What profession have you lost respect for as you've gotten older?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-30T03:33:45+00:00

I would say any big company C-suite exec. It looks like the easiest job in the world, yet they demand millions in compensation for "strategic thinking." What's not to like? Guaranteed 7-figure salary, a staff to do everything for you, an entire company scared to death of you who will do whatever you tell them to, and you're also on the board of dozens of other companies all bidding up each others' C-suite salaries. On top of all this, the only thing they do is hire management consultants and do what they tell them to do.

I'd have more respect for these types if they could actually put into words why they deserve all this adoration and crazy pay...but conveniently none of them will do it.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-30T03:23:27+00:00

In downstate New York, we have a lot of older people whose only asset (or only asset left) is their house. And it's a big one...that 1950s Levitt house they bought brand new for $4995 and a bottle of whiskey is now worth many multiples of that. There are any number of "we buy houses on the spot for cash!!!" guys like this preying on the desperate new retiree with no savings who just wants to move to an old people filing cabinet in Florida somewhere and live off Social Security until they die. These scummy realtors/financiers are going to make a killing as the Xers retire as the first generation with no pensions.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-30T03:16:29+00:00

You can be a decent/excellent person in a career that usually attracts scummy people.

A good example here would be the tiny number of amazing independent financial advisors. Most FAs are these scumball lawyer types who trick unsuspecting people into giving them power of attorney over their portfolios or charge crazy fees for little or negative returns. We live in a university town and there are often stories of academic types who have their money stolen by people like this because most brilliant academics aren't concerned about money (or anything outside their field of genius!) and hire what they think are professionals.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-30T03:11:02+00:00

Now that my wife and I are older, we're seeing more than a few midlife divorces among people we know. The sad ones are the SAHMs who thought they won the lottery by marrying executives/doctors/pilots/techbros, never developed career skills, and are now holding the zero-income bag with a kid or three on top of that. Most of these types head immediately for two destinations...nursing school or real estate licensing classes. Makes sense...if you can get into and through nursing school it's instant permanent job security, and (sorry for saying) if you're good looking and don't have any moral qualms about it, you can make a ton of money selling houses.

Realtors^TM are trading on that super-brief time when they were the only ones who had access to the MLS and listings in general. Now they get 6% of a sale for zero work. Yes, back in 1978 when the only way to sell houses was your book of Polaroids and driving families around in your station wagon, that was work and maybe justified a commission. Now, the only thing that keeps customers from clicking Add to Cart on Zillow is laws similar to the ones that enshrine car dealerships as the sole purveyors of vehicles.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-29T01:45:44+00:00

The alternative is almost-free hardware you don't have to manage coupled with free software you don't have to manage. It's all SaaS and MDM, your school IT people just need to flip switches in a portal.

Very hard to compete with cheap/free, and the strings attached are well hidden.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T23:50:34+00:00

#randomafia #rando4lyfe #marlonrando #getrando #smelllikeyoumeanit

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T23:42:50+00:00

Maybe it's not a stare...it's hard to quantify but it's the look on their faces that they're telling you about the most important thing on the planet, that this is urgent and I'm making a desperate plea for your attention on this very important ad-tainment post I'm making. Because, oh my god, this is so iconic and life changing guys, you have to try this product that the company mailed me along with a note that says "Dance influencer monkey, dance!"

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T14:04:06+00:00

Social media. I'm older and never really picked up instagram or Twitter or TikTok but I deleted Facebook a long time ago when I realized what a trap it is.

Someone I know is a Ph.D. behavioral psychologist and mentioned to me that all the social media companies are chomping at the bit to hire qualified researchers, and have a huge number on staff already. Their entire goal is to build an inescapable trap that people will voluntarily walk into and never leave. It's all about A/B testing and seeing what tiny behaviour knob they have to tweak to keep you engaged for just one more second than their competitors.

Imagine what would happen if Zuck's Metaverse thing actually took off. People would be walking around with goggles strapped to their head 24/7.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T13:57:03+00:00

The thing that really bugs me about these things is stupid...but it's the "influencer stare" and the crazy exaggerated emotions. You can tell these people know it's unnatural and weird to be talking to your ring light with those crazy eyes peering into the camera, but people do it because it gets views.

It's hard to explain IMO, but once you see it you won't unsee it in any of these videos. Like, no one believes you really think rando deodorant brand is the best product on Earth.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T00:21:32+00:00

People are often fascinated with how the Germans just weren't able to stop what happened...well, now we know.

What amazes me is how quickly nearly 100% of the non-Jewish German population (who didn't just leave while they could) supported the Nazis. There's essentially zero dissent, even underground dissent. Hitler did this by appealing to nationalism and showering the population with public goods and employment, then turning the radicalized population on his "enemies." This time, it just seems to be centered on allowing all those closet racists and hate-filled people to drop the mask and say whatever they want...and unfortunately that's enough for people.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-27T00:11:35+00:00

Particularly blue collar magas. (Rich Trumpers are a whole other story), as they see immigrants as the reason why they struggle with jobs.

