The whole handshaking thing should make for some good comebacks.
"In your day? In your day you could walk into a business, shake hands with the owner, give him your resume and he gave you a job. And Dinosaurs ruled the earth!"
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Indeed, I'm not an X, and I'm definately not a millenial. The whole, 'you remember when you first got the internet as a kid, but there was nothing to do on it' thing is the key.
Man, what. The original AOL's game Out of Order is the greatest thing ever.
Man if that game came out on mobile devices, Draw Something would die. Dead.
I didn't say there was nothing to do on computers, my contemporaries aren't that old, that's X but there was nothing to do on the internet. Search engines barely existed, websites were fragmented shells which were impossible to navigate, there was barely any actual content and what little there was took so long to download as to be absurd. We saw it all change, as people figured out what the internet was good for.
When I first got access to the internet, web browsers didn't really exist*. It was strictly Archie and Veronica/Gopher.
*I am dating the "real web" from the launch of Mosaic. Though there were web browsers before that, they weren't much used.
The whole handshaking thing should make for some good comebacks.
"In your day? In your day you could walk into a business, shake hands with the owner, give him your resume and he gave you a job. And Dinosaurs ruled the earth!"
Well, that was probably great advice back in the day. Of course it also helped to be a healthy, straight, white man, but nevermind, at least there was some sort of clear, objective path you could follow to getting a job and launching a career. Later on that advice morphed into "get good grades, stay in school, go to college... and THEN shake hands with the owner and hand him your resume!" But now all we have is this really fuzzy guideline like "network! Utilize social media proactively! Develop your personal brand! Think outside the box!" And since it's impossible to tell whether someone is really doing that or not, it's the perfect excuse for always blaming an individual for their joblessness, rather than realizing something is wrong with the system.
The whole handshaking thing should make for some good comebacks.
"In your day? In your day you could walk into a business, shake hands with the owner, give him your resume and he gave you a job. And Dinosaurs ruled the earth!"
Well, that was probably great advice back in the day. Of course it also helped to be a healthy, straight, white man, but nevermind, at least there was some sort of clear, objective path you could follow to getting a job and launching a career. Later on that advice morphed into "get good grades, stay in school, go to college... and THEN shake hands with the owner and hand him your resume!" But now all we have is this really fuzzy guideline like "network! Utilize social media proactively! Develop your personal brand! Think outside the box!" And since it's impossible to tell whether someone is really doing that or not, it's the perfect excuse for always blaming an individual for their joblessness, rather than realizing something is wrong with the system.
I get this a lot right now. I'm trying though. I've gotten like five interviews in two weeks.
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
Well, i think it's fine if you're middle-aged and have two-decades of work related experience to build up contacts from. Then you can just call up people you worked together with in the past and ask them if there's any openings at their company.
It doesn't work so well when you're fresh out of college, and all your friends are also jobless or working as interns or minimum wage grunts.
Well, i think it's fine if you're middle-aged and have two-decades of work related experience to build up contacts from. Then you can just call up people you worked together with in the past and ask them if there's any openings at their company.
It doesn't work so well when you're fresh out of college, and all your friends are also jobless or working as interns or minimum wage grunts.
Well obviously you should just do what your parents did for a living instead of making your own life choices so you can make use of their connections.
Well, i think it's fine if you're middle-aged and have two-decades of work related experience to build up contacts from. Then you can just call up people you worked together with in the past and ask them if there's any openings at their company.
It doesn't work so well when you're fresh out of college, and all your friends are also jobless or working as interns or minimum wage grunts.
Well obviously you should just do what your parents did for a living instead of making your own life choices so you can make use of their connections.
heh that works too I suppose. Assuming your parents have connections.
My parents went to college when you had to fill out giant scantrons to enter programs into a computer.
Old CS majors have the best stories.
My Dad told me a story once of how in his Electrical Engineering program they had this huge, refrigerator sized box of computer equipment. It was 25k of memory
"Fuck you all, you're all fucked, I'm fucked, we're all fucked, what's the point?"
So, I appreciate that. It was nice when in the 90's things felt like they may end out okay, but now it's very not okay. Even as someone in high school I felt like I still had a chance to find a job, maybe work and go on to higher education. Graduation was in 98 and I've been working ever since. Haven't managed to do the college thing, as in California tuition has gone up like 11,000,000% in the last 15 years and I don't want the debt.
