this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
39 points (97.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

44176 readers
1365 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Dunno if this violates rule 3 but here I go: I am a 21 year old male currently living with a family member, I only have a DL and a High School Diploma and nothing else. I'm in the deep south so trade unions are hard to get into. I have a disqualifying condition so I can't join the military. Getting a job is difficult because they never respond. Question in title.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Grenfur@pawb.social 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

While I can't tell you how it works for everyone, I can tell you how it worked for me. I too grew up in the deep south, small town of 100 people, middle of absolute nowhere. I do have a college degree but in a field entirely unrelated to what I do.

It boils down to playing the game a bit. General rule of thumb is that you should never stay in a position for more than about 2 years. You SHOULD if possible stick with a company for 3-5 years. This will cover two things that recruiters are looking at on resumes, promotability and tenure. The basics of it is that at 2 years you should be seeking a promotion, if it doesn't come, you're looking for a different company. It's annoying, but 'raises' at most companies are ass and won't outpace inflation. You're chasing a 'raise' through either a promotion or a new job.

My journey. I started out in the hotel industry, thought it would be a good way to go (Protip, it isn't). Pay was shit, work life balance was awful, working with the general public is a nightmare. I made something dumb like $10 an hour as a Secretary. But at 2 years I got promoted to Sales Assistant, 1 year from there I took a slight promo/side-grade to the Front Desk (Not a pay increase but into a position where I had more promotion opportunities). 2 Years at the desk before I was manager of the FD. Still shit pay, still shit hours. Realized pretty quick that was where my upward mobility would stop, but even in the south 35K a year won't pay bills... What I did have though was 6ish years at a company and 2.5 promotions.

I found a small tech company that would let me answer phones on their support team. Pay was roughly what I made before (But I was already living on ramen and cold sandwiches so whatever). What it really was, was a place where I had chances to move up.

1.5 years before I made senior, 1 more before I made tier 2. From there I had a chance to work directly with clients as a tech consultant. It was a job that I truly didn't like, but what it did was put me in a place where I could regularly interact with a bunch of people that owned business. A place to make connections. Not the job I wanted but I took it. Another year and I made senior as a tech consultant. It was at this point that my long term clients actively started trying to headhunt me. For the first time in my life I got to choose my job. I took a job for a company I liked making roughly what I made as a senior. Got another promotion, and that's roughly where I am now. I fucking love my job. The people I work with are good humans, the pay is sufficient, just bought my first home :).

Now, it didn't actually take all 20 of those years for me to be comfortable. The first 6-8 where rough, I ate ramen, cold turkey sandwiches, and slept on a mattress on the floor in a one bedroom apt with 0 furniture lol. About 8 years in I could afford real food and furniture. By year 12 or so I had enough money to actually do things like take a vacation.

The moral here is, it sucks, but play the game a bit. Your degree or lack there of is almost irrelevant. My degree is in Historical Culture studies... I work in Tech :P. Your resume showing you got promoted every 1-2 years is what people wanna see. Pick a job with upward mobility, even if it isn't what you want, actively apply for promotions, position yourself to know people, suffer through the ramen phase.

Side tip, look for jobs in big cities that allow remote work. If you're in the south, think Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, etc etc. They typically pay better because they're used to paying people based on what it costs to live in or around those cities.

Sorry for the book. Hope it helps :).

[–] QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

This is really great advice and something I’ve experienced as well.

However, one caveat is that startups work a lot differently. You can promote a lot faster since you’re usually doing multiple jobs at once and learning a lot of new skills at the same time. They usually don’t care too much about specific work experience either. Can you think on your own, build a team or be apart of one, and can you an execute quickly?

And as always no one cares about specific degrees (especially in management), the more general you talk about it the better. People actually understand what area you were interested in, you stuck with something most people don’t do and for a degree (and, don’t really care in what).

Also, over communication is better than no/poor communication. That’s helped me probably the best to promote than anything. Well, that and doing things no one wants to do, especially when on a new team. Gains brownie points almost instantly.