In the early light of dawn, the ship, a venerable craft of sturdy oak and taut sail, cut through the swells with the grace of a creature born to the sea. Her crew moved about the deck with a quiet efficiency, each man a component of a greater mechanism, their movements honed by countless hours…
Tag: Careers
The Decline of Trust in the Expert Class
If there is one phenomenon that has captivated and confounded the public sphere in recent years, it is the growing disillusionment with the so-called ‘expert class’, borne out of an increasing realization that our ‘expert class’ — those with gilded credentials and self-proclaimed authorities on all things consequential — have consistently failed to live up…
Remembering Theodore Kaczynski
Theodore Kaczynski, known to some as “Uncle Ted” or the Unabomber, was a figure whose life resulted in a collection of writings that have elicited considerable commentary and debate. As a figure of profound controversy, he left a philosophical legacy that continues to reverberate within the intellectual sphere. As a linguist and mathematician, he wove…
How to Make $500,000 a year
Hey folks, let’s have a chat about being a social media manager. Now, you’re in your office, maybe a cubicle, making a cool $100,000 a year, managing posts, tweets, hashtags, and the whole social media parade. One day you start scratching your head when you realize something interesting – your work, your efforts, are actually…
Equity
A punk anarchist long ago taught me about equity. He hated anything successful or beautiful. Instinctually he wanted to destroy it so it was made equal to everything broken and ugly. When he saw something well made, he raged inside that something so good existed in contrast to his wretched life experiences, and he revenged…
Preparing For the Future
Emerging trends clearly indication how young boys will have to find good career paths. Since 2015, women are the majority of college graduates, now at 60% and projected to continue increasing their dominance. “In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro,…
Money Left On The Table
Some people in IT obviously earned good money, but how they earned it was unclear. Top talent was often well paid, but not rich, while those who received millions in stock were often mediocre and seemed to be lucky to get free money because their company was acquired. An organized approach for using talent to…
Antiwork Censorship
I’m all for reforming jobs, offices, and workplace practices. It seemed r/antiwork would be the perfect place to discuss ideas about that and organize with similar minded people. It only took a few days to be banned from r/antiwork. Nothing I said was hostile or inflammatory. My thoughts slightly deviated from their narratives and that…
Living in Triplicate
Because of instability and chaotic reactivity throughout society, you have to operate in triplicate for resilience. In addition to your primary career, you need to keep a secondary career in case your specialty falls out of favor and is replaced. You’ll also need to develop a third career as a backup, one which is midrange…
Ask For What You Want
The best lesson for job discussions I ever got was from a prank phone call. The core advice is to simply ask for what you want rather than complying with established norms or accepting something you don’t want. Changing jobs is not a time to compromise and begin a new undertaking that focuses on what…
Hippie Career Obliviousness
I never considered the idea of a career because I lived as a hippie. There was always some job that paid enough so I had food and a place to live. Modern life seemed to make a wife and kids improbable, so there was no pressure to have a complex job paying enough to support…
Careers as Pirate Ships for Pillaging Companies
The old joke about gentle compromise of an unsatisfying relations goes: My boss pretends to pay me, and I pretend to work. Jobs not only oppressively dominate where someone lives, the hours they sleep and rise, and the entire structure of their days, but then workers take the stress of their jobs home for no…