Ugh, yes, and many Americans naively imagine that all that John Hughes movie nonsense is somehow a normal universal part of teenage growing up! They'll see their kids start doing it and since they did it too they just shrug whist fully about the passage of time!
Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind of baby court intrigue.
In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and my child have gone to school in different areas and in both cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some places than others.
Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.
> Somehow knowing that first boy born today will have an ID number of 120702450001X
It's even worse. Only post-2011 IIRC births have an algoirthmic SSN. So everyone over the age of 13 still has old fashioned sequential SSNs, where XXX-YY-ZZZZ is determined by
1) XXX is the code for the office that issues your card. Can be guessed precisely and accurately by knowing birth location. For example, I can guess what region of the US you were born in (or lived in when you immigrated) by the first digit. 0 or 1 is probably northeast. 4 or 5 is probably near Texas. 7 might be near Arkansas. Etc.
2) YY-ZZZZ is sequential by date! So by knowing just birth day, can be guessed to within a range. In practice, this means it's easy to guess YY alone, but harder to get all 4 digits of ZZZZ
3) For some stupid reason it got popular to print SSNs with all but the last four digits masked. This is horribly bad because those four are ACTUALLY THE MOST SECRET PART! It's the only part that might not be guessable. But since it's common to be more lax with securing them..... it is super easy to recover the full SSN if you find a piece of paper that says something like
JOHN SMITH
123 Main St
Alabama City, AL 76543
In ref acct: XXX-XX-1234 (2001-03-14)
Dear Mr Smith,
Your account is overdrawn. Have a nice day.
Thinking of you,
The Bank
It also means if someone is personally known to me, even vaguely, I may be able to reconstruct their social seeing nothing but a scrap of paper that has just the last four, if I can guess approximately where and when they were born or first entered the US. If I'm in a situation where I can try several guesses, it's even easier.
It's because it happened gradually / naturally / semi un intentionally, because:
1) SSN was not intended as a national ID, but it so happened to fit the shape of one, in that almost everyone has one and they're unique.
2) It has never been possible to institute an intentional national ID system in the US for political reasons
That is the recipe for the problem we have now. Strong demand for a national ID from many business purposes, the existence of something that looks a lot like, but is an imperfect form of, national ID, and the refusal to create a proper national ID, has naturally led to a de facto system of abusing the SSN as a national ID and just kind of everyone being a little annoyed and sketched out about it but putting up with it anyway for lack of alternatives.
Incidentally, did you know anyone can generate a valid new EIN (which is a lot like an SSN, and can be used where an SSN can be used for some but not all purposes, specifically filing taxes and ) at this page https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe... ? This isn't legal advice and I'm not a lawyer and I don't know in what situations you personally would be legally permitted to use this (it's meant for businesses, absolutely not some kind of personal alias) -- but technologically, it's just honor system, and anyone can certify they need and are entitled to a new EIN and the IRS web site will provide you with a new unique one. I don't think you even need a legal entity, since you don't need a legal entity to run a business in the US.
Ah it was a different time. Societal trust was greater. Without global internetification, the only people who could ever have any opportunity to exploit this information were your fellow campus denizens (students, professors, etc).
Without global internetification, there was not as much an average person could really do or would know to do with an SSN alone to exploit it.
This story is a good parable for so much of what has changed in the world the last couple decades -- we had a world built for less globalization, then we globalized, and we've been gradually adapting to / dealing with the unintended consequences since then.
A real life door can only be picked by your neighbors or anyone else nearby -- attack surface is limited by the nature of physical distance.
A virtual door can be picked at by 7 billion people.
It's so well known it would be easier for you to source your claim. Or you know, you could source the claim yourself. Obviously you didn't bother before posting.
When I say dragons fly over the rainbows, I need to source the claim. When I say that the sky is blue, it's you who needs to look it up if you doubt it so much.
In the meantime until every tool is rewritten to account for your recommendation, just add 2>&1 and stderr will redirect to stdout, so you can easily pipe it to other stuff
It depends on the company. Some companies really are this bad. If you haven't been in one, you're lucky. If you are in one, it can be hard to recognize for a while (see OP) but the key is to recognize it so you can get out of there.
> Companies (or departments) wouldn't actually last very long if management teams were as bad as you described.
That is only true for companies in a highly competitive market. There are all kinds of markets, some are very competitive (e.g., the market for a commodity like gasoline or flour), some are total monopolies or oligopolies (e.g., the market for smartphone operating systems, or for electricity or water in your city) and many are some hybrid somewhere in between.
The less competition a company has to face, the more they are able to grow dysfunctional while still staying profitable, thus avoiding any serious pressure to curb the dysfunction.
Also, even in cases that are more competitive, managers are human and make mistakes, and the feedback cycle might be so long that a lot of dysfunction can happen before it's time to pay the piper and a whole division has to be sold off or laid off. This is most likely to happen at companies huge and diversified enough.
I think you have been fortunate enough to never work at a place like the one OP described. I have, although only once. If you find yourself in such a place, yeah, take it as a sign to get out.
Ignoring that it isn't normal elsewhere and wasn't normal here 100 years ago either when children were too busy for that kind of baby court intrigue.
In fact, even in the modern US it's not universal. Both I and my child have gone to school in different areas and in both cases the level of that kind of nonsense was far less in some places than others.
Teenagers aren't naturally alienated. You're alienating them and that's why they're alienated. By 13 a normal child is ready for and craves a lot more responsibility and efficacy than much of modern suburban American provides them, and lacking it leads to trying to direct the energy into other less constructive outlets. Idle hands are the devil's hands.