Most of my friends are in the same boat, the ones that went to college either have crippling debt and are working shit jobs, or had parent's who would pay for it and after struggling initially on graduation to find work have found "okay" jobs. They were only "okay" because they didn't have the additional costs associated with crippling debt. Those of us who didn't attend college get to sit around and feel like pieces of shit for not feeling comfortable with debt or having rich parents while we're told we're failures over and over for not going.
It's pretty great.
Edit: By pretty great I mean my apathy at this point is immeasurable. Fuck you all.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
It works though.
One of my best friends, who was psychotically ambitious even back in high school, became a sales executive at TWO major national companies before he was 30.
All he had to do was graduate top of his class in HS, put himself through state university working nights, work 60 hours a week in internships every summer, network like a motherfucker, and then be prepared to work 80 hours a week and move anywhere in the country when the situation called for it.
For him, hard work really did pay off, but it was pretty hard work. But hey. VP by 30. The dude spends the weekends with people like Dirk Nowitzki and Marc Ecko and gets paid to do so. Pretty good for a kid whose dad is a deadbeat, his mom makes minimum wage, and his family has drug problems.
I've decided every time I get depressed about lacking money, I'm going to read this thread again. Some of your stories make me weep inside. I really never thought about how lucky I was to get the job I've had sans any college degree. I basically got lucky with a software startup that ended up being bought out by a big ad agency. I'm still driving a beatup used car that needs repairs, but that sure beats the ten hells some people speak of here. :-/
Born in '84 by the way, so juuust old enough to remember the tail end of the 80s but most of my memories come from the 90s. Haha, I remember when Nickelodeon had their "Kids election" for president in '92, and I voted for Bush Sr. Wasn't I an adorable eight year old?...adorably wrong, but still adorable! ;p
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
All he had to do was graduate top of his class in HS, put himself through state university working nights, work 60 hours a week in internships every summer, network like a motherfucker, and then be prepared to work 80 hours a week and move anywhere in the country when the situation called for it.
There's a glaring problem, here:
Only 1 person can graduate top of their class.
So, yeah. Not sure about that whole, "It works!" thing.
Born in '83 so I remember some 80's but mostly 90's too.
I can actually remember the year my hope died. It was in 2001. No, not THAT month. It was whichever month that Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, effectively tanking the whole thing. From then things just snowballed for the next 10 years and my life pretty much followed the same.
But I still got lucky compared to alot of people. Unlike dispatch.o I'm never given shit for not going to college; most of the people I knew who were my age and who did go never got the jobs they wanted (and were saddled with debt). The only one who did, worked for the government, go figure.
My parents went to college when you had to fill out giant scantrons to enter programs into a computer.
Old CS majors have the best stories.
My Dad told me a story once of how in his Electrical Engineering program they had this huge, refrigerator sized box of computer equipment. It was 25k of memory
The guys in charge of the computer room were the best. Cold room stores beer well.
Trades is a good option for virtually guaranteed employment these days
Assuming you could get in. I looked into it recently, and was told they had several hundred people ahead of me on the waiting list. For like, 10 positions per year.
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Networking is nepotism without being a relative. Which is a distinction without a difference.
Trades is a good option for virtually guaranteed employment these days
Oh? My electrician friend has spotty work at best. Trades have unions. Unions protect the dinosaurs.
Depends on the trade, and depends on the area.
Electricians is one field that has been swamped with people lately because a few years ago it was all "WE NEED TRADES!" and everyone was like, oh trades. Ok, I'll be an electrician
like there are a lot of other options where employment is good.
I am getting into Power Engineering / Stationary Engineering. There are a lot of job opportunities in this field and I am not having a problem getting job offers in this field.
Seriously, if you are sitting at your computer right now reading this post and you want a job and you are interested in trades, look into this trade. You will find a job if you stick with it, and you will make good money.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Networking is nepotism without being a relative. Which is a distinction without a difference.
If you Completely redefine the word nepotism then it means something else, sure.
Networking is using a set of social skills with a thought to advancing your career or the careers of people in your monkey sphere.
