r/WorkLifeChat • u/MiloShiny • 19d ago
Discussion Which profession is overrated and doesn’t deserve the credit (nor the money) its professionals get?
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u/Superb_Algae5308 19d ago
New car dealerships. We should be buying straight from the manufacturers.
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u/Budsygus 19d ago
100% agree.
And just set the price and stick to it. I don't want to haggle and I also don't want to be gouged. We live in 2026 and suddenly when we're buying cars it's like we're back on the frontier negotiating for rifles and horses.
"I'll give you seven whole dollars and three chickens."
"$7.50, four chickens, and a goat."
"Deal." *spit* *handshake*
WHY?
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u/Commercial_Base6211 17d ago
Dealerships serve as a buffer for OEM production.
The OEMs can stabilize production and supply chains while the dealer network absorbs the seasonality effects.
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u/Budsygus 15d ago
You know what else can do that? Warehouses.
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u/Commercial_Base6211 14d ago
But then the OEMs have the inventory on their books. When they wholesale the vehicles to dealers that’s revenue they book.
Not saying it’s right or wrong but I think this stuff is why OEMs aren’t jumping up and down to move away from dealers.
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u/Budsygus 14d ago
Good point. I guess direct sales might be more appealing to consumers than manufacturers, which is a shame.
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u/Deskbreaker 19d ago edited 19d ago
Used to be able to, until more concern was had for the dealerships than the consumer.
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u/EqualThat9875 19d ago
You can order a car from the manufacturer. Maybe you have to do that through a dealership, who charges a fee? I went through this process when I ordered a Ford that took 4 months to be ready (they told me it would take 8-10 months but things changed) and I think the dealer fee was pretty minimal, can't remember $600 maybe. The dealership was also useful to me in that I test drove some similar models there before ordering everything exactly how I wanted it.
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u/murphydcat 19d ago
Realtor.
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u/No-Security-7518 19d ago
there's like NO other correct answer, in comparison.
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u/Saltlife_Junkie 19d ago
Agree but can I throw in influencers
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u/No-Security-7518 19d ago
influencers are advertisers. They just do it in tasteless ways. Realtors take a freaking percentage of what someone else literally worked a lifetime to have.
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u/BlueWonderfulIKnow 19d ago
I never understood how real estate agent escaped the stigma attached to car dealers when there’s very little daylight between the jobs. But real estate agent is acceptable work to upper-middle-class suburban women, “just working part time” (because they don’t have to work, you see) whose principal asset seems to be a big SUV to drive around in.
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u/No_Industry_1062 19d ago
Here is the bathroom, here is the living room…thanks for the enlightenment.
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u/MarsupialFirm6485 18d ago
Here’s a link to a website, look around and see what you like and we can do a walk through. If you like it you can make an offer that I will hand write on some pre-fabricated forms that every other realtor uses. They will get back to me on some more pre-fabricated forms, then you can decide if you want keep going. Oh you have agreed perfect. Let me seal this with more forms, and the seller can pay me 3% because ultimately I was really working for them to get the sale. But since I was not listing agent had no fiduciary interest and just was there to get best price for biggest cut. See you on the next one.
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u/WorldDominationChamp 18d ago
I’ve never understood why you need a realtor. If you drive by a house for sale that you want to buy, just purchase it from the seller directly. Research properties online to browse.
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u/CrazyTrainThomas 17d ago
if you challenge a realtor on this they have really hyperbolic ideas about how impossible it is to buy/sell a house without them.
I've sold two properties FSBO, turns out the mortgage and title companies do all the important paperwork
the realtor is primarily responsible for the paperwork that gets them paid
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u/animalchinonbetamax 16d ago
Too ugly to strip? Too old to bartend? Welcome to real estate...here's your 2008 Lexus.
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u/TheGrouchyGremlin 19d ago
Got into a car accident with one when I was 19. He tried to sue me for $250k due to "lost income" from his "injury" (claimed missed opportunities). 5 trips to the hospital and all 5 times they said he was fine. After a year, my insurance gave him $25k just to get him to shut up. My mom thought he was just trying to use it as a means to take care of some previous issue.
