what's something your profession wants to keep secret?

People think tech is all clean and perfectly designed. In reality, a lot of important systems are just ‘it works, don’t touch it’ and everyone’s a little scared to mess with them.

Working in public sector and everyone is against bloated government departments but brooooo….. if you knew how *few* people were working on your permits, licences and registrations, and the reason we say it’s ’in depth review for robustness, safety and regulatory compliance’ is because it’s just two dudes in the whole state who get maybe ten minutes a day to work on your application, amongst the dozens, even scores currently in progress. It’s not the red tape that’s the hold up. It’s the admin.

Social media sites are FULL of sex pests and predators - especially sites that target children and teenagers. The companies know this, they have the data, they have reports from community staff, and they do not contact the authorities most of the time - because it would make them look unsafe. The number of grown-ass men I caught pretending to be teenagers so they could talk to kids was entirely way too high.

The amount of predators that my school district has quietly dismissed, no lawsuits, no press… just some paperwork and the next day the adult predator is gone and the child’s parents receive a check. Everyone is quiet and life goes on.

Face moisturizer are made of two or three basic ingredients. When you pay high prices, you are paying half of it for the brand and packaging. Sometimes the scent… most expensive cosmetics are not worth more than 2-3$ are jar when they are fabricated. Ex L’Oréal employee here.

Audio systems are over-designed, costing clients tens of thousands of dollars they really do not need to spend.

Ventriloquist here, it's a scam. The dolls are actually real and talk themselves.

Canadian pacific railway had a 50 car train crash in banff/yoho years ago. The company told press it was mechanical but everyone i worked with fixing track were saying it was from higher ups telling the train they need to hurry, as they needed to push more trains through. The train was going faster than permitted and couldnt stop. I was in foreman training and a guy just came off leave from being there and told us his side of things. He was at the bottom of this hill listening to the emergency broadcast with some signal maintainers. They told them to pull the switch and watched the train crash into the river. A signal Maintainer ended up going into the river (-50, keep in mind) to hold the conductors head above water. He was out there for maybe 10 min before finally saying he couldn't be in the water anymore.. so just let the head go and basically watched this conductor die. The company can blame it on maintenance all they want, but someone in office rushed them, not understanding all the circumstances, weight, hill grade and reality. They'll never admit it and some articles state only 20 cars were derailed. I spoke with so many guys who were at that derailment and it was well over 50. Cp is such an awful company and I ended up quitting with all the awful shit they put their employees through [cp fatality source 1](https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/medias-media/discours-speeches/2022/03/r19c0015-20220331.html) [cp fatality source 2](https://www.rmoutlook.com/local-news/three-dead-in-train-derailment-1573677)

Advertising and marketing. People think ads are meant to convince you immediately. Most ads are just trying to make your brain remember the brand so when you finally need the product, you pick the one that feels familiar. It works disturbingly well.

IT consultant here. The entire infrastructure that the internet is built on is fragile and could fall apart at any moment. [Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2347/)

It’s not big pharma. It’s CVS, Walgreens and PBM’s alongside state p******* boards who are made up of employees of CVS, Walgreens and PBM’s that make prescriptions so egregiously difficult and hard to get. Caremark, Aetna, UHC, Optum are all in one big Diddy style freak off together with patients’ cash being the endless supply of baby oil. PBM’s should be illegal and big box corporate retail pharmacies shunned by the public. Transfer all your prescriptions to a mom and pop independent p*******.

Software dev here. The secret nobody wants to admit: we Google basic syntax errors way more than we'd like to admit. Stack Overflow is basically our collective memory. Also, a shocking amount of innovation is just taking an old solution and putting a new UI on it. Don't tell the product managers.

New techniques in education do not produce increased student learning for the majority of students. Everything is about helping the least achieving students.

i'm a stand-up comedian and i promise that you can learn how to write a good 5 minute set! a lot of my peers are rude and gatekeeper-y to newbies because of a false scarcity mindset, and the art form can be challenging to learn. many people think that it's all about innate skills, but it's not! learning how to perform stand-up is an extremely attainable skill, it just takes a ton of work and time. if you want to try it, you should!!

Almost no one who buys our *very* expensive firewalls and security platforms actually sets them up properly. 

Brushing and flossing really is the secret to good teeth.

