I suspect the vast majority of readers of this substack have time for your writing because we feel that the majority of “competing” content has become (or rather become less secretive about being) a shill for automakers, or even worse, a shill for the current “public enemy #1” of cars and car people - the democratic party.
I used to read 4-5+ sites, now I just look at pictures of cats and read ACF. So if Jack and his handpicked contributors can put out 4-5 sites worth of content that would be great.
If you had a clone of facebook marketplace then I'd really never need to go anywhere else. Only problem would be that I bet most of the other guys around here have stuff that's way too nice for me to afford.
Do you know what happened with RADforsale? It seemed like the DWA crew had a decent sized following and could have kept that site going for longer than they did. I assume it is dead now since there have been no new listings since January of this year.
They're too busy counting their cash. Not only did Hagerty pay a reported 2.3 million for Radwood (I can't say for sure, I was removed from those discussions when I repeatedly criticized the mere idea of it) I've been told they just bought the DWA podcast for serious money.
The RADforsale platform itself was apparently mostly ignored by potential sellers because it overlapped with BaT and Cars and Bids, both of which serve exactly the same audience with more credibility.
Speaking for myself, I make the time because I enjoy Jack's writing. But yeah, you're absolutely correct about the competition, especially Road Car Trend and their EV fetish.
I didn't think that Kroger, at least in their Hy-Vee and Fred Meyer incarnations, had any reading material available anymore other than the backs of cereal boxes....
I just... don't read anything else that doesn't come from a book, outside of stuff directly related to my job; with Gray Mirror as the only noteworthy exception, now and then, when I have the patience for it.
I only read authors that I can trust and/or verify.
Every time I hear you talk about “only” owning so many $600 shirts or other such nonsense I have to fight competing waves of anger and jealousy, as I fight to reconcile my own six figure salary with my seeming inability to get through a single back-to-school season without using credit to buy my kids (who simply refuse to stop growing) a basic assortment of Thai and Vietnamese threads to wear to school for another season.
But hey, at least you’ve given me something to, uh, aspire to.
Having four children is a wealth infinitely greater than having bespoke shirts. If my first wife's health had permitted it, I would be wearing Brooks Brothers as I bullied my four sons through a Jackson 5 style music-misery childhood!
The only way to convert is to drive one yourself or have her drive one where she has to load and unload things. Any sensible person appreciates the ability to open doors and have room to do things.
If this is any consolation: I'm trying to find some freelance tech work to keep the lights on while I look for a permanent gig. In 1999 I could easily get $50 an hour. Today that same work pays $60 an hour, if I'm lucky -- and it's infinitely more miserable, degrading, dehumanizing, and "optimized".
THAT'S why software sucks? Inexperience on the part of the developers?
I assumed it was because programmers are deeply dysfunctional people who equate complexity with capability and view the learning curve necessary to master that complexity as fun.
That was true from 1955 to 2005. Today software is a cut-and-paste product of normies from low-wage countries who treat it with all the passion and interest I used to show while cleaning the dumpster at Rax.
The more I hear about your hosts at Substack, the more I respect them. They are demonstrating a commitment to free speech. They also seem to be thus far resistant to acquisition.
As someone who tends to get lost in the comments section, it’ll be interesting to hear others’ takes on my insipid opinions. Hopefully it gets more to join up. More money, more racecars, more problems, more stories. I’m all in.
I am sure the Substack reps have developed a best practice model, however, I question whether it is at all applicable to a creative product. In the old days of blogs there was the publishing schedule advice. Print magazines had supposed marketing experts advise which color would sell more issues. I can't imagine it wise to tell a jazz musician to keep a track under 3:30 because that is what popular music on the radio plays for. The 55/45 stat says everything about what needs to change of the output, which is nothing.
I suspect you're right. They showed me a lot of other successful Substacks with 50,000 readers and whatnot but most of them were aimed at women or young people who are looking for advice, tips, whatnot.