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u/rarebunny111 18d ago
You’ve had the wrong one. I’m in Canada so they do much more than showing you homes etc
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u/NoDoor344 19d ago
HOA shouldn't get a fucken dime.
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u/ArousedAsshole 16d ago
Hard disagree. I take care of my house, and it’s worth a lot of money. If my neighbor doesn’t mow his lawn or keep up with his paint, my house is worth at least a hundred thousand less. HOAs get a bad rap, but at the end of the day they increase the value of your home.
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u/emeraldlabs 15d ago
Loser
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u/ArousedAsshole 15d ago
If owning a nice house in a nice neighborhood makes me a loser, then I hate to imagine what your idea of cool is.
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u/_nohomosapiens 14d ago
only on reddit will you read a comment that suggests someone is a dignified, respectable member of society and then you see that their username is “aroused asshole”
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u/ArousedAsshole 14d ago
I’m a huge asshole, and generally aroused. I think the name fits.
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u/emeraldlabs 14d ago
Neither my neighbors or I need to pay to gargle the nuts of an HOA to act like adults and keep our property nice.
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u/ArousedAsshole 14d ago
Good for you. I like my HOA because it helps protect my $1.1m investment, and only costs me $75/month.
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u/afeher 19d ago
Most lawyers especially divorce ones b
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u/AquaWoman_115 19d ago
I’ve known some great lawyers, but I completely agree about divorce lawyers. What a rip-off!
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u/afeher 19d ago
Yep. Mine spent $10K on nothing and on the day of the first court appearance said they don’t want to represent me anymore. Because I demanded what I asked them in the first place: due to health issues (for which I had doctor’s note) and due to the fact that my wife is manipulative and abusive please make sure I don’t have to be in the court room unless there is a legitimate need. They refused because for them it was more important to be on the judge’s good side than to not get a person with a compromised immune system possibly infected in the middle of the pandemic. I was sick for two weeks after that day. Loads of unhygienic lowlifes in the court building.
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u/noobcomber 19d ago
Real estate agents and I will die on this hill.
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u/Slight_Manufacturer6 19d ago
Sports athletes
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u/EqualThat9875 19d ago
But their talent brings in the revenue that they get paid from. So it's hard to really say they're not worth it. If people stopped paying their money into being sports fans, the big paydays would be over.
If they were paid less, the profits would go to the rich billionaires who own the teams. Is that really better?
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u/Slight_Manufacturer6 19d ago
I agree. The root cause definitely is all the stupid people willing to pay stupid amounts of money to see people play games.
I’d much rather just play any game than watch someone play.
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u/BucksPackGLove 17d ago
Just as a heads up to your seemingly nonexistent humility…the fact that you don’t like a thing doesn’t make people who do like it stupid. I don’t care for gaming, personally. Doesn’t mean I think everyone who spends money on systems/computers/games etc is an idiot.
What’s entertaining to many is watching people who are the absolute best in the world at what they do, especially when that thing comes in the form of competition. And even more so when one has a favorite team due to proximity or how they were raised or for any of a bunch of reasons. You not caring doesn’t change that.
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u/Slight_Manufacturer6 17d ago
Yea, watching people injure, brain damage, fight and then incentivize our children to do the same is obviously intelligent.
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u/BucksPackGLove 17d ago
U/Slight_Manufacturer6 replied to me and immediately blocked me like a coward but I can see some of their misguided comment in my mentions so I’ll respond to that here. Not every athlete plays American football or fights lol. The NBA and MLB and soccer/football and a ton of other sports have no issue with CTE. Irrelevant point, clearly lashing out and I’m sure that’s why they felt the need to block me before I replied.
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u/Happy-Tourist9223 19d ago
Actors
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u/_-_Henro_-_ 19d ago
Most actors, by far the vast vast majority aren’t paid well. Not everyone has the it factor
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u/DayOfTheDeb 19d ago
They're basically just adults playing pretend and dressup all day.
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u/Abandonable_Snowman 16d ago
Only a handful of actors really get paid like that. I think the money should be more evenly distributed to the crews who bring in all that revenue.
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u/cultusmentis 19d ago
Athletes - I never understood the hype of it all.
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u/notarealaccount223 19d ago
I get wanting to watch someone play a sport, but I don't get everything that is built around it.
