My grandpa told me “always call your boss sir, and respond “yes sir”, youll be promoted real quick.”
First day at my first job my boss tells me “by the way you don’t need to call me sir, just Brian”
Its actually insane that the world that boomers lived in was that simple.
Dutch has a formal and informal 2nd person word (think “you” vs “thou”).
I have an intern who will not stop using the formal version, and it feels super awkward. I keep telling her to stop it, but she said she always uses with older people…
She’s 23, I’m mid 30s. Ouch.
At least she doesn’t help you cross the street. Yet.
“Is your lunch soft enough? Should I cut it up for you? We have a blender back in the kitchen if you want?”
You do those shenanigans in french too.
Super complicated with SO family though uhg.
Fun fact about English, “you” was actually the more formal one. But since we don’t use “thou” anymore, and most people know it from old-timey speak and church, we think of it as more formal today.
Well, people in the past talked MUCH more formally than we do.
If I talked to my grandfather in 1400 the way I talk to my husband today, he’d probably disown me.
sir doesn’t sit well with me either for work positions, I say it to be nice sometimes, but not because you’re my boss. and if someone calls me sir, my response is " I’m not your sir, just call me …"
just call me …
Maybe?
just call me …
Al?
That’s how I see it too. It’s like a whimsical anachronism referencing a more formal era.
They didn’t. Some Boomers are also in the “just Brian” camp.
“Find a job doing what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
I used to love software. Then all the Lumberghs took over.
How’re your TPS reports coming along?
In our next union agreement “only one unified timesheet ever” is a demand we’re putting forth.
And you know for us to put that in the deal and see what it’ll cost us in return, we’re fucking fed up.
I feel like that’s the same as a TPS report.
Hobbies always change when they become a job because it transitions from well thought out, interesting and creative projects to mass production and monotony.
As a hobbyist you have the ability to discover and work on unique, novel projects, without stress but professionalism is about consistency and speed.
Usually by running the business you can dedicate some time and resources to the fun and novel stuff. Thats how I run mine at least, as a woodworker. I don’t crank out high grossing trendy stuff day and night but take the time to explore new ideas and get creative with it. That and using handtools instead of power tools.
I mean, I 100% agree with this one. If I’m going to be at work eight hours a day, five days a week, I better damn well enjoy it.
I’m a software dev, too, but have always left companies / teams soon after a Lumbergh took over. That was always a very good career move for me, and I am almost always pretty excited to go to work.
Plus, Lumberghs will be there for things you don’t enjoy as well. That would just make it harder, at least for me.
Sounds like somebody has a case of the “Mondays”.
Happy wife, happy life. Marriage is about compromise and sometimes I want to be happy too.
Happy spouse happy house is a better version. Both people should be happy.
Happy mate. Happy estate.
Never heard this version, I like it
Yeah old school relationships are insane. Always upset because of the “old ball and chain”.
That was my take from the very beginning. I hate that one.
Sure, but in fairness I think that the intent of that saying is not to say that husbands should not be happy but to counterbalance the trend that used to be more historically prevalent in marriages for the wife to be treated as an appendage of the husband and taken for granted. If you view your partner as co-equal then arguably this saying simply does not apply to you at all.
I have never, ever heard it uttered by anyone except a married man who definitely meant it to mean “Give in to her every demand as written at any cost and you might have a moment of quiet.”
Never go to bed angry is in here too. You can see why if you also know that nothing good happens after 2AM. Sometimes you just gotta sleep whether you’re kinda mad or not.
But I guess they didn’t have HIMYM…
HIMYM?
How I met your mother.
Pretty sure the show counted the phrase about 2AM.
If you’re a quiet dedicated employee your value will be recognized and rewarded.
