I'm finishing up my accounting degree, a field which I honestly have no interest in pursuing. But, screw it, I didn't know I wanted to be a programmer when I started it and I have less than a year left.
I take issue with the idea that business BS started in the 80s. If you read material from the 20s and 30s, it was likewise filled with meaningless jargon and memes. Motivational posters are very old and they're filled with vapid and empty sayings, with the belief that by some magic hanging a sign that says "work harder" will make employees work harder (whatever that means) and make you more money that way.
What I've learned is that when you teach a soft skill, you get people teaching garbage. In an accounting class or a supply chain and logistics class, there can be some real meat to be learned, even when there's not science per se. But for most things, the books are full of arbitrary enumerations of "types of managers" and acronym to make it sound like we're being taught something. But, sadly, the attitude people have in business is that they want to be in charge of people and so they don't have to worry about the details. The details are for the expendable people you make money off of. The way you get rich in America is by being so awesome, because that's what the rich people told us is how they made their fortune.
And the problem is that they're kinda right. At the top of the food chain, everything breaks down into politics. There's little to no way of evaluating quality, and so this self-serving culture of bullshit develops. Everyone thinks they're a great judge of character and that they have these ineffable skills that cannot be measured that justify why they've gotten to where they are. But it's all just marketing. They're doing their job, sure. But there's bullshit in business for the same reason there's bullshit in marketing and politics. You're selling something and the product is interchangeable with a thousand other ones.
I agree with your assessment, and came to realize these things when I did my first internship in a company, as my university requires this to graduate (that was almost 10 years ago now).
At the time, I felt quite depressed by it. The person who was my boss's boss would regularly say completely technically incompetent things, and yet here she was running a dev team and making tons of money too.
As I've moved forward in my career, I've slowly come to feel better about things. It might take a few painful failures, but over time you become good at spotting the people who are all talk and no skills/knowledge, and you know to avoid them. Conversely, you learn how to spot the people who know what they're talking about, and know to accept their job offer instead of the employer who gave you a higher offer but gave you a bad impression during the interviews. And because you are (hopefully) getting better at what you're doing, you have more options, and more leeway to say no.
It's almost empowering to tell yourself that if these idiots can make bank, then all you have to do is learn their ways and bend them to your advantage.
I'm finishing up my accounting degree, a field which I honestly have no interest in pursuing. But, screw it, I didn't know I wanted to be a programmer when I started it and I have less than a year left.
I take issue with the idea that business BS started in the 80s. If you read material from the 20s and 30s, it was likewise filled with meaningless jargon and memes. Motivational posters are very old and they're filled with vapid and empty sayings, with the belief that by some magic hanging a sign that says "work harder" will make employees work harder (whatever that means) and make you more money that way.
What I've learned is that when you teach a soft skill, you get people teaching garbage. In an accounting class or a supply chain and logistics class, there can be some real meat to be learned, even when there's not science per se. But for most things, the books are full of arbitrary enumerations of "types of managers" and acronym to make it sound like we're being taught something. But, sadly, the attitude people have in business is that they want to be in charge of people and so they don't have to worry about the details. The details are for the expendable people you make money off of. The way you get rich in America is by being so awesome, because that's what the rich people told us is how they made their fortune.
And the problem is that they're kinda right. At the top of the food chain, everything breaks down into politics. There's little to no way of evaluating quality, and so this self-serving culture of bullshit develops. Everyone thinks they're a great judge of character and that they have these ineffable skills that cannot be measured that justify why they've gotten to where they are. But it's all just marketing. They're doing their job, sure. But there's bullshit in business for the same reason there's bullshit in marketing and politics. You're selling something and the product is interchangeable with a thousand other ones.