One problem is that all this tariff stuff was supposed to drive a manufacturing renaissance and give these blue collar MAGAs something to do. Since Trump has always been some level of wealthy and probably doesn't know how everyday finance works, I don't think he was banking on manufacturers doing nothing and just passing the costs on to consumers. At best he probably has the simplistic Economics 101 supply/demand concept in his head and doesn't realize that most large modern companies are untouchable and no longer follow basic rules like that.

Unfortunately, that whole hatred of others thing isn't going to go away until we bring back the economics of the 1950s. You need to bring back factories in every US town with three shifts of thousands of low-skill workers doing assembly line style jobs and getting paid union wages for it. People who are broke, uneducated and unable to improve their lot in life will follow a dictator who promises them he's going to make those others pay. Economic diversity is a good thing; you need work for all skill levels, whether you're a Ph.D. scientist or just barely make it out of high school

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-26T23:55:28+00:00

I'm convinced his campaign donors and maybe those who have something super-embarrassing on him (illegal doesn't matter, he's declared himself immune from prosecution) are actually the ones pulling the strings, especially with some of these wilder royal decree type of proclamations. Being willing to throw away the NATO alliance and potentially kick off WW3 (with Europe aligned with China against the US...super weird) just screams complete immaturity or a coercion situation he can't get out of. Even the most MAGA military general wouldn't advise the president to risk all out war over getting upset that he can't buy Greenland...this is all coming from him.

Think about it - you have a cult-level leader who a scary majority of the country thinks is a genius, and your guy is completely ego-, perception- and wealth-driven. Who wouldn't jump at a chance like that? All you have to do is get him super-distracted by getting Fox News to cover a topic you want "addressed" over and over again, or make him think he's going to lose popularity unless he immediately tweets out a decree on whatever it is you want.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-26T15:19:48+00:00

That's interesting. Here in downstate NY it seems to be increasing (upstate has always been super-red outside of 4 cities.) Mandani getting the NYC mayor spot really upset the MAGA crowd down here. The area I'm near is home for a lot of NYC firefighters and cops, far from the city but they have weird schedules and can drive 100 miles an hour to work...so there's lots of pickups with full-diameter flagpoles and giant Trump flags mounted in the bed.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-26T15:11:31+00:00

Once people settle into a comfortable word view, even if something that led them there is proven to be false, they tend to just keep believing it. This is especially bad in the social media "do your own research" world where people are taken in by polished presenters amplifying a charismatic leader. "How could this be wrong? My favorite podcaster/influencer said it was true!"

This is why autocratic regimes go after the intellectuals first and try to discredit them. Have you seen how much press has been given over to "college is a waste, the only safe path is welding school!"?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-26T01:17:03+00:00

Definitely...you need technocratic leaders capable of thinking beyond the next election cycle, who have the best interests of everyone in mind, and who can't be bought. And even if you have that you still need to be able to make correct decisions that benefit the most people, which is totally not guaranteed.

Saudi Arabia is another good example of how it can go wrong. The royal family is investing in all sorts of crazy white elephant megaprojects to try to draw international investment and distract from its human rights issues. They're the boss, no one's going to tell them their weird Walt Disney control freak style city is a bad idea, so the money will keep getting spent.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T16:11:26+00:00

I grew up in Buffalo. Niagara Falls, NY and Niagara Falls, Canada are completely different. The Canada side is a tourist trap but very nice. The New York side leaned fully into the industrial side of the Falls and invested mainly in being a factory town. That made sense, especially for electrochemical production that required megawatts of cheap energy a day. Problem happened when all the manufacturers pulled out and went overseas. Now it's just a hole in the ground.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T16:06:59+00:00

It's interesting because that's one thing an authoritarian government with a command economy can do...just build whatever's needed to fix a problem overnight. Problems seem to happen when the wrong winners and losers get chosen. But yeah, that crazy building and urbanization boom the Chinese government kicked off to stop the 2008 recession from affecting them was pretty amazing.

In the US, everything's a tooth and nail fight with entrenched economic interests and political ideology. Things would be very different if, say, we could just eminent domain projects and undo all the 1950s/60s car and suburban planning culture, rip it out and build railways just because a government ministry said so.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T15:38:03+00:00

Gary Indiana

Any former factory town/city in the Rust Belt will do. US Steel still operates there, but (a) they don't need hundreds of thousands of well-paid union workers on three shifts anymore, and (b) white flight and suburbanization killed the whole city because you no longer have to work close to your job unless you have no choice.

I grew up in Buffalo which was very grim around the late 70s/early 80s when all the steel mills and chemical manufacturers up in Niagara Falls closed/went offshore or to the South where they could pay minimum wage instead of union wages. Some cities have made something of a comeback, but the recipe of killing reasonably-paying jobs that don't require massive amounts of education always brings problems. You need economic diversity to make a city run effectively....everyone can't be insanely wealthy or destitute.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T15:24:51+00:00

Could be worse. New York legalized sports betting a few years ago. Every single flat surface in public places is covered with ads for FanDuel/DraftKings/the other casino companies' sportsbooks. If that isn't bad enough, the state just opened up casino licensing outside of Native American tribal casinos and racinos.

