It is “jobbigt” to be at job

** this post is work in progress **
Many moons ago, it was customary to marry someone from the the richer family. The rich got married into people who were after the money, having money meant better possibilities to formulate the families. The need for money, created the need to marry.

Nowadays, when the general level of income and living is OK in general it has created situation where people actually do not want to get married anymore. Lot of single mothers opt out from the burden of living together with men (as well).

The general direction of the governments however most likely leads into situation where the living is in ok levels only if you marry, mate, get together with someone instead of living single, alone - but not a lonely life. This can be seen on societies where consumer products are meant for families and not one person only. And banking is based on taking huge loans to buy a house.

Meanwhile many people are wanting to live more fulfilling li, this is opposite for building up a career, spending most of your time at work, and missing the life in the meantime.

Technological advances may also create situation where not everyone is able to have a job. Artificial intelligence, machine learning is potentially making that, to remove the need for repetitive worker. Making perhaps decisions in behalf of worker. Some say it creates more jobs, not removes them, but facf is that humans can concentrate into jobs requiring more creativity, however the old maxim is that not everyone gets to be astronaut. This means that not all will be eligible to get work, especially when the structure of corporations are handling less-skilled work.

Interesting is that freelancing, and similar way of working are actually making less money for government, economy in generla, which will weak the state even more, and can cause chain reactions into society, such as generic insafety.

Flynn effect describing the general IQ levels have been thought to be in declining IQ side for some time. Schools system generalizes people, not help them to reach their full potential. This also can lead into mediocrity citizenships - compare this into Artificial Intelligence taking our jobs.

Guaranteed minimum income, a citizen wage, is one solution to provide minimum salary, without specific work. This has created debates that people need to do something in order to gain that. But what? Would this allow e.g artists to be more creative when not having burden to produce, philosophers and others to think. Citizen wage also would allow people to pursue their own companies in safety knowing there is still something to fall on if their startup does not fly off.

ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income
Guaranteed minimum income (GMI) (also called minimum income) is a system of social welfare provision that guarantees that all citizens or families have an income sufficient to live on, provided they meet certain conditions

Oh and that jobbigt on the title? It is swedish for being hard, difficult

Mistreatments

The constantly evolving world can make it constantly more difficult to live. This is seen when existing, perhaps, simple approaches and areas are becoming more complex, due evolution, interconnection - and lack of changed or more correct approaches. This can be seen on many industries, but mainly within those who could be thought to be non-linear.

Healthcare is one non-linear area. On it, cost cuttings have naturally emerged, also increased queues, long waiting times to treatments which also can endanger the patient. Similarly, there is no real comprehensive examination of patients when the reserved time is 20 minutes, for one symptom, about what patient does not necessarily know of, and therefore is unable to connect the dots to possible other issues.

One could question if the work changing into the “sports” has caused losing the patient.

An example from the life of a newly diagnosed diabetic which I did found out.

• Very blunt approach without taking things into the context, like how this person takes bad news, or does he have any information about matter. Yin is patient, Yang is the sickness with all the secondary symptoms.
• Misdiagnosis, to not look the blood tests as a holistic issue, missing the point about long range sugar.
• Not checking baselines. Diabetic may have other issues that she or he may not be aware of due not knowing being diabetic earlier. Due this reason it is very good to check baseline for sensing on legs, eyesight, Dupuytren's contracture - or at least tell the person that these symptoms are good to follow and try to prevent. Checking those and putting into baseline one can follow if and how the actual sickness may worsen the health of the patient.
  Diabetic without proper treatment, can lead to multiple secondary sicknesses and issues, such as things with heart, amputation, eyesight, nervoussystems and so fort and those will become very expensive for the state to handle. Therefore it should be utmost imporance for the state to treat diabetic well, to prevent upcoming costs to happen - which also allows people to stay at work, ensuring tax money for the state. Unfortunately, only short term decisions are typically made.

Is this a sign of our times? No proper healthcare anymore.

Do you feel being mistreated?

Job Interview

I have been in a few during my journey on planet earth. There are lot of variety how they are conducted.

As an applicant, it is important to take use of the opportunity to figure out what kind of place the employer is - it is a two-way interview, also the employer is an applicant, which sometimes is not fully understood by the presentative of the employer.