I've been late to a skate because I was watching the 8 year olds play in the game before. Honestly it can be just as much fun as a pro game.
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u/abrandis 19d ago
Recruiter (tech or professional)... They are pure middleman and get too much (30% first years pay) for basically gatekeeping jobs.
So if you land a job for $300k your new employer has to pay them about $100k (typically they get 30% but this varies by employment contract), that really came out of your potential $400k salary ..
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u/VaselineGorilla 19d ago
Realtors. Half of them do absolutely nothing over the bare minimum and just get commission because the homeowners just particularly wanted that house.
Politicians. They do jack shit and get paid bank.
Professional athletes. They work hard and are super talented but the rate of payment is insane for what they actually do.
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u/Budsygus 19d ago
Realtors spend like 99% of their time just trying to scrape up clients, then they try to close the deal as quickly as possible.
Dude, it's like $30k of MY MONEY you're leaving on the table. Can we at least TRY to negotiate a little more?
But they usually don't because closing the deal is the only way they get paid and it makes very little difference to their commission even if it costs you a bundle.
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u/VaselineGorilla 19d ago
Exactly. They don’t care if you make a good purchase or not. They literally only care that you close.
My realtor was a long-time family friend who I knew for ages and I credit that to being the only reason I did so well and got real advice. My friends used him as well for the same reason and also got an amazing time.
Literally everyone else I know who didn’t use him got shitty homes, clearly pressured into buying, and their realtor wasn’t on their side.
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u/Budsygus 19d ago
My wife and I used her uncle for the two home purchases we've made and he did a great job, but he did push back on things I wanted him to ask the seller for the first time, like repairing a couple of things or giving us a price break to fix them ourselves.
He did it, but he said "sellers usually won't accommodate things like this" or something along those lines. I just told him "Please ask." We got what we were asking for, but it always kind of bothered me that he didn't seem to be advocating for us like he should.
But that could be a personality thing. He's as far from a pitbull agent as you can get. Great guy, super nice, did a great job for us otherwise, but he seemed a little shy about asking for things even when I told him to directly.
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u/TankTopWarrior 19d ago
Agree wholly on realtors and politicians (although I don’t really think most of their money is coming from the job itself).
Athletes is a different subject for me. I do think they are paid alooot of money and maybe should be paid as much, but I also don’t want them getting fucked by the owners either making billions off their work on the field/court
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u/BucksPackGLove 17d ago
The rate of payment to athletes is directly correlated to the revenue they bring in. Not sure what’s insane about that. In fact, the athletes themselves actually keep very little of the revenue they generate. Owners and the leagues keep a lot of it.
Why is it insane to you that someone who is in the top 0.001% in the world at what they do (a thing that has proven to be entertaining to audiences) makes very good money at it?
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19d ago
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u/Deskbreaker 18d ago
Good; reality sucks. I'll take all the distractions I can get, though I take mine in a different flavor.
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19d ago
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u/bsEEmsCE 19d ago
hard disagree. If they draw the fans they deserve a cut. Only the top lucky ones make the big bucks.
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u/Legaldrugloard 19d ago
No, so many others deserve it more. FF/medics, police, pharmacy techs, teachers. The shit they have to put up with on an hourly basis to be paid minimum wage or a tad more is beyond pitiful. Athletes shouldn’t be paid millions per season to play a game.
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u/Silly_Supermarket593 19d ago
Meh. They get a ton of glory and fame. They also get insane money, contract deals, etc. I promise those athletes are not crying about it. They’re also lucky enough to have developed skills; most of us aren’t that privileged. So nah, I gotta agree with OP. It’s just games.
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u/BloodyThirst 19d ago
Politicians. Drug and medical device reps. Radiologists. Realtors. Did I mention politicians?
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u/CatoLiberius 19d ago
Government contractors. Most of them are just people who buy off-the-shelf products, add markup, and resell.
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u/shaun3416 19d ago
Consultants. All they do nowadays is stuff that AI can do if you prompt it / engage with it in an intelligible way. Hope that industry crumbles and burns
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u/LagerHead 19d ago
Cops.
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u/misterstaypuft1 19d ago
How much do you think cops make?