People who abuse the emergency services system in their town can go to jail. If you call 911 for nonsense, or because you think you'll skip the line, you're wrong. Your triaged like everyone who walked in. If you needed rapid transport, you're going to be seen by a doc just as fast as if you walked into the ER. But if you call 911 for convenience, multiple times? You will be charged. You will be fined, and yes, people do go to jail for it.

Not really wanting to keep it a secret but there's no big mystery to therapy. There's no magic tools or techniques, most of the healing is in the relational process of talking with another human, who sure is a 'skilled helper' but all of the theories and techniques are readily accessible in books and on the internet. Also a healthy lifestyle of good sleep, healthy diet, regular exercise and good social relationships is 80% of the battle. Maybe medication if you're at a clinical level. I see so many people come in disappointed that there's no magic technique behind the curtain that will 'fix' their depression, nah mate you've got to do the hard work of looking inwards, addressing your unhelpful thought and behavioural patterns and making lifestyle changes.

A lot of Engineering salaries plateau (mid-career) when you get to the top of your technical field, that is why so many highly qualified and experienced engineers become people or project managers.

I think it’s universal, but the particulars are always surprising: how many smooth, accomplished people don’t know what they’re doing and are propped up substantially by the people below them. Or, as I always think of it: the three raccoons in a trench coat problem.

I worked for a pet insurance company that had software that worked with Veterinary hospitals / offices clinical software so the clinic could give away free one month certificates for the pet insurance. In turn, the clinic could bill our company directly for the services which our company would instantly deny or approve.  Our marketing team worked with the Practice managers and hospital admins to increase the cost of care in their clinics so that more people would be forced into trying the certificate one month program out, especially when facing an emergency situation.  Then if the consumer cancelled the certificate, the conditions that were originally covered would now be seen as pre-existing if they ended the insurance and thus forced people to keep the insurance.  Because pet insurance premiums are based on a number of factors including cost of care in the area the pets live, the increased cost of procedures that hospitals did to boost profits would in turn raise the cost of care in the area, and then that would raise the premiums for all insured pets in that zip code / territory.  This wasn't a flaw. It was intentional. On top of it, the company was incentivizing staff at hospitals to give away those free month trial certificates by giving the staff prizes and rewards for the number they gave out. These weren't just little prizes either they included fully paid trips to Hawaii, Las Vegas, other destinations, etc. The internal data showed that after six months of a clinic being part of the certificate program that their medicine would go up in cost over 20% (23-26% iirc).  This was back in 2018. So imagine just how much worse it is.  That same insurance company also has a side venture with prescription pet food which is exactly why that "prescription" food is so expensive. Oh btw, prescription cat and dog food is a joke. If your vet is recommending a specific brand remember they are getting a cut. Ask your vet what medicine your pet needs and what specific diet changes they need. What foods to avoid. Don't take a generic "just buy Royal Canin" or whatever the vet recommends.  It's really sad but insurance has killed all ethics in many animal hospitals. 

We hide the dead people at the hospital. Pushing something that's covered in blankets and pillows? Goin to the morgue. It makes sense why we do it, I mean imagine being in rough shape at the hospital and seeing someone wheel a corpse past your door, would be a little unsettling

In many software companies, 'Legacy Code' is basically held together by duct tape and prayers, and everyone is terrified of the one person who actually knows how it works leaving.

The best way for your child to learn is always "f*** around and find out" I never stop a child from engaging life with the scientific method

I'm an Electrician and the secrets I have would shock you

most people have no idea how often we just wing it in our jobs. it’s wild what you can get away with if you sound convincing enough.

I work with burial vaults and cremation. When we cremate overweight people it smells like Burger King.. kinda greasy.

China doesn't need to steal intellectual property from the U.S. anymore. They've already surpassed us in multiple cutting-edge fields, and retain their best and brightest rather than losing them to U.S. universities and companies.  This has been drastically accelerated in the last few years.