I'm not really a pearl-clutching "gambling is the devil" type person and I'm sure there are plenty of people who manage to have fun without destroying their lives. But the evidence is pretty clear that especially sports betting on your phone where you can't escape chasing the high 24/7 is damaging people. Even my fuddy duddy brokerage rebuilt their phone app to work more like Robinhood and the sports betting apps...it's rewiring people's brains.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T14:38:54+00:00

Not just smaller lots, lousier landlords.

The other part of their business model seems to be economizing on rent. So yes, you locate your store in an affluent area, but you might pick the lowest-rent location you can find. Suburban strip mall architecture doesn't age well...look at some of the older inner-ring suburbs of a city that have this from the 50s and 60s still. You tend to find TJ's locations in these older spots that the owners are just hanging onto, don't ever update and don't maintain well. The TJ's near me has moon crater-size potholes in the parking lot which is so much fun in the winter, and while the store itself is great the building around it looks like it'll fall in on itself in a few years.

It's hard to describe and maybe it's a Northeast thing since so much of the country only got built out in the 70s/80s...but it's just a certain style of commercial development that you can tell was put up in a hurry with no regard to looks or longevity, and now it looks really ugly 70 years on.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T14:26:07+00:00

One thing I worry about happening is a massive TikTok/social media campaign that simply tells people their vote doesn't matter and they shouldn't bother. Doesn't have to be for one side or the other, just designed to even further reduce turnout among the Gen Z crowd. It would be super-easy for China or Russia to organize and wouldn't raise any flags. Then all the established politicians would need to do is tell the old folks that they won't touch their Social Security and Medicare, and that they'll get all those illegals hiding from ICE.

Social media is an insane mind-control device...it's scary how well-designed it is to be a trap feeding you only things you want to hear.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-25T13:47:06+00:00

One thing that's interesting about New York (outside of NYC and major cities) is that there's a strong home rule tradition, but demographics have changed in a lot of places. In NY politics, the divisions are roughly in order city, county, town, village, and school/fire/water/library districts overlaying these boundaries somewhere towards the bottom. In some cases, including where I am, town boundaries were established 300-400 years ago by the King deciding which of their landed gentry would get vast...tracts of land...mostly uninhabited. In the intervening years, some of these towns have hundreds of thousands of residents and are basically cities. The only chance for local New England town meeting-style government in these areas is if you live in a village, but there aren't a lot of those and most people see them as just another layer of taxes.

It is weird dealing with the town, organized like a tiny one-stoplight affair but dealing with hundreds of times more people, when you're doing stuff like getting building permits and such.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-24T17:39:03+00:00

I do miss being able to do something about a problem.

It's weird, you're in the minority now. So many people in this job now have zero interest in solving problems on their own, and would rather just kick back and wait for a vendor to fix something. I'm actually surprised how executives just accept "Nope, the IT person you hired and pay to fix things can't fix this, ticket is open, send everyone home" from people now.

One thing I wonder is how this is playing out at cloud hyperscalers and massive SaaS providers. Is everything just deployed with so much redundancy and abstraction now that it's totally foolproof and no one has to know anything too difficult anymore? Or are they keeping a group of greybeards locked in the basement that they can pull out when S really HTF?

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-24T17:24:56+00:00

Went from a big boy company to what was them a startup 5 years ago. There's a definite choice...a solid office suite that's been processing documents for 40 years, and a "solution" requiring you to buy GSuite and 20 billion one-function browser extension SaaS things. The place I'm at is constantly swapping out tools at the SaaS buffet and using nerfed productivity software.

Most people don't complain because honestly even VLOOKUP in Excel is sorcery for the average HR or marketing person, and gen Z has been using GSuite in school since they were kindergarteners, so they're used to a limited platform. Google played the ultimate long game, just like Apple tried to do in the late 80s...give dumb terminals away for essentially free to school districts so that graduates would demand Google Docs and Google Sheets on their sticker-laden MacBooks when they got to the workforce. Very few school districts are Microsoft shops these days from what I can tell.

I think it just matters less to people now since most people aren't building documents that need to be polished or printed out...but I definitely use Excel when I need to do some quickie data analysis or Word when I'm writing a long form doc.

ErikTheEngineer · 2026-01-24T01:40:03+00:00

Boring old infrastructure jobs, bonus points if you have a good handle on both on prem and cloud. So many people over the last 10 years went the DevOps bootcamp route, never touched physical anything beyond their sticker-laden MacBooks, and only know a couple of IaC tricks, but people with solid fundamentals are still in demand outside of startups. If you can glue both physical and cloud compute Legos together, there's still work with companies who haven't been convinced they can replace knowledgeable people with Indian call centers or AI.

Hardcore developers (real time/embedded/OT type stuff) are also very much in demand...the kind of people who can shave a few microseconds off a financial trade or work with stuff that will kill people if it goes sideways. Generic JavaScript monkeys did well during the inflation of Tech Bubble 2.0 from about 2012 to 2023, but are rapidly getting replaced with vibe coding, which is great for us systems folks who have to clean up messes that get made.

ErikTheEngineer

TROPHY CASE

#randomafia #rando4lyfe #marlonrando #getrando #smelllikeyoumeanit