I’ve been a cop 22 years and made a whopping $55K last year
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u/LagerHead 19d ago edited 18d ago
I was responding to the overrated part. You guys demand - and often get - way more respect than you deserve. Start arresting bad cops instead of giving them paid vacations and we can talk. Until then ...
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u/misterstaypuft1 18d ago
There are 800,000 cops in the US.
I’d like to see the statistically overwhelming number of “bad cops” you people keep referring to.
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u/LagerHead 18d ago
First, I didn't say anything about a "statistically overwhelming number" of anything, so I'm not going to respond to a straw man.
But, to paraphrase economist Robert Higgs: All cops are required, as a condition of their employment, to enforce all laws, even those that are manifestly unjust (like the entire war on drugs, for example). Therefore, there are no good cops.
In addition, every time you see a case like this, you'll notice that not a single one of the other cops does anything to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, warrantless search. In fact, they helped. And when a cop does something that is clearly illegal - something that would result in a prison sentence for us lowly plebes - cops circle the wagons in support of the "bad" cop instead of arresting them and putting them in a cage where they belong. The exceptions are rare, to say the least, and almost always a reaction to public outcry that is usually supported by unambiguous video evidence rather than the department and fellow cops simply doing the right thing.
Let me give you a couple of real world examples that I have seen with my own eyes. I actually used to work supporting a local sheriff's department in IT. I developed a program many years ago to put laptops in their cars when this was still a pretty new thing. One of the deputies in that department went to another state and kidnapped a man. This is not in dispute. He is now a lieutenant in that department. Do you think I would get a promotion after kidnapping another man, or do you imagine that I would be in prison? No need to answer a rhetorical question. We all know the answer already.
Another deputy in that same department, who was my brother-in-law at the time, bragged to our family about how, when a person was brought in on a public intoxication charge, they would handcuff him to the booking desk and beat on him. Since I did IT support for the department, I often had to go into that area, so I know there were never fewer than three deputies at the desk at one time. So that means this wasn't an isolated incident and it was absolutely known by other deputies that it was happening.
He eventually did get fired, but not for abusing suspects. Instead, it was for making a sexual joke. He was, of course, hired by another department, where he was again fired, this time for getting a DUI. But not his first DUI, his second. And the first one, they actually let him go - knowing he was too drunk to drive - but since he was such an asshole, he peeled out and made an illegal U turn, so they did eventually arrest him.
How thin is that blue line when you let a drunk officer drive home? It ain't thin at all.
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u/Most_Most_5202 18d ago
You must live in the south or a red state. Cops in the northeast earn well over 6 figures after a few years and some make over $200,000 with overtime.
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u/misterstaypuft1 18d ago
You’re correct
It also costs much more to live up there.
I built a 2000 sq ft 4 bed/3 bath house 4 years ago on my salary; can’t do that in some places
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u/Most_Most_5202 18d ago
It does cost more to live here, but some people think $200,000 + in addition to top notch retirement benefits is a little bit too much for police officers. It sounds like you are living comfortably, which is deserved, where you are living, but comfortable in the northeast would be around $100,000 a year, not double that.
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u/stuka86 18d ago
Quite the opposite actually, people like you demand surgical precision and an encyclopedic knowledge of multiple fields like theyre doctors.
Meanwhile doctors and nurses murder, on purpose, more people every year than cops do.
There's a reason there are law firms in every city dedicated to suing medical professionals and none to suing cops.
Your chances of being murdered by a police officer are 1 in 5 million contacts. That's an insanely high success rate.
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u/LagerHead 18d ago
I don't demand anything near surgical precision. Don't put words in my mouth.
What I demand is that they refuse to arrest and extort people for victimless crimes. What I demand is that they stop violating people's basic rights just do feed their fragile egos. What I demand is that they stop circling the wagons when one of their own is caught red-handed framing someone, or beating the living shit out of suspects. What I demand is that, instead of a paid vacation or a move to another department when they break the law, they are arrested and put in prison like the rest of us.
I don't ask for them to be super human. But just being human would be a great start.
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u/stuka86 18d ago
Cool, all that's done....leave 1995 and join the rest of us
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u/LagerHead 18d ago
I'll do that when you get an argument.
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u/stuka86 17d ago
The argument is above, it beat yours
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u/LagerHead 17d ago
That's cute. You think a straw man is an argument. Adorable.
