Bait and Switch
The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
by Barbara Ehrenreich · first published 2005
33% recommend33% neutral33% critical
"Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed." "Bait and Switch highlights the people who've done everything right - gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes - yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Today's ultralean corporations take pride in shedding their "surplus" employees - plunging them, for months or years at
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With the economy in the tank, disqualifying the unemployed simply makes it easier to reduce the stack of resumes which must be passed to the hiring manager. It is hardly news - read Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich which covered this issue while the boom was still happening in 2006. http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/baitandswitch.htm .
on “Help wanted — jobless need not apply” ↗…of similar pacing, as well as a much shorter book on the gendered professionalization/demolition of the medical practice in the medieval era titled "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses" or "W.M.N."[3] Her "Bait and Switch,"[4] however, about the white-collar unemployment industry I found dull and unenlightening. 0. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1869.Nickel_and_Dimed 1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24452.Dancing_in_the_Str...…
on “Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots” ↗Shot down by whom? There's nothing preventing someone from hanging a shingle as a recruiter. That's what I was getting at. Edit: Recruiting is one of those "make your own jobs" Ehrenreich describes in Bait and Switch.
on “Why are technical recruiters so clueless?” ↗…Furthermore, "concentrate" is no less problematic than "chakra" within a logical-positivist framework. None of which is to deny that many life coaches may be FOS -- I found Ehrenreich's description of them in Bait and Switch consistent with my observations.
on “Signs that (business/life coaches) just want your money” ↗…getting rich too. It's more a multilevel marketing scheme - which doesn't mean someone won't rich here but the entire enterprise is grim and not something I'd want to read about - well, Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait And Switch is somewhat interesting. But still.
on “Why most non-fiction authors don't make any money” ↗