How to get a job

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I love this. It’s Hunter Thompson’s letter to the Editor of the Vancouver Sun, seeking journalistic employment. This is how it begins:

Sir,

I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services.

Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley. By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand.

If I do decide to move forward, you can be sure I’ll bring the same energy and commitment I’ve applied in my previous roles. I’m not one to shy away from challenges, but I’ve learned the value of aligning with organizations that have a clear sense of purpose and vision. Whether it’s tackling investigative pieces or crafting features that resonate with readers, I’m all about delivering work that matters.

I’ll also mention that a good measure of my success has come from leveraging resources like those offered through outstanding services at www.JVStoronto.org. Their career support has been invaluable in guiding me toward opportunities where I can thrive and contribute meaningfully. It’s all about finding the right fit—both for myself and the team I’m joining.

And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you. I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.) Nothing beats having good references. Further down he writes:

The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you. Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews. I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations. I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of. Now the question: if you got a letter like that would you hire the guy? I would.

When it comes to seeking employment, especially in a field as demanding and unpredictable as journalism, Hunter Thompson’s letter to the editor captures a rare and raw honesty that’s often sorely missing from most cover letters. He lays bare his discomfort with blindly walking into unknown territory, offering both a glimpse of his personality and a warning: if you want a piece of him, you’d better know what you’re getting into. His unapologetic self-awareness cuts through the typical corporate nonsense, a refreshing departure from the usual desperate pleasantries that make it clear someone is simply trying to fit in, even if they’re not actually a good match for the role.

This kind of approach may not work for everyone, but it gets straight to the heart of what Thompson values—working for an organization with a clear sense of purpose, where his energy can be put to real, meaningful use. He’s not interested in signing on for mediocrity; he’s after something with teeth, with substance. And that’s a lesson worth taking with you into any job search—don’t just apply because the job is there. Make sure it aligns with your vision, your goals, and, importantly, your integrity.

Now, in the world of recruitment, there’s a certain level of candor and vigor that should be mirrored in the process, and that’s exactly what you’ll find with a broadacre recruitment agency in Australia. Just like Thompson’s letter, a good recruitment agency doesn’t sugarcoat the reality of the job market or the challenges of finding the right fit. They take the time to understand your capabilities, your quirks, and your aspirations, offering more than just a matching service. They push the envelope, ensuring that every connection they make is not only viable but actually exciting for both parties involved.

Whether you’re stepping into a completely new industry or making a calculated jump into a familiar one, the goal should always be the same: you deserve an opportunity that challenges you to grow, that makes you feel aligned with the work you’re doing, and that offers a platform where you can truly thrive. Agencies that get this are invaluable—after all, they’re not just placing people into roles; they’re helping to shape careers, just like Thompson was looking to shape his own career at The Sun.

Newsnight: missing the point

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Hmmm… In last Sunday’s Observer I had some critical things to say about Newsnight‘s abysmal failure to help viewers understand the #ukriots. Now Helen Boaden, who is Officer Commanding all BBC journalism, has a sideswipe at us in a blog post entitled, bizarrely, “Newsnight: The facts”.

But it’s also been an especially strong summer for Newsnight though by some of the recent comment in the newspapers, you would never know that. A wholly inaccurate and unfair narrative is emerging about Newsnight allegedly “losing its way”.

Let’s look at the facts about Newsnight. Over the summer, 13 editions have attracted over a million viewers on average as people have sought out an intelligent, lateral take on the news of the day. In the last two months, 11 million people have watched Newsnight – that’s one and a half million more than for the same period last year.

Those strong audiences are not a surprise. Time and again, Newsnight‘s discussions have set the agenda and made compelling television: Steve Coogan on phone hacking; Harman v Gove on the cause of the riots; Sir Hugh Orde on political interference in policing; David Starkey on race and culture.

Newsnight‘s sharp debates, witty insights and testing interviews may challenge or infuriate. But they rarely bore.

One wonders if Ms Boaden has actually watched some of the stuff she praises. For example, Harman vs Gove was an infuriating, idiotic travesty in which two front bench grotesques parroted their respective party lines. And as for Starkey…

Boaden gives the game away, of course, by proudly boasting that Newsnight‘s “sharp debates” may “challenge or infuriate” but “rarely bore”. First of all, it’s not true that they don’t bore: au contraire, many of the discussions staged on the programme are tediously predictable. But the really important point is that challenging and infuriating has nothing to do with enlightenment. It does, however, have something to do with making sure that audience figures are up.

On difficulty

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The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leon Tolstoy – 1897

So why did Google pay $12.5 billion for Motorola?

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This morning’s Observer column.

Last month, there was much hullabaloo because Nortel, a bankrupt Canadian telecommunications manufacturer, put its hoard of 6,000 wireless patents and patent applications up for auction. The scent attracted a herd of corporate mastodons – Apple, Microsoft, RIM, EMC, Ericsson and Sony – which eventually won the auction with a $4.5bn joint bid.