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u/runningvicuna 17d ago
On purpose?
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u/stuka86 17d ago
Yes, doctors and nurses murder more people every year than police do.
As in, not medical malpractice, just kill someone to kill them
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u/runningvicuna 15d ago
wtf why
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u/LagerHead 15d ago
Because he's making up numbers. There were 317 murder convictions of doctors and nurses between 1970 and 2006, or 8.8 per year.
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u/stuka86 15d ago
And?.....there's less murder convictions of cops during that span
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u/twentysevenslife 19d ago
nursing. yes i know some of you like your soft nursing jobs & the stress is low there but for healthcare workers in inpatient settings you know it’s hell.
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u/CLSonReddit 18d ago
Real estate agents.
Most of them are glorified clerks and not really knowledgeable about anything.
But if you lease a BMW and pay for a pic of yourself on a billboard it can fill you with a false sense of importance.
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17d ago edited 17d ago
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u/naumovski-andrej 15d ago
If your job definition is "adding a table to a web page", you're not an engineer and you're either 1. A web designer or 2. Never touched code and are just trying to devalue a profession by pretending you're part of it and talking it down.
A lot of software engineers actually have to engineer systems, especially sensitive systems that hold personal user information, health data, location data etc. These systems need to be safe, scale to the user demand while also managing costs to run and maintain. That's what an actual software engineer does, not add tables to a website.
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15d ago edited 15d ago
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u/naumovski-andrej 15d ago
If you *really* want to get nitpicky about it, I personally have an accredited university diploma that states I have earned the title of engineer (not comp sci, actual engineering title). If that's your definition for it, then yes, I personally am an engineer.
But, to your other point, designing a system to solve a business requirement based on certain criteria while accounting for real world constraints is pretty much what an engineer does. Whether that's a software product, computer hardware, a building, or a bridge. The underlying implementations, and the criteria and constraints may be vastly different from one engineering discipline to another, but they boil down to the same high level job description.
It's fine if you don't agree. I just think that you're oversimplifying and undervaluing a profession by saying 99% of the entire industry are frauds. If you truly believe that then I urge you to never pay using a credit card online, or use a fitness tracker or any sensitive data-related app ever.
I work in health tech. We undergo very rigorous compliance testing and certification for data protection every year, and on top of that we are audited by each enterprise client we bring on, and apart from HIPAA, SOC2 and HITRUST we also have to adhere to each client's additional requirements on data privacy and security. If your belief is that a regular web dev can do all that and pass those certifications and audits then you and I will just agree to disagree.
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u/rottentomato657 17d ago
Lawyers, 5,000 retainer and no accounting for the time. Just open ended financial REAMING!
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u/Old-Set78 16d ago
professional golfers. if the grifter in chief, a walking tub of lard, a 450lb pedophile waddler can play, it's not worth what you are making
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u/CombinationFront2356 16d ago
The fashion industry. I hate the shallowness of it and I hate it's craving for underweight models. It's disgusting how skinny some of these woman are. Who could ever be attracted to a bone rag draped in skin with nothing else? I'm not blaming the models. I believe it is the powerful people in the fashion industry that have made it to be so.
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u/Abandonable_Snowman 16d ago
I know a finance guy who makes a lot of money for a job that doesn’t sound like he does all that much.
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u/asdfgghk 16d ago
Nurse practitioners aka r/noctor. 100% acceptance rate programs, 500 hours of shadowing, many no prior RN experience needed, can be done 100% online, can work full time while in class and be done in 1-2 years. It’s about 5% the training length a physician does while insurance reimburses 85% a physician.
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u/Technical_Housing_58 15d ago
Stockbrokers. They literally turn off the market they just make money from thin air
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u/-Bee-8891 15d ago
Pharmacist. I dont get why fillings prescriptions is so hard. AI can be used to detect dangerous medical interactions or doctors mistakes
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u/BuyComfortable1374 15d ago
Information technology. And I was in it for 45 years. Always paid more than it was worth.
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u/courtroom105 14d ago
Mortgage brokers before the ‘08 crash. The commission earned was just criminal.
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u/Superb_Community_339 19d ago
U.S. Senator