Nepotism is giving/receiving a job based on the vagina you sprouted out of.
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Nepotism, in modern usage, typically includes friends. Granted, you can also get TIPS and INFORMATION instead of outright getting handed jobs through networking, but there's a lot of nepotism involved and favors given.
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Networking is nepotism without being a relative. Which is a distinction without a difference.
If you Completely redefine the word nepotism then it means something else, sure.
Networking is using a set of social skills with a thought to advancing your career or the careers of people in your monkey sphere.
Nepotism is giving/receiving a job based on the vagina you sprouted out of.
Nepotism is giving jobs based on personal connections. Specifically, in this case, familial ones.
Networking is the process whereby you acquire personal connections to advance your career and land jobs.
You'd have to be incredibly obtuse to ignore how these are the same thing, with family connection replaced with social connection.
Talk to anyone in job hunting or such. You know, the people who emphasize the power of networking. Networking works because when a position opens up, they pick you because they know you and know of you.
Alot of times, jobs you get through networking get filled before anyone outside the company even knows they exist.
I was an 80s kid . . . I don't really identify with either the Millennials or the Boomers. The Boomers, well, they're the Boomers. And the Millennials seem very . . . very caught up with image and memes, sometimes seeming to prefer them to content. Like, I sometimes feel the reason they swung over to Obama had less to do with his policies and more to do with the fact that he had the cleverest meme-makers on his side, whereas the Republicans were still marveling over the series of tubes that is the Interwebs. Would they still have voted for him if McCain had hired some incredible young, artistic talent? They seem just as easily influenced as other generations, IMO--maybe moreso. The amount of times I have heard people parroting a philosophy because they saw it on South Park or "heard Chris Rock say it" . . . But on the other hand, I know a lot of Millennials who feel strongly about social justice and who are way more knowledgeable about gender vs sex, racial disparities, feminism, and social justice in general.
In short, I think the Boomers tend to be more homogeneous as a generation, whereas with the Millennials there's a sharper dichotomy between intelligent Millennials and idiotic, immature Millennials. The smart ones are REALLY smart, whereas the stupid ones make you despair of humanity.
So, work. I was working during the 90s when the economy was booming and unemployment was low, but it was a crappy job, in retrospect. So as luck would have it, I went to college as a "nontraditional student" riiiight before the economy TANKED. Actually I was pretty lucky, as I had finished my two years of community college before the bubble burst, which sent sudden FLOODS of people back to school, causing classes to fill up impossibly quickly. My frame of mind right now? Enthused about my own future, concerned about the direction the country is headed. Every day it seems there's a new news story to make me shake my head and go "WTF, America."
"Networking" is another way to say "nepotism," really.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Networking is nepotism without being a relative. Which is a distinction without a difference.
If you Completely redefine the word nepotism then it means something else, sure.
Networking is using a set of social skills with a thought to advancing your career or the careers of people in your monkey sphere.
Nepotism is giving/receiving a job based on the vagina you sprouted out of.
Nepotism is favoritism without merit on the basis of bloodlines. Networking is favoritism without merit on the basis of having eaten mini-quiche together.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Or maybe you guys just aren't very good at it and think that's it's some sort of unfair advantage and/or magic.
Vegging out in front of the TV after work is a helluva lot easier than going to an professional/alumni thing, but you aren't going to make any acquaintainces watching big bang theory reruns.
Trades is a good option for virtually guaranteed employment these days
Oh? My electrician friend has spotty work at best. Trades have unions. Unions protect the dinosaurs.
Depends on the trade, and depends on the area.
Electricians is one field that has been swamped with people lately because a few years ago it was all "WE NEED TRADES!" and everyone was like, oh trades. Ok, I'll be an electrician
like there are a lot of other options where employment is good.
I am getting into Power Engineering / Stationary Engineering. There are a lot of job opportunities in this field and I am not having a problem getting job offers in this field.
Seriously, if you are sitting at your computer right now reading this post and you want a job and you are interested in trades, look into this trade. You will find a job if you stick with it, and you will make good money.
Is that actually a trade? It seems like they mostly want people with experience in civil engineering/electrical engineering.
Yeah, its a real trade. The title is a bit confusing because it has the word "engineering" in it, but it is not professional engineering. It is basically engineering technician/technologist.