Just a couple: -80% of ambulance calls didn't require an ambulance. It just required 2 able bodied people to go help an elderly and/or mentally ill person. -I'm not allowed to tell you that you don't need to go to the hospital. If you call 911 and want to go, I must take you, even when the driveway is full of vehicles and family who are sober and capable of driving the patient. The majority of calls are like this and can prevent us from responding from actual emergencies because every ambulance is stuck with a patient who could've made their own way to the hospital. -You will be triaged the exact same as if you walked into the hospital. I drop people off in the waiting room all the time. -Resuscitation rarely works. Last time I checked the statistics in our area, it was something like less than 5% of out of hospital cardiac arrests survived to be discharged from the hospital. We are torturing your grandma/grandpa for a less than 5% chance of recovery. Resuscitation is for young people with reversible problems, i.e. drowning, not meemaw who is in congestive heart failure and smokes a pack a day. I can't undo a lifetime of organ damage, and it is selfish to make your grandparents a full code "because they're a fighter!" Congrats, you made their death as painful and traumatic as possible. -Emergency rooms are for emergencies. Chronic care will be referred outpatient. That is why everyone goes "they did nothing for me!" No, they found no evidence of an emergency, meaning it can be dealt with outpatient.

Professional mime here. Those invisible boxes we make are real. We let you think they are just pretend so the government doesn’t capture us and weaponize our powers.

the loading bar on that web app is lying to you. you think that it's constantly estimating how much of the loading has been completed but the logic is more like start loading every couple seconds check to see if loading has finished if it has, go to 100% and then launch the app if not, increase the completion percentage by some small amount repeat until fully loaded or completion percentage is in the 90s and the lie starts to self-destruct

Two master’s degrees in Geology and Engineering? Tough, but doable. Mastering a musical instrument? Infinitely harder, took far longer, and comes with basically zero chance of income. Learning to play an instrument is one of the most underrated challenges out there.

Almost all veterinary practices now (including the ones that still sound like Mom and Pop practices) are owned by giant corporations and private equity. They determine the prices for everything (not the veterinarians, practice managers, etc.)

That a lot of industries quietly run on one competent, underpaid person holding everything together with spreadsheets, stress, and pure spite.

Veterinarian here - we are not trying to take your money unnecessarily- most of us really try to minimize your costs (I use like 20 different labs bc some are better at some things and some are significantly less $ while being high quality). Also, we do not get kick backs from food companies. I make recommendations based on my experience and what I think is best for your pet. If you want to try a diet I’m not familiar with, I will look into it with an open mind. I cannot emphasize enough that almost all vets genuinely care about their patients and want to do what they can to provide good outcomes.

working for the public sector, we buy lots of things we don't need or will never use, just because we have to use the budgeted amount. If we don't do this, we will get less money next year. I would estimate that 50% is wasted.

Phd STEM R1 professor. Scientific peer review is a joke and there is no one policing false data.

Govt - not really a secret but there are a ton of brilliant underpaid government workers that make it all happen. The elected/appointed people suck b/c they often have an agenda and no skills/knowledge/experience of how things work. And then there are the people that just coast in a job that can't fire them. That's it, three categories and if you identify a person early, you know how to work with them.

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Lifeguards wear sunglasses so they can close their eyes

All these threads just make me realize that everything is fake and everyone is constantly being fooled out if their money. 

We do have to spend some of your donation to our charity on staff salaries and keeping the lights on, and yes our staff deserve to be compensated at market rate for their work. Working for charity is not an act of charity.

In IT, when we say to you on the phone that we have to investigate the issue further and we'll get back to you, we really mean to Google the error code to figure out wtf is going on.

Ex-Comic shop worker here. None of the things you collect are in mint condition. The comics you board and bag to keep "safe" might have been borrowed by a staff member as something to read while they take a shit.

Corporate jobs. A lot of “professionalism” is just learning how to sound useful in meetings without saying anything.

The screen protectors at the cell phone store that they charge you $60 for? They pay less than $5 for. Their pricing hasn't changed but maybe $1 over the last 8 years, but the store price has more than doubled. At least at the store I worked at.

I brew beer at a large brewery. We have 3 base recipes and just add different hops/flavors/water dilution on the back end and call it something new.

When I was a scheduler at a medical clinic I realized that clinics rarely follow their cancellation list - if you call us and we have an earlier s*** open we will put you in it, rather than declining you and pulling the next name from the waitlist. In this case, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I'm a nurse, and there's no secret: consistent diet and exercise coupled with good sleep will cure 90% of your problems. I'm so sick of people blaming "big pharma" and conspiracy theories. Nobody wants to give you a pill. Nobody wants to keep you sick for money; patients keep themselves sick all by themselves. Patients are almost never compliant with medical advice.

