In Defense of Penelope Trunk

I was saddened to see that Penelope Trunk's career column for Yahoo was rendered kaput this week. I read this somewhere, via a vast web of acidic blog posts that basically intoned "See ya later beeeyatch!"

From what I could gather, the more vocal of Trunk's detractors took issue with the following:

• Trunk's often brash "this is the way it is" advice, which at times lacked any mitigation or compassion. I recall some hugely devisive reviews of Trunk's panel at BlogHer'07, in which she spoke about career issues for bloggers. Some women found her advice to be brilliant, while others were positively offended by her approach. I was running around all over the place and unable to attend, but being as career-content-obsessed as I am I would have been borderline aroused had I been there.
• Trunk's questionable career expert credentials. Some of the more conspiracy-theory-minded folks in the Blogosphere went to the trouble of tallying her marketing experience and finding it came short of her stated 10 years. One reader even calculated her wins during her not-so-illustrious or long career as a professional beach volleyball player.
• Trunk's contradictory take on such time-honored coventions as writing resumes and not sleeping with people you work with.
• Trunk's digressions into deeply personal, seemingly non-career-related issues, such as her deteriorating marriage.

I've met Penelope (her real name is Adrienne, another major point of proof of her weirdness by some of her critics) at the BlogHer Business Conference and was pleasantly surprised. As with many bloggers I meet, her often removed writing persona didn't match her in-person energy. She approached me and my partners to introduce herself, knowing that we were likely too crazed to make the rounds to every attendee and speaker. She was warm, even humble. She reminded me of me: full of piss and vinegar in writing, but really a kooshball.

As someone who, pre-BlogHer, made her way writing about career development I was shocked at the ire being thrown Trunk's way. And yet, reading her work I can understand how a writer who says brazen things (pun intended, when you consider the name of her blog and book) can receive brazen comments. But we're not talking politics here, we're talking career! Having suffered the devaluation of my own writing by editors the minute it was determined "career" content, I was heartened to see that Trunk had made this often overlooked subject as contentious as the war in Iraq. I was even envious.

There's something a bit vindicating here: Trunk says she learned from her employers that she was canned because "career" was a low-yielding CPM (cost per thousand views) category, though her traffic was high. Personally I think this is a BS excuse. I work in this industry and see that even lower CPM verticals can generate beaucoup bucks with high traffic. I doubt Yahoo was losing money off of a blogger who was bringing them traffic. But I was glad to see there clearly is a lot of interest in career content, especially when the advice veers from the norm.

Says John Grabowski on his blog:

I am now just a little bit closer to believing there is a god. And that he or she hates stupid advice from a twit.

Back in the days of the guillotine, in a final act of indignity, you had to tip the bladesman if you wanted your head cut off cleanly. In Penelope’s case, they made her travel to their New York offices at her own expense to learn she was getting axed.

Robespierre would have approved.

This is a violent disapproval of a career columnist, but I must say that as a career writer this isn't the worst thing in the world. My worst fear is not people disagreeing with me, but of irrelevance.

This post might serve as my belated review of Trunk's book, which she sent to me, and which I simply couldn't read in any timely fashion, due to the increasing intensity of my work with BlogHer. But, months later, I did manage to pick it up one night before bed, and though I rarely get very far with books that I try to read before falling asleep, I found this one a distraction to slumber. I had a few immediate responses:

• I appreciated that she addressed the Gen Y Factor, which Boomer, even Gen X, management dismisses as lazy and needing to get with the program. I know this sucks folks, but we are no longer living in a meritocracy that rewards you for your pain and anguish. "Putting in the time" no longer determines how successful you will be. If an ungrateful 25-year-old has skills that you need to run your business and he wants flextime, you need to figure out how to give it to him. It's unfortunate that this new understanding was baked into the psyche of a generation succeeding ours, but that's the way it is. Some folks have radical disagreement with Trunk on this one, but then you must consider whether you are still nursing the burns from your time under the grunt fire.
• Her de-emphasis on following along a career track feels right to me, but more because of my personal experience and less because I truly know whether following any prescribed path leads to fulfillment. Trunk often points to her invaluable experience on the pro beach volleyball circuit as a necessary distraction for her career. I wonder: if she had won a volleyball tournament, would her advice carry more weight? Do we need to be "successful" at our divergent ventures in order to be considered wise?
• Her ability to call it as she sees it. I've been in career crisis several times and have read everything from What color is Your Parachute to The Bible looking for inspiration. One thing that I can say about nearly every resource I've referenced is that, when it comes to career, most experts take a measured, sometimes annoyingly objective approach that reminds me of a therapist I once visited, who sat with me in silence until I blurted out something, anything. I had come to her for guidance, not to have my rumblings psychoanalyzed and laid out in front of me for my interpretation. Very often people in career crisis have many signs laid out in front of them, but they aren't reading them correctly. They need someone to say, "Here's what this means!" and give you the opportunity to embrace or reject their interpretation.

