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If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
- notahacker 16y agoThe problem probably wasn't having the masters degree so much as having the masters degree and applying for jobs with titles like "administrative assistant" moral of the story: don't trust "careers counselors"
- slantyyz 16y agoFrom the sounds of it, the author didn't have much work experience. What else can he apply for? Around the time I finished my undergrad, there was a recession (almost 20y ago), and most of my liberal arts peers were taking customer service jobs. When you're fresh out of school, you gotta start somewhere.
- lsc 16y agoget a job that counts. Even if you have to be underpaid, or work for a small employer. Work in your field. Working in fast food (or data entry) doesn't get you on that upward path to where you want to go... with a degree and a year of data entry experience, you have no more than you had with just the degree. I have relevant experience going back to when I was 15 on my resume. sure, my first cable monkey jobs paid less than fast food, but it lead to better things. If you are willing to work for menial labor wages, you can almost always get work that requires skills. there are many small businesses, all attempting to cheap out on hiring. take advantage. my first job? I worked at a shady computer repair place run by an Iraqi woman. I was paid by the piece (usually a dollar or two below minimum wage) which, I was told, was more than the last (much older) guy got, though, as the woman explained, "You are much better than he was." It was actually a really great experience (except, maybe for the lack of air conditioning in the living room where we worked.) and I got massive discounts on used computer parts until I moved out of the area, so even financially, it worked out okay.
- slantyyz 16y agoget a job that counts... work in your field The guy had a Masters in English. Having an English degree does not necessarily mean you are qualified to be a writer or teacher. Depending on where he lives (small town vs. big city), I think the options could be more limited than you think.
- lsc 16y agoThen write documentation. Everything needs documentation. Sure, it doesn't pay that great, but neither does data entry, and it's at least in the field, and even if his degree was in comparative literature, he should be able to handle writing documentation for something. I'm trying to say that the ability to write clearly is a valuable and marketable skill. Granted, it doesn't always get the pay it deserves, but people /will/ pay you for it because it /does/ add value to the business.
- slantyyz 16y agoWriting documentation is a skill that requires more than a good command of the English language. The technical writers that I've hired in the past didn't even have English degrees, but were excellent at what they do. I don't think the copywriters in the media agencies I worked at had English degrees either. I've only hired one English major in my career, and that was as a software developer. He was -much- better at writing code than he was at writing prose. Frankly, a lot of people don't know what field they belong in when they first graduate. I have a social sciences undergrad and an MBA, and I've been "out of my field" doing technology for 90% of my career. Most of my friends in the tech industry also don't have engineering or CS backgrounds. A lot of them have diverse backgrounds like poli.sci, etc. And most of us started our careers doing stuff like "admin assistants" etc.
- lsc 16y agoan English degree is not required to write well. However, writing well, one would hope, would be required to obtain an advanced English degree. I'm focusing on the ability to write well as a marketable skill. Yes, you need to add that to something else to be useful, usually, but the ability to write well is fairly rare, and it's a skill the guy has, so it's a good place for him to start. >Writing documentation is a skill that requires more than a good command of the English language. The technical writers that I've hired in the past didn't even have English degrees, but were excellent at what they do. non-technical products require documentation as well. Like I said, he'll need to learn some other things to go along with the writing ability, but having the writing ability there up front helps a lot, and hopefully allows him to find an employer who might be willing to take a chance and be patient while he learns the rest of the trade (at a lower pay rate, of course, than an experienced documentation writer)
- akadruid 16y agoAt least the counselor got him a job. What is strange is that he apparently gave up on his job hunt despite being underemployed in his new position. I wonder at some of these stories I read where people spend months looking for work as if it were some kind of game. Do they not eat or live under a roof? How do they pay for those letters and faxes? When I left school, I temped in warehouses, factories, offices, whatever, while I was hunting for a programming job. When I lost my programming job some years later, I temped at a bank until I got another programming job.
- slantyyz 16y agoI've learned something useful from every job I've had, whether I was underemployed or not. He (the author of the article) can probably learn a lot about organizational behaviour being an admin assistant. He can also take that time to think about what he really wants to do as a career. Your first few jobs (or the degree you have) don't define what you end up doing in the long term. You really have to play it by ear.
- GBKS 16y agoSounds like a situation he put himself in by having no goals and just looking for anything that comes up. Instead of doing that, he could have done research in what opportunities his degree opens up for him and specifically target those areas in his job hunt.
