In fairness, writing is a specific skill. Most people aren't very good at it. It's one thing being able to draft an email or a blog post. Even if it has the qua

In fairness, writing is a specific skill. Most people aren't very good at it. It's one thing being able to draft an email or a blog post. Even if it has the quality of being clear and sounding empathetic, that doesn't magically turn it into good writing. This post is the perfect example. It lacks an original premise, a unique sense of language, or an understanding of the relationship between incident and narrative. Most of its core ideas are hokum: 'I think it was the immortal Steve Jobs who said "don't worry about getting wet, just dance in the rain"'. But Google isn't a writing company. You could work there for a hundred years and never gain the ability to write anything worth reading. There's no evidence that the experience produces unique literary insight. Instead, it seems to create exactly this kind of sludgy, imprecise advice. All of which is unintentionally revealing.