The book The Sociopath Next Door asserts that up to 4% of people are sociopaths, defined as people who lack empathy and conscience. Many sociopaths end up being celebrities, politicians, or CEOs, as they seek fame/power/money and don’t have empathy for others acting as an internal ethical conscience; not all end up violent.

Your father and brother, and possibly even mother fall on this scale. They are just on the extreme violent side of it.

So how many households are like yours? I’d assert, based on that book, it’s a max of 4%. But more likely it’s significantly lower than that since yours is on the extreme side.

The majority of people are not like them.

Not what I’m referring to. When pouring water into a cup, it makes a sound. And that sound is different if the water is hot vs cold. And you probably intuitively can tell the difference, even if you’ve never thought about it before.

Not directly related but your comment reminded me of it: did you know you can hear a difference in hot vs cold water?

And I don’t mean that as a general, “one can learn to hear it,” I mean it as, “this is a skill you there reading this probably have that you likely never realized you have.” (Unless you have also seen this video or something like it.)

This list reminds me of the “reasons my wife cried” list, lol.

But seriously I love this list and think it’s great to find joy in the small things like this. And if you don’t/can’t, it’s ok to seek out help for your mental health.

I was firmly against them but an opportunity showed itself early in my career and figured I could stick it out for 2 years to get a big name on my resume… and somehow it’s been ten years now. But it’s a company with a genuinely good culture and my career has grown constantly over those 10 years, so I’ve been happy. TBF, my employer before this was extremely toxic so in comparison it’s been amazing.

Just curious, do you mean specifically the job as in role, or do you think this about going back to a company as a whole?

I can name easily a dozen, maybe two dozen people at my company I personally know who left then came back, although generally to a different role. And I’ve seen most of them get promoted after coming back, even to high roles like Director or VP. I don’t know if that’s just because of a good company culture or if it’s because it’s a larger business (2-2.5k corporate employees).

You and I are on the same page. My only point was that there are unfortunately many people out there now who believe they have a “healthy” level of skepticism, but are actually misled, misinformed, and not educated enough to distinguish reality. And I named specific groups who frequently fit this pattern.

When skepticism is truly healthy, it’s great. But there are many people who are unable to identify what “healthy” means here. No where did I say or mean to imply that some skepticism is a bad thing.

Unfortunately this also gets abused by some people who believe they have a healthy level of skepticism, but actually are way off the deep end. Like anti-vaxxers, flat-Earthers, and other anti-science people.

So “healthy” in this context shouldn’t be defined by the individual.

Lots of advice here but I haven’t seen anyone mention coding boot camps. There are free ones like FreeCodeCamp or lots of paid options. You can do these to learn or validate what you have been taught.

My company hires associate-level software engineers directly out of college programs and boot camps. They don’t expect people from these to know everything; you may not have ever even used the language that you will be expected to code in! But by completing a program you’re showing you understand the logic of programming and that is applicable knowledge.

Look for entry-level jobs and you’ll be fine. Even better, look for companies that intentionally hire from programs like yours. They’re more likely to have internal programs to help teach new-to-career folks.

I recently finished reading The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan. It’s from 2019 and so depressing with how much has happened since then that’s not accounted for, but it was interesting insight into how people like that can accumulate a following. It might help answer your question.

My older sister had a boyfriend move in with her shortly after she moved out of my parents’ house. From the first time I met him I had bad vibes.

Fast forward maybe a year or so they were renting a house and adopted a dog together. His “job” was motorcycle racing, so my sister basically just covered all costs. When they broke up, they aligned on who would get what with parents as mediators. He kept the dog, she kept the TV, etc.

He moved out while she was at work and took the TV, but he forgot all his motorcycle gear in one of the closets. So he had to come back with his tail between his legs to get that after stealing from her. She got the dog back at that point.

General scumbag. My intuition had no reason but was right!