Most of my readers are more successful than I am, many of them know a lot more than I do. At best I serve as a way to focus their own thoughts, as was the case for you and the outstanding things you wrote as a Riverside Green reader.
really liked the piece about the compressor. that kind of engineering fascinates me. a silver lining of the long emergency / great unwinding may prove to be that the gumption (is that the word?) of early generations to make more from less may return to our world. also, at the risk of sounding misogynist (as in, "wow, a girl turning a wrench!"), i genuinely appreciate a woman's perspective on engineering topics plus now i know what a balayage bob is...
Grace is a once-in-a-generation talent. My intention was to promote her to my job before she turned 35, so the department could have a young leader who was also a writer first and foremost. I don't suffer from the typical Boomer/Xer "HURR DURR I WANT TO PROMOTE WOMEN SO I'M THE LAST WHITE MAN IN THE JOB" -- had she been born a man I'd be of the same opinion. Maybe more so, I can't help being a caveman.
I've always admired her writing, but since automotive journalism is dead, and Hagerty is such a niche site, where does someone with her talents go to have a successful career? I do not mean to pigeon-hole her as just an automotive writer, since I'd bet she could write well about any subject that interested her.
She's also a very good editor and more often than not she improves my work. Writers are supposed to complain about editors but I can't really complain about most of her edits other than the time I referenced the Beatles' and Rolling Stones' 1964 appearances on the Ed Sullivan variety show and she made it into a talk show on NBC. Her parents were probably not even alive then, so I'll attribute it to her youth.
Her piece on driving a 1973 BMW 3.0 CSL was outstanding.
Fat Brad has all the emotional vulnerability and volatility of a 15-year-old girl, minus any of the reasons you'd put up with it.
He has never completed a project, never written anything worth remembering, never won or even entered any sort of competition, never gotten a job for which he wasn't the lowest bidder (including the current one) and never accomplished anything other than helping some West Coast scumbag reproduce a local church car show in Northeast Ohio using a copied logo and some cringetopia marketing. He is the polar opposite of "making your moves in silence". He pretended to be some kind of socialist Hero Of The People right up to the moment he fell backwards into someone else's money, at which point he cheerfully and immediately transitioned into a Cleveland slum lord.
Finally, he has publicly stated that he can and will physically attack me the next time he sees me, despite the fact that he's never attacked anything in his life besides a can of Crisco.
It is my curse in life to have every one of my self-proclaimed enemies be a complete and total pussy. A few years ago at Laguna Seca I thought I was finally going to have a chance to scrap it out with some real bad dudes from Jersey but to my chagrin we ended up becoming friends before we could actually get the fistfight done. Oh well.
I do so hope that you can get another moonbat commie liberal progress wingnut to write again about how fantastic the plan is going. Bonus points if they are part of academia….More importantly how everyone that disagrees with their worldview is a lover of tiny mustached man. Or even how we are holding back the ascension of the country into Utopia despite really turning into a lawless 2 tier criminal Justice hologram memory of a country that once existed.
Lastly, how wonderful cities are to live in with their rivers of fecal matter, piles of trash, rampant homeless, accepted corruption, grifting, propaganda, violent crime and now poisonous water that is largely due to white supremacy (somehow)…. Or how Memphis was not an anti-white murder spree last week….
I doubt we will see David Sanborn any time soon; like most unrecognized Super Geniuses, he is locked in a deadly battle against the idiots in his own family who refuse to pay him the proper deference due to someone who can cut and paste a CNN opinion column link.
I look forward to seeing the Radical in person, no matter how handsome it looks, not to mention the coaching.
I’m a seldom commenter but I try to read every comment on every story. Thank you Jack for posting compelling articles that foster such in-depth discussions and I greatly appreciate the thoughtful responses of my fellow readers. I suspect the guest posts will be no different. I also have no problem receiving notifications via email for when these are published.
