There’s often a skill that seem interesting, but I can’t see doing anything for me in my day-to-day life. What have you learned that was a lot more effort than the payoff was worth?
People pleasing, spent nearly four decades getting so good at it thinking if only I could be just that little bit “more good” that I’d get what I want and need from people and relationships only to realize I’ve been plenty good this whole time, it’s a fools errand and I only attract people who will move the goal posts every time because it’s what I expect and have trained for
That’s sad. I’m sorry.
The vast majority of higher math and some industry-related chart interpretation as far as aviation goes.
I guess I’m probably older than 95% of the people here, so all the “spaghetti” charts we had to figure out, the actual trigonometry used to calculate wind correction angles, all of the math used to calculate EPR, thrust, and Mach speeds. Instruction in these calculations was very demanding and unforgiving. Then it all pretty much became useless as I followed the leading edge of software development and electronics moving into the cockpit. So I learned it all only to have it disappear within a few years.
I got a bunch of software certs for when I was first job hunting and now they either no longer exist or have been so changed that the certs don’t matter.
certs are scam.
but they pad your resume and make test companies a lot of money.
Depends on the cert and the environment you are already in.
For example, I’m an IT Consultant, we kind of rely on ‘professional certs’ to get work at client projects, especially if a project is covering specific niches and we have consultants that have certifications within those niches.
Also, many of the more mainline certs can definitely be worth getting (especially in the early career stages), as a quick example some of the CompTIA certs like Networking+ (a colleague got his job with us solely with that cert btw)
Network engineer here, lacking experience that net+ lets me know a person has a base understanding of networking, enough to know if they even like it. I can work with that.
That’s probably the worst part of it. In some places they’re required or very helpful to have, even though they’re still complete bs and a scam. Cisco is the perfect example. Their certs are useless and constantly changing, they’re really expensive, and they don’t really teach you about the general subject (networking). They just shill their products and their proprietary, non compatible way of doing stuff, and you pay thousands for that. Yet jobs still want those certs, even if they don’t work with Cisco.
I have to disagree with you on the Cisco stuff. It absolutely teaches you foundation networking.
I remember looking into getting Azure and GCP certs some years ago and went through a few prep courses. It turns out getting the initial certs for cloud services like them is basically to be a salesman for them. It’s like they’re training IT people inside companies to be embedded salespeople for them. Insidious, and kinda genius.
Oh yeah they do. I got my Google GAIL a while back and my son just finished up some AWS one, they are both just variations of ‘Which of our products would you use for x?’.
C|EH was more fun to study for than test for.
Belly-dancing. So difficult, and not even really fun.
As an old time computer nerd I have uncountable examples of deprecated knowledge. There is no use in knowing how to use the reserved upper memory in autoexec.bat and config.sys, nor how to use Napster or Kazaa.
But all these skills do shape your brain and way of thinking.
Assembly language taught me to be precise and think before typing. Flash taught me that nothing lasts forever, as big as it might seem.
Eventually, all this adds up and creates a profile that is very demanded in my career.
That said, my mom taught me to thread a needle without looking. And I can’t sew, so that’s that.
Learning the Dvorak keyboard layout.
It seemed worth it at the time when I was playing a lot of monkeytype and I still love typing with it. But I made the full switch and forgot how to touch type with qwerty. So now I have to switch layout every time I use hotkeys and switch back to type. Switching is fast but an extra step.
I decided to switch because I think it’s a superior layout but honestly it’s not even that worth it. You will not gain speed, just more comfortable and satisfying.
Oh hey I did this a decade ago as well!
During that time, I was obsessed with typing faster thinking that would get me paid more at my job.
A major point: you can’t help people on their computer without mentally switching
Helping coworkers was annoying. Helping my mom set up her computer was annoying.
I learned how to work hard and be good at my job and actually get things done, not just look busy and act important.
Jokes on me, the entire management make 100x more than me and do 100x less. And they get to spend hundreds of millions on stupid projects that are horrible ideas, but I have to cut back on my area to save $100.
