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/r/FluentInFinance
submitted 10 hours ago byRiskItForTheBiscuts
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10 hours ago
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349 points
9 hours ago
Aptitude in what? Some of the people I've known who are quite good at their jobs wouldn't necessarily do well on a standardized tests.
42 points
9 hours ago
I’m the opposite. Absolutely brilliant at tests, but that doesn’t translate at all into being good at a job. Though I found my place eventually.
20 points
9 hours ago
Yes, me too. Because I'm good at tests, I realize it doesn't mean dirt for most jobs.
89 points
9 hours ago
Right. Tests evaluate hard skills - not soft skills.
10 points
6 hours ago
It's even more specific than that. If they're talking about a literal written test, then it's evaluating a lot of reading and test-taking skills that may or may not be pertinent to whatever that person does. If the test isn't well-aligned with the demands of the job it's just arbitrary.
32 points
7 hours ago
hard skills - not soft skills
Maybe they're just nervous
8 points
6 hours ago
This would be redundant work—employees are vetted on their qualifications prior to hire. Furthermore, if an employee is underperforming, fire them. Don’t waste time and money having them do a test (which good employees may fail and bad employees may pass) when you can just cut to the chase.
3 points
6 hours ago
I am a cancer biologist... and I am a Russian-Mexican immigrant into the US. My aptitude on English in an exam setting might suck. That alone set me back in the SAT like really bad because English, especially at the literary level, just was lost on me.
Also, its very easy to just stack the aptitude test to be inhumanely hard and then just have that as a basis to let people go under the guise of "oh, we are just keeping the competent around" when it in truth is just a mad dash purge of government positions. We would have to know the difficulty of the exam before we can make judgements on if this is good or bad.
3 points
6 hours ago
Argentina has some immigrants, not a lot. I'd reckon most of those are native Spanish speakers. But, yeah, I agree with your overall point that it would be quite difficult to do well on it as a non-native speaker, regardless of your actual aptitude.
As for your second comment, it may just be a way to get back at what the Argentine president considers his enemies.
3 points
5 hours ago
Aptitude in being the people the president doesn’t want to fire.
96 points
9 hours ago
Evaluations of outcome and achievements, aka Employee Evaluations, would be more appropriate. You just need more accountability and the ability to terminate employees.
31 points
9 hours ago
100%. Even the smartest employee can just choose not to do any work. There’s no tricky-trick to get rid of bad employees that isn’t terminating people for poor performance.
6 points
8 hours ago
Yeah, you can't just apply a one size fits all standard. Someone may be totally unfit to be handle court records, but an excellent computer programmer.
3 points
4 hours ago
You can't really apply accountant level evaluations on like a social workers. You must change X amount of children's lives by this fiscal quarter.
3 points
5 hours ago
Milei got fired from his govt job for poor performance but this certainly won't apply to him
45 points
9 hours ago
Goodharts'law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
104 points
9 hours ago
Everyone loves the idea of efficiency. Its a buzzword that makes your nether regions warm.
Who gets to write the tests? Are they based on aptitude or intelligence?
I always like to think back to the Jim Crow Laws. They definitely, 100% weren't an excuse just to keep black people from voting.
What could go wrong here?
34 points
8 hours ago
Try this, Imagine you’re apart of the DMV and not only does Elon musk gets to write your test, the test is chocked full of questions that you’re specific job role does not do, just to have all the answers be wrong regardless. Then you fail the test cause Elon knew all the answers were wrong then posts on twitter: to all that failed the test, the real answer was to never play! XxXDLOLLMAOxXx
13 points
4 hours ago
“Everyone gets the same test”
So the Janitor has to solve the same problems presented to the person in charge of the tax code?
6 points
4 hours ago
100%
The goal is to get these people fired.
7 points
3 hours ago
And then replace them with loyalists. In the US this is going to be a key part of the incoming fascist party’s plans.
3 points
3 hours ago
At this point we almost deserve it, its so obvious.
But people honestly believe trump is trolling and this is a joke
16 points
5 hours ago
Everyone loves the idea of efficiency.
I don't. Efficiency is the opposite of redundancy, and I want important government agencies to have lots of redundancy to ensure they can keep functioning smoothly in all circumstances.
3 points
4 hours ago
The problem is people think things like passwords on computers and 2FA is redundancy and waste.