Or maybe you guys just aren't very good at it and think that's it's some sort of unfair advantage and/or magic.
Vegging out in front of the TV after work is a helluva lot easier than going to an professional/alumni thing, but you aren't going to make any acquaintainces watching big bang theory reruns.
I'm actually rather good at networking, I'm just not ignoring the inherent bullshit involved with it. Particularly of the sort that is generally talked about when it concerns job seekers and such rather than trying to expand your understanding of a field or subject matter.
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Deebaseron my way to work in a suit and a tieAhhhh...come on fucking guyRegistered Userregular
Moniker, I wasn't directing that at you. I apologize if I was unclear.
Networking is useful because it tells the potential employer more about you, with more enthusiasm that some random person in HR who probably didn't know you would be able to muster. This is especially relevant because these days many companies refuse to give a reference other than "Yes, that person worked here from [start date] to [end date] and we [would / wouldn't] hire them again." I worked for a company where that was literally all they gave out when called about references. Not exactly a well-spring of information.
Or maybe you guys just aren't very good at it and think that's it's some sort of unfair advantage and/or magic.
Vegging out in front of the TV after work is a helluva lot easier than going to an professional/alumni thing, but you aren't going to make any acquaintainces watching big bang theory reruns.
"making friends" <> "being born on third base"
Deebaser, you seem very confused.
You've decided people who point out networking is nepotism must obviously just be jealous they can't network. For ... no reason whatsoever.
The "your just jealous" argument is stupid in any context. That includes this one. It's avoiding the argument because you don't have a rebuttal.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Holy crap this thread is depressing, the worst part of it is reading it I am one of the "lucky" ones.
Born in '87, "graduated" in 2005 (GED, dropped out of high school), flirted with Community College for a semester, set sails for an expensive (but accredited and transferable) trade school. Got an AAS degree in Information Technology with an emphasis in Network Security (Cisco crap) right before the financial collapse. Got laid off. Watched my job interviews and prospects wither away, couldn't get the money together to continue my education. Unemployment for roughly two years, falling out with my family largely precipitated by a new bitchy Boomer step mom who thought I wasn't looking for work hard enough. Flirted with homelessness. "Adopted" by girlfriend's family who I somehow attracted while homeless when her father found out I was living out of my car. Lucked into employment hacking internets via an ad I'd applied to two years previously in late 2010. Worked there a year, got some killer skills...buuuut I got fired after being made a scapegoat for a mishap that happened as a result of company-wide poorly defined protocols and poor communication with a client in regards to what they wanted tested in an app. Now I'm looking for work again, bright side is I have some awesome, hard to find skills, and I'll probably end up making around double what I was, if not more; so I'm doing pretty good.
But I've been homeless, suffered from long term unemployment, my credit is fucked because of an emergency room visit I made while I was unemployed ("Well we can't work out a payment plan but a collections agency definitely can!"), my career has been possibly permanently hijacked because of extended unemployment and absolutely shit pay at my first job, and my girlfriend is 21 and still struggling to get enough courses at community college to transfer to a university because of how clogged up everyone is with students; but I'm fucking lucky. That kills me. My generation is fucked.
Posts
Old CS majors have the best stories.
"In your day? In your day you could walk into a business, shake hands with the owner, give him your resume and he gave you a job. And Dinosaurs ruled the earth!"
You forgot bootstraps in there.
When I first got access to the internet, web browsers didn't really exist*. It was strictly Archie and Veronica/Gopher.
*I am dating the "real web" from the launch of Mosaic. Though there were web browsers before that, they weren't much used.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
Well, that was probably great advice back in the day. Of course it also helped to be a healthy, straight, white man, but nevermind, at least there was some sort of clear, objective path you could follow to getting a job and launching a career. Later on that advice morphed into "get good grades, stay in school, go to college... and THEN shake hands with the owner and hand him your resume!" But now all we have is this really fuzzy guideline like "network! Utilize social media proactively! Develop your personal brand! Think outside the box!" And since it's impossible to tell whether someone is really doing that or not, it's the perfect excuse for always blaming an individual for their joblessness, rather than realizing something is wrong with the system.
I get this a lot right now. I'm trying though. I've gotten like five interviews in two weeks.