Yeah, that doesn’t work well anymore. Gotta be a noisy dedicated worker, and be willing to move jobs a few times to start seeing the rewards
rewards mostly come from job hopping. Raises at every place I’ve worked arent callibrated to inflation, so your 4% raise that the boss thinks is so great is closer to 0-1%/
I put that into practice and just got promoted last Halloween! Let people know that you’re smart and interested in how your job works.
Yeah, that doesn’t work well anymore.
It never did.
Working hard will get you far.
This works as long as you apply some level of thought to it. Digging a ditch with a spoon is hard work, it’s unlikely to help you get anywhere.
Depends. For someone else? Maybe not. On yourself? Definitely.
Work hard studying and exercising. Self improvement I’d important, and its not related to job opportunities, but rather mastering the art of living.
Something along the lines of “don’t ever go to bed angry at each other.” Like, yeah, you should try to work it out, but if you fucked up real bad, don’t push it. Sleep on the couch.
Sleeping on the couch isnt gping to bed, though…
So, they technically didn’t go to bed angry
Correct, it’s going to couch.
Alternatively, sometimes a good night’s sleep is good for everyone to clear heads and calmly tackle their issues the next day with fresh perspectives.
“Fully empty your battery before charging it up again, it increases the lifespan of the battery.”
This was true before lithium-ion batteries became the norm. But for lithium-ion batteries, the opposite holds.
What’s the opposite of “full empty your battery before charging it again?”
Don’t let it uncharge fully. You ideally want to stay in the 30-70% range as much as possible.
Also, charging it to full is much better than letting it die until it’s empty.
I’ve also heard 40-80%
Well that one is still true if somehow you still have Ni-Cd batteries in your life.
“If you love something set it free, if it comes back it’s meant to be.” Nearly cost me the best relationship of my life because I was a dumb, impressionable kid that believed in wise sounding words. If you love something, hold on to it. Work for it. Don’t let it go just to “see if it comes back”.
Same could probably be said for just about any seemingly wise sounding sayings.
I think it’s more about control than sending what you love away.
“Set it free” means let your love interest choose to stay or leave on their own, don’t try to keep them caged.
Depending on what you mean, it’s possible that your love you regret letting go of wouldn’t have lasted even if you had held it and fought.
Though if you mean you took that saying and thought it meant you needed to push your love away to see if they returned, then yeah, that’s not a great strategy.
Yeah, the latter is how it was explained to me. Like, literally break up with the person you love to see if they’ll fight for you to take them back. Or push them away and wait a few years to see if they magically reenter your life or something. Crazy, I think some people believe they live in a hallmark movie
Ah fuck, that’s a rough lesson to learn the hard way. Like so obvious in hindsight, but if you needed to learn it, you needed to learn it before you could see that.
I installed a gravitic emitter in my belt that makes it feel like she has to walk uphill to approach me. Let’s see just how much she loves me, and if it’s statistically significant in its difference between how much she loves approaching the cat.
Could have also meant just not working to maintain it. “Let it go” could (foolishly IMO) mean “stop feeding it”.
My parents separated when I was really young, roughly 5 yrs old. As I grew up and had visitation with my dad he always drilled into me “women just want a man who can provide for them, in the end they all just want money.” Being young and obviously not knowing how crazy my dad was yet, I believed him for a long time.
Turns out when you treat people like they just want you for your money, that’s the only kind of people who will put up with you. Kinda self fulfilling. Found a nice lady now, happily married and caring about each other, not just money.
Go to a four year college so you can get the best jobs.
Nah, that advice is still correct. The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
It’s just that a lot of people don’t realize just how much shittier not having a degree in 2024 is compared to not having a degree in 1974.
So while the baseline has gotten worse, and the actual benefit of college has shrunk, it’s still easily worth the 4 year commitment and the tuition/opportunity cost.
Right now trade schools are actually providing a better cost to income ratio than college.
It’s anecdotal but my friends in the Boston area were all making 120-150 in salary plus bonus before I was even out of school and I started in software at 65k and didn’t break into that level for another 4 years. Now I make 230 but they’ve all got houses and decked out retirement funds from having that good money when they were much younger. That extra 20-30k/yr in 401k and IRA funds with 5-6 years more growth time in the market isn’t something to shake a stick at.