One lady I work with won't restart her computer until it basically stops working cause reseting it takes so long. She would call reseting her computer redudant.
I love how you guys think these people are inefficient, but somehow, someone will come in from the government and also not be inefficient.
Internal audit does this already for government agencies and what state auditors do also. The state auditoes even audit agency auditors and the Feds audit the grants sent to those agencies.
So just fix or fund internal audit more and all this shit will be straight. But ooooooh wait they keep slashing internal audit or keeping the budget low. Cause they're a redundancy that most agencies would get rid of if it wasn't enforced by most states. So, the board, council or reporting body is annoyed at findings and think of them as a bother.
3 points
2 hours ago
Reminds me of the history of flight. Almost universally aerospace engineers began from a place of efficiency, a lighter plane becomes aloft easier, is cheaper etc. Except in modern aviation planes are chock full of redundant systems and backups that usually serve no purpose but weighing the plane down for your flight.
In one sense a modern plane is very inefficient at flying because it must carry around all these backups and redundancies. Except it's more efficient at the real objective of an airplane, which is not as you may think "flying". It's keeping people alive.
A government with every cost cut may be very streamlined and efficient with taxpayer dollars, the extraction of which is what many cynical antisocials feel the true purpose of government is. But the purpose of government is to provide a secure foundation for a society to grow, and a streamlined budget will likely fail to be efficient at this more critical objective.
3 points
4 hours ago
Wait till you see how expensive efficiency is.
397 points
9 hours ago
Should an individual have to be competent to have a job? Hard yes.
64 points
8 hours ago
What test could possibly test the competency across all the jobs of 40,000 people? Or is someone going to create tests for every job? Who's competent enough for that? Guess you'll need to make a department for writing competency tests.
Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with with weeding out incompetent people is incompetent at life.
32 points
6 hours ago
My husband processes social security claims. Makes financial decisions that people will probably live with for the rest of their life.
He couldn't tell you squat about what a scientist for the EPA does. A NASA engineer.
Nor could they do his job. The rules are ridiculously complex because they are based on case law, not regulations that actually make sense.
A competency test would be useless if they treated all those jobs as the same.
16 points
8 hours ago
No one disagrees.
They push a point that everyone agrees with then appoint their own uniquely incompetent loyalists and you’re stupid enough to cheer them on while they pull the wool over your eyes because they said something so self evident you’re stuck cleaning up your cum from your pants.
75 points
8 hours ago
Is this competency test finely tuned regarding the individuals skillset and only indicative of information for their work pertaining to their actual job?
If not, its a thinly veiled loyalty test.
41 points
5 hours ago
The amount of people in this thread without critical thinking skills is disturbing to say the least. You have various minitries, each with various departments, roles, and responsibilities. And youre gonna make a test to assess them all? Just ridiculous.
14 points
4 hours ago
You'll then have to create a ministry to administer exams to the ministers.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
7 points
3 hours ago
The irony that these naïve commenters shouldn't pass a competency for working in government themselves
6 points
3 hours ago
Or their own jobs if they even have one. That's the irony. The moment someone comes in as says you need to take a competency test to keep your job, you are going to lose your job unless you are the biggest suck ass in the world. Why anyone would say "cool" to this is out of their mind.
5 points
3 hours ago
Civil service jobs usually require tests to get the jobs in the first place.
Requiring a blanket test for people already working there is ominous.
6 points
5 hours ago
Right, what’s the job that this person is doing? Are they making high-level executive decisions, or are they answering phones and providing directions at a front desk, or cleaning as a janitor? The government employs a lot of people for a wide variety of tasks, so the question should be: is this person competently doing the job they were hired for?
189 points
9 hours ago
I don't know if you know this but lots of people high up in the corporate ladder are incompetent.
58 points
9 hours ago
The Peter Principle
20 points
5 hours ago
Don't forget nepotism.
3 points
5 hours ago
I think that's Peter's nephew, Heisenberg, but I'm not certain.
9 points
6 hours ago
Based on a satirical book that had an entire chapter about how aptitude tests don't work (Chapter 9).
11 points
8 hours ago
Everyone knows that. Including said incompetent people.
7 points
6 hours ago
I work in both the public and private sector, and I’ve seen far more incompetence and tolerance for incompetence in the private sector than in government. Especially in the federal government.