Well shucks, looks like non paying haters don’t get to see me talk shit about certain grotesque so called automotive journalists. Or pretty much everything else that exists that I hate.
In my more cringeworthy moments, usually after getting over-involved in fiction, I daydream about publicly challenging all my detractors, anon and otherwise, to trial by combat, they can pick the weapons from Space Invaders to Russian Roulette with three chambers loaded. But then I remember how they all got together and begged the PR people not to let me come to press events because they didn't feel safe. If you're scared of a 50 year old cripple you aren't going to accept any challenges of any sort.
Outshine Webster’s magazine? You mean the magazine nobody reads or is even aware of?
Webster’s poor behavior reminds me of the bosses I used to work for. Extremely loyal to themselves, would suck off anyone above them on the food chain, and dismissive of anyone who worked for them.
I just saw that noted automotive ___________ Emilia Hartford is featured in a Hagerty video. That made me laugh. I’m sure she will be in The Magazine soon. I’m guessing an article heavy on photos and light on words. Maybe she can write the captions for the photos. Or someone can help her write them.
In fairness to Larry, he went through a lot to get me on the team, both at R&T and Hagerty. My old business partner, Uncle Ron the dope king, used to tell me two things:
"You can't want something for someone that they don't want for themselves," and
"You can't expect that other people will share your own code, or your own standards." I'd have quit the company before I let them fire Larry -- or Grace, or Jeff, or any number of other people. But that's me, and I'm an idiot.
Oh, wait. Ron told me one more thing.
"YOUNG stupid bitches... grow up to be OLD stupid bitches."
"Extremely loyal to themselves, would suck off anyone above them on the food chain, and dismissive of anyone who worked for them." Very well put. Even more offensive because they have the same amount of skin in the game as you do but their brains tell them they're 'owners'.
Hah! We always used to joke about managers who acted like money to pay us was coming out of their wallets. The diversity hire bosses were the worst. They actually thought that they had skills.
Everyone has had bosses like this because a not insignificant portion of the population are sociopaths that LOVE empowering themselves in any organization.
I believe leadership is a natural talent, a particular combination of charisma, gregariousness, extroversion and empathy.
The military and corporate America, on the other hand, think leadership is a learnable skill, like doing a brake job or an oil change.
But the military and corporate America are hierarchical organizations that need MANAGEMENT at each level. They recognize that very few people are natural leaders, but they need managers, so they deliberately conflate the two.
And that's why the military and corporate America are shot through with bad bosses.
The leadership vs management debate is an old one. I agree with you that the two are separate skills, but I think leadership, like any talent, requires development.
One reason that I think both the military and the government have such awful leaders is that they are both very hierarchical but neglect to develop many of the natural leaders. That means the people who are willing to push their way to the top and work to get their managers' attention are the ones who rise, while people who work well with others, build consensus, and guide the process in a more gentle, behind-the-scenes manner are much harder for managers to identify. And if you aren't identified, you can't be selected for advancement.
I think it is especially problematic for people from the working class. We are taught to keep quiet, do our best and let our work speak for us. And that works when you build brick walls, wire houses, fix cars, etc, because they are physical objects and people can actually see the quality. It doesn't work in an office environment where ideas are the product. Ideas are ephemeral. They get passed around and reworked and unless you have a team that is constantly saying "Ice Age had this great idea. He's so smart." you never get the recognition you deserve.
The upper classes, I think, have been taught subtle ways to blow their own horns and get credit for work in office environments. Either that or they weren't raised with the idea that highlighting one's own effort is a bad thing. Maybe the other little kids in their elementary schools didn't beat up the know-it-alls or something. Whatever the case, they can do something I am unable to bring myself to do. That means that even thought I can work my up to their level through brains and effort, once I get there the rules of the game are so different that I am unable to compete on an equal footing.
To address your comment about the upper classes blowing their own horns, one trait that absolutely ALL self-made men share is that they're shameless self-promoters.
