Job Advice

On 13 June 2007, the Washington Post Express ran a very informative article on an interview with Penelope Trunk, the author of “The Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success”. Rest assured that if you desire to be the ultimate wussified shell of a human for the rest of your life, this book should prove to be a step by step “how-to” manual.

Admittedly, I haven’t read the book, and don’t intend to. Why do I need to when Ms. Trunk offers wonderful insights along the lines of moving back into your parents’ house after college as a strategic career move? Is this serious?

Let’s be honest here, there are certain acceptable circumstances when you can move back into your parents’ house: 1- You are actively searching for a job and are just awaiting offers to see where you’ll move. 2- You Are in the process of moving into your own place and there is a gap between your leases. 3- You’ve undergone some enormous life trauma like divorce and need a place for a couple of weeks to get back on your feet. 4- Your old house burns down.

If you fall outside any of the above categories, or fall into one of them and stay at your parents’ house for longer than a maximum of one month, you are a L-O-S-E-R. Loser. No ifs ands or buts about it.

You are not entitled live some posh existence fresh out of school, and your parents didn’t have it easy when they were young either. If you don’t like your low salary, get off your lazy ass, work harder and get promoted.

Ms. Trunk would have me believe that, “In order to use your early 20’s to figure out what to do, you need flexibility, and the best way to get that is to live with your parents and let them support you.” I didn’t make that last quote up. If you’re earning a salary and your parents are supporting you, you suck. And your 20’s aren’t there for you to “figure out what you want to do”. You fucked around enough in college and should have figured it out there. You are not entitled to wander the earth searching for purpose on your parents’ hard earned dime. Quit being a douche-bag and get your ass in line.

More sage advice from Ms. Trunk: upon becoming a new manager – “The first thing you have to think is (when you have a work task) ‘Who can I delegate this to?’ A lot of people think delegating is not taking responsibility. But it’s a gift to the people you work with; it’s giving them fun work to do.” First of all, merely delegating doesn’t make you a good manager, delegating the right things to the right people does. Delegating everything makes you a lazy asshole. Second, I don’t mind hard work, but I don’t ever view tasks from my boss as “a gift” or “fun work to do”. Of course Ms. Trunk probably doesn’t know that because she’s never had to work for one of the assholes who reads a book like this; she’s busy getting rich off of them.

But my personal favorite passage, word for word, is this, “There’s a lot of research published that says that people are hired because of their skills and fired because of whether they’re likeable. People who are competent at work, but not likeable are judged by their peers as incompetent, so if you want to be judged as competent, give compliments to people. The most core career advice you can get is ‘learn to be well- liked.’ It’s more important than skills, job hunting or networking.”

There aren’t words in the English language to express how utterly stupid this advice is. If a boss hires and fires based on likeability over competence, they’re a moron. If you’re the kind of weak-minded dumb-ass that cares enough what your truly incompetent coworkers think about you that you would actually dumb yourself down to please them, please do the world a favor and step into traffic without looking both ways.

I wish I ran a company that was competing against Ms. Trunk and the morons who take her advice. I would kick the shit out of her and put her in the poorhouse. Of course, she could always go back to playing professional volleyball. No business sense is required there.