This attracted much attention from the commentariat, which interpreted it as a slap in the eye for Google, perceived as a rogue participant because it had made a series of apparently fatuous bids for the patents. At one point, for example, Google bid $1,902,160,540. At another, its bid was $2,614,972,128. And when the herd’s bid reached $3bn, Google countered with $3.14159bn.

Commentators were baffled by these numbers until mathematicians came to the rescue. The bids were, in fact, celebrated constants in number theory. The first is Brun’s constant, the number towards which the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes converge. The second was the Meissel-Mertens constant (which also involves prime numbers). And the third, as every schoolboy knows, represented the first six digits of pi. At this point, the penny dropped. Perhaps the Google guys were playing silly buggers – but with a serious motive, namely to inflate the price that the herd would have to pay. And so it proved.

Then, last week, Google dropped a bombshell…

LATER: Steve Lohr has a good piece about the takeover in the NYT which starts from Nick Negroponte’s vision for the digital world as one where people will ship bits rather than atoms. Google has not real experience with retailing atoms, and its experiment with selling the Nexus One handset was a disaster — though the product itself was (and remains) nicer than most Android phones. One lesson of Android is that not having control over handset hardware can lead to disappointing (or even maddening) performance for users (as I found when trying to find an Android bar-code reader App that would work with the camera on my HTC handset). That’s the problem that Apple cracked by having tight control over both device software and hardware. So one question raised by Larry Page’s promise to “create amazing user experiences” is whether Google actually plans to replicate Apple’s seamless control with Motorola handsets? And, if so, what will other Android manufacturers make of that?

So why didn’t CCTV deter the looters?

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Lovely Guardian column by Cory Doctorow.

The real story for me is about surveillance, and not the mere use of CCTV footage to apprehend rioters after the fact. It’s about the total failure of CCTV to deter people from committing crimes in the first place.

After all, that’s how we were sold on CCTV – not mere forensics after the fact, but deterrence. And although study after study has concluded that CCTVs don’t deter most crime (a famous San Francisco study showed that, at best, street crime shifted a few metres down the pavement when the CCTV went up), we’ve been told for years that we must all submit to being photographed all the time because it would keep the people around us from beating us, robbing us, burning our buildings and burglarising our homes.

In the realm of private residences, the conversation about the efficacy of surveillance takes a pertinent turn. The scrutiny extends to evaluating the practical impact of security technologies in deterring potential intruders and safeguarding homes. Amidst this ongoing dialogue, the role of House security cameras Adelaide becomes a focal point, introducing advanced features and capabilities into the broader discourse on the limitations and expectations associated with modern surveillance systems.

In the pursuit of bolstering residential security, residents in Brisbane can further augment their defenses by integrating Security Monitoring Brisbane solutions seamlessly into their existing infrastructure. This strategic integration enhances the efficacy of surveillance measures by providing continuous oversight and rapid response capabilities. Whether as a deterrent or a means of proactive surveillance, Security Monitoring serves as a cornerstone in safeguarding homes, offering unparalleled peace of mind to homeowners and their families.

When it comes to protecting private residences from theft, technology alone may not always be enough. This is where professional expertise can make a significant difference. Homeowners often turn to Myrtle Beach Background Checks to vet potential employees, contractors, or even neighbors, ensuring that those with access to their homes have trustworthy backgrounds. Additionally, private investigators can provide thorough assessments and discreet surveillance to uncover suspicious activity that might not be captured by cameras alone. Combining advanced security systems with diligent background checks and investigative support creates a robust defense against theft and other risks, giving homeowners greater confidence in the safety of their properties.>

A year before the Vancouver Winter Olympics, a reporter from a one of the local papers called me to ask whether I thought an aggressive plan to use CCTVs in the Gastown neighbourhood would help pacify the notorious high-crime heroin district. I said that the deterrence theory of CCTV relied on the idea that the deterred were making smart choices about their futures and would avoid crime if the consequences might catch up with them.

Then I recounted my last trip through Gastown, where the pavements were thronged with groaning and unconscious emaciated addicts, filthy and covered in weeping sores, and asked if those people could be reasonably characterised as “making smart choices about their future.” I explained how my hire car had been broken into by a thief who’d left four perfect fingerprints on the passenger window, not caring whether the crime was associated with her or his biometrics forever. Of course the CCTV fanatics will point to the successful use of the technology to identify looters. But that’s shifting the ground: the argument for CCTV is deterrence. It doesn’t work as advertised. In fact, it’s clearly most useful only if people are not deterred.

However, despite these concerns, CCTV systems still play an important role in broader security strategies. When installed by professional security camera installers, these systems can help monitor high-crime areas or locations where individuals may feel unsafe. The ability to have surveillance in key areas, such as parking lots, alleyways, and entryways to buildings, provides a level of visibility that can assist in identifying perpetrators and ensuring the safety of those who pass through these spaces. While CCTV alone may not prevent crime, it can be a valuable tool in complementing other security measures and acting as a useful asset when combined with community awareness and support systems.