The common man, on the other hand, is raised & socialized to resent and detest "braggarts."
What I meant was that you either have the ability to be a leader or you don't. If it's there, you can develop it. If it's not, then there's nothing to refine. My objection is to the common belief that ANYONE can become a leader, regardless of actual ability.
He has had some nice articles about teaching his kids about cars, which is admirable, but I guess helping people younger than him only applies if your last name is Webster.
I'm still looking forward to your fiction. I'll pay for that, too!
Yes please.
Let me write something you can read for free and we'll see if anybody wants to pay to continue :)
I suspect the vast majority of readers of this substack have time for your writing because we feel that the majority of “competing” content has become (or rather become less secretive about being) a shill for automakers, or even worse, a shill for the current “public enemy #1” of cars and car people - the democratic party.
I used to read 4-5+ sites, now I just look at pictures of cats and read ACF. So if Jack and his handpicked contributors can put out 4-5 sites worth of content that would be great.
My barn has three kittens that somehow made their way in, so pretty soon we'll be able to serve ALL your needs here.
If you had a clone of facebook marketplace then I'd really never need to go anywhere else. Only problem would be that I bet most of the other guys around here have stuff that's way too nice for me to afford.
ACF Marketplace! Can't do any less traffic than RADforsale!
Do you know what happened with RADforsale? It seemed like the DWA crew had a decent sized following and could have kept that site going for longer than they did. I assume it is dead now since there have been no new listings since January of this year.
They're too busy counting their cash. Not only did Hagerty pay a reported 2.3 million for Radwood (I can't say for sure, I was removed from those discussions when I repeatedly criticized the mere idea of it) I've been told they just bought the DWA podcast for serious money.
The RADforsale platform itself was apparently mostly ignored by potential sellers because it overlapped with BaT and Cars and Bids, both of which serve exactly the same audience with more credibility.
Speaking for myself, I make the time because I enjoy Jack's writing. But yeah, you're absolutely correct about the competition, especially Road Car Trend and their EV fetish.
I didn't think that Kroger, at least in their Hy-Vee and Fred Meyer incarnations, had any reading material available anymore other than the backs of cereal boxes....
What this man says is the truth.
I just... don't read anything else that doesn't come from a book, outside of stuff directly related to my job; with Gray Mirror as the only noteworthy exception, now and then, when I have the patience for it.
I only read authors that I can trust and/or verify.
it actually didn't occur to me that jack's writing was especially lengthy until he mentioned it.
Every time I hear you talk about “only” owning so many $600 shirts or other such nonsense I have to fight competing waves of anger and jealousy, as I fight to reconcile my own six figure salary with my seeming inability to get through a single back-to-school season without using credit to buy my kids (who simply refuse to stop growing) a basic assortment of Thai and Vietnamese threads to wear to school for another season.
But hey, at least you’ve given me something to, uh, aspire to.
Maybe you won't die in a ditch flat broke like I'm going to!
At my age, I'm starting to feel like my life will serve as a cautionary tale.
Buddy, you and I are in a similar boat only mine are much younger! Feels like they're in new clothes every f---ing week.
Yeah we have four, from age 15 to 6. They’re all growing like weeds!
At least the older ones can generally pass clothes down to a younger sibling.
Having four children is a wealth infinitely greater than having bespoke shirts. If my first wife's health had permitted it, I would be wearing Brooks Brothers as I bullied my four sons through a Jackson 5 style music-misery childhood!
We're at 2 and, God willing, will see a third and then whatever happens, happens.
I will say, my wife is coming around to the minivan idea I floated to her before the firstborn arrived on scene. Ho-ho-ho.
The only way to convert is to drive one yourself or have her drive one where she has to load and unload things. Any sensible person appreciates the ability to open doors and have room to do things.
I had her test drive minivans and haul out the child seat when she was pregnant. She was still off them, unbelievable I tell you!
The way I see it, I'm making really good money - for 1992.
