There are also enough engineers looking for jobs that companies can be picky and only hire the ones who seem agreeable and inoffensive, which reinforces the dynamic. “Idealistic” folks accumulate employment gaps that they have to explain or which cause AI ATS systems to auto reject their application before a human ever sees it, meanwhile management and hiring panels become increasingly corporate and less tolerant of difference because that’s who gets hired.
I don’t disagree with a lot of the advice here as a practical thing (e.g., having a scrubbed public image online, assuming that someone evaluating your job application will research you), but I also remember a time when you didn’t have to do that to work in the industry. A lot of the smartest, most creative folks in my CS program were also outspoken on (e.g.) privacy or civil rights in ways that could be tied to their real name, and it makes me kind of sad to think that they’d probably have to hide that today if they wanted to get hired as a new grad.
I was getting unregistered jalopy vibes from the condition of the truck (dirty, preexisting body damage). Often also means uninsured, and an owner who doesn’t have anything to pay for the damage they cause. The good news is that this driver may not ever get his truck out of impound (in addition to towing + storage fees they’ll need to pay to get registration current, they probably wouldn’t have let it lapse in the first place if they could afford to do that), so he may be off the road for a while. The bad news is that he’ll probably never make the city whole for the damage caused here, though maybe they’ll recoup something by auctioning the truck.