- toxicflavor 16y agoIn an ideal world perhaps. In the real world, sometimes you just have to suck it up to avoid an even more desperate situation. I think it's clear that's what he did.
- espinchi 16y agoI really hope there's a good deal of fantasy into this story. Gladwell, in his great book Outliers, argues that IQ is only related to success to some extent: above the intelligence level that allows you to get a MSc without great difficulties (this is obviously a fuzzy metric), adding much more doesn't have a big impact. Other factors (was programming your hobby at 16 and you got access to a workstation when it was not common?) make the difference.
- slantyyz 16y agoGood point. Brains can only take you so far. Passion, skills, experience, luck, timing, instinct... those elements are also in the success/riches equation.
- JangoSteve 16y agoI expected this article to be something totally different. I think it was a great article, though the title had little to do with the moral of the story. But man I can relate. When I graduated with my Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degrees, I thought the world was my oyster. I found a sweet job called Marketing Engineer that required both a well-formed understanding of engineering and a knack for marketing and communication (I had those!). Turned out to be nothing more than a glorified technical support job (at least 6-7 hours of my work day). After 8 months, I was totally depressed, my side startup was suffering because of it, and I had to quit. No amount of money was worth that feeling all day, every day.
- SMrF 16y agoI totally sympathize and if you are on the startup path it sounds like quiting was the right move. But I think your expectations for an entry level job are too high. One thing newly minted adults would do well to realize is your first few years at any job are going to be spent doing the grunt work. If you go into it expecting to spend your days oscillating between mind numbing boredom and hectic days filled with busy work, it's a lot easier to deal with. People with this perspective know opportunities for better work will arise -- and seriously, two or three years is just not that long.
- lsc 16y ago>One thing newly minted adults would do well to realize is your first few years at any job are going to be spent doing the grunt work. Is this what most people experience? The earliest bits of my career consisted of me getting thrown in to situations for which I was in no way qualified, then being expected to sink or swim without much help. Often nobody at the company really knew how to do the job I was hired for. Great fun, really; by the time I figured out how to "swim" I usually decided it was about time for a new job. I guess that's the thing... when there are problems... go solve them. If the boss doesn't give you more work, go find some.
- jbooth 16y agoI had something similar, but we're lucky. If you go to work for a "big company" they'll have their whole dumbed down training program, you'll have to learn to push paper around "their way", etc.
- edw519 16y agoLet's see now... You took bad advice from the wrong person. You dumbed yourself down. You played the role of some other person, not yourself. You played someone else's game without expressing what you were really thinking. You settled for an inappropriate job. You're bored to death and wasting time in a dead end job for 6 months now. And you call that "Damn Smart"? [EDIT: The only smart thing you did (following up with a nice Thank You note) is the only thing that got you the job. Please don't attribute your "success" to anything else.]
- ulf 16y agoI think the title was supposed to be the train of thoughts for everyone who got his original application. They thought he was too smart to apply for that given job, so they did not even invite him for the interview, since he would have to be rich, if he was as smart as his application implied, in THEIR opinion.
- jqueryin 16y agoAll I took out of reading this article is that he should have been looking for higher level positions based on his qualifications. If he was so smart, he should've set his sights a little higher for a more rewarding and/or challenging position.
- barkmadley 16y agointelligent people tend to undervalue themselves while unintelligent people tend to overvalue themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- abrown28 16y agoIt got him a job and time to look for a better one.
- mleonhard 16y agoIn the comments he says he worked there for 3 years, until going back to school for a PhD: http://activevoice.charlesbivona.com/?p=165#comment-13 http://activevoice.charlesbivona.com/?p=165#comment-13
- asimjalis 16y agoWhat was your graduate degree in? Could you apply that to create value somehow?
- toxicflavor 16y agoStaying alive and being able to pay the rent is creating value too.
- mian2zi3 16y agoNo, that's consuming value.
- toxicflavor 16y agoThen we disagree on the value of staying alive irrespective of one's productivity level.
- mquander 16y agoYou're being intentionally ignorant of the way everyone else uses the term "creating value," which describes work that improves the world around you, not just work that happens to keep you alive.
- toxicflavor 16y agoExcept my point is that you can still improve the world around you (create value) even if your work does not do so. In that sense, maintaining your own survival is also a means of creating value. On the other hand, you seem to define "creating value" in excessively narrow terms by accepting whatever preconceived notion you insist it is defined by.
