More and more employers don’t care about your education. It makes sense: the first place social change happens is usually at the workplace because social change is almost always financially prudent. Think about it: hiring women during WWII meant factories could keep operating, so women got equality at work faster than other places. Giving gay partners health benefits gave employers access to a much stronger candidate pool, so gay rights launched from corporations (companies like Disney lead the way).

So that’s what’s happening with the backlash against school. Employers will continue to get much better at picking successful candidates by largely ignoring schooling (Google is leading the way), and then they’ll start to ignore other largely meaningless issues that are problems only for less progressive people. Which means you need to start adjusting whether you worry about this stuff, too. Read more

Melissa says to me, “The reason you’re not writing is because you’re hiding. And if you hide something from blog readers you can’t cope. So you don’t write.”

I tell Melissa, “If you’re going to move to New York then David should put some of his huge salary in your bank account.”

Melissa says, “Don’t change the subject when you can’t face reality.” Read more

The advice I’ve given to new grads in the past is to marry rich so you have more options. And don’t go to grad school to get out of difficult choices. Consider moving home with your parents to save money and don’t do what you love.

This is all really good advice.  You should go read those posts, but this year, my message to new grads is that you should make the mistakes I made when I graduated. They were good mistakes to make.

1.  Ask for too much in the interview.
The first job interview I ever had was for the number one children’s book publisher at the time, Harper Row. It was a long shot, but I sent my resume to their New York City headquarters, and I ended up getting an interview – my ten years running our family children’s bookstore was worth a lot more than I realized.

When I got to the interview I didn’t understand that it was my job to sell myself.  I thought that had already been done, and that’s why I got the interview. Read more