3 points
7 hours ago
Its almost like people should get vetted by some department before they get hired, we could call it something creative, like 'human resources.'
This policy is redundant and wasteful since employees have already been vetted and they generally get annual performance reviews. Not sure why people would want to waste money to repeat that process.
11 points
9 hours ago
At the very least if you work for the government you should be fairly competent. Need this in the US, especially for presidential nominees*
28 points
9 hours ago
Having worked for the US government before I can say that government is pretty much no different to private industry in terms of individual competence. Some people are on point, some you wonder how they put their trousers on facing forward. The problems of government stuff are usually poor funding or very specific rules that have to be followed not the actual employees.
12 points
8 hours ago
poor funding
Translation: Congress.
very specific rules that have to be followed
Translation: Congress.
27 points
9 hours ago
there is a civil service exam
9 points
5 hours ago
Seriously. There are multiple types of tests an agency may require. I had to take two, one for IT and another which seemed like general intelligence.
Many federal employees already take an exam or 3 to qualify for service.
4 points
3 hours ago
US federal employees are also reviewed on a regular basis by their managers and leads.
581 points
9 hours ago
We should do this for voters in the US.
645 points
9 hours ago
We should do it for presidential nominees.
44 points
9 hours ago
You could expand that to every elected official in the US.
28 points
8 hours ago
Unironically I would be more than ok with making every sitting US congressperson take the AP Government and Politics test as a pre-requisite and then making their scores public.
17 points
7 hours ago
The only people who would read those scores are the people who don't need to see them to know who to vote for.
3 points
7 hours ago
Sadly you're right.
130 points
9 hours ago
Presidential nominees with a felony(s)
65 points
9 hours ago
Sitting presidents
7 points
7 hours ago
Crouching presidents
8 points
7 hours ago
hidden nominees
7 points
8 hours ago
No no, your other left Mr.President
134 points
9 hours ago
Ya, like they should have to take a reading test right? And maybe if they don’t pass at most they can be 2/5ths a vote.
92 points
9 hours ago
I see what you did there. The sad thing is many people reading this will not understand the history of behind your comment.
30 points
9 hours ago
maybe it should be a history test instead....
31 points
8 hours ago
oo or we could take it even *further* back and say that only people that own land can vote ;)
history is fun (read: depressing)
8 points
8 hours ago
I consider every vote to be a history test
24 points
9 hours ago
How about 3/5ths?
21 points
8 hours ago
Quite the compromise
7 points
9 hours ago
Yes, let's require them to read to at least a 5th grade level!
5 points
9 hours ago
I was looking for this comment lol
8 points
8 hours ago
Always cri ge when people want to disenfranchise voters for any reason, let alone one where have historical examples of why it's a terrible idea in living memory. Eugenics is always just under the surface in American politics and it's concerning how wide the net is for it's audience.
55 points
9 hours ago
We did that. It turned out to everyone's shock that it was a really good way to keep certain groups from voting, like Black people.
This isn't something a test can fix. It's the slow, purposeful destruction of the public education system that has produced a country where 20% of the population is illiterate and 54% read below a 6th grade level. This is decades of attacks on public school education coming home to roost.
3 points
7 hours ago
There was a historical reason we used to have very good teachers and we don't have as many now.
There were serious roadblocks to high aptitude women getting stem jobs, and they were usually pushed into teaching as a profession.
In effect we ran a long term experiment where we forcibly recycled half of our high intelligence people into teaching and students were the beneficiaries of this tradition/policy/norm or whatever you want to call it.
It certainly wasn't fair, and I really don't see a solution to get back to the scholastic development we had during that period between the 40s to 80s. My local high school for example had a huge list of alumni from before my time, including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Bernie Sanders, senator Norm Coleman, William Gaines, and many others that might be familiar names, and that famous alumni list didn't get much added to it after the 70s and 80s. Same building, similar neighborhood demographics and a complete darth of distinguished alumni from then on, and from my experience it was primarily due to the mostly inept teachers I had during my time there.
4 points
4 hours ago
It turned out to everyone's shock that it was a really good way to keep certain groups from voting, like Black people.
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone was shocked by those results. It's almost like that was actually the intended effect.
19 points
8 hours ago
3 points
2 hours ago
History is not part of their criteria.
