Bootstrappers guide to being successful.

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scientia potentia est
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All you americans are fired.

A good read from buzzfeed of all places.

All you Americans are Fired - BuzzFeed News
Yea H-2's and even most H-1's are total BS. I remember in the late 90's at a company I worked at, we had a chinese development manager, and he had a group of chinese H1B's working for him that did projects, never with us, and we were instructed not to talk to them. He ferried them back and forth to an apartment he rented for them and they never went anywhere else. They worked 12-13 hours a day. Similar to the article they'd post ads to say they tried to hire people but couldn't so they brought these chinese workers over. H1B's are supposed to be paid the "prevailing wage" but they obviously weren't. Total scam.
 

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
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Yea H-2's and even most H-1's are total BS. I remember in the late 90's at a company I worked at, we had a chinese development manager, and he had a group of chinese H1B's working for him that did projects, never with us, and we were instructed not to talk to them. He ferried them back and forth to an apartment he rented for them and they never went anywhere else. They worked 12-13 hours a day. Similar to the article they'd post ads to say they tried to hire people but couldn't so they brought these chinese workers over. H1B's are supposed to be paid the "prevailing wage" but they obviously weren't. Total scam.
Vote Rubio or Hillary tho because fixing that shit would be racist.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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Saw a video not long ago of a company that had put on a conference on how to work the H1 visas to your advantage. How to advertise for jobs so that nobody would be qulaified, where to advertise for them and such. The whole deal was so you could hire foreigners with little to no hassle.
 

Vegetoee_sl

shitlord
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That's just sad. People are so greedy, they'd sell out their own sons and daughters. What pieces of work this country breeds.
 

Mist

Eeyore Enthusiast
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The part about how life is still a competition even though it looks like there should be plenty for everyone is something I wish someone had told me when I was younger.

The rest of the stuff is the kind of unfairness that only dumb people complain about.

The kind of unfairness that smart people complain about is that the game is rigged to benefit those that are already winning, in ways that discourage people who aren't already winning from even bothering to try.
 

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scientia potentia est
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The kind of unfairness that smart people complain about is that the game is rigged to benefit those that are already winning, in ways that discourage people who aren't already winning from even bothering to try.
Get to winning then, the game is fun up here.
 

Borzak

Bronze Baron of the Realm
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I know this will get laughed at. But give up on the dream job and just get a job that pays. Don't bitch and whine and be an above average worker with a decent attitude and you will move up. I'm not at my dream job. I don't work with anyone at their dream job. The ones I count as sucessful aren't all that well educated formally (except the engineers). The guy in the other half of the business I ran had a high school diploma, worked as a welder and showed above average intelligence and didn't bitch. Moved his way up running one half of a multi million dollar business. I have a GED.

It won't happen overnight, lot of people think because they have X degree or they are smart they should start out at the top. Doesn't work that way. The president of the company I just left has a high school diploma from not the best school district, worked as an iron worker for a fair amount of time, moved into the office as a project coordinator to the field, then project manager, then president of a 450 million per year company.
 

Urlithani

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Have any of you ever felt like the fire inside died down? How did you get it back? I've been with my company for over 10 years. It's a good, privately owned family company. Instead of accepting my resignation 3 years ago when my wife and I decided to move to TX (to be near her family), they kept me on and would start training me to doing offsite stuff. Basically:

- 37 years old. Dropped out of high school, got a GED. Started this job in the mailroom, moved to warehouse, now I fly around the lower 48 putting together new retail stores (It's a franchise company). I'm on the road Mon-Fri. I'm probably not going to find another job making over 50K/yr, 5 weeks paid vacation, and a 401k with 4% match with my education level.
- My wife and I have a 1 year old boy, and we are going to have another boy, due around July 31st. Obviously this is the biggest game changer, and watching him crawl, then walk, and then say "dada" for the first time through facetime has made work hard.
- Debt: ER visit to the vet for a dog, a couple credit cards near max, and a difference in philosophy with my wife about money stresses me out when I'm working.

