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Comment by phpthrowaway99 | Hacker News Reader

I was about top 1% in the country. So buying from me would be a different experience. Maybe you landed on someone in the bottom 50%, at a bad dealership too.

The owner of our dealership was a Cal grad, the sales manager was a Jewish accounting major, I had an engineering degree, my favorite coworker completed medschool but couldn't pass the MCATS, and everyone else had a degree too.

When I went to work for a Penske dealership (a public company), corporate was in town one day and had a meeting with me to ask how the owner at my previous dealership did things. So maybe it wasn't your typical car dealership.

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> the sales manager was a Jewish accounting major

One of these things seems out of place when listing qualifications

He used to joke about him being Jewish as part of why he was so good with our numbers. I meant it in a good way? I guess my sales skills are a bit rusty.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it odd.

Car salespeople say a lot of culturally inappropriate things constantly to each other. The sales manager I mentioned constantly referenced himself being a Jewish accountant to us as a fun way to remind us he's good at his job. Somehow it stuck and I guess I forgot even positive stereotypes are now allowed.

I have to admit, the fun banter between salespeople and even management is the #1 thing I miss these days.

> guess I forgot even positive stereotypes are now allowed.

could have been avoided had you said something like "we had a Jewish accountant, as he often liked to remind us" or something that didn't imply that you personally attached some elevated level of job competence based on his choice of holy book(s).

Isn't Jewish also a race, not just a choice of holy books? When he said it I assume he meant it regarding the race, not that reading the Torah makes you better with numbers.

GGP is screaming #quityourbullshit.

e.g., How do you fail an MCAT? You get a score.

The rest sounds like partial truth + embellishment.

I mistook boards, for mcat. He obviously had a decent mcat since he got into a medical school.

He is a salesman, its part of the job.

Let's hope a moderator steps in.

Do we really need to moderate the fact that while listing proof of how smart and good my team was, I used Jewish accountant as a descriptor? (That I only said because he constantly joked about this himself and it just stuck with me). It was included to accent a list of positives about the groups intelligence.

If I had said we had a Polish mathematician, would that also need moderation? Or if describing how service oriented we were, I included an ex Catholic nun?

Different experience how?

> I've heard excuses, stalls, lies, promises and objections over 10,000 times.

Sounds like you were also trying to guilt trip people who then struggled to find a socially acceptable way to disengage

The MCAT is for admission into med school. How did they complete it without passing?

Likely they mean one of the step exams. Med school and residency are a brutal game - the exams don’t stop till you pass the boards at or around the time you become an attending!

I appreciate that you understood exactly what I meant, giving a medschool outsider some benefit of the doubt. Yes it was one of the board exams he couldn't pass.

Others instantly assumed I was lying or exaggerating, as if I need some street cred on an anonymous 1 week old throwaway account.

This is getting more irrelevant to the thread, but it’s highly unlikely “inability” to pass a step exam was the reason for exiting medicine. The first pass rate for US MDs is 95-97%. American medical school is designed to make it highly unlikely you will not pass those tests. You could also retake it up to 5 times.

The real issue is that failing a step exam or passing with a lower score (once passed you can never retake) nearly completely eliminates you from certain specialities - especially the more lucrative surgical subspecialties. Some people may simply decide to give up at that point. It’s much more likely burnout or an overall “fuck this” with the training, or other red flag, eg cheating or egregious behavioral problem then not passing a single exam. Because although there are a ton of exams after entering medical school none are as high stakes as the MCAT for continuing to be a doctor.

Ah, great points! The person may have said it was an exam to keep the explanation simple for others.

Perhaps they didn’t match (entirely didn’t match or couldn’t match where they needed to be for family/some obligation), burnt out, etc.

There’s tons of reasons one may not make it all the way through, though it is quite rare if you grind hard enough and are adequately flexible RE residency location and stuff. The system wants you to finish once you’re in med school, since med schools and residencies are measured by completion rates and similar success metics.

Medicine is a really tough thing to get in to, and I don’t think people fully grasp that as they apply for med school. It looks prestigious from the outside, but is financially draining for a long time and is extremely inflexible (find out where you match and move with only ~3 months notice?! Who thinks that’s acceptable in the modern world of two working spouses?).

>This is getting more irrelevant to the thread

Maybe not the thread, but certainly relevant to the top commenter's story, which sounds really embellished.

"Failing the MCAT" (?) -> "Failing boards as dropout reason" (?) ...

And top commenter is all over the thread, trying to win people back after folks point out these oddities. Seems like a lot of effort.

Either top commenter is the car sales messiah or embellishing (along with his "alleged" med school dropout colleague). Both are possible, but one is more likely.

Can you think of any possible reason I would do this on a basically new account, labeled throwaway, basically making it worthless as a long term account anyway?

Furthermore, I said early on I was top 1% in the country (for my brand atleast, which already only hires 'better' and experienced salespeople) and later narrowed it down to the most accurate at 0.3%.

