this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
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- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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"personal networking" feels a lot like just saying "go fish in a bathtub"
It means "be rich".
People who have to work 40 hours a week, plus do their own cooking and cleaning, plus all their own errands, plus taking care of the kids or pets, don't have time to network.
There's a reason politics is filled with rich lawyers and finance people, and it because they have the luxury of networking.
No, networking means maintaining healthy relationships with your peers, friends, and coworkers from all your previous jobs and telling people you're looking for one.
If there's no luck there, then yes, you suck it up and go to the gutter pile of Indeed, classifieds, and doing work you never wanted to do lol.
anyone who says 'networking' is a charlatan imo. at least try to word it like a human being while giving advice
I agree, I put in the shoes of HR and Management, I CAN FEEL YOUR DESPERATION, you are acting like an attention whore and this smells in KILOMETERS.
Depends on how big your bathtub is. But really. Knowing people in your field is always helpful.
It's basically useless when you've tried your network and it's all dead ends. This advice feels like the "don't be ugly" of the employment world.
Also, if you are the "first" in your family for something (first college grad/first grad school grad, etc.), you have a HUGE disadvantage to those who have family members that can give well-informed opinions and advice. This was especially true in law school - students with lawyers in their family did far better during and immediately after law school than those students (like me) who were first to graduate college, let alone first for an advanced degree. And by "far better" I don't simply mean "daddy got them a great job straight out of law school," I'm talking about better academic performance, better utilization of available school career resources, better networking skills, you name it.
Dude I got a PhD and tried to get a tenure track job. I'm from a family of dirt farmers and had no advice on how to break into academia. Your words couldn't be more true.
Yeah there's that about the dead ends. Been there as well. My own field now has a lot more gains to be had from networking. Past ones, not so much. Maybe it depends on the nature of the job as well? I'm not sure. I imagine it's a lot more helpful in sales.
I'm not great at it myself honestly. I could really learn from my spouse. She's an SME in a niche field and literally every job after the first one, she was recruited by someone in her network. But that's neither here, nor there.
Anyway, that's all I got. Rant over.
I got a lot of this advice trying to get into academia. From what I found, knowing someone somewhere is actively detrimental to getting a job. Not only will you not get a job because of your connections, people will avoid giving you a job because hiring from a network speaks ill of the academic rigor of the institution. Whether it's real or not, the image is maximal meritocracy, and that means the traditional advice from the corporate world is useless.