BF2S Forums I hate my job/I need a job/I've got an interview MEGATHREAD

it’s much better when industry is ran by a circle of crooks and cronies.

america needs more oligarchs!

that’s happened at my place this year, though my position and niche within the department is safe (i’m the language and style guide guru). we’ve been bringing in a lot of newfangled tech, as any academic publisher basically must, and at times it has been like getting assistant editors to dig their own graves. i mean not even subtle, either. ‘here is your new supplier team in india with whom you will be working and managing, going forward. please show them how you proofread. oh, i’m afraid we no longer need you to proofread this journal from now on’.

very glad i spent a few years doing the glamour-poverty thing in books publishing as it has afforded me a strange status in the incredibly over-engineered tech-fetishising academic publishing world. everyone’s job gets totally reworked every 3-4 years according to the latest craze.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 02:32:10)

nope, capitalism is the root of all problems.

outsourcing in publishing began almost immediately that desktop publishing became a thing, moving away assets/power from large printing presses. the 90s were a terrible time to be a typesetter in the UK, because anyone with a computer and the same specialist software (or, increasingly, adobe suites) could skill up and do your job. most typesetting is now done in india for 1/3rd the price of a high-quality english outfit. that's not altogether an unhappy development, as now tonnes of medium and small-sized presses are a thing, lots of translated literature comes across from niche markets, etc. in the old model, the publishing houses and presses had enormous power. they were quite literally cultural gatekeepers. in the 1990s you'd need about £300k (unadjusted for inflation) to even think of starting a publishing house and bringing your first book to market -- not to mention immense connections, and very much being 'in' the network. nowadays you find publishers ran out of people's living rooms in east anglia that get nominated for international prizes.

outsourcing pressure and that sort of thing is going to be the only consequence so long as amazon and major retailers squash the price of books down to the sub £10 market.

the story in academic publishing is a bit different and too boring to even get into it. it's majorly beholden to fads in supplier management/onboarding new technology, like 'online proofing tools' as opposed to tried-and-tested PDFs/hand. the situation there is one of huge world-straddling conglomerates like Elsevier, who control like most of the market, leading and the rest following like lemmings. there's a helluva lot of money sloshing around in academic publishing so you get a parasitical project management class who spend all their time leading the charge and taking departments through these pointless faddish changes.

i do know that a few years ago Wiley, one of the giants, outsourced all of their production to suppliers in india. a huge project that saw many staff reduced basically to email coordinators and front-facing author managers. 5 years later and there's been such a hit to quality and reputation that Wiley are now deploying huge resources to bring it all back in-house, and making a song and dance about it. who really benefited from it all? the project managers taking their yearly appraisal bonuses, of course.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 03:34:48)

You must be a patient and compassionate man. This is good news.

Mac deleted his posts which gave my previous two context.

Nah you are on drugs

1:25

I was in my room and I was just like staring at the wall
Thinking about everything
But then again I was thinking about nothing
And then my mom came in and I didn't even know she was there
She called my name and I didn't even hear it
And then she started screaming, 'Mike, Mike'
And I go, 'What, what's the matter"
And she goes, 'What's the matter with you"
I go, 'There's nothing wrong, mom'
And she goes, 'Don't tell me that, you're on drugs'
I go, 'No, mom, I'm not on drugs, I'm okay
I was just thinking you know, why don't you get me a Pepsi'
And she goes, 'No, you're on drugs
I go, 'Mom, I'm okay, I'm just thinking'
She goes, 'No you're not thinking, you're on drugs
Normal people don't act that way'
I go, 'Mom just give me a Pepsi, please'
All I want is a Pepsi and she wouldn't give it to me
All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi
And she wouldn't give it to me, just a Pepsi

Mod abuse.

Lol.

you deserve it. a ginger in australia! the sun must play havoc with your bonce. colleagues must use your over-boiled egg of a head as a red beacon during summer months.

lots of normans were ginger, lmao. they were literally norse-people who went south. ginger hair (in whites) comes precisely from celts and norse-people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_the_Red

the founder of normandy, rollo, was likely red-headed.

https://norwaytoday.info/culture/dna-hu … normandie/

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-28 02:48:34)

is that your excuse for your toxic interest in eugenics and genocide?

i bet your aussie mates and colleagues love you talking about 'your norman roots' after the 3rd shandy.