I don't agree with all of Trunk's advice, but her decisive stance on what she believes is correct provides me with the opportunity to determine which side of the fence I'm on. While Trunk's detractors may consider her subjectivity to be dangerous to readers, I believe that, for more readers, it provides a perspective to parse out with their own intuition.

For instance, Trunk's approval of interoffice dating makes sense from a rather obscure perspective:

“If you tell yourself that men at work are off-limits, you put yourself at a huge disadvantage,” she says. “And if you want to have children, you need to make getting married a higher priority than your career."

Of course, as John Grabowski rather harshly points out, a primary reason for not dating a co-worker is the distraction it presents if the co-workers stop seeing each other, have an argument, etc. It also may create a perception of favoritism. And yet, for women who truly do want children more than they want to advance in their career Trunk is absolutely correct: Where you put your focus is where you get your outcomes. By actively NOT pursuing relationships, you are more likely to not have one. Fact.

Where I don't agree with Trunk is her implication that this workplace convention stems from a more insidious societal motive of keeping women unfulfilled.

"So the adage to not date men you work with is totally antiquated. It assumes that women aren’t equal to men, can push back childbearing indefinitely, and should put their career ahead of getting married. All of these are bad assumptions.”

This implication is heard in a number of places, such as her last column for Yahoo!,

"Here’s what my boss’s boss’s boss said: 'You should write for Lifestyles. That is more women oriented.'

Immediately I was reminded of when my column was cancelled at Business 2.0 magazine.  After I had recently announced that I was pregnant and said I did not plan to take any time off from writing the column.

My editor told me, as he was firing me, 'Now that you’re going to be a mom you should try writing someplace like Working Mother.'"

I suspect that this advice isn't really about a bunch of chauvanists trying to gracefully push out their decidedly brash talent, but rather folks who expect career advice to be about just that: getting jobs, keeping jobs, and staying out of occupational trouble. Sure, career advice can include all of that, but I believe that the best of it includes personal interjection, something more than the career counselor we had in high school who tallied up your scores and told you what you should major in and where you should go to school (by the way, the glaring nugget of insight I got from this testing, when I was 16 years old, was that I should go to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota).

Which leads to my next gripe about the Penelope gripes: That she isn't the career expert she pretends to be. This leads to the next logical question: What constitutes the proper experience needed to be a career expert? Nobody questions that Tony Robbins should not be a transformation catalyst, no? Career advice ain't brain surgery, it's a lot gushier--figuratively, that is. I found that just by writing about some of my career drama I was helping people deal with theirs. Never have I told people what they should do with their lives, and yet I've been asked to speak about career development with college students and entrepreneurs. I received a book contract for my collection of career stories and turned it down in part because I felt nervous being called by the publisher a career expert. I'm more a career survivor. Yet, looking back on this, I think I was hard on myself. I don't hold a degree in Career Competence, but "Career" is an amorphous enough topic in that a general ability to dispense wisdom--or at the very least, get people thinking about career, like Trunk does--constitutes competence.

Other criticism I read included Trunk's overindulgence with including detailed accounts of her personal life, including marriage counseling with her husband. Some of these accounts read like they come from a woman who is a bit smug over her career, angry at her husband, and resigned to end her marriage.  Knowing the grief I experienced when I first started writing about my relationship (a practice I continue only with extreme caution) I cringed reading the details; and I wondered what purpose describing the issues in her marriage had in helping people with their careers.

But this was short-sighted of me. While Trunk was not offering up service journalism she was offering up an experiential outcome that anyone navigating career and marriage must face, and she was offering it up as clearly as she knows how, by describing how it is affecting her personally. The personal and the professional ARE the same. And while I don't think it's fair to write about one's husband so personally, and while I don't think that describing one's success in a blog ("I tell the mediator I have a busy speaking schedule and a six-figure contract for my next book. I even talk about my blog, and the estimated 450,000 page views a month") endears one to her readers, I do understand the purpose of sharing such private information for the purpose of enlightening, and even for the much more indulgent purpose of healing herself.

What strikes me as the primary beef of Trunk's anti-fans is her inability to remove herself from her advice. But this expectation is a bit of a double-edged sword. Advice that comes from a completely objective source lacks meaning. We want our doctors to be completely objective and yet empathetic. We don't want to be told we're going to die without an ounce of compassion or sadness for our plight. We want Trunk's advice without having to smell her own issues, but then we would lack the benefit of recipes borne from failure, from too much salt or heat. The best kind of advice IMHO, is sorted from the struggles of those who need it most.

