Maybe look into some MOOCs? They have low completion rates, but it's entirely up to you to finish. Tons of data stuff out there. Try Coursera. They're generally not credit-bearing, though, so look elsewhere if you need to finish a credential.goroth wrote:I'm kinda feeling the same things.
I love my boss, love my colleagues, and enjoy my job. I think. But I've just got this growing unease, and yeah, the whole future carrot dangly thing. My skill-set is such that I could easily get a job doing the same thing somewhere else - I'm lucky there - but it is also a very specific skill-set. I saw an add for a data analyst at a music startup in stockholm, and fuck... I could almost do that sort of stuff. But I can't at all. So I'm considering going back to school, but have to figure out a way to do that while paying dem billz. Higher ed is free here, so there's that, but there isn't a whole lot of part-time education and flexible learning as the whole system is kind of designed around young folks studying full-time and leaving on a tight budget. So I dunno. I think if I genuinely hated my job or my boss it would be easier to work out what I think.
Gonna try and find a part-time course, you know just a single unit, somewhere on the webz that could get credited towards my unfinished degree in econometrics. See if it seems like a good idea to go harder.
I dunno.
TBH I think we're all going to become unemployed within our lifetimes due to AI, and that a universal wage will have to be implemented. That will solve a lot of shit. But it will also be painful along the way.
Your point about AI is really interesting, but I'm not so sure it'll happen that quick. The whole Kurzweil/singularity is near premise is really interesting, but I think it'll take a little longer. This is based on nothing but hunches, though. Maybe it's because you're a more highly-evolved scandy, and this sort of rapid progress seems possible where you are. Maybe you heard, but the U.S. recently regressed to a troglodytic state with our last election. And for better or worse, our massive economy is a stiff rudder on global development.
My little situation isn't any better--worse, if anything. It's all part of the irony of being a marxist man-child who still can't respond to authority. Somehow I criticized and worked my way to the top of a 'career college' that promotes atomized labor both in- and out of the classroom. It's almost as if my beliefs and ideals--things that kinda define my working life (and probably more of my personal life than they should) are woefully out of sync with what I do all day! WEIRD. It's 10:00, and I've already told two people they should quit and take higher-paying jobs at better places...they were hitting me up for higher wages, which they absolutely deserve. At some point this will catch up with me, but I'm constitutionally incapable of stringing people along.
Anyway, what bothers me is that I came really close to finding a way out of the bullshit. A traditional tenure-track professorship is a pretty rad job, but 1) they are rapidly disappearing and 2) the pay is surprisingly terrible in a lot of fields. That's what I'm trained for. So now I feel kinda trapped doing work that has little or no value for a failing institution that forces me to gut my brain and soul in order to 'hit my numbers' and therefore keep my children clothed and fed. Sad trombone.
Maybe I'll just hang on until Invisible Woman would like to go back to work, and then I can return to dicking around and teaching for $9 an hour.
Anyone solve the labor problem yet? I've written hundreds of pages on this subject and feel dumber than ever.
