it's really beautiful, places that previously were unionizable now making major wins, amazon, starbucks, wallmart, fast food workers even I fear however, after some initial advances, a certain beurocratized, compromised, 'friendly with management' psyop might take place, this is what's happened to traditional business unions: the teamsters, afl-cio, It's important now more than ever to push for autonomous unions, direct worker self management, wildcat organizing and all that, lest the non-profit industrial complex take over

https://www.prole.info/ tho

Unions can be great, but i feel like they have been heavily weakened by the fact so many workers today are working as "independent" (myself included) and it could be useful to push for more unionization between self employed people

>>33 yeah working conditions are very very different from the old days where everyone in town worked in 1 or a handful of big factories. Now it's all about small centers of production, capital intensive labor, lots of little work sites, they call it 'post fordism' SO it's very easy to just fire everyone at a location or close down a shop completely if the threat of unionization appears. Not to mention all the propaganda and surveillance corporations like walmart or amazon do. Also an issue where the old business unions are completely in bed with management, refuse to take any radical action and are completely adsorbed into the democratic party or support reactionary politics. So new organizational forms are absolutely necessary, unions that go by region or industry, that cater to independent workers Personally i think a more informal approach to unionization might help, like unions organized in secret as affinity gruops, utilization decentralized encrypted apps that can't be easily monitored by cops or employers

this meme is, in both form and content, perfect

One other thing to note (from Circle 2) is that you'll want to have 3 or 4 projects under your belt. Contributing to Open Source projects is a good way to do this, also doing work on the Linux Kernel (google 'How to do a linux kernel patch', it's easy and looks really impressive). Definitely have 1 or 2 decent projects you've done yourself, too. = 3rd Circle: Gluttony = Time to interview. Cracking the Code Interview and HackerRank questions, as mentioned before, will get you most of the way. Understanding Agile/Scrum and being able to speak to managerial bullshit is pretty important too. To be honest, I've failed a lot of interviews. The more you interview, the better you'll get at them. It's best to not seem too hungry, but feign enthusiasm if you can. The big key to interviews (besides passing the BS questions) is twofold- Being able to 'talk shop', and seeming like someone they would want to work with. In general, talking casually to engineers is just like posting on stackoverflow/reddit/etc, but a lot of college grads fail that. Another mistake I've made is trying to seem too much like a hardcore techie- usually people want to work with someone with outside interests, so talk about cars or video games or Bakunin/Goldman or whatever Have a salary expectation in mind before you go into the interview. Glassdoor is a useful tool for finding out what people at a certain company make, but companies will manipulate that to make applicants ask for less. It's always fine to aim a little high and let them talk you down. If you can, be willing to relocate- often times places will pay for a move, and being willing to move will open a lot of doors. Prepare a few references.. In the US they usually won't try to call someone at your 'current' job, so use that to your advantage if needed. When you get to the on-site interview, don't wear a fucking suit. Ever. Be absurdly polite to everyone, etc.

6th Circle: Heresy At this point, I just want to list a bunch of easy cheats that you can do to pad your resume. Some of these will be more achievable after you've been in the industry for a bit. - Conference Talks Submit to a bunch of conferences. Most people are half awake at these things and you can get away with a powerpoint and a few jokes. - Open Source Stuff I wrote a script to find typos in major repos, and automatically submit PRs to fix them. I now list a bunch of contributions to major repos on my resume. You can also actually contribute to open source, if you aren't an asshole like me. As I said before, doing quick fixes on the Linux Kernel is easy and looks really impressive. - Mentoring/Community I won't be cavalier about this one, giving back is super important. - Editing Books You can do side work peer reviewing books. Hit up publishers, they always need people to do this and you can list book credits in your resume. My name is in a bunch of fancy sounding tech books just because they let me lol - Writing Books

7th Circle: Violence? This is another one that is pretty important the whole way through, I just forgot to list it at the first part. Web Presence. When you apply for jobs, the recruiter will google your name. You will need to have a github, and you probably want to have a blog. - Github Put your IRL name on your github, and include it in your resume. There are a few tricks to 'padding' your github account. Fork a bunch of repos that look cool. Make a few more impressive sounding projects, even if they are nonexistant projects don't have code in them - Recuiters rarely actually look at code. Run this: https://github.com/avinassh/rockstar it's a script to make it look like you constantly upload onto github. Contribute fixes to small repos, github will list those repos in your page (even for tiny fixes). Put everything you possibly can in your github.