A good approach I have concluded, is, in top of normal guidance of knowing the company:

• Spend time on a company website if they have such
• Study their values, vision, story. Values should not only be about delivery.
• If there are external interviews, case studies, presentations study these.
• Discuss about values, and how they guide the everyday work. This both with HR and hiring manager. Ideally one does not need to think values separately them being organic part of person but they still need to act accordingly.
• Ask retention, how many people have left and to where
• Try to get in talks with current team members, preferrably with diffrent backgrounds, this was hugely beneficial for me to put pieces together.

• Try to evaluate how hiring manager is talking about team, the words I, me, us, responsibility, trust how they are used in rhetoric can show the attitude (generally, as an example, more experiend and best managers do not use I, say "trusting team" instead of "giving responsibility” etc)
• Ask career possibilities, objectives, bonuses.
• if company says learning organization, walk the talk is support employee thinking - this means r&d and entreprenourial spirit should be supported. Common thing is to lean into conventional historical way of doing, sometimes which is good on some areas, but it prevents thinking.
• Be honest. tell that, reason being that if you lie then you are different person at work than they hired.
• Where do you want to be n years, this figures out if having direct goals. Sometimes not understanding Zen-thinking that goals may not work so dreams is better, and if explaining otherwise than career ladder, try to mirror it to goal, like better expert and gaining more holistic understanding of various areas you are supporting.
• There are some common questions which can be interpreted wrongly, like I commonly am thought to be seeking short term jobs, but have not yet fully figured out why that is thought since it is not the case. This means that you should explain your stance for question within what context it is valid. Naturally, this means that interviewers should first get to know the interviewee before making definite conclusions how to interprete the assessment.
• They may ask about values. Based on psychological competence, the unconscious competence is best, meaning the competence is "second nature", without extra thought into it. This is ideal situation with values, no separate thought as it comes naturally. However it depends on the interviewer how things are interpreted.
• Questions about weaknesses, well that depends on the job. Some jobs are easier to know before hand, some others are more difficult - it is not that person does not know himself. Some may think this being a sign of emotional intelligence when knowing weaknesses, but it is quite difficult to know if job is more abstract.
• Questions from interviewers can be indirect. This means that they can ask questions which they think may give an answer to a question which was actually not asked. You may want to ask clarification as well what is wanted to be known. This where do you want to be in n years can be such.
• One interesting thing could be to try to ask if you are hired as an expert or proficient, competent, advanced beginner, or novice person. This sets some requirements for you in regards way of working, and also to figure out how the management works - e.g closer to expert you are, less rules and management there must be.
• Try to ask corner cases, like how is remote work supported, or how you can buy a computer which is not attached to a corporate network. Those seeing it as mandatory evil try to keep you at office, as well as more junior managers.
• Note also that a companies who restrict employee thinking and want them to adapt for conventional way or working blindlessly, they may see curious person with many questions a potential danger for existing culture.
• ideally a new member into company, team, should complement the team - not blend in.
• Wanting external views mean that internal thinking is not in shape.

Generally speaking, you are trying to assess the maturity of your boss, internal culture, available freedom, ability to think instead of purely being told what to do.
One generic article supporting this:
https://hbr.org/2016/12/6-traits-that-predict-ethical-behavior-at-work
One good description of the evolution of a leader can be found here:
http://http://c4isys.blogspot.fi/2016/06/genesis-of-leader.html

Some very good guidance, in my opinion can be found from the links below, please note that not everyone need to reverse, program - they unconsciously teach you logical, mathematical thinking which is essential. I selected some of the advices breaking into security field, as it is a special field when comparing to others, like an form of art, craft instead of mechanical science although many think it as a science.

https://moxie.org/blog/career-advice/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/06/how-to-break-into-security-ptacek-edition/
http://https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/08/how-to-break-into-security-miller-edition/
https://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2016/08/so-you-want-to-work-in-security-but-are.html

A totally different posting could be different suitability tests, which can give very varying outcomes, lets just say that if you eveluate a fish for its ability to climb a tree, it will think being stupid for rest of its life. This means that same test should not be used for everyone. People just are different, and some of the most famous scientists did not succeed on Mensas test either. Spatial intelligence can be trained with Sudoku, when you look numbers as symbols instead. Mathematical questions typically are on high school level.