Well, i think it's fine if you're middle-aged and have two-decades of work related experience to build up contacts from. Then you can just call up people you worked together with in the past and ask them if there's any openings at their company.
It doesn't work so well when you're fresh out of college, and all your friends are also jobless or working as interns or minimum wage grunts.
Well obviously you should just do what your parents did for a living instead of making your own life choices so you can make use of their connections.
heh that works too I suppose. Assuming your parents have connections.
My Dad told me a story once of how in his Electrical Engineering program they had this huge, refrigerator sized box of computer equipment. It was 25k of memory
My general view is now,
"Fuck you all, you're all fucked, I'm fucked, we're all fucked, what's the point?"
So, I appreciate that. It was nice when in the 90's things felt like they may end out okay, but now it's very not okay. Even as someone in high school I felt like I still had a chance to find a job, maybe work and go on to higher education. Graduation was in 98 and I've been working ever since. Haven't managed to do the college thing, as in California tuition has gone up like 11,000,000% in the last 15 years and I don't want the debt.
Most of my friends are in the same boat, the ones that went to college either have crippling debt and are working shit jobs, or had parent's who would pay for it and after struggling initially on graduation to find work have found "okay" jobs. They were only "okay" because they didn't have the additional costs associated with crippling debt. Those of us who didn't attend college get to sit around and feel like pieces of shit for not feeling comfortable with debt or having rich parents while we're told we're failures over and over for not going.
It's pretty great.
Edit: By pretty great I mean my apathy at this point is immeasurable. Fuck you all.
It works though.
One of my best friends, who was psychotically ambitious even back in high school, became a sales executive at TWO major national companies before he was 30.
All he had to do was graduate top of his class in HS, put himself through state university working nights, work 60 hours a week in internships every summer, network like a motherfucker, and then be prepared to work 80 hours a week and move anywhere in the country when the situation called for it.
For him, hard work really did pay off, but it was pretty hard work. But hey. VP by 30. The dude spends the weekends with people like Dirk Nowitzki and Marc Ecko and gets paid to do so. Pretty good for a kid whose dad is a deadbeat, his mom makes minimum wage, and his family has drug problems.
Born in '84 by the way, so juuust old enough to remember the tail end of the 80s but most of my memories come from the 90s. Haha, I remember when Nickelodeon had their "Kids election" for president in '92, and I voted for Bush Sr. Wasn't I an adorable eight year old?...adorably wrong, but still adorable! ;p
There's a glaring problem, here:
Only 1 person can graduate top of their class.
So, yeah. Not sure about that whole, "It works!" thing.
I can actually remember the year my hope died. It was in 2001. No, not THAT month. It was whichever month that Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, effectively tanking the whole thing. From then things just snowballed for the next 10 years and my life pretty much followed the same.
But I still got lucky compared to alot of people. Unlike dispatch.o I'm never given shit for not going to college; most of the people I knew who were my age and who did go never got the jobs they wanted (and were saddled with debt). The only one who did, worked for the government, go figure.
The guys in charge of the computer room were the best. Cold room stores beer well.
Let me say those years of college never did me any good, but the vocational and certification stuff has been a godsend. Also much cheaper.
I'm also glad someone else mentioned gopher. I was feeling kind of sad that it wasn't getting any love.
Assuming you could get in. I looked into it recently, and was told they had several hundred people ahead of me on the waiting list. For like, 10 positions per year.
False. Networking is getting out there and meeting people. People mistake it for neopotism, but they really aren't the same thing at all. Having your dad call his buddy to get you a job isn't networking. Attending a professional mixer and making LinkedIn buddies on the other hand is.
Oh? My electrician friend has spotty work at best. Trades have unions. Unions protect the dinosaurs.
Networking is nepotism without being a relative. Which is a distinction without a difference.
electrician's union.
Depends on the trade, and depends on the area.
Electricians is one field that has been swamped with people lately because a few years ago it was all "WE NEED TRADES!" and everyone was like, oh trades. Ok, I'll be an electrician
like there are a lot of other options where employment is good.
I am getting into Power Engineering / Stationary Engineering. There are a lot of job opportunities in this field and I am not having a problem getting job offers in this field.
