minor example, there's this dude at work who can be pretty hard to deal with. Because I'm friendly with him, he just got me into a deal with tools that saved me hundreds of $.
Networking is what matters because regulators, certification, academics, and HR have all entirely failed to do their jobs, and everyone is lying.
Companies simply can't believe anything they see, and even if you have the correct mertiocratic qualifications, your psychological conditions may prevent you from working effectively in the environment or with the team.
As a result, the level of work required to suss out a good candidate whom you can employ for 3-5 years is neigh-on-impossible.
Therefore, what most places value is trust. If a person that they trust, says that you can be trusted; that's worth it's weight in gold because they don't have to work nearly as hard to analyze you, judge you, watch you, even after you're hired for the next 90 days.
It's no joke, I've seen the data. Referral hires have the best track record because the person referring them already knows whether or not they'll actually meet the real qualifications of working at a place every day with a set of people.
We built a materialistic, low-trust, fraudulent credential, economy and as a result trust has become the single most valuable asset that a person can have.
I don't disagree with you for the most part, especially the part of about fraudulent credentials (hello woke degree mills!). I just have first and second hand accounts of "trust" meaning "in the club" in reality, and that part shields them from having to actually be competent. Companies never seem to complain about the well connected fuck ups they employ, so when the well connected part is taken out of the equation it's difficult to sympathize with their concerns.
The problem is they're not really interested in selecting for good candidates outside the networking process because that takes real work on the part of the hiring manager. My mom told me a story about how her company hired a finance major for a rudimentary accounting job. The guy was retard who couldn't figure out basic credits and debits and their takeaway was that they needed to stop interviewing non-accounting majors for jobs like that instead of, you know, taking basic steps to filter out retards. For anyone reading that isn't aware: All majors in the school of business (accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) take the same "business core" as part of their major that teaches basic stuff like that. A finance major with an IQ above 85 would have been able to figure out that job.
This is a bit of rant, but it's born out of frustration with employers who whine about how hard finding good people is when they use their inability to find a networker as a pretext to hire the cool bullshit artist since he'll be fun to be around at least. It's all that not dissimilar from women who whine about not being able find men with ABC when they're selecting for men with XYZ.
I agree that that is the pathological version of this. Fundamentally, because trust is more valuable than competency at this point, laterally being in a boys club and schmoozing around with people is more valuable than a 4 year degree in mathematics (3.5 years of which is gender studies and critical race theory). Within that, con-men (literally: confidence men) will find such environments perfect to operate in. In the worst case, the entire social structure is run by the predators (con-men), and so it becomes impossible to ascend without fraud. This has happened many times already.
We're not really disagreeing, I'm pointing out the back-end explanation of what went wrong.
This is all part of the same competency crisis, though. The HR departments that recruit are operating under all the exact same ideologies as any Leftist. They will refuse to hire non-retards based on skin color unless they have no other choice. The hiring managers will also be retards as well. It's retards hiring retards, and the company (in abstraction) can't figure out why nothing is working. They don't realize the horrible truth that every component part is broken.
So, they rely on the networking process. But if they don't know how to network properly and filter people out correctly (which is a whole different skill set in and of itself), they will also not be able to filter out retards or predators.
It's not wrong. There is a feminization of society and institutions that has broken social structures based on masculine concepts and frameworks.
I dislike handing out blackpills, but... depending on the type of job you're talking about, it gets even worse.
Most government jobs, you'll find really quickly, have no meritocracy whatsoever. It's pure nepotism above a certain level of authority. You might find a diamond in the rough every so often(and said guys tend to be REALLY fucking good at their jobs), but most often it's all about how many dicks you've sucked to get where you are.
Of course, there's a flip side to that - because they've sucked so many dicks to get where they are, they expect everyone else to kneel down and fellate them. And when you don't, they get really pissed off. Ask me how I know!
Thankfully, I've only ever had to deal with this from the outside looking in, but it's hilarious watching how they break when you refuse to bow down to thier little kingdom. Sadly, you can only do this in certain situations. I doubt people would appreciate, for instance, me pointing out how service went straight to shit when they started hiring on a bunch of black women to fill the positions for all the white men who were retiring...
Let's be real, we've built a low trust society.
Let's be even more real: the American populace has been actively ignoring that our government hasn't built anything and instead let the country fall into disrepair.
You wouldn't look at a falling down, foreclosed house in Detroit and say "ah they built a shitty house."
I live in NY State -- and one of the biggest things I have learned is that blue states are AMAZINGLY worse off than Red states.
Basic infrastructure isn't failing, it has failed. I am talking about traffic lights that never turn green, or turn green towards a parking lot for 45 seconds at 3am. Potholes that never get filled. Police that never show up when you call 911 (had a guy in the middle of the street stopping cars and screaming at people).
Why would anyone have any trust for anything when basic services are broken beyond repair?
Yes, entirely.
The solution isn't to browbeat them, it's to put them out of business.
That would be possible of companies weren't being protected by inflation and regulation.
Stress business enough, and you know what they do? Fire those 2 negative contributors no matter who's friend they are. That's why deflation and contraction are important.
This is such a lower mindset. The reason you hire only people you know or friends of friends is because that's the ONLY legal way to vet anymore.
Why the fuck would I take a chance on some stranger who claims to have skills instead of just going with somebody I trust's son who at least has been vouched for.
The rest of this thread is equally retarded, using "networking" to mean connecting with people on LinkedIn in, instead of demonstrating your capability to those you have relationships with and trading on that reputation.
I have customers I never called, never met personally, and don't even share a language with that carry certain months. Simply because I took care of their brother or friend and they gave the recommendation.
Y'all want to talk about white communities and living off the grid but you won't make the connection that that's how things function in such a place. That's what gatekeepers IS. Not this pseudo liberal "meritocracy" that never existed in the first place.