Is this going to be funny-crazy or sad-crazy?
Just mean, out of touch crazy. And there's no picture of her butt.
Maybe LinkedIn doesn't allow pictures of butts? None of my connections have one up there.
What a silly cow! Nothing more to say.
My considered opinion, is that I just want them to all fucking die. This relentless beshitting of the world has to fucking stop.
At the job I was working before this one I had my boss explicitly tell me that "as a professional" he expected me to work 60 hours a week and put 40 hours a week on my timesheet. I really needed the job so I didn't tell him that "as a professional" I expect to be paid for my work. I did, however, submit an honest timesheet showing that I worked exactly 40 hours a week. He never called me on it, but I suspect that if I wasn't so important to the project he'd have fired me.
I meet the criteria for exemption from FLSA's overtime provisions, but my employer insists on acting like I don't. Which works for me. I think they got afraid because lawyers took out ads at all the bus stops looking for clients for unpaid-overtime cases.
1,2: I'm getting a bit of sad-crazy out of it.
Actually, there's an argument there, but only when you've lost senses of perspective and scale.
She's trolling, right? Trying to hit people's "omg bad mother" buttons?
Social acclaim for trying to be a good mother has been unchallenged for too long.
"Work to make enough money, then take a break from work. Then work again when you need money."
The sentence that makes it clear that even though the problems of employer demands to control employees' time are widespread in the labor market, the people she's thinking about, and purporting to give advice to, represent a tiny slice of a tiny slice of the population. The point when she goes on to say that "these days" employers don't balk at gaps in the resume is particularly rich, given the last decade.
Before Obamacare, that plan would have been a disaster. Now it is merely unrealistic.
Trying to hit people's "omg bad mother" buttons?
Maybe the well of fictional domestic violence stories went dry.
It makes a pretty fast transition from, "huh, I guess some people might think that," to, "You're a goddamn sociopath." The intro says that people who want to let work be their whole life should be allowed to do so and there are more like that than you think. Ok, maybe, although I think it's actually less because people are pressured to say they like it.
Then as soon as she starts with the numbered list it gets insane. People shouldn't expect a regular paycheck if they don't devote their entire life to their employer? Exfuckingcuse me? You'd think all these free market priests would understand the concept of I can do something you need so you pay me. That's the argument of a person who ran a company and found the most annoying part to be the fact she had to spend so much money on those goddamn fleshy automatons.
And of course the complete lack of empathy or understanding that other people aren't in situations that make such arrangements possible if they still want to eat tips it to sociopath side. Shockingly I haven't heard her advocating for the policies that would enable such job/family hopping for others, universal healthcare and guaranteed basic income.
The idea that it makes better financial sense for companies to pay for two nannies or multiple weekly cross-country flights rather than hire enough workers to cover decent hours seems like a pretty impressive leap too.
Has PT been so brilliantly successful as to be entitled to chuck about advice as a simian its night soil?
I was rather flabbergasted at the bit about her being annoyed that employees mistakenly thought she was spending a lot of time with her kids.
And in the same breath, her company paid for two full-time nannies for her, and the others didn't have small kids and thought that was unfair; is that to say that any employee with small kids would have got the same benefit?
Holy shit. What a piece of work.
Thanks. I work on my flinging.
Don't expect to maintain a life-flinging balance.
I appreciated the "A players" nonsense. Much like the "A"s in the whole "game" BS. Try to rig any discussion of the question by defining yourself and those with your characteristics as superior, with the ipso facto that you & those get better results, with criteria for results also defined according to your terms.
Beyond that, she seems to believe that the world consists of tech companies. Basically she ought to get out more.
In this case, the kids may have been better off for spending less time with mom.
The picture and its role in the article is the most impressive part, I think. Didn't she also write a column with a litany of disclosures of mental health issues, or am I thinking of someone else? Bipolar, substance abuse, etc.?
But yeah, I second Flippanter's Dunning-Kruger vote.
"So, what is it about your now-collapsed marriage to a violently abusive husband that makes you feel you need to recommend it as a model to others?"
I find it hard to be mad at Penelope Trunk for her political and work-life balance views on account of it still looks like she's just flat out mentally ill. (Glad to see the Farmer finally cut loose, though, plainly that situation sucked for everyone.) What's mostly horrifying is the knowledge that all this is trickling down to her home-schooled kids.
My considered opinion, is that I just want them all to fucking die.
Agree. This is my response, to this, and to basically everything.
27.1: Right, but it's not as if untreated manic episodes are incompatible with 20-hour work days!
28, 29: The abuse story was about The Farmer, who's still her (extralegal) husband, as far as I know. I don't actually keep up but I know someone who knows her IRL and occasionally passes on particularly wacky gossip. I hadn't heard about their taking in a pregnant homeless teen and exploiting her story on the internet or anything, though, so maybe I'm out of the loop.
32: She claims in the article that he's her ex-husband now, at least I assumed that was the Farmer she was referring to?
33: I'm pretty sure that's her kids' dad, who predates The Farmer. Google doesn't say anything about her having divorced ("divorced" maybe?) the Farmer and she does still seem to live on a farm, but heck if I know!
Farms are great places for fling/life balance.
Cripes, so in all likelihood she's actually still with that guy and there's no upside here at all.
I feel blessed to have forgotten all about this.
She just inhabits a totally different reality where English words don't mean the same things they do to us. Her summary of the LinkedIn piece is " It's the story of connecting with my kids, more than anything. To me, it's a nice story."