- Ardit20 16y agoThat is creating value to himself! The original point was about creating values to others. How on earth can you be smart and not realise the rules of engagement in the world? Not you personally, but the guy who claimed he was super smart.
- boredguy8 16y agoBecause I'm smart. Money certainly has utility, but it's not the be-all and end-all of my existence. It enables freedom in choices but doesn't become the reason I make choices. And it certainly has let me chose not to work with someone who is impressed by 'dumbing down'.
- toxicflavor 16y agoIt enables freedom in choices but doesn't become the reason I make choices. Well isn't that nice for you? Too bad it's not true for everyone.
- boredguy8 16y agoIt is true for everyone that money enables freedom in choices. My point is that it's worth avoiding reaching a point that you need to be rich for some reason like "more = better".
- TotlolRon 16y agoYep. Self-induced lobotomy is a very useful skill.
- lhorie 16y agoI find the idea of paper degrees being somehow a synonym of "smarts" a bit elitist. As far as getting rich goes (at least in startupland), there's a big difference between "so, what can you do?" and "so, what can do to help me"? If life isn't turning out quite like you expected, perhaps it'd be "smart" to be a bit more proactive?
- jafran 16y agoi think the author of this post needs to drop his intense feelings of superiority and entitlement as they are obviously not backed up by any real world metrics. sorry, much of academia is completely disconnected from the real world. just because you made marks doesn't mean the rest of the world should bow before your superior intellect. sheesh, the nerve of some people...
- mkramlich 16y agoThe impression I've gotten is that what a Masters of English most prepares you for is a PhD in English. A distant second and third would be editor and writer. Then maybe a journalist.
- avar 16y agoIt would appear that you talk like a fag, and that your shit's all retarded.
- Aaronontheweb 16y agoWhy are you voting this guy down? It's a quote from Idiocracy.
- Avenger42 16y agoI didn't vote him down, but without quotation marks or attribution, it simply looks like a slam toward the author. And I haven't seen the movie often enough to recognize the quote immediately. (I've seen it once, and the only quote that I remember is from the Costco greeter.)
- slantyyz 16y agoIt also doesn't help that the remark is homophobic.
- run4yourlives 16y ago1. Because this isn't reddit. Random quotes add little to the discussion. 2. Because it misses the point, in that the problem is the author, not everyone else being stupid.
- Aaronontheweb 16y agoNo humor allowed. Got it. Thanks.
- run4yourlives 16y agoI said nothing regarding humour.
- mquander 16y agoIs that supposed to be a reason? How does being a quote from Idiocracy make it worth posting?
- rlivsey 16y agoI've never run into this myself (BSc Comp Sci, MSc Management), but that might be because most jobs I've had have come through word of mouth / networking. Plus, once you've got a bit of a career history, your education doesn't matter much compared to your experience. I've spoken to plenty of friends/employers who don't care about degrees at all, but not many who would actively count that against applicants. As other people have said, it most likely depends on the kind of jobs you're applying for. Being massively over-qualified for the position you're going for can certainly act against you as you're more likely to get bored and move on.
- mian2zi3 16y agoDumbed himself down for a job he was over-qualified for and ends bored to depression. Sounds about right.
- toxicflavor 16y agoDo you have a better suggestion?
- mian2zi3 16y agoYeah. Learn how to get a satisfying job instead of taking bad advice from an incompetent career counselor. Maybe doing 3hrs worth of data entry this the most economic value this guy can provide. In that case, he better learn to settle. The answer is right there in the article. “I learned all I needed to know in high school, ya know,” he argued. “I wanted to make money." The way to get a job is to convince your boss you can make him money. This is why businesses hire. Instead of trying to impress potential employers with yours smarts, or relate to them like a frat boy, impress them with your understanding of the value you provide and how you add to their bottom line. Then you'll get hired. Nick A. Corcodilos talks about this in Reinventing the Interview: http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Headhunter-Reinventing-Interview-Win/dp/0452278015 http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Headhunter-Reinventing-Interview-W... (Great book, but probably not worth buying. If memory serves, it is a little repetitive, but it is short and you can read it in a bookstore in one sitting.) Or go read back articles from Ask the Headhunter.
- starkfist 16y agoI've had a lot of success relating to the employer like a frat boy. It's way easier to get hired this way than actually knowing how to do something.
