59 Industry Secrets That Are Known To Everyone Working In The Field

Poor parenting is as destructive to schools as underfunding.

Ex political PR here. They all lie. Shocker, I know. But what actually shocked me at the beginning of my career was realizing that there is absolutely no political party/option I will ever be able to fully support. Sometimes it's selective truth; technically accurate, but stripped of context and presented in a way designed to make you believe something else. Sometimes it's spin. And often they simply lie.
Another thing I didn't expect: politicians are often three steps ahead of their own PR teams. People assume PR knows everything and our job is to figure out how to sell it to the public. Not necessarily. Things are deliberately kept from us too. Because the more people who know something, the greater the chance it leaks.
You would be surprised at the magnitude of the things they lie about — things you’d assume would be far too important, consequential or risky to lie about.
Also leftist - right-winger; it does not matter. They are very much connected.

When i worked at a call center for a bank you got better results being nice to person on the phone than yelling. When people called about fees if they were nice looks like a bank error happened im sorry about that. You yelled, cursed, and said rude things sorry nothing i can do.

The owners of your grandma's nursing home don't care about your grandma. They only care about the money she brings in. And they'll keep that place as understaffed as possible to make more money.

I do construction inspections for a living. Do not buy a house that was built after 2006.

I train service dogs, and volunteer my time to help train new teams in my community.

Something people are horrified to learn is that businesses pretend to be legitimate service dog programs and flip rescue dogs into "service dogs" with little or no training and sell them for large profits of 40k or more per dog.

"your data will be anonymised" - no it won't.

The success of your therapy is mostly based on if you’re willing to commit to changing, the other determining factor is how good of a relationship you have with your therapist. The type of therapy used is a distant third.

How every harvester has rat poison, rat traps, rat bodies, rat poop, and all things related to rats and mice on every single machine. Rats and mice are a huge problem around our food at the farm.

Libraries don’t want your old books. That complete set of encyclopedias you saved since the ‘80s? The box of moldy paperbacks from your dad’s basement? We don’t want them, we can’t use them, and they go straight into recycling/trash.

Now, if they’re in good condition and something someone else might want to read, that’s a different story. We can either use them or put them in the book sale.

You are giving away lots of rights on all the forms you sign and click through without reading. And no. You don’t have a choice.

I'm a software developer for online payment security.
People are constantly *attempting* to hack into systems to get people's bank details, it happens every single day, multiple times. Trying to hack systems that hold hundreds and thousands of peoples details to take their money.

If you’re ever behind on your mortgage payment the bank sends an inspector to drive by and photograph your home.

Most people never notice this happening. But if you’re late on your mortgage and see a car pull up in front of your home and someone snapping photos from inside the car then quickly driving off, that’s your bank protecting its asset.

Zookeepers get paid abysmally, at least in the US. I've seen the National Zoo offer $25/hr but every other position I've seen or worked has been $19/hr or less. This is for a career that almost always requires you to have a 4 year degree. I also have not met a single zookeeper who doesn't struggle with some sort of chronic pain or injury from the physical labor and most of my coworkers have been at most in their 30s. On top of all that, keepers are often under a lot of mental pressure while taking care of their animals and dealing with grief (due to an animal passing) ends up being a large part of the job. People will really take advantage of the fact that "everyone wants to work with animals".

There's no testing required for 5th wheel hitches in the RV industry - all those huge 5th wheel trailers being towed on the highway.... the only thing keeping it connected to the truck pulling it, doesn't have any required test to be approved to use.

US Food Service inspections. Meat packaging plants in particular, but this is pretty much the whole food industry: you're barely being inspected.

There aren't enough inspectors. Period. The ones that are there are technically working for the government, but their paychecks come from the company that's being inspected.

Yeah, that's a thing. It's accepted. Our food contamination rate seems to be increasing (though there is a lot of produce concerns there, so don't drop that at the meat industry), as our government is defunding anything that looks like oversight.

The defense industry doesn’t pay for anything. They do their own research, bill the government for the labor ($200-$300/hr) and get to keep the IP. This is on top of their massive contracts where the government pays for the overruns.

Judges *regularly* make politically and/or emotionally motivated decisions rather than decisions based on evidence.

Maybe this is more well known than I realize, but: Professors at colleges and universities are assessed almost entirely on the basis of the research/scholarship they produce. Teaching is not really a factor. You could be the most outstanding teacher (not just well liked, but genuinely a teaching prodigy for all the right reasons) and institutions of higher education, with very few exceptions, will hire, promote, tenure, or otherwise reward, the more productive researcher 99 times out of hundred. Even small liberal arts colleges that appear to be teaching oriented tend not to value teaching.

All the code AI is writing is basically unmaintainable. Big SaaS systems *will* come crashing down before too long.

Look at Github today, and imagine that's everything in a few years.