= 8th Circle: Fraud = 'Imposter Syndrome' is bourgeoisie guilt. You will probably encounter it at some point. This guide was meant to be a bit flippant and humorous, but the truth is there's really no actual way to completely 'fake' your way into software. If you start to feel like you're an imposter, the best thing to do is just improve- start learning/doing things and you'll be feeling better in no time, or at least you'll be a better imposter. = 9th Circle: Treachery = There's a good chance you'll eventually get burnt out. This compounds with the realization that basically every other worker (especially those that aren't class traitors) is probably working considerably harder than you. The truth is that the software engineering field is not only very mentally taxing, but can be extremely soul crushing. To paraphrase some asshole, the best engineers in the field are mostly working on better ways to put an ad in someones face. It's easier than you think to get sucked into believing corporate culture bullshit. The software industry is innovating mind control management techniques at an impressive pace. Falling for these traps will almost guarantee burnout for anyone that is a remotely critical thinker. I don't really have a solution for burnout, but I can attest to it being real. Techies, especially devs, are often tedious people to be around. The culture that has grown from 'googly-startups-types' is a special type of consumerist hell. Most of these people will fill their sad existences with funko pops, neoliberalism and video games or whatever, but I suspect most Lagunanons will be unable to find happiness wallowing in the scraps of consumerism. Donating time to the Free Software Foundation and humanitarian libre software projects feels good, and the people involved in the libre side of things are often a breath of fresh air compared to the patagonia-wearing-brogrammers you usually deal with. Eventually you'll begin to wonder if any of it is worth it, and wonder why after all of these years all you have to show for it is a shitty apartment, strained relationships with your loved ones, a drug addiction and carpul tunnel syndrome. You'll consider moving to a non-extradition country and selling exploits to organized crime, or something. Thaddeus isn't all he's cracked up to be, he doesn't even work with Americans and you don't really want to deal with organized crime anyways

good post thanks for the info

great advice, we'll see where this takes me :)

I left my call center job a while ago because I needed to travel and picked up remote work doing transcription and other stuff like that, making well below minimum wage. Then Covid Hit and everyone at my old job is working remotely and got a raise. Meanwhile, the online freelance places I've been working has been flooded with new people so it's impossible to get a gig.

Fuckin hell

been unemployed and looking for a job, now no hope of finding a job lol,

It really looks like we're entering depression right now.

thanks for the info

the ping pong tables are the worst…

>>11
you can't suck at ping pong, lest you lose status, can't be too good at ping pong, lest you outshine the master, if you don't like ping pong, then you're a debbie downer, don't have team spirit etc.

I wanna be in the tech field, currently learning infosec, not good enough to freelance. I'm tired of telling people to turn their router on and off and getting yelled at for customers not paying their bills.

> I'm tired of telling people to turn their router on and off and getting yelled at for customers not paying their bills

fucking same, worked for Hulu and At&T, Verizon etc. tech support for boomers is the worst, they get so fucking made about the most basic thing

> currently learning infosec, not good enough to freelance


Shits tough, personally i wish i had gotten into this stuff at an earlier age, but then you're never to old to learn.

I'm sure you're aware of most/all of this stuff, but just gonna post some resources

The Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual is a great resource https://www.isecom.org/OSSTMM.3.pdf

Someone dated pentesting framework but still fairly useful http://www.vulnerabilityassessment.co.uk/Penetration%20Test.html

Owasp has a lot of great resources as well
https://owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/assets/archive/OWASP_Web_Application_Penetration_Checklist_v1_1.pdf

Somewhat longer list https://owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/latest/3-The_OWASP_Testing_Framework/1-Penetration_Testing_Methodologies

In terms of security focused distro, parrot >>> kali imo

>>4
Employers looks at certs more than anything

some other things to check out along similar lines
Comptia certs are pretty easy to get and really help in getting some kind of IT position, most of the certification any computer nerd would already know, half of getting an IT job is a confidence act … https://www.comptia.org/certifications

Amazon AWS is also useful though they are evil
https://aws.amazon.com/certification/

I'd also recommend looking into red-hat certification, it's really easy to practice sysadmin stuff on home network and easier than pentesting type stuff… https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/certification-central

A similar line of work is locksmithing, practice picking locks at home, get a cert, work as an apprentce etc.

>>6
I got sec+, but it didn't help me much. I live in the middle of nowhere so that not to surprising and there isn't much to apply for with corona.

>>7
true, getting a job anywhere right now's gonna be a hassel, i think the economies being restructured toward everything being more remote, but hten the few places that advertise remote jobs are pretty floode with applicants right now