If this is any consolation: I'm trying to find some freelance tech work to keep the lights on while I look for a permanent gig. In 1999 I could easily get $50 an hour. Today that same work pays $60 an hour, if I'm lucky -- and it's infinitely more miserable, degrading, dehumanizing, and "optimized".
My problem is that ever since I was 16, I've been stuck in an abusive relationship with the CONCEPT of employment.
From the Car Talk guys.
Ray: My brother has always said, “Don’t be afraid of work.”
Tom: Right. Make work afraid of YOU!
Ray: And he’s done such a good job at it, that work has avoided him all his life.
THAT'S why software sucks? Inexperience on the part of the developers?
I assumed it was because programmers are deeply dysfunctional people who equate complexity with capability and view the learning curve necessary to master that complexity as fun.
That was true from 1955 to 2005. Today software is a cut-and-paste product of normies from low-wage countries who treat it with all the passion and interest I used to show while cleaning the dumpster at Rax.
The more I hear about your hosts at Substack, the more I respect them. They are demonstrating a commitment to free speech. They also seem to be thus far resistant to acquisition.
As someone who tends to get lost in the comments section, it’ll be interesting to hear others’ takes on my insipid opinions. Hopefully it gets more to join up. More money, more racecars, more problems, more stories. I’m all in.
I am sure the Substack reps have developed a best practice model, however, I question whether it is at all applicable to a creative product. In the old days of blogs there was the publishing schedule advice. Print magazines had supposed marketing experts advise which color would sell more issues. I can't imagine it wise to tell a jazz musician to keep a track under 3:30 because that is what popular music on the radio plays for. The 55/45 stat says everything about what needs to change of the output, which is nothing.
I suspect you're right. They showed me a lot of other successful Substacks with 50,000 readers and whatnot but most of them were aimed at women or young people who are looking for advice, tips, whatnot.
Most of my readers are more successful than I am, many of them know a lot more than I do. At best I serve as a way to focus their own thoughts, as was the case for you and the outstanding things you wrote as a Riverside Green reader.
I found this entry from Ted Gioia fascinating. He’s publishing his next book on Substack.
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/10-reasons-why-im-publishing-my-next?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
It truly is, although this idea that you can make $100k a year with 901 subscribers doesn't quite work in real math.
really liked the piece about the compressor. that kind of engineering fascinates me. a silver lining of the long emergency / great unwinding may prove to be that the gumption (is that the word?) of early generations to make more from less may return to our world. also, at the risk of sounding misogynist (as in, "wow, a girl turning a wrench!"), i genuinely appreciate a woman's perspective on engineering topics plus now i know what a balayage bob is...
Grace is a once-in-a-generation talent. My intention was to promote her to my job before she turned 35, so the department could have a young leader who was also a writer first and foremost. I don't suffer from the typical Boomer/Xer "HURR DURR I WANT TO PROMOTE WOMEN SO I'M THE LAST WHITE MAN IN THE JOB" -- had she been born a man I'd be of the same opinion. Maybe more so, I can't help being a caveman.
I've always admired her writing, but since automotive journalism is dead, and Hagerty is such a niche site, where does someone with her talents go to have a successful career? I do not mean to pigeon-hole her as just an automotive writer, since I'd bet she could write well about any subject that interested her.
I'm working on an opportunity for me, and her, as we speak. Who knows if it will work out...
She's also a very good editor and more often than not she improves my work. Writers are supposed to complain about editors but I can't really complain about most of her edits other than the time I referenced the Beatles' and Rolling Stones' 1964 appearances on the Ed Sullivan variety show and she made it into a talk show on NBC. Her parents were probably not even alive then, so I'll attribute it to her youth.
Her piece on driving a 1973 BMW 3.0 CSL was outstanding.