In essence, my work performance has suffered because I can't see past the next few years where we won't be doing much of anything but paying down debt, and I'll be gone a lot of the time while my sons grow up. I need to harness these things into an incentive to work harder instead of letting it drag me down.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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Have any of you ever felt like the fire inside died down? How did you get it back? I've been with my company for over 10 years. It's a good, privately owned family company. Instead of accepting my resignation 3 years ago when my wife and I decided to move to TX (to be near her family), they kept me on and would start training me to doing offsite stuff. Basically:

- 37 years old. Dropped out of high school, got a GED. Started this job in the mailroom, moved to warehouse, now I fly around the lower 48 putting together new retail stores (It's a franchise company). I'm on the road Mon-Fri. I'm probably not going to find another job making over 50K/yr, 5 weeks paid vacation, and a 401k with 4% match with my education level.
- My wife and I have a 1 year old boy, and we are going to have another boy, due around July 31st. Obviously this is the biggest game changer, and watching him crawl, then walk, and then say "dada" for the first time through facetime has made work hard.
- Debt: ER visit to the vet for a dog, a couple credit cards near max, and a difference in philosophy with my wife about money stresses me out when I'm working.

In essence, my work performance has suffered because I can't see past the next few years where we won't be doing much of anything but paying down debt, and I'll be gone a lot of the time while my sons grow up. I need to harness these things into an incentive to work harder instead of letting it drag me down.
There's a few things going on here to address:
1) You have to get a handle for your finances - you didn't specify but you imply the wife is a spender. You (or her) making more money will never fix this. You just have to deal with it, see a therapist if needed.
2) Don't sell yourself short because of your education. Experience >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Education in almost every field. I might be missing a few > signs. Identify what roles or niche your position has created for you and find comparable roles in other companies. Don't just look at identical titles, understand what you do and how you do it. 50K is not a lot of money for anyone with serious experience in a field where random people can't just show up and do the job well. That said, you didn't really state what you do. If you manage new build outs top to bottom with 7 figure budgets you are likely underpaid. If you just stock shelves, well... you need to make some serious investment in catch up.
3) You have to get some self-motivation back. If that takes flagellating yourself over missing your children to kick your ass in gear to get back in the game, do it. You have to be in a good position mentally when you look for other jobs, and you should. Clean up your resume and get digging.
 

AngryGerbil

Poet Warrior
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The part about how life is still a competition even though it looks like there should be plenty for everyone is something I wish someone had told me when I was younger.
Amen.

Good of you to even notice.

Know that you do not live in a garden, you actually live on a battlefield.

Welcome to it.

And I think I agree. Learning this fact at a young age would probably be advantageous, in general.
 

Talos

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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The kind of unfairness that smart people complain about is that the game is rigged to benefit those that are already winning, in ways that discourage people who aren't already winning from even bothering to try.
Why should the wealth of other people discourage anyone? As long as someone isn't expecting to become the next Bill Gates there should be nothing to discourage them from working their hardest to become somebody. Know your capabilities and have realistic expectations.
 

Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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I don't think Mist is talking about wealth being discouraging but that there is a system in place that discourages. If you take a group of people and you tell them their whole lives the system is rigged against them, that they are judged by the color of their skin, that they'll never be treated fairly, and then use programs to incentivize the destruction of their families under the guise of helping them, it's going to be tougher for them to get out there and make a real go of it.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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The brutal reality is also that not everyone is useful to society. Lots of people would be dead with more scarcity. I think that's a point that gets glossed over in the "endless garden" nonsense. Many people are where they are because they have no remarkable skillsets, no useful physical capabilities and they generally don't care about anything but TV and being comfortable so those things don't change. Those people just don't qualify for more than the little they get for what they do.

None of that is prefect and it doesn't always work out but when dealing with societal scale issues you have to deal with the broader scope.
 

Borzak

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Somewhere along the way a good portion of people got it in their mind they have to be a big shot, fulfilled, a dream job or whatever at work. It's a job. You go to work, earn money to take care of your family. You do what you gotta do and the rest of the time is your time to be satisfied.

If you can do all those things so be it, but it's not a requirement in life. You can take a job that's not flashy/rewarding or whatever, work at it and become pretty sucessful in life.