But let's say I'm lying.. for fun I suppose? Doesn't everything I wrote apply to someone that actually IS top 1% in car sales? Even if I didn't sell 30 cars a month for 10 years, surely you don't deny someone does that? And even if you'd argue that "no, no one can sell 30 cars a month for years!!"... Doesn't the entire point of my original message still stand.. even a salesperson that is just average will still make tens of thousands of calls, practice thousands of closes, see how thousands of people act as they try to negotiate or stall...

Are you implying top sales people don't exist, or that one wouldn't be on hacker News, or that I was simply not one because of the way I write things?

Ps, if you check my post history, you'll see I went to Cal as an ME, and recently self taught and wrote an entire Saas in shitty php that 30+ companies pay for happily. Unless that is ALSO made up, doesn't that sound exactly like the type of person that would probably outperform the average car sales person?

> Can you think of any possible reason I would do this on a basically new account, labeled throwaway, basically making it worthless as a long term account anyway?

On first order principles, I reject your premises that "throwaway" account names make accounts worthless in the long run. There are tons of counter-factual examples, e.g., "ironic name."

> Ps, if you check my post history, you'll see <insert resume"...

See, this is circular reasoning. If your account is "worthless," what incentive do you have to be reliable/honest?

What's interesting is that I think you know these counter-arguments and are trying to steer away from them.

No, I didn't know of apparently a popular user named ironic name. However, I'd still argue that ironic name is just a username like most. A username that says throwaway in the actual username is always going to be considered basically trollish imo and serves no real purpose of building a reputation around. What, am I going to magically turn this into a network play to land a VP of sales job somewhere?

And to your second point, that while obviously there is no proof of anything by just reading my post history, you'd have to be slightly crazy to think I started a new account recently, and from the FIRST post dreamt up an elaborate plan to seem like a php Saas creating, Berkeley grad, top salesperson persona..

And to think, you caught me in my massive lie because I mistook the MCAT exam for board exams! Something no regular person would EVER do.

I didn’t necessarily think of that as an oddity though. There’s a lot of stigma associated with dropping out of something like medicine combined with very few people out of medicine knowing any details of the training and licensure process. That said, the overwhelming likely scenario is either quitting or getting kicked out and using the “board” failure as a cover (colloquially doctors hardly ever call them boards in the US, they just call them “step”. Boards usually refer to exams taken for specialities after one is licensed and has completed residency). Regardless of the posters possible embellishments I wouldn’t expect them to know any of this. Also some people assume it’s like law where there’s some type of bar exam with a terrible first pass rate. There isn’t. Specialty board exams have lower pass rates, but failing those won’t prevent you from being a licensed practicing physician.

Wayyy off topic, but here are some thoughts.

> There’s a lot of stigma associated with dropping out of something like medicine...

Sure, there's external stigma, but IMO, the larger driver for stigma is self-imposed. Med school enrollees are filled with "most likely to exceed" personalities who are harder on themselves and catastrophize a minor setback v. peers as "the end of the world."

> (colloquially doctors hardly ever call them boards in the US, they just call them “step”.

Anecdotally, I've only heard friends in medicine (US) refer to them (the USMLE exam[0] and steps) as "boards," while in med school. I'm sure that some call them steps, too. I'm also aware of post-residency/fellowship specialty boards. Those are usually singular because you only need one and sometimes they're oral, like a thesis defense where you get grilled on a schedule of of your cases over the past couple years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Medical_Licensin...

> catastrophize a minor setback v. peers as "the end of the world."

The counterpoint to this is that most medical trainees endure a tremendous number or setbacks during training that they must overcome. If anything residency teaches it is grit. I would say trainees generally tend to evolve in this respect from premed undergrads and 1st/2nd year med students who are relatively insufferable throughout the rest of training where there is necessarily a personality shift.

> Anecdotally, I've only heard friends in medicine (US) refer to them (the USMLE exam[0] and steps) as "boards,"

Yes, probably when talking to non doctors to keep it simple. But everyone inside usually just says specifically Step 1, Step 2 etc or USMLE.

> Those are usually singular because you only need one

No. If you subspecialize - you will board in two or more things. For instance an interventional cardiologist will be boarded in internal medicine, general cardiology and interventional cardiology each with their own training requirements and exams.

> sometimes they're oral, like a thesis defense where you get grilled on a schedule of of your cases over the past couple years.

The vast majority of even the oral exams are standardized tests with standardized cases. I can only think of OBGYN that does the case review.

Again, I'm not qualified to get at the nuance so I defer to you if you're in the industry.

> No. If you subspecialize

Sure. I agree that you need a singular board for a terminal specialty and potentially interstitial boards along the way.

> Yes, probably when talking to non doctors to keep it simple. But everyone inside usually just says specifically Step 1, Step 2 etc or USMLE.

Again, I'm not in the field, but see a lot of references on the web using "boards" language. From a quick google search "USMLE called steps or boards", I get a test prep site [0]. I'm assuming this is a matter of "precise v. common" usage.

> The United States Medical Licensure Exam (USMLE) Step 1, commonly called “the Boards,” is a standardized test

[0] https://www.boardvitals.com/blog/9-things-to-know-before-tak....

I meant some type of board exam, not mcat. Got the words mixed up.

I think in another post they said they were premed, so maybe they completed that program but couldn’t get a high enough score on the standardized test that most schools require.

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