- ThomPete 16y ago"Life is too short to walk around reluctantly doing crap work" -Bruce Sterling
- toxicflavor 16y agoAnd life can be even shorter if you don't.
- mahmud 16y agoThat's a false dichotomy. The issue is not doing crap work, the issue is doing it reluctantly. If you put a little effort into your work and think of the big picture, even the stupidest job can be considered a success if you pair it with a solid Plan-B and an exit strategy. Work on crap, but also work on your dreams while at it. What do you have to give up beside TV and idling? I bet this English graduate did nothing on his spare time but read Walt Whitman. If he is so smart, why hasn't he reverse-engineered human interaction and learned how to build rapport with people? Hint: you meet people on their terms when you need them. Learn to mimic their personalities and walk in lockstep with them.
- toxicflavor 16y agoIt's not a false dichotomy. It's not true to say that life is too short to spend doing crap work because some people don't have the choice to make a living in any other way, no matter how reluctant their decision is and no matter how much it cuts against their dreams.
- ThomPete 16y agoI don't buy that. Have you ever read Fish? http://www.charthouse.com/productdetail.aspx?nodeid=11010 http://www.charthouse.com/productdetail.aspx?nodeid=11010 There is an art to everything it's just a matter of finding it and you can learn a great deal from even the most tedious work.
- 16y ago
- reynolds 16y agoI don't get the mentality of sending out thousands of resumes. I sent out one to get my current job because I wanted to work there.
- jazzyb 16y agoSome people (such as myself) have a hard time landing interviews for some reason[1]. During my final year in college, I sent out no fewer than three dozen resumes to potential employers (all of whom were hiring); only four of those companies asked me to come in for an interview. [1] Note that that "reason" was no doubt due to my inexperience and not knowing how to properly market myself at the time.
- GBKS 16y agoNot getting contacted back can many times also be a fault of the company hiring. Sometimes it takes weeks to hear back, sometimes they want you to stop by tomorrow while you clearly wrote you're on the other side of the country. Just another indicator not to take job hunt too personal and making sure to look into every opportunity available.
- cparedes 16y agoI don't get it, either. Most of the jobs I've applied for after I've graduated college, I was able to get at least an in person interview, and several times, was able to juggle between several offers; I've only applied to roughly five or six jobs in my whole career so far. Why? Because I actually took the time to look at their website, see if it was something I was interested in, and even come up with work-related questions that I could ask them in my cover letter. Though, I would still say that it's a numbers game, but you still have to make a decent effort for each job you apply for. It's almost like dating, in a way.
- kd0amg 16y agoI was able to get at least an in person interview, and several times, was able to juggle between several offers This alone suggests you were in a somewhat different situation than that of the author. Resume carpet-bombing is what people seem to eventually do when they aren't getting offers.
- klochner 16y agoAre hard to read font colors a new trend or something? #666666 for body text makes my eyes bleed
- sliverstorm 16y agoThat's because #666666 is the color of The Beast.
- Ardit20 16y agoand it is not optimal contrast with the white background, nor black for that matter.
- sliverstorm 16y agoAh, but it is even less optimal with a background of #777777
- igravious 16y agoIt is actually the colour of the Beast Beast.
- zavulon 16y agoThe 'dumbing yourself down' skill comes very handy when talking to most girls at bars/clubs.
- iron_ball 16y agoBecause you want to date the girls who can't keep up with you intellectually? Whatever floats your boat, man.
- nandemo 16y agoI though that what zavulon is saying was common sense. I assume people who are downvoting him don't hang out in bars and clubs much, or aren't going there to pick up girls.
- grannyg00se 16y agoIf you skew your job hunt by appealing to people who are offended by intelligence, then as an intelligent person you're going to end up with the wrong job.
- michael_nielsen 16y agoI like the converse: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" It's attributed to MIT's Paul Cootner, supposedly as a comeback to a money manager who asked him why, if Cootner was so smart, he wasn't rich?
- shadowfox 16y agoThat response didnt make much sense to me :(
- jbooth 16y agoWho's smarter? Money manager guy who does a good job of getting paid in a system that is universally regarded as broken and overpaying everyone involved to do a crappy job, or the professor who reinvents some area of science but only makes 90k? Depends on your definition of smart.