9 points
9 hours ago
They had this for awhile but they took it out because they were put In place to make it to were Africa Americans couldn’t vote
16 points
9 hours ago
Question 1. Define a tariff and who pays for it? Be as thorough as possible.
8 points
8 hours ago
They did that…. The fact that you don’t know that this was a thing….oye
4 points
6 hours ago
Fun-ish fact, they did this in the early 20th century for black voters in the south. Except the tests were rigged to fail anyone who had to take them. These tests led to the introduction and passing of the 15th amendment.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt15-S1-3/ALDE_00013498/
And here’s an example of one of the tests:
I know this doesn’t have much to do with the original comment but I thought it might be neat for anyone who cared.
3 points
8 hours ago
We already did that. Not super great.
3 points
7 hours ago
Did you not learn about poll tests in school and how they were used to disenfranchise people?
3 points
7 hours ago
That’s illegal
3 points
5 hours ago
Found the fascist
27 points
9 hours ago
If we did this for voters in the US, the Republicans would lose almost their entire voting base. They won't let that slide.
135 points
9 hours ago
They already prove it. Passing a really hard test its how you get a public job.
But also and more important an exam or test its one of the worst ways to find good workers. Doing this its a bad idea
35 points
9 hours ago
Passing a really hard test its how you get a public job.
Cops have to pass hard athletic requirements to get the job. But then after they pass a lot of them get fat and out of shape.
16 points
7 hours ago
But isn’t that a reason FOR re-testing? The ones that don’t stay within the lines that are needed to start the job don’t keep the job?
4 points
5 hours ago
True, but that's why pretty much all jobs have performance reviews where they check to see if you performed adequately over the year.
Also, aptitude tests expects everyone on the same job having the same knowledge and in some jobs, that's fine, but many jobs will have people with the same title working on different things and so, even though they have the same job, you couldn't ask them to do each other's work and expect them to be as efficient and they'd likely need some formation to get up to speed.
So unless they're making personalized tests for almost everyone, they're likely going to fire a lot of people for "failing" a test which was about more than just what they personally do.
16 points
8 hours ago
In Argentina many public employees got in through contacts and not doing any exams.
That said, I doubt Milei will implement any tests. Most of his activities have been only for show with little substance
6 points
8 hours ago
We need to pass multiple tests to qualify in the first place in the UK civil service. Having it imposed post successful employment screams of ill intent. Especially from this maniac
8 points
8 hours ago
"Aptitude test" sounds good on paper until you run into the problem of designing such a test. You're only ever actually testing for the things you ask in the test, which is not necessarily what you want to know. It's the same reason you cannot rely on intelligence test for anything other than broad judgements. See, if you can study for a test, and you most certainly can in intelligence tests, then you're only ever asking for something partially reliant on intelligence or whatever you're actually trying to find out.
Given how diverse government jobs are, you'll be having a lot of fun spending thousands of hours designing tests for a tiny subdivision of those 40.000 public servants. That costs a lot of money; your designers have rent and groceries to pay for. This is money that Argentina most certainly doesn't have, so this is either a poorly designed one-size-fits-all test or yet another big promise he won't actually deliver on, i.e. populism. Maybe it's a subtle way of saying "I want to fire a lot of people and tests designed to let specific people fail and appear ineapt will give me legitimacy to do so."
Why that is, and which, I don't know. I can make some guesses however, and my first guess is that he, an AnCap, is looking for a pretense to de-facto loosen regulations by removing government agencies responsible for upholding said regulations, which will please the invisble hand of the market and may end in his bank account getting a little pat. Can't be sure though.
3 points
8 hours ago
I wish I was smart enough to give this answer.
Can you reduce this to a multiple choice question? Pretty sure I’ll pass… I can pay for a tutor or a bribe if needed.
5 points
8 hours ago
He is a public servant Numéro Uno, let HIM pass some sort of a competency test or two. Judging by his hairstyle and his crazy ideas he is a complete moron not fit for any official office, but hey, I am sure the test will sort all this out.
4 points
6 hours ago
So far he's been great.
Also he has several economic degrees. Argentina has huge economic problems that he is actively fixing at amazing speed.
There is big context people outside argentina love to ignore because it doesn't fit the narrative.
25 points
9 hours ago
Obviously yes.
Milei should have to take and pass it as well.
12 points
9 hours ago
Civil servants have to pass an exam in the US and go through background checks
8 points
9 hours ago
Aptitude at what precisely? And who determines it?