Just because your insurance policy says you get 30 visits covered per calendar year covered for something like... physical therapy, for example, doesn't mean that you will get those 30 visits covered, even if your doctor and/or your physical therapist says you need them. They are usually forced to fill out a bunch of paperwork for you, documenting to the insurance company why you need these 30 visits, trying to justify why they should be covered. A group of doctors (sometimes not even in that specialty, not even close) working for your insurance company will review that paperwork and decide you only need/needed 10 visits and anything beyond that wasn't "medically necessary" enough. So even if your doctor, your PT, whoever, thinks you need 30 visits... whether or not you actually get them, covered by your insurance or not, is up to a random group of doctors that have never treated you, never met you, and never will.

Half of it is confidence.

When dealing with an insurance companies shitty behavior or poor service, threaten to contact your states department of insurance. You will get service much much faster.

The U.S. government actually works far better than most people think. At the scale it operates, it’s remarkable that so many systems, processes, and layers of bureaucracy function as consistently as they do. That doesn’t mean there aren’t inefficiencies, failures, or frustrating delays—there absolutely are. But even when things break, there is usually still a process, a workaround, or a path to fix it. It may be slow, messy, and imperfect, but it is not random chaos. The bigger secret is that the machine works A LOT MORE OFTEN than people realize.

The level of stupidity of the American public

Ex senior child protection social worker here. The volume of cases that are disregarded and/or mishandled because we simply do not have enough boots on the ground or resources to sufficiently do our jobs. If the neglect or abuse is not glaringly obvious and the kid is not a public liability, then the case is typically passed around like a hot potato or thrown out entirely. It's largely why I threw in the towel after what was shy of 30 years of service.

The rich assholes running the country club i work at are embezzling money and evading taxes. Oh well. 

I work in a restaurant. Yes the world knows alot is microwaved. But you wouldn't believe quite how much

Graphic designer here. We actually CAN make the logo bigger.

How so many doctors and nurses don't take patient safety seriously. Mistakes made in surgery that are from carelessness and could be easily avoided.

Truck driver here. There is no shortage of truck drivers. The industry wants people to think that so people will drive thinking they can earn money, and pay them next to nothing. Don’t get me wrong, there are companies where you can make decent money, but a lot of freight is being moved by drivers making next to nothing, especially for companies like Amazon.

Dentist here. Not everybody needs fillings or root canal treatment, but everybody gets it- thats how we make our money!

Locksmiths seem hellbent on job security by preventing access to their tools/tricks. Kinda makes sense but I don't think criminals care. Some do difficult work that absolutely requires special skill but certainly not all.

Lawyer here and we just make work for each other and ourselves in an ouroboros of cash and billable hours.

The funeral industry is very corrupt. It's all about money just like everything else. Everyone should be cremated.

"If a piece of medical equipment fails, hope it kills the patient rather than maim them. It's much cheaper on the company in the long run." - my senior at the biomedical engineering firm that I used to work at

It's actually insanely easy to dye your own hair at home, the reason box dyes are frowned upon is simply because the peroxide developer in the box dye at drug stores is usually 40 volume and in reality all you need to dye your own hair at home is 20 volume+ the color. if you switch those 2 small things your essentially getting the same results you'd get in the salon. of course this is for virgin hair + people trying to cover grey hair. If you want to dye your hair a rainbow color you simply need bleach + 20 volume. it's the higher peroxide people use at home that wreck their hair, not necessarily user error like so many hairstylists claim. So if youre trying to save money and skip the salon, get some igora royal dye off of amazon and their 20 volume and skip the boxes like splat

I worked in a US nursing home. Do you know how normal it is from the moment a patient press their call light, on average wait 15-30mins for staff to respond to them? How normal it is for residents to soil themselves because the CNA’s are wickedly understaffed or the majority of the CNA’s that do show up, don’t do their jobs? Patients pay over $10,000 PER MONTH to be treated this way. Yes, there are real angels that work in these establishments, but admin push them to their breaking point and they leave or they find better opportunities. If you love your loved ones, absolutely do not put them in a nursing home.