- Ardit20 16y agoWhich definition are you using and what's the alternative definition and what are the pros and cons, that way only I guess can we find if the rich guy or the smart but relatively poorer guy is smarter.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Eliezer 16y agoIt's the equivalent of saying "Yes, Madam, and you are ugly, but I will be sober tomorrow." If you're smart but not rich, you can try to get rich. What do you do if you're rich but not smart?
- mkramlich 16y agohire 10 smart people
- 16y ago
- blueag 16y agoBecause I don't have rich uncles?
- run4yourlives 16y agoI'm 35. I'll try not to be too critical. Moral of the story: Being educated doesn't say anything about you being smart. Here's the rub. A college degree is a specialization. That's why you "major" in something. It was never designed to be an extension of high school. So, you should get a degree in something that you are both passionate about and also accept the limited career paths that come with that particular passion. If the career paths are limited and/or not to your liking, assume that the degree will not help you find a job. You may as well use the money to travel instead. The further you deviate from the career paths that are attached to the degree you obtain, the more worthless it becomes. Attempting even greater specialization along this field of study only enhances this effect; it will not correct it. So, Mr. Masters in English: Why are you not focusing your search on the career paths that are attached to the degree that you have; assuming this is actually a passion of yours, namely teaching and/or writing? Applying for random positions because you figure your degree actually means something is about as stupid as applying to the space program and for all the same reasons. You do not have a catch all pre-requisite. You have specialized training, and you receive little to no benefit over the random person on the street when you are evaluated for suitability to this position if the training isn't aligned with the job you are trying to get. Not realizing this after years and years of education isn't very smart at all, really. Sadly I know you aren't alone.
- drusenko 16y agoSpecialization can definitely be a negative when you apply for a position where your degree doesn't apply. As an employer, if you see someone applying for a "billing specialist" (read: fairly unspecialized) job with a masters or PhD, you instantly think: "This person is not going to be satisfied working this job, this person is going to want to get paid too much, etc"
- run4yourlives 16y agoExactly, which is basically what the author of the post is feeling.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoPart of the problem is that there is almost no career path for the specialization called "Masters in Humanities." Even with a PhD, the career path is very limited. I've watched my sister-in-law, with a PhD in English and teaching experience, pretty much give up on her career because it is nearly impossible to find a tenure-track position in the humanities.
- lee 16y agoI read a lot of comments mentioning how the author is overqualified for the jobs he's applying to. But we've gotta consider two things: 1) We're currently in a depression/recession. Jobs are scarce out there. 2) He has a Masters degree in English! Compared to most of us on Hacker News, we don't have experience job hunting with an arts degree.
- mquander 16y agoIf this story is trying to convince me that it makes sense to dumb down credentials ("at least I was employed") it was not successful. He apparently sent out his resume to roughly every business he saw on the street. Perhaps if he had represented himself better on it, he would have gotten a different job that doesn't suck.
- sabat 16y agoYou haven't been out on the market lately, I suspect. People don't read resumes anymore, so there's no real chance to impress anyone. They scan keywords. If you try to represent yourself well, chances are you won't be keyword-rich enough to get attention.
- ergo98 16y agoWhile I think this story is largely fictitious, when someone argues that they're downtrodden and victimized because they sound smart -- in verbal or written form -- they're often missing the forest for the trees. Unless you're debating esoterica of a specialized domain, the smartest people manage to communicate in a simple, effective manner(1). The person accused of using too many syllables, in contrast, tends to be someone who isn't actually terribly smart at all, and the compensation is a verbal find/replace of commonplace words with a cargo cult collection of "smart" words, because that's what they think smart people do. When someone says "you're too smart", or "you sound too smart" or "try to dumb yourself down", most of the time they're not really saying that you're too smart. They're saying "can the act." (1) - The best example of this, I think, was Richard Feynman. He never tried to sell the idea that he was smart -- anyone who needed to know that already knew it -- but instead managed to communicate the most incredible ideas clearly and effectively.
- amohr 16y agoI know it's hard to believe, but there are people who legitimately enjoy finding the exact right word. This is like trashing someone for working on an open source project - they're just doing something they love the best they know how. In this case it's not strategically optimal and finding that out was a (perhaps overdue) shock.