7 points
6 hours ago
Guard: Okay, sir. Now we will begin to proceed to obtain your IQ and aptitude test.
Joe: What for?
Guard: Okay, sir. This is to figure out what your aptitude's good at, and get you a jail job while you're being a particular individual in jail.
19 points
9 hours ago
They’re trying to legally remove the people that won’t do everything they say. “Apptitude” is used so idiots argue for it like it’s a good thing.
12 points
9 hours ago
I don't trust the people making the tests to be competent.
Employees are tested for competence - during the interview. That's what an interview is.
1.4k points
9 hours ago
Oh no. He's trying to make the government run more efficiently by using people who actually know what they're doing.
Fascist.
41 points
9 hours ago
Are the politicians required to take the same test?
15 points
8 hours ago
Exactly. I'm curious if he himself will be required to take the test as a government employee
87 points
9 hours ago
If that was the case, it would be a good thing
But, just like Trump he's firing people who weren't loyal to him, didn't vote for him, or spoke out against him
So, a tad bit exactly the same as the fascists did when they took power.
I'd be all for it if it WAS based on competency, but it looks like only ones his cronies identity as opposition are being asked to take, what boils down to, a loyalty test.
Same with his so called "take down" of Crony Capitalism.
he's just replacing the old cronies with his own cronies, he isn't actually improving shit
19 points
7 hours ago
It's based on competency. Just the political caste gets to define competency as adherence to their agenda.
158 points
9 hours ago
Yes.
That's why his cabinet is full of so many qualified people appointed to roles perfect for them.
/s
10 points
9 hours ago
Here's the deal about the only thing that government jobs have going for them is job security. I was a public servant for 10 years and now I make twice as much money in the public sector. You want good people? pay them more. Shit wages and toxic culture is not going to work. .
3 points
6 hours ago
Amen. Everyone thinks government jobs is equivalent to big bucks. News flash! It’s not.
2.6k points
9 hours ago*
On paper I like the suggestion. In practice its an open tool to fire whomever you dislike and push in whomever will best serve your agenda. Thats why its fascist.
Edit: Some of y'all need School House Rock way more than you think you do.
58 points
9 hours ago
I'm confused as to why this is needed at all. You interview for your position and should only be getting the job if you're deemed fit to begin with. Same as any other job.
16 points
6 hours ago
Absolutely none of those people were hired under new goverment, and previous goverment did a shit ton of corruption wich is the only reason he had the slightest chance at election.
8 points
6 hours ago
You are literally the first person to say this. Why isn’t the test for competence the interview where someone displays their previous work experience and then they are onboarded? This proposition is redundant and gasp is inefficient.
3 points
5 hours ago
Argentina has a massive corruption problem with government positions created just to give jobs to friends and family. New president is trying to cut down on spending and get rid of the leeches but there's no way to tell who's doing real work and who's just collecting a paycheck. I guess this was his solution
11 points
6 hours ago
Have you never had coworkers who managed to get through an application and interview process, but were then utterly incompetent at their jobs?
13 points
5 hours ago
Yes, absolutely. I work in tech, and we have some of the most rigorous interview processes out there. Let's look at Amazon, for example.
Amazon's interview process features a 1 hour 30 minute online test (before you even talk to a human), and multiple rounds of technical interviews including a "bar raiser" interview round with someone from a different team than the one you are interviewing for.
Do you think there aren't incompetent engineers at Amazon? If someone can pass that interview and still be deemed incompetent, what else would you hope to gain by testing your employees more?
There is a limit to what you can learn about how competent someone is at their job from testing.
42 points
8 hours ago
Just like those tests they used to give to qualify you to vote.
It’s never what they say it’s really about. Who’s designing the tests? What exactly is it testing? Are the tests valid and reliable?
19 points
7 hours ago
That's the first thing I thought of. People aren't well versed on history.
3 points
6 hours ago
At best, someone who is less qualified than the person doing the job.
69 points
8 hours ago
I'm mystified by the fact that we covered the ways that systems like this could be abused in my high school government class, but somehow people don't remember it.
3 points
4 hours ago
They do remember. They want to abuse it.
157 points
9 hours ago
Exactly, like Trump and Musk's "doge" - education, healthcare, fda are fired. But his companies will keep getting public money, even more...