RG and AC did spend too much time discussing car Twitter folks that few of us care to read about. This has been better. It’s tough to avoid with posts like this: https://www.evpulse.com/opinions/alternating-currents-im-done-with-ice
Fat Brad has all the emotional vulnerability and volatility of a 15-year-old girl, minus any of the reasons you'd put up with it.
He has never completed a project, never written anything worth remembering, never won or even entered any sort of competition, never gotten a job for which he wasn't the lowest bidder (including the current one) and never accomplished anything other than helping some West Coast scumbag reproduce a local church car show in Northeast Ohio using a copied logo and some cringetopia marketing. He is the polar opposite of "making your moves in silence". He pretended to be some kind of socialist Hero Of The People right up to the moment he fell backwards into someone else's money, at which point he cheerfully and immediately transitioned into a Cleveland slum lord.
Finally, he has publicly stated that he can and will physically attack me the next time he sees me, despite the fact that he's never attacked anything in his life besides a can of Crisco.
It is my curse in life to have every one of my self-proclaimed enemies be a complete and total pussy. A few years ago at Laguna Seca I thought I was finally going to have a chance to scrap it out with some real bad dudes from Jersey but to my chagrin we ended up becoming friends before we could actually get the fistfight done. Oh well.
More "Sherman McCoy" content, s'il vous plait.
Anything special to get to the website? I just read the emails, didn’t realize there was a site
You're on it now! Just click the "Avoidable Contact Forever" on top of the page to get the main page.
I eagerly await the next update on your Radicals. And all your latest exploits!
Sir, I'll be YOUR competitor at NCM, in the Super Unlimited class! Just let me know whom I need to block so you can take the championship.
I do so hope that you can get another moonbat commie liberal progress wingnut to write again about how fantastic the plan is going. Bonus points if they are part of academia….More importantly how everyone that disagrees with their worldview is a lover of tiny mustached man. Or even how we are holding back the ascension of the country into Utopia despite really turning into a lawless 2 tier criminal Justice hologram memory of a country that once existed.
Lastly, how wonderful cities are to live in with their rivers of fecal matter, piles of trash, rampant homeless, accepted corruption, grifting, propaganda, violent crime and now poisonous water that is largely due to white supremacy (somehow)…. Or how Memphis was not an anti-white murder spree last week….
Just for the interactions in the comments.
I doubt we will see David Sanborn any time soon; like most unrecognized Super Geniuses, he is locked in a deadly battle against the idiots in his own family who refuse to pay him the proper deference due to someone who can cut and paste a CNN opinion column link.
I look forward to seeing the Radical in person, no matter how handsome it looks, not to mention the coaching.
I’m a seldom commenter but I try to read every comment on every story. Thank you Jack for posting compelling articles that foster such in-depth discussions and I greatly appreciate the thoughtful responses of my fellow readers. I suspect the guest posts will be no different. I also have no problem receiving notifications via email for when these are published.
We are just ten days out now!
Well shucks, looks like non paying haters don’t get to see me talk shit about certain grotesque so called automotive journalists. Or pretty much everything else that exists that I hate.
They can still read me doing it, though.
Will there be a Playa Hater's Ball at some point??
"...if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go home and put some water in Buc Nasty's momma's dish. Good evening."
Silly jc. You know Playa Haters don’t have Balls.
In my more cringeworthy moments, usually after getting over-involved in fiction, I daydream about publicly challenging all my detractors, anon and otherwise, to trial by combat, they can pick the weapons from Space Invaders to Russian Roulette with three chambers loaded. But then I remember how they all got together and begged the PR people not to let me come to press events because they didn't feel safe. If you're scared of a 50 year old cripple you aren't going to accept any challenges of any sort.
It's a reference to an old Dave Chapelle show episode lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKIwj1TQmFs
Which in turn is a reference to a real thing!
Best Chappelle show skit ever
Either that or Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood stories.
"Would you fellas like some grapes?."
Outshine Webster’s magazine? You mean the magazine nobody reads or is even aware of?
