random

One of the blogs I follow regularly is Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist. Her stories of startups, suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, weird mix of seemingly unrelated anecdotes, personal references and thoughts on career is interesting and often thought provoking. Like this one that Prom is a career stepping stone. Excerpts:-

The thing that is most difficult in work life is adjusting to different cultures as seamlessly as possible. People do not lose jobs because they don’t get the job done. People generally lose jobs because of poor cultural fit. If people think you fit on the team, they’ll cut you slack even when you don’t get the job done. In fact, the Harvard Business Review reports that people don’t even care if you don’t get the job done if they like you.

It’s the getting people to like you part that is so hard.
.. Asians are kicking everyone’s butt in academics. But.. Asians don’t do as well in the workplace. Because the skills that you need to do well in school are not the skills that you need to do well at work. Work is not a meritocracy—it’s a popularity contest.

Also after a long break, I was catching up on Radiolab podcasts this weekend. Radiolab podcasts is science based – they choose all sorts of subjects like time, love, chimps, sleep, parasites; get scientists who are doing interesting work; narrate stories using music and sounds and have delightful hosts who are not really scientists but have long experiences in hosting such programs. Often the topics may seem drab like tumors for example, but the kind of stories they pick, narration and insights will make sure you stay hooked till end.

One of the shows I listened to last weekend was called “strangers in the mirror”. It was with two guys who have face blindness – they can’t remember faces. They were talking about the social awkwardness of it – one of them said he just withdraws from the shame of not identifying the people he is supposed to know and other said he tries to charm his way out of such awkward situations. So other day in the elevator I met a person with whom I had lunch a week back where we were introduced. As he entered elevator I said hi and he didn’t have a clue who I was – then I told him about others who were in that lunch with us etc and his response was to invite me to a dinner which of course never materialized..:)