Career concerns

While my current term ends June 30th, I hope to finish up my coursework in April. Then I will need to enter the workforce once more.

Because my schooling is being paid for through the Trade Act, I had to submit various things when I was applying, including openings for jobs in the new field and what salaries they listed. At the time (early 2024), there were lots of good jobs available, all earning more than I had made with my previous education and experience level.

Then a horror of a human being associated with racism and violence was re-elected.

Sure, things like Linda McMahon being appointed to Education and a general hostility to knowledge were concerns, but instructional designers don't have to work for public schools. There is a large need for corporate training. I assumed there would still be opportunities in the private sector.

Well, one major corporation's cost-saving measures have -- in addition to lots and lots of layoffs -- eliminated any "unnecessary" training. This includes cutting the fairly standard yearly ethics refresher.

That is something I have taken in both the tech and health sectors. While I acknowledge that a fair amount of it is obvious -- and a lot of the examples were not going to come up for me in my positions -- I thought it was a good reminder. For one thing, they kept using examples of things that really happened. Maybe they didn't happen at your company, but someone out there either did not realize it was a violation or didn't care that much about being unethical.

It then becomes hard to believe that the motivation for ending yearly ethics training is so much that it is unnecessary and wasteful as that some people want to eliminate scrutiny on their actions.

After all, when DOGE goes through and ends software licensing that causes redacted information to become easily viewable and that is highlighted through a case where the rich and powerful just keep getting away with horrific abuse, this does not increase confidence in anyone's ethics or commitment to actually learning and understanding anything.

Add to that the general apparent increase in ignorance and lack of interest in expertise, with lots of shameless lying and artificial intelligence making it much easier to obfuscate and to avoid actually doing your homework and also apparently killing a taste for literature of educational reading...

That then becomes adjacent to an area of more existential dread.

I get why the wealthy and powerful would like to keep others ignorant and averse to changing that ignorance, but I am disappointed in how little resistance there seems to be. 

All of which is to say that while I am still planning on graduating and keeping notes of what I can add to my resume, I am a little worried about my chances of becoming gainfully employed. 

Or my chances of not being constantly angry.