Now I make 230
Yeah the break even point is like the early 30’s, even among people who are killing it in either path.10 years of $100k+ in your 20’s won’t be able to build up enough of a buffer against $200k+ after 30, when retirement ages are around 60.
It’s actually harrowing how little I have in retirement savings compared to them. I spent the first 6 years of my career paying off loans and only contributing up to my employers match. I was illiquid for multiple large economic events while they had cash laying around. They could buy cars when interest was zero. They had a house to refi when interest was zero. I feel like a millennial describing boomers but these are guys in their 30s who went to trade school.
For me to catch up I have to put money almost entirely in taxable accounts where their money and returns are shielded from taxes. They were actually able to use a Roth for many years where I was only real able to max one out for two years before my promotion put me out of eligibility.
The earlier you are in a market, the better off you are and trades put you into the market almost 10 years earlier than someone taking 4 years of college and then having 4-6 years of loan payments
The 4-year degree provides a huge benefit over not having it.
For average lifetime earnings.
So for some it may not provide a big help.
There’s also a lot of things that people ignored from this advice. No one said get literally any degree, art majors have been the source of unemployment jokes since before I was born. No one also said take 5-7 years or more to get the degree either.
Oh wow that’s a good one! There was a time where it worked out great the vast majority of the time. Not so much now, definitely aged like milk
Skip the line with a blue badge at amazon (not financial advice)
Find what you love, and then figure out how to make money on it.
It worked for me, but not my spouse. Sometimes you just need to find something you’re happy enough doing to make the income.
I always thought that was really dumb. After hearing stories from people then “find a skill in demand that sounds like a fun challenge” is a way better approach. I went for software but mech/civil engineering, carpentry, electrician and architect would all also be great choices.
Depends what part of the process you like. Some people like to be very meticulous in their hobbies, and somewhat of a perfectionist. That rarely exists in a professional environment, where everything is based on getting projects out the door, on schedule and on budget.
I actually like banging out projects quickly, so the professional life of my hobby suits me well (woodworking). I love pounding out big mortises with a sledgehammer, planing big boards and watch chips go flying. I hate fiddling with joinery and slowly fitting them for 10 minutes (slowly learning how to do them faster). For other people, joinery is their favorite part.
I love sleeping.
Effectively ALL of what I was told about what makes a satisfying and successful life. I was told the right thing to do is work hard, go to school, get a good stable job, get married, settle down, have kids, buy a house, own several depreciating assets.
Life is about being happy. Nothing else. Do what makes you happy, because that car, vacation, or other piece of consumer shit won’t. Nor will living by scripts somebody else wrote for you.
I had my house paid off at 30 and was traveling 5-6 times a year. High-level in the gaming, lottery and promotions industries. Misery. Now I have a humble life and I paint and craft things and I go dancing. And I’m happy. I could pick up the tools again and make a highly successful Steam game, but I won’t. I already proved my point in my career and creative output, and I don’t want to anymore.
Bro, won in life, now doing sidequests
I gave everything away and now I live a simple life where I volunteer, work at crisis shelters, do recovery mentorship, housing outreach and other things. I am happy and I do not care about the trappings of the material world anymore. I chased the hologram until I caught it and discovered its true nature.
This reminds me of this meme, I saw one time :
I agree, but i also get a chuckle out of getting the meme wrong on purpose: this man held the same job title for 21 years, but something about being Principal Performance Architect sucked so much that he retired within a year and became a goose farmer.
Super curious here.
What game did you make?