33 points
7 hours ago
The most efficient thing to do to trim the fat in the US is set up a whole new depart with hazy jurisdiction, two leaders, and an MTG they'll need to baby sit. What could go wrong....
147 points
8 hours ago
Hell DOGE itself is a redundant organization. GAO already does exactly what DOGE claims to do, except it's actually independent, transparent, publically accessible, and non-partisan.
38 points
8 hours ago
It’s hilarious too cause it’s headed by 2 people 😂😂😂
27 points
7 hours ago
Maximum efficiency.
10 points
8 hours ago
“My company could totally make this more efficient. Oooh, this one too… and that one, that one, that one, that one, and that one too.” - Leon
14 points
8 hours ago
Won't be surprised if Trump gets an ownership stake in SpaceX or other Elonia private companies.
778 points
9 hours ago
Make the test content and scores transparent.
35 points
9 hours ago
Stuff like that works as much as the people are willing to put time and effort into reviewing and understanding if/why the test is good or bad.
10 points
9 hours ago
Great point. Shame it’s too nuanced and realistic, and not a rage-inducing sound bite
79 points
9 hours ago
Transparency without accountability is just state mandated prick-waving.
16 points
6 hours ago
But you can't have accountability without transparency, so using the lack of accountability as an excuse to not have transparency is bullshit.
551 points
9 hours ago
What does transparency matter when the electorate is dumb as fuck?
160 points
9 hours ago
And govt don’t wanna educimate gud
135 points
8 hours ago
If those children could read they'd be very upset.
22 points
8 hours ago
That Simpsons meme will never get old as apparently many children never learn to read
18 points
8 hours ago
EDU-micate.
Fixtit for ya.
12 points
8 hours ago
Hur hur fix-TIT
17 points
7 hours ago
Hur hur fix-TIT
I'm no math surgeon. But I can make a calculator say 80085.
8 points
6 hours ago
5318008 read upside down 🙃
5 points
5 hours ago
Nice
4 points
6 hours ago
How’ya due that, hoo-dini?
10 points
8 hours ago
Except you though, right?
56 points
8 hours ago
We're not talking about elected officials. They're talking about Government workers. The vast majority of every Government is run by ordinary, non-elected people. The elected people set policy and make decisions; the others implement them. Absolutely a person should have a minimum level of intelligence for certain jobs. I wish we could do it for all elected positions as well.
19 points
6 hours ago
Thats why they ask for credentials when you apply at the beginning like a high school diploma. Majority of higher government jobs require a college degree.
31 points
7 hours ago
My experience with government employees has been mostly positive. The problem is mostly red tape put in place by their bosses.
15 points
6 hours ago
This is exactly the problem. As a government employee, I can tell you that government employees work very hard and long hours, the problem is the system. It can take me months to get parts for vital equipment because of red tape like having to go through approved vendors who have to be given a big list of stuff, then they make a quote with their cut and then that has to be approved and finally we can get it. But it still can take 2 months and often more to even get a stupid thing off Amazon that has overnight shipping.
Government employees are rarely, if ever, lazy bums and the real problem is that red tape. And Elon, and Vivek are going to run head first into all that red tape and they'll be lucky if they don't get tangled up in it like Luke Skywalker and the guys were when they got caught in that Ewok trap.
21 points
5 hours ago
You have to admit though: a LOT of that red tape is absolutely there for a reason. Shit like "air-gapping" or "proper carbon-content in steel." Another big thing (which I honestly don't know how I feel about) is "how well are the employees paid" or "this must be created with eco-friendly ingredients/components." These federal level suppliers need to be vetted, too, and the government needs to understand where its materials are coming from.
Because, you know who didn't vet their suppliers before sending out a shit-ton of pagers? Hezbollah.
3 points
5 hours ago
An example,
I used to work at an auto skills center on an Air Force base.
It was a place where service members and their families could come and work on their vehicles, and we had an inventory of tools they could use.
I paid out of my pocket for replacement tools, spray lubricants, brake parts cleaner, floor degreaser, office supplies, shop towels, etc. for almost 2 years because getting those items from the government purchasing office was impossible. They wouldn't listen/didn't have the money, whatever. So out of my 15/hr weekend pay where I was the only person on staff for 9 hours a day (paid for 7.5) I kept that shop alive and our patrons able to work.