R.I.P Good Journalism

The power of the internet is that everyone can be a journalist. The downside of the internet is that everyone can be a journalist.

The power of internet is that speed upon which people get news from any event. The downside is the speed. People get used to speed, and that creates cycle to create news fastly, which then can lead into incomplete, potentially erranous news.

The competition to get news out is the new goldrush. This means having news is the news. Speed over content. Correctness, truthfulness of them is seconday, and if there are any corrections, not many read those - corrections are not news anymore. If people spend time to send the corrections, the writer tends to add the correction in a form "n.n send this: blahblah" - aka not admitting the mistake on the first place but pointing out someone sending it (this is same as saying "sorry if i have offended anyone" - the word "if" points out not taking responsibilit) and bringing totally outsider into a limelight. Admitting mistakes would be crucial to gain trustworthiness.

Internal politics, cloak and dagger - world

What would Batman do a situation like this?

That was what came into my mind when I heard one manager confessing that he cannot fix one problem at his employer since the person to whom he would need to say about that, is equal level in organizational hierarchy to him. So there can be constant problems presented by situation, mocking etc but not telling the problem to stop this due being scared to talk to other person who has a same title.

Let that sink in for the moment, and then repeat it:

"Organization, and people within, can suffer when a manager makes a decision to refuse telilng other manager some things" Which one from those two is more important?

Got it?

Who is to blame on this kind of situation? the original wrongdoer? the manager who is scared? organization?

Unfortunately these kind of situations are not rare in corprate world. The twisted picture of successful person supports cloak and dagger, stomping into feet, extrovert, talking rather than doing. It is also difficult to see this, since in short term such a behaviour looks successful and thus the path one should take.

It should start from the top, to punish such behavior. The below video shows the correct way to react - preventative would be always best but sometimes reaction is needed and this is the way to do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U

Do you care about your (social) network?

World has been changing a bit, actually it changes all the time. We used to have network of people around us, immediate family, neighbours, classmates, work mates. This has changed due ability to reach out fmor the physical homebase, traveling, calling, sending cards, internet. Due the connected nature via internet, our network can be much greater than it used to be - with shorter amount of time than otherwise. Also the value of your network makes us more valuable. It is quite common that deals, knowledge are based on trust - and that can be based on who can vote for you.

Trust.

Before being trusted, one needs to gain trust. It can take years to get it. It is said that network is built before it is needed. It is a social network after all.

Social.

What does it mean being social Should the extrovert behaviour then be preferred? One should know that introvert is not same as shy.

There has been interesting studies, thoughts, about how people change their social network when becoming older, even lessening the amount of people on it, becoming more lone (but not lonely) wolf. This is interesting when comparing the youth, when trying to seek who we are, common acceptance and such. Yet, animals do the same - after initial childhood they are exepcted to fly out from the nest. This essentially means we actually are exepcted to live like introverts want to live. Being together with other people was for seeking safety and security. So the introverts are the brave ones, and not the one who move to big cities as they are “just” seeking the safety?

Caring.

Now, it is important to nurture the connection, and not only utilize the network when you need it. That way you need network of altruistic givers and never reveal the sources if wanting not to be seen as exploitater of other people. It may not always feel good to help people who always exploit others. Do you care about your (social) network?

Do you value your values?

Values. They do mean a different things to different parties.

Values what do they mean for you in a conceptual level? A treasure? A jewel perhaps? a wedding ring?

Do they mean same to your employer than to you? Do employer’s values mean same to you than to them?
At work they are words to show what principles company work at. Some take them more literally than others. In military, values can be thought to be a doctrine - and surpsingly then they actually have a meaning.

Values are worthless if they are not followed. Yet they bring extreme value (pun intended) when they are followed.

When interviewing into a job, it may be valuable to have a discussion about values. In this way it can probably prevent landing into a micromanagemented job, where one does not like to be. Values, philosophical discussion about humanity for finding that, and then discussion about technical corner areas to find others. Instead, quite often the job interview concentrates on mechanical things, like job history, but that does not carve out people who have egoism etc - character is more important. Or not so often what made a manager eligible to manage in the first place