Seriously, if you are sitting at your computer right now reading this post and you want a job and you are interested in trades, look into this trade. You will find a job if you stick with it, and you will make good money.
If you Completely redefine the word nepotism then it means something else, sure.
Networking is using a set of social skills with a thought to advancing your career or the careers of people in your monkey sphere.
Nepotism is giving/receiving a job based on the vagina you sprouted out of.
Nepotism, in modern usage, typically includes friends. Granted, you can also get TIPS and INFORMATION instead of outright getting handed jobs through networking, but there's a lot of nepotism involved and favors given.
Nepotism is giving jobs based on personal connections. Specifically, in this case, familial ones.
Networking is the process whereby you acquire personal connections to advance your career and land jobs.
You'd have to be incredibly obtuse to ignore how these are the same thing, with family connection replaced with social connection.
Talk to anyone in job hunting or such. You know, the people who emphasize the power of networking. Networking works because when a position opens up, they pick you because they know you and know of you.
Alot of times, jobs you get through networking get filled before anyone outside the company even knows they exist.
In short, I think the Boomers tend to be more homogeneous as a generation, whereas with the Millennials there's a sharper dichotomy between intelligent Millennials and idiotic, immature Millennials. The smart ones are REALLY smart, whereas the stupid ones make you despair of humanity.
So, work. I was working during the 90s when the economy was booming and unemployment was low, but it was a crappy job, in retrospect. So as luck would have it, I went to college as a "nontraditional student" riiiight before the economy TANKED. Actually I was pretty lucky, as I had finished my two years of community college before the bubble burst, which sent sudden FLOODS of people back to school, causing classes to fill up impossibly quickly. My frame of mind right now? Enthused about my own future, concerned about the direction the country is headed. Every day it seems there's a new news story to make me shake my head and go "WTF, America."
Nepotism is favoritism without merit on the basis of bloodlines. Networking is favoritism without merit on the basis of having eaten mini-quiche together.
Vegging out in front of the TV after work is a helluva lot easier than going to an professional/alumni thing, but you aren't going to make any acquaintainces watching big bang theory reruns.
"making friends" <> "being born on third base"
Is that actually a trade? It seems like they mostly want people with experience in civil engineering/electrical engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary_engineer
The history of the trade is that it formed from Boiler Operators.
I'm actually rather good at networking, I'm just not ignoring the inherent bullshit involved with it. Particularly of the sort that is generally talked about when it concerns job seekers and such rather than trying to expand your understanding of a field or subject matter.
Deebaser, you seem very confused.
You've decided people who point out networking is nepotism must obviously just be jealous they can't network. For ... no reason whatsoever.
The "your just jealous" argument is stupid in any context. That includes this one. It's avoiding the argument because you don't have a rebuttal.
Born in '87, "graduated" in 2005 (GED, dropped out of high school), flirted with Community College for a semester, set sails for an expensive (but accredited and transferable) trade school. Got an AAS degree in Information Technology with an emphasis in Network Security (Cisco crap) right before the financial collapse. Got laid off. Watched my job interviews and prospects wither away, couldn't get the money together to continue my education. Unemployment for roughly two years, falling out with my family largely precipitated by a new bitchy Boomer step mom who thought I wasn't looking for work hard enough. Flirted with homelessness. "Adopted" by girlfriend's family who I somehow attracted while homeless when her father found out I was living out of my car. Lucked into employment hacking internets via an ad I'd applied to two years previously in late 2010. Worked there a year, got some killer skills...buuuut I got fired after being made a scapegoat for a mishap that happened as a result of company-wide poorly defined protocols and poor communication with a client in regards to what they wanted tested in an app. Now I'm looking for work again, bright side is I have some awesome, hard to find skills, and I'll probably end up making around double what I was, if not more; so I'm doing pretty good.
But I've been homeless, suffered from long term unemployment, my credit is fucked because of an emergency room visit I made while I was unemployed ("Well we can't work out a payment plan but a collections agency definitely can!"), my career has been possibly permanently hijacked because of extended unemployment and absolutely shit pay at my first job, and my girlfriend is 21 and still struggling to get enough courses at community college to transfer to a university because of how clogged up everyone is with students; but I'm fucking lucky. That kills me. My generation is fucked.