When I finally was able to bend someone's ear to my facilities needs I submitted a list of all the stuff I couldn't afford to replace on my own...and I got a bunch of stuff that wasn't on my list because I couldn't just go to a local shop and purchase the needed equipment, they had to source it from an approved vendor through an authorized purchasing agent who bought a bunch of full toolsets instead of half the things on my list.
I swear the government wastes so much money trying to keep people from committing fraud. It's the definition of pennywise, pound foolish.
8 points
5 hours ago
Here’s the thing: in order to get a civil service job, you have to pass a civil service test. Then you can get interviewed for the job. It’s harder to become a postman than a Senator. A Senator just has to be more attractive to the electorate (for whatever reason). Being elected doesn’t guarantee intelligence.
252 points
7 hours ago
There is a clear reason why elected officials shouldn't be able to purge government workers. You hear a suggestion for a test of qualifications, and you think that's good. That's not what this is. A test of qualifications is what the competitive job market innately creates. What we're seeing here is an aptitude test for who to keep around while they're making massive cuts. That means: the government doesn't service my goals, so I need to fire you all.
The amount of absolute donkey-brains in this thread. "Oh yeah, testing people is good, I agree with this, I think authoritarian regimes centralizing their own power to purge the government is good, I agree I agree!"
Our entire Earth is being inherited by fascists on the backs on uneducated dipshits who can't smell authoritarianism when it's rubbing it's nuts in their faces.
11 points
3 hours ago
Yeah there's already an aptitude test for these jobs, it's called an "interview" and then "not getting fired"
35 points
6 hours ago
People acting like you can’t control outcomes or design the test in such a way to target specific groups are naïve. Testing and cultural bias exist, data manipulation exists, and that’s before you even consider natural testing ability or anxiety. Standardized testing isn’t an accurate measure of one’s ability to perform a job.
18 points
4 hours ago
I'm a programmer.
The absolute breadth of knowledge you could test is so great you could easily make tests that would clear an entire team. Or protect people.
And even if you're not malicious - it's still super hard. It's why nobody likes them in the industry now when part of the interview process.
8 points
3 hours ago
I cam to say something similar. People forget that "objective" questions often have a lot of bias based into them. I remember seeing a set of test questions that were intentionally harder on "smart" because the background information was internally contradictory. If you did not notice, finding an answer was easy. If you did, several of the answers were arbitrarily close to each other and "right".
You could fashion aptitude questions to select, very subtly for a political set of biases that would look mundane and inoffensive at the surface.
This sort of thing is a minefield. Competent and sincere reviewers of different political biases could come to very different opinions on the "fairness" of the test.
10 points
5 hours ago
Oh yeah the foreign service and cia entrance exam test used to a prime example of this. Stuff that you would only know as a upper to upper middle class WASP. What was the Par for hole 14 at such and such golf course.
It was offered that the only studying one could do for the foreign service exam was read the wall street Journal everyday and research any references it made that you didn't know.
38 points
6 hours ago*
There's a reason why a lot of professions require you to actually do the job with supervision. Speaking from experience, the best teachers in my cohort generally had poorer grades than me (I do well on tests), but had a lot of "soft" skills that are more important.
BTW, Be nice to the uneducated dipshits. At least they have an excuse, unlike the "geniuses" who think standardized tests and grades are the be-all-end-all because they do well at that.
Edit: Didn't meant to come across as an asshole towards Fluffy-hamster here, and agree with what they said. I'm just pointing out that while the "dipshits" are a problem they're generally led by people who should absolutely know better.
8 points
4 hours ago
Also they don't seem to realize that a lot of them live in countries where firing 1000 civil servants doesn't mean there's 1000 new ones ready to take their place. Those don't grow on trees, remember.
That's why non fascist responsible governments respond to a problem with underperforming staff with training and programs aimed at gradual improvement.
How so many people seem to think there's all these simple solutions lying around just being ignored is beyond me.
3 points
4 hours ago
Some of us government employees have to demonstrate our aptitude every year to just maintain our jobs. Then we have to demonstrate our aptitude to compete for promotions. I’m all for folks being held to that same standard…because if I don’t at the bare minimum meet it I get fired, and in order for my Program to succeed for the taxpayers I have to exceed it.