Her idea of work is juvenile-- understaffed startup with a few people going all out to put together a good idea that barely works is her best case.
a) The ideas implemented successfully (say Amazon AWS with its completely insane authentication environment designed for a small number of social insects rather than many human beings) have a short half-life. That software stack that ate 6 brilliant person years, it'll make money for 2-5 years before being completely rewritten by others, at which time it'll be one service of many. It's extremely rare that work done this way has lasting value, beyond possibly creating a technical advantage for a company that can be made into a first mover niche. The paycheck is a shitty proxy for worth.
b) Some brilliant people have problems with ego and reality perception (Hi Penelope!). But most of the strong people that I have known are under no illusion of being Einstein. To the extent that people compete with each other the way she describes, it's for limited resources (grants or space for a lab say). The intense competition to be first is an artifact, lots of people work quickly and well while liking or hating their colleagues without having their souls shrivel away or developing illusions about purifying conflict.
Since she's so certain that work coming first is a good idea, what has she done, either as lasting contribution or profitable effort?
34: I stand corrected. "So, given that your first marriage collapsed and your second is violently abusive, what makes you think you have the solution to finding domestic happiness?"
Hey! Speaking of violent exes -- how quickly is it remotely possible for a person to get a student visa to study in Ireland? Does anyone here have optimistic stories about quick visa turnarounds in general? I will omit the ugly backstory for now.
This person is a U.S. citizen, although I believe her infant daughter is technically an Irish citizen.
We have an Irish lawyer on the blog, if you didn't know. I mean like for real, not some Hibernian law society bullshit.
That's good. I don't know if this study scenario is quite officially possible-but-unlikely, but it's out there (unofficial acceptance to a degree program starting soon). The situation here is deteriorating seriously, meanwhile.
32: I remember reading the other thread about PT, but I missed this detail about you having second-hand knowledge about her. She writes articles that are obviously click-bait. Does she believe the content of the articles? Does she actually have Asperger's or is it a convenient excuse for being a monster?
Once I accepted that everything she says is crazy, I really enjoy seeing her try to contort statistics to suit her arguments. I really really enjoy watching people lose their minds over her articles. Don't they know?
47: I forget if I said that at the time. The other woman involved is a trainwreck herself and I've mostly cut her out of my life, but she lives nearby and their children are friends.
I was about to say I wouldn't begin to guess what PT really has except I'd totally default to Borderline Personality Disorder, probably. I don't see why the Asperger's self-diagnosis should be accurate. Mostly it's all just contortions about why you should always do what she did or else do the opposite of what she did but in any event, pay attention to her!!!
If we're going to remotely diagnose, I agree with the Axis II-stuff. I'd bet on Histrionic.
According to the internet, there's no more Axis II. It's all just one big Axis.
I guess it's all a social construct anyway.
32 is nine kinds of crazy. Holy shit.
Apparently, in the new DSM you can only be one kind of crazy at a time but that can have different sets of symptoms. And there's no more trepanning, apparently.
And there's no more trepanning, apparently.
DIY. It's a form of self-care.
On a related note, don't look at the image on the Wikipedia page for craniotomy.
Trunk has always sounded to me like she has some form of Borderline Personality Disorder.
56 it's like you know all of my weaknesses.
Also, yuck.
32 is radioactive atomic ninja crazy.
54.last: Back when I used to get near-daily migraines, trepanning made a whole lot of intuitive sense, but I never indulged.
The one good thing about Penelope Trunk is that she furnishes an excuse to listen to the earwormy "Penelope Tree" by Felt. (Possibly well-known trivia: Penelope Tree was the sister of Frances FitzGerald, who wrote Fire in the Lake, whereas Penelope Trunk something something fiery lake something something.)
59: They now do a thing where they freeze some nerve in your nose. I don't know if that works or not, but it seems safer.
Daughter of Marietta Tree, well-known Washington hostess for intellectual salons?
Fire in the Lake was a sensation ~1970, I don't know how well it holds up.
If you were an intellectual teenager in the late 60s, depressed by the level of debate around you, on both sides, concerning Vietnam and much else besides, books like FITL and Barbara Tuchman's Stillwell and the American Experience in China could help restore your faith in American culture.
Frances FitzGerald, who wrote Fire in the Lake
Also Way Out There in the Blue, an absolutely wonderful history of those near and far wars Reagan's missile defense ideas.
49: Shrinks still say, "it has an Axis II flavor." I think that Bordlerline and Histrionic are cluster b disorders. I've never seen the new DSM. It's an expensive book
What I don't get about you people is that you read things like the linked article start to finish instead of making it two paragraphs in, muttering "oh for fuck's sake," and clicking your way somewhere, anywhere else.
Wait are we talking about BPD? Guess I should read the thread.
What I don't get about you people is that you read things like the linked article start to finish instead of making it two paragraphs in, muttering "oh for fuck's sake," and clicking your way somewhere, anywhere else.
Not all of us! I gave up well before two paragraphs.
Don't read the thread, Smearcase! No need at all!
Though yay tiny installment of the Teo & Smearcase Show!
Don't listen to her, Smearcase! Read the thread!
70: We we'll be right back once Smearcase finishes reading the thread.
Sleep is weakness leaving the body.
Sorry, I meant to be sympathetic that you're up in the middle of the night.
I was, trapnel, and then someone small very noisily wasn't. I'm about to turn this off and sleep again, I think.
I know feck-all about immigration /visa law here but shoot me an email & I can do some checking.
PS is your friend a US citizen? This website says an entry visa is not necessary
http://www.ucd.ie/international/study-at-ucd-global/coming-to-ireland/visa-and-immigration/before-arriving-in-ireland/
On entry into Ireland confirm you are a student not a tourist to get the correct stamp in your passport and if possibe have college acceptance letter with you.
The baby's citizenship could actually be a disadvantage if it makes them suspect she's not really coming as a student.