I should have put all my stat points into soulless bullshit corporate jargon and none into intelligence.
100%. I’m not a manager but the higher I get, the more I’m paid and the less useful work I do. I just end up telling people smarter than me what I need them to do.
Coming from a working class background, it’s a difficult thing to rationalize in my mind but a friend described it well by saying “Can you do their job? - No? Then you can be the buffer against the politics and BS and keep them organized and working on the right thing so they don’t have to worry about that”
It’s a lot less fulfilling than doing practical work but I also feel like I have a lot more agency (for better or worse) than I did at lower levels.
All the useless mathematical technics from studying physics at university. Now working in software engineering, I barely use more than highschool math, sometimes.
Instead of spending weeks writing down equations I wish I had learned more about science history, breakthrough experiments, other sciences etc.
Those maths are only useful for a tiny percentage of the students that will eventually become theoritical physics researchers.
It’s the curse of studying science in France, it’s unnecessarily math heavy.I used to work for a software consulting firm and one of our clients was NASA. Nothing exciting, just replacing an expensive proprietary system written in a commercial language with an open source one used for analyzing data from the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and the then to be launched Interstellar Boundary Explorer (I BEX).
The maths were so far beyond my two time community college drop out, barely graduated high school, self taught background I couldn’t even explain them. Fortunately we used paired programming and had enough mathemagitians on staff I never had to deal with the maths alone. My contribution was mostly UI and data visualization.
Getting a private pilot certificate. Was fun, but after going to every airport within range, not sure it was worth it.
At least you didn’t go all the way through Instrument rating and Commercial license, only to realize ADHD was a thing and also not treatable while maintaining a medical.
I was already working in tech so the backup plan is chugging along fine; but goddamn the student loans…
What are the rules around flying a small plane with ADHD? I’m unclear if one needs to be off meds for an extended period to get a private license
I believe for even a third-class medical a pilot needs to be off ADHD medication for over 4 years, with additional screening/testing involved if they have been prescribed. My knowledge is limited since I have never been prescribed such meds and only realized I have some level of ADHD due to my son getting a diagnosis. He only took the meds for a year or two in elementary school before he opted to stop due to side effects and his brain overcoming that developmental hurdle.
It sounds terrible, but my advice would be that unless your ADHD is severe enough to demand medication you should never ever tell an Aviation Medical Examiner or standard doctor about ADHD suspicions if flying is something you want to do. I could technically still go fly if I found the time, and have never felt I was distracted given the degree that flying a plane engages all parts of your brain.
There is a dark side to this way of thinking though, as any sort of deviation from the norm with mental health or cognitive performance is often pushed under the rug instead of being treated due to fear of losing livelihood. A tragic example was Germanwings Flight 9525.
I’m a trained electrician. Despite taking and passing a reputable school for it, I can’t get licensed to do it in my state because you have to have 2 years apprenticeship. You get an apprenticeship you have to go through a school supported by the union. The only school supported is the one they own.
Despite being fully capable of wiring a building to code, installing a solar array or electric car chargers I can’t do shit with the information and it way a year and $2k fucking wasted.
That’s not useless, that’s a corrupt state.
Not your fault at all.
If I’d taken the time to call around and figure this out beforehand or picked a school that arranged the apprenticeships, wouldn’t be out the time and money.
I’m not upset about it, I know more now and there’s plenty of dubious electricians that will inspect my work and sign off on it if I need to do anything. Plus I’m in mental health now which is my real passion.
The local schools exist, so why would anyone really think to check if a school is locally applicable? It’s a type of problem I see often, in general: you wouldn’t have known what precise things to research until you’re faced with the actual problem. Sometimes kind and scarred souls will blast their warnings across the relevant initial source of information, but most people just move on.
But, that being said, that’s not a terrible amount of money for, presumably, a ton of relevant knowledge to any homeowner or home owning friends. I’d love some electrical knowledge and confidence, spent all my point son automotive. But I’m glad you found more passion in a different path, too.
Hey if you ever need it, hit me up. My favorite part of knowing things is helping others know things too!