Webster’s poor behavior reminds me of the bosses I used to work for. Extremely loyal to themselves, would suck off anyone above them on the food chain, and dismissive of anyone who worked for them.
I just saw that noted automotive ___________ Emilia Hartford is featured in a Hagerty video. That made me laugh. I’m sure she will be in The Magazine soon. I’m guessing an article heavy on photos and light on words. Maybe she can write the captions for the photos. Or someone can help her write them.
In fairness to Larry, he went through a lot to get me on the team, both at R&T and Hagerty. My old business partner, Uncle Ron the dope king, used to tell me two things:
"You can't want something for someone that they don't want for themselves," and
"You can't expect that other people will share your own code, or your own standards." I'd have quit the company before I let them fire Larry -- or Grace, or Jeff, or any number of other people. But that's me, and I'm an idiot.
Oh, wait. Ron told me one more thing.
"YOUNG stupid bitches... grow up to be OLD stupid bitches."
That's the truest thing a man will ever know.
That's good to hear about him. I just don't respond well to corporate BS.
Uncle Ron is a wise man.
"Extremely loyal to themselves, would suck off anyone above them on the food chain, and dismissive of anyone who worked for them." Very well put. Even more offensive because they have the same amount of skin in the game as you do but their brains tell them they're 'owners'.
Hah! We always used to joke about managers who acted like money to pay us was coming out of their wallets. The diversity hire bosses were the worst. They actually thought that they had skills.
Everyone has had bosses like this because a not insignificant portion of the population are sociopaths that LOVE empowering themselves in any organization.
I believe leadership is a natural talent, a particular combination of charisma, gregariousness, extroversion and empathy.
The military and corporate America, on the other hand, think leadership is a learnable skill, like doing a brake job or an oil change.
But the military and corporate America are hierarchical organizations that need MANAGEMENT at each level. They recognize that very few people are natural leaders, but they need managers, so they deliberately conflate the two.
And that's why the military and corporate America are shot through with bad bosses.
The leadership vs management debate is an old one. I agree with you that the two are separate skills, but I think leadership, like any talent, requires development.
One reason that I think both the military and the government have such awful leaders is that they are both very hierarchical but neglect to develop many of the natural leaders. That means the people who are willing to push their way to the top and work to get their managers' attention are the ones who rise, while people who work well with others, build consensus, and guide the process in a more gentle, behind-the-scenes manner are much harder for managers to identify. And if you aren't identified, you can't be selected for advancement.
I think it is especially problematic for people from the working class. We are taught to keep quiet, do our best and let our work speak for us. And that works when you build brick walls, wire houses, fix cars, etc, because they are physical objects and people can actually see the quality. It doesn't work in an office environment where ideas are the product. Ideas are ephemeral. They get passed around and reworked and unless you have a team that is constantly saying "Ice Age had this great idea. He's so smart." you never get the recognition you deserve.
The upper classes, I think, have been taught subtle ways to blow their own horns and get credit for work in office environments. Either that or they weren't raised with the idea that highlighting one's own effort is a bad thing. Maybe the other little kids in their elementary schools didn't beat up the know-it-alls or something. Whatever the case, they can do something I am unable to bring myself to do. That means that even thought I can work my up to their level through brains and effort, once I get there the rules of the game are so different that I am unable to compete on an equal footing.
To address your comment about the upper classes blowing their own horns, one trait that absolutely ALL self-made men share is that they're shameless self-promoters.
The common man, on the other hand, is raised & socialized to resent and detest "braggarts."
What I meant was that you either have the ability to be a leader or you don't. If it's there, you can develop it. If it's not, then there's nothing to refine. My objection is to the common belief that ANYONE can become a leader, regardless of actual ability.
Genuinely insightful, and it's one reason my brother always earns more than I do.
He has had some nice articles about teaching his kids about cars, which is admirable, but I guess helping people younger than him only applies if your last name is Webster.
Did anyone notice the Farago's article is gone? Conspiracy abounds.