Comments

[Zandria]

I agree, Jory. I like Penelope's assertive style. Nobody will agree with someone on all issues, but it seems to me like most of these people complaining are people who just like to get annoyed on purpose and then complain about it (and complain loudly!). Why else would the same people go back to read her Yahoo column (and probably her blog, too) over and over if that wasn't the case? I enjoy reading her writing.

[Dean]

I am an older guy who reads P Trunk's blog. I rarely agree with what she writes (and that goes double for her partner Ryan's writings). But I read for the purpose of getting a different perspective. And notwithstanding my lack of agreement with what I'm reading, it nevertheless makes me think about things especially what might me on the younger minds in our work force. It is that different perspective that I seek and that is what she offers. I see no need for people to go ballistic about it. If they dislike it so much and find so little of use in the advice, one would think they could just skip reading it. Each to his own I suppose.

[Sela]

Got to disagree with you on this one. From time to time she had good advice, but too often she simply struck a contrarian pose and wanted us to believe it was fresh and true simply because it went against convention. She usually failed to support her more outrageous assertions (including discouraging women from reporting sexual harassment).

[lizriz]

So nice to read this thoughtful post today. I enjoyed reading Penelope on Yahoo - sometimes I agreed with her, sometimes I didn't. She does have a distinctive, non-apologetic, and bloggy way of writing.

What was completely bizarre and disheartening was reading the comments, though. I don't understand why people wouldn't just comment thoughtfully about what they didn't agree about - What's the point of logging in just to be hateful and say she's stupid? And then to say that you know better about career stuff - And yet you're leaving hate comments on a blog post??? Embarrassing!

[Charles]

This John Grabowski sounds really mean. I'd hate to meet him.

[Charles]

This John Grabowski sounds really mean. I'd hate to meet him.

[slavicdiva]

Enjoyed your post, but I have to disagree with one bit. You write:

"If an ungrateful 25-year-old has skills that you need to run your business and he wants flextime, you need to figure out how to give it to him."

I don't think most people have an issue with that statement. But much of what PT wrote came across as, "If you're 25, you should do everything you can to game the system while doing little actual work and regardless of whether you have any actual talent or skills, or anything else to contribute."

As for "ungrateful," too often "ungratefulness" translates into "unpleasantness" or even "snottiness" in the workplace. Where I work, cooperation and teamwork is a very big deal, and someone - regardless of talent - who treated fellow workers badly would not have a job, regardless of talent. That is my company's ethos, and it applies to everyone from the CEO to the maintenance guys.

PT did not appear to have any real career successes of her own, which also led her critics to question what qualified to give advice to others - particularly when that advice was often toxic to anyone who wasn't interested in gaming the system.

As for John Grabowski, he's not at all mean (I've known him for years, although we're on opposite sides of the continent). He is, however, plain-spoken, and not afraid to call things as he sees them. His articles are generally insightful and well-thought, and you should read more than the tiny excerpt quoted above before judging.

[Brad]

Wow, you're sure working hard to defend the indefensible. Penelope's bio is false, plain and simple. And lacking any actual credentials (as you say, "career" credentials do not exist) the only thing she has to establish her credibility as a career expert is her record of past accomplishments. All she's established in my mind is a tendency to "brazenly" stretch the truth.

Your first reaction to the stuff she has written about her husband was correct. Do you know ANY spouse who would find that acceptable? You can attribute it to her own desire to heal. I will cynically attribute it to her desire to goose her blog traffic.

By her own admission, she has been fired from jobs "a lot". This being established, her advice on anything workplace-related is worthless to anyone who wishes to remain employed. Sorry, I can't agree that merely getting people thinking about their career defines her as competent.

[jen_chan, writer SureFireWealth.com]

Despite the false name and everything, it's rare to find someone who can speak his or her mind as bluntly as her. Her name is controversial at least but she does have plenty of supporters, it seems. And despite the odds against her, I think 2008 will prove to be a very important year for her.

[Jack]

Jen Chan wrote:
"Despite the false name and everything, it's rare to find someone who can speak his or her mind as bluntly as her."

Surely you jest. They're everywhere. Turn on cable TV--you have no shortage of loudmouthed idiots with no credentials passing themselves off as experts. They do make money, many of them, but in the carnival barker era so did snakeoil salesmen.

[Olechka-persik]

Thanks for post. Nice to see such good ideas.

Ed: ...