- ergo98 16y ago>I know it's hard to believe, but there are people who legitimately enjoy finding the exact right word. Absolutely. There is an appropriate time and a place for such an exercise, however, and having the cognizance of when and where is useful. >This is like trashing someone for working on an open source project - they're just doing something they love the best they know how. I don't think it's anything like that. The submission is about a person who had purportedly been sending out thousands of resumes with nary a bite. Their angle is not "Clearly I'm doing it wrong", but they instead resort to the tried and true "everyone but me is stupid" angle. I don't patronize that thought process because it's the hubris of failure.
- jiganti 16y ago
- debt 16y agoI'm lazy as fuck. That's why.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Ardit20 16y agoRubish. And I'll say what I like because this is the internet and I will care about you as much as you cared about my five minutes. Your tone is patronising. You are shouting at me, I feel like a little child in a very dark room with a very tall man shouting at me and I have watery eyes and will any moment start crying. First, English Literature. That is arts. Arts and business are two different things. With english lit you write the subjective rubish you did and make me feel very bad for no reason whatever. Second, is this all fiction? Third, how old are you? - just to say I didnt read it all, I didnt wanna cry and didnt like the darkness. Fourth, it is not smart to study English Literature, you read book instead. Fifth, it is not smart to apply to jobs you are not qualified for. Sixth, get a proper degree! Seventh. Are you saying that someone who went to Harvard would be looked down compared to someone who went to, well I dont know about there in the US, but a rubish university by reputation, unless you were appying to be a bin collector? Or are you saying that really employers do not want smart people - smart by the standards of reality - that is great university reputation and numbers or letters in your paper- when applying for the jobs which kinda - if not in reality than perception - require a lot of responsibility and someone's intellect you can trust when making far reaching decisions? To Conclude, I don't like you, whoever that wrote it. It is grim, it is shouting at me, at no point, as far as I read anyway, and if you were so smart you would have made my reading pleasurable and I would have finished reading it, did I think that you showed any reason for me to think that you are smart, your article is full of generalisation, opinions, You know, perhaps if you are smart enough you will understand this, you article gives those same emotions as - and this is brutal - as those articles written by journalists in populous newspapers did when they were arguing for invading Iraq. I do not say it is of that grave scale, it gives those same emotions. So god let me pray that you do not become a journalist and so too god I pray that your articles, if of the same kind, do not find their way to HN again.
- adnam 16y agoQuote: '“This letter is too well written.” He fiddle [sic] with the pen as he read.'
- lispm 16y agoIf You're So Incredible Rich, Why Aren't You Happy?
- vox 16y agoBecause money isn't my primary aim in life.
- rwhitman 16y agoConsidering I've spent my career in the opposite position, I've never fully understood this mentality. But America is littered with over-educated, under-employed people for some reason. I recall working service jobs as a student with unhappy coworkers - career waiters, cooks or store clerks - in their mid 30's with Masters degrees and that was back when there was no recession to use as an excuse. I'd attribute it to entitlement, maybe just a personal disposition of not being very driven, and the fact there are many people who's only real talent is excelling at school...
- LiveTheDream 16y agoOP should have simply done something interesting in the extra 5 hours per day that his employer was paying him to do nothing. Read a book, write memoirs, work on a side business...
- marklubi 16y agoAm I the only one that read the article and thought that part of the problem had to do with the fact that he was sending out "thousands of resumes" in the last two months? I really expected to come to the comments on this post and see a lot of responses about that. It doesn't sound at all like he was trying to target his market at all. It sounds as though his plan was to simply spam his way to finding a job.
- known 16y agoI'm smarter than Obama, why I'm not President of America?
- seis6 16y agoClearly the story is not about being Smart. More in the lines of: you can get a dog job if you learn to bark. But then don't complain if you are not a dog, don't ask for meat and eat the bones that a dog eat.
- dooshydoo 16y agoA polarizing article not meant to entertain or educate, but to gain traffic from those searching for 'smart and rich'. If the story were true, I’d feel sorry for him; creating an ideology based on the corner of a puzzle piece makes you horse-headed and ultimately miserable. Fortunately, it’s not, and he has successfully brought attention to his personal site, which, because of the content, is pleasantly ironic. My left-handed compliments to the chef.
- mathgladiator 16y agoIf you're so damn smart, why don't you start a company and then consult? I've seen the pattern that internally many companies work the way the article noted. That is, insecurity and ass-kissing go way down to the bowels of the company. However, I have found that the problems created by ass-kissing are solved when you sell yourself not as an employee but as a consulting expert/guru. Then, intelligence and other awesome qualities are then marketing tools.