Dinosaur Mom, Salary Parent, Bureaucromancer
One of the books I downloaded during my recent convalescence was Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I’ve been a fan of his work since I first encountered The Black Swan in my local library back in 2008. His books show up variously under “business,” “finance,” “systems,” and “self-help” in bookstores, but basically he’s a philosopher, … Continue reading Wolves and Weirdos, or Skin in the Game for Bureaucrats
I spent most of October developing new bureaucratic processes and redeveloping them when they didn’t work the first time. I suspect I will spend November similarly. In the universe of bureaucratic labor as game play* I default to the role of the person who gets sent off to find the box that the game came in … Continue reading This Month
I attended a Virtual Human Resources Training Conference last week that was offered by the Office of Personnel Management. I don’t currently work as an HR specialist, but I am trying to stay as looped in as possible so that I can eventually find my way back into the HR fold. This was a good investment of … Continue reading Games People Play
This post by (apparently) a professor at a British university highlights some of the aspects of Utopia of Rules that I found most striking. It also draws attention to a university protest in Europe that I didn’t know about. The More You Know and all … In keeping with the Graeber FanGirl motif, I recommend his recent Baffler … Continue reading Moments in the Culture
All I wanted was to post about reading The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by one of my main brain heroes, David Graeber. (I am reading Utopia in short bursts of delight. It is the only book I have ever pre-ordered.) Not true: I also wanted to post about the … Continue reading Distractions
This whole “branding” thing just isn’t working for my blog. For one thing, I don’t post often enough. I haven’t figured out a way to blog in a timely and career-enhancing manner about the professional topics dearest to my heart, namely employee relations and supervisor-craft in large organizations. This is largely because I find blog-worthy … Continue reading Alienation