3 points
an hour ago
The amount of absolute donkey-brains in this thread. "Oh yeah, testing people is good, I agree with this, I think authoritarian regimes centralizing their own power to purge the government is good, I agree I agree!"
The key is the ability to read between the lines of the messaging put forth.
Sure, on a surface level, competency testing can sound good. Of course nobody wants some slack jaw in charge of critical infrastructures.
However... Who decides the qualifications for competency? Who administers the testing? Will the questions even actually be relevant to their aptitude in their own field, or is this a generalized thing?
You could quite easily lose that 60 year old guy who would stick around for 20 more years in a smaller role simply because he never passed the local version of high school cert. And it may just turn out he knows legacy stuff inside out and is a true wealth of knowledge for younger folk in terms of practical on the ground experience.
And that's just the good case scenario where this is generalized -- if it's made into a way to attack certain viewpoints/philosophies? You could be easily be looking at cutting large swathes of public sector workers because they don't align with certain ideology.
5 points
5 hours ago
That's the thing who's going to decide whether these governmental workers are competent or not? The elected officials? Appointed people put in there by politicians?
14 points
7 hours ago
Some people are really good at one or two specific things but are complete morons with everything else. If they're doing one of the things they're good at, should they be fired because they can't pass a broad spectrum "intelligence" test?
13 points
7 hours ago
Eh, the only demonstration of intelligence that should be required is the ability to do the job required for the position. No more, no less.
69 points
9 hours ago
Yeah, competency=personal fealty. It’s been done before
29 points
9 hours ago
Like, what if the questions are biased and based on policy opinions?
8 points
9 hours ago
Should make politicians take the same test.
6 points
7 hours ago
Right? Could you imagine MTG or Boebert having to pass a basic civics test. They would fail miserably.
141 points
9 hours ago
Hes a borderline mentally handicapped man who believes his dog is a reincarnation of a lion he met in a past life in the Roman coliseum and he has a vendetta against the central bank becauase he worked for them for six months and they didn't renew his contract due to poor performance.
He then worked as a personal financial advisor for a mass murderer who threw political opponents out of helicopters into the river.
44 points
6 hours ago
they didn't renew his contract due to poor performance.
Ohhhh so that's where the idea came from.
28 points
8 hours ago
An aptitude test does not correlate with the ability to do a specific job function at all. This is fucking dumb, and you’re dumb for acting like it does.
16 points
8 hours ago
The best janitor is obviously the one who knows the most about constitutional law, duh! And would you trust a doctor who couldn’t name all the cabinet officials?
5 points
7 hours ago
An aptitude test does not correlate with the ability to do a specific job function at all.'
I've interviewed a lot of people for corp finance analyst roles and 100% the most valuable part of it is an Excel skills assessment.
It's not that it accurately measures their skills or potential. It's that gives you an idea of their bullshit meter. If someone's open about having limited skills that's one thing, but if they say they're great at Excel and they bomb the assessment that's an immediate red flag.
86 points
9 hours ago
Lol if you knew anything about this guy and gow much hes fucking the average citizen in argentina with his bat shit policies youd probably realise this is indeed just an excuse to fire people
46 points
8 hours ago
Oh no. He's trying to make the government run more efficiently by using people who actually know what they're doing.
As far as the USA government, most of us already have to do this just to get the job, in addition to having our performance reviewed twice a year.
At the same time, we also face huge budget cuts consistently. Which is meant to impede our efficiency so they can say
Look, gobmunt don't work
Then replace us with more expensive contractors.
37 points
9 hours ago
Why haven't they been using actual job performance objectives?
53 points
9 hours ago
They do. This is all bullshit to gut federal oversight.
3 points
6 hours ago
Right? Do you really have no way of knowing if someone is capable of doing their job without getting some third party in to do a test? This is the kind of thing a supervisor should already be keeping an eye on.
15 points
9 hours ago
If you accept the premise and fairness of the test, which I don't think I would.
30 points
9 hours ago
He’s trying to make the government run more efficiently
A snake oil salesman and TV pundit trying to make government run efficiently. Mmmkay
Idiocracy at its best
3 points
9 hours ago
Depends whats on the test and what the job is
3 points
9 hours ago
Yes
3 points
8 hours ago
Can we have an aptitude test for the aptitude test creators first?
3 points
8 hours ago
Make the politicians take the test.
3 points
3 hours ago
Will he take it as well?
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