I made several hundred games over my 20+ year career. I started making games for the world’s first touchscreen internet-enabled kiosks, the Playdium arcade in Toronto, etc. Moved onto online game development as senior dev for GameLoft.com, made the first online pari-mutuel gaming system, introduced online lottery technology to the world’s “Big 3” lotto companies. Made the first 3D tennis game. Honestly too much to even discuss as I could go on for hundreds of pages. Most people who are older than 30 have played my games and wouldn’t know it.
I’m older than 30.
Probably played one of your games.
It’s such a nutty claim for me to make… but I really believe any person on the Web circa 97-2005 and was involved in any kind of Web-based gaming has directly played at least one. Shockwave, Flash, Facebook no difference.
If you played any kind of web- or Internet-enabled, State-run lottery product anywhere in the world between 2010-2015 I would bet my actual life. And since the games I made were all localized for international audiences they were world-wide!
If you’ve been on a Riverboat Casino in the past 2 decades you’ve 100% played because I ran the game studio that made the games for a major supplier of riverboat Video Lottery Terminal games.
Holy shit… I never actually stopped and realized how many lives my crappy games touched…
One of the things I’ve learned from my favorite psychology professor is that paying attention to my conscience, doing what my gut tells me is the right thing to do, is the most effective treatment for depression I’ve ever found.
I used to be enamored of basically financial success and exploration. Now I most highly value the lack of things nagging at my conscience.
I’m pretty poor, but I’m happy.
I used to make a lot more money making software. During that time, I kept maybe 25% of the promises I made to people professionally. I would very often say “This’ll be done in three weeks” knowing I’d have a better chance of landing this or that contract, also knowing the three weeks was extremely optimistic.
I did that all the time. Very bad character in retrospect. No wonder I was anxious and depressed. Always feeling like some kind of hunted animal. Somehow, I thought of myself as a good person because I lied to myself.
Now I do work where I keep approximately 97% of my promises (I track this). I make less money. Honestly the work I do is easy. But the payoff in terms of my serotonin and dopamine levels is huge. I feel solid. I rarely have trouble getting started with my day.
I’m hoping to take on slightly harder, slightly more meaningful work. But now that I have a taste of being reliable, I never want to go back.
Work hard and do your best at work and you’ll go places.
Yeah I got moved around several times in the office. That’s about it.
~2004. My highschool civics teacher told the class that real estate was always a good investment because it only went up. I didn’t really trust him at the time though.
Real estate can be a good investment, even pre 2008 crash. What can be dangerous is over leveraging. A primary residence isn’t really an investment, still worth buying though.
He was just echoing the same sentiment lead to all those house flippers. He was a wealth of conservative BS and that was just one of his thinly veiled prosperity gospel moments.
I mean, if you had money at the time and bought a house in one of the larger cities or their suburbs, you would probably be loaded by now, even though you would regret it for about 5 years after the crash
You have to be loaded to be loaded? Got it.
This “teacher” also would complain about wellfare queens who had children just to claim more benefits, that the best thing that could happen to a country is to be invaded by the US because they’ll rebuild afterwards and that every Union but teacher’s Unions were obsolete today, among other things.
deleted by creator
The wealthy are buying up properties either to rent out or if they’re Chinese, to move their wealth to places their government can’t take it from. They absolutely own propriety, but not with the intent to flip.
deleted by creator
Don’t believe anything you read on Wikipedia.
That infuriates me. “Oh but anyone can edit”. Yes, but see for how many seconds your stupid edit will last. It’s the single most rich and accurate encyclopedia humanity has seen, ffs.
Teachers should be using Wikipedia as an opportunity to teach skepticism and following sources. I wouldn’t allow Wikipedia to be used as a cited source, but as a starting point for finding other sources on a topic.
Does anyone still say not to trust Wikipedia? They did so in the beginning and it certainly didn’t have to turn out trustworthy so that was good advice for a few years.
Now we see it’s the most trustworthy encyclopedia, and my kids’ teachers qualify it as “an encyclopedia is not an original source “, which is correct and a valuable distinction. They recommend it as a starting point but don’t allow citing it, as is correct.
