Tell a fish success is measured by climbing a tree, and he will spend his whole life thinking he’s a failure.
What skills, attitudes, personality traits have you seen mismatched to a certain job that later made the individual an awesome worker in another job?
Logical reasoning is good for programming but won’t get you anywhere in management.
Logical reasoning is good for programming
For a given type of logical reasoning.
(Everquest once introduced the command “/stand” in a patch, replacing the existing command “/sit off”)
I almost cried with joy when my boss at my new job as a massage therapist thanked me for being so quiet. I was turned down for jobs and nearly fired from one for being “too quiet.”
That sounds amazing!
Brutally beating up and killing people is seen as insanity in education but effective in law enforcement
Until there’s a school shooting and every teacher is expected to be the Good Guy With Gun™.
Paranoia (to a healthy degree) is good for information security professionals but drives literally everyone else crazy. I wish people would adopt more of that, though. Maybe we’d see fewer data breaches…
The CEO of my company decided to send a holiday E-Card to everyone right before Christmas. I reported it as a phishing attempt and IT just laughed and said it was fine. Apparently I’m the only one that reported it and just… What? An email from outside our organization that claims to be from the CEO and contains a non-descript link to an unknown website? And I’m the only one that saw red flags from that?!
I’m sorry. I agree with you that your take is valid. I once had to explain to the assistant to the CFO why it was a bad idea to whitelist a gambling website (“they’re doing a fun play for the world Cup that uses points instead of real money’”) for the team handling customer card payments…and even then she still wanted it done until I told her she had to officially sign a release accepting responsibility for negative outcomes.
IT probably just laughed at the absurdity. C suite does whatever it wants and IT just has to deal with the fallout.
“Thinking outside the box” is rewarded in software development but terrifying when applied to assembling an airplane.
Boeing would like to know your location.
Ha! Boeing couldn’t find me when I worked there.
Thinking outside of the box too much is scary in manufacturing and engineering. Mistakes are expensive to fix.
Also doesn’t work for submarines
Most neurodivergences
ADHD is hell in a corporate setting but fantastic in a creative profession (I do both)
My untreated ADHD was a huge asset when I worked customer support for an airline. I had tons of customer complements and I was hailed as an example by area management on how to balance corporate costs with getting customers what they want.
I utterly failed managing a team of 15 people doing the exact same job. The multiple competing priorities on any given day often left me in task paralysis.
Now I work in I.T. and my ADHD is an asset again. I complete most days work in 3-5 hours and play video games the rest of the time.
ASD is great in an office where you can work in an office without distractions and noise, not so great in creative work IMO.
I say that as someone that’s both ASD and ADHD, and have a BFA with a focus on fashion design. I was pretty good at pattern making, but too literal in for design. Currently I do pre-press, and I’m solidly competent.
For me personally adhd makes factory work torture but kitchen work a breeze.
autism_IT_superpower_trope.jpg
Joking aside. I struggle in everyday conversation or in most job settings because the small inconsistencies and inaccuracies that are a normal part of everyday speech accrue in my head without any discharge in a painful way and I either detach to cope (and look like I don’t give a shit) or have to splurge back at someone all the minor nonsense logical inconsistencies they’ve been using over the last few minutes. Or people rely so much on you being in the same mental world as they are that I genuinely don’t understand what they mean and come across like a pedantic asshole. From experience this is deeply unwelcome. I would not last long anywhere where normal conversation and ways of thinking is not the thing under the microscope.
In software development, I can take architects, senior devs, department heads, c-level execs… whoever… streaming technical info, regulatory requirements, business processes at me seemingly for any length of time because I can ask anything I want and at the end of it they’ll ask me what’s wrong with it and I can give them a list and how to fix it. I’m also completely immune to telling senior-whomever that they are wrong, because when I tell them, it’s because they are and I can show them why.
For this I am paid $$$. Anywhere else I would be fired.
(Also, watch The Accountant, it’s great)
Wow! Good thing you’ve found a place to shine.
One thing that separates you from another person questioning authority is that you immediately back it up with facts and offer solutions. Many people who would be able to spot the issues would just take the opportunity to say “boss man, you’re an idiot” and refuse to elaborate beyond “trust me, I know what I’m doing, I’ll fix it.”
In most other jobs you need to have some level of critical thinking and some ethics. The police profession is therefore ruled out.
ADHD. I’m an excellent developer… I’d probably murder someone if I had to do retail or do any other “always on” job.
Working in emergency medicine would be amazing, but the first lull that happened, I’d fuck up and people would die
Soft hands.
Great for massage therapists, surgeons, etc.
Terrible for any physical work such as construction, wood working, etc
Improvisation is a brilliant skill in something where you can just keep going if something goes wrong. Attention to detail is a brilliant skill in something where something going wrong will get someone killed. The example that comes to mind is a stage hand vs a stage hand where pyrotechnics are involved.
That one is thought provoking. The jobs seem so similar at a glance, but they need very different people to do each of the jobs well.
There are so many jobs where looking at only the details in front of you at a given time is absolutely crucial, and yet being called myopic is still an insult.
Talking on the phone is necessary in a call center but is not something you want your surgeon to do during surgery.
Saying no in sales is anathema to success. Saying no in HR is everything and the world will burn if you cannot.
