"I didn't need help when I went to college. these lazy kids just need to get a paper route for the summer to pay for a semester or two. it couldn't cost more than a couple hundred bucks for books and classes"

what you did over your 25 year long career is irrelevant to what current people are going through. the rest of this is a rant on "boomer" mentality. I'm an xer myself, just sick of people perpetuating the broken ideals of the most spoiled generation.

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I've been in IT just as long but in the last 10 years I have been asked to learn the following under threat of becoming "irrelevant"; cloud computing, big data analysis, cryptographic signing and tracking of data, machine learning, and the most recent artificial intelligence.

how the fuck are we supposed to keep up with this and maintain our family/home and maintain friendships and maintain our sanity all while juggling the roles and responsibilities weighing us down at work.

in 2021 I worked over 3200 hours in the year. that's double 8s almost every single day. part of that time was training time I was forced to comply with to make sure "the company remains competitive." it also doesn't include the 16 hours of training over the weekends that I couldn't claim because, "if you can't perform the responsibilities given to you within office hours provided then perhaps you should work from the office under supervision." I think we all know what that meant. want to know what I did with all that training? I'll let you know as soon as I use it.

point is, the world got fucked up, and greedy pieces of shit at the top make the smaller greedy pieces of shit greed harder, and so forth. when will it be enough? when can we stop working on frivolous bullshit that's going to be dropped and abandoned when "the next big thing" shows up? when can we start building shit that matters so much that we can't just abandon it?

so, what's this got to do with YT? if I could have watched 200 hours of training videos for free online instead of taking multiple courses, homework, tests, etc; I could spent more time with my kids, or hobbies, or doing whatever the fuck I want. instead, I was stuck doing busywork for some other assholes bonus.

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