Dear Tim Ferriss: Fuck you. Sincerely, the rest of us.

[elfs]

Now, you might think that this is a rant about The Four Hour Work Week and it's claim that anyone can make a living working only four hours, if only they figure out how to do it right. It's not. After reading Ferriss' book, I'm convinced that Ferriss defines "work" as "shit I'd rather not do," but he's doing stuff for hundreds of hours every week improving the brand that is Tim Ferriss.

No, this is about the (A) in Ferriss' formula, namely "automation." Ferriss has a formula: DEAL (Definition, Automation, Elimination, Liberation). But 'automation' isn't about computers. It's about having other people do the work you don't want to do. Ferriss is all about hiring third-world people with access to call centers and paying them to do his scutwork. Ferriss interviews a lot of people himself for material, and he has his Mumbia-accented flunkies do his cold-calling, looking for a bite.

Today I got a call from a call center in India, in which the very nice, but thickly accented woman on the other end tried to sell me a job doing C#, or ASP.NET, or Sharepoint. I told her politely that I don't know any of those things, and that I've never coded for Microsoft products (okay, I did some VBforAccess in 1995), and that I don't know what in my resume made her think I was appropriate to the task.

"Okay, sir, well how about Amazon? Is there something I can take to my recruiter to have her contact you?"

I realized as I listened to her that I was listening to a Tim Ferriss creature: someone who the recruiter had hired, at $5 an hour, to call a long list of people culled from Monster in the desperate hopes of hitting a winner. A first-pass filter through that list, looking for the desperate, hopeful ones who were still out of work and might be worth the recruiter's time.

I'm sure it works, but the number of people whose English I barely understand, asking me about positions I have absolutely zero interest in (especially now that I'm gainfully and fully employed in a position that uses my skills to the max, ThankYouVeryMuch), has skyrocketed in recent months, and today was just the real cake. "How about Amazon," indeed.

Congratulations, Tim Ferriss. And fuck you.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I got one in my inbox today... Western European name, good English, but wanted me for jobs in an all-Microsoft shop involving developing in C#, doing data warehouse, MS-SQL, Sharepoint, and a few other things... absolutely none of which show on my resume.

"Why, exactly, did this land in my inbox? Whatever the reason, it is a bug that needs to be exterminated with extreme prejudice."

Yeah, I sent it. If that's her level of competence, I don't care if the job is with freakin' Richard Branson doing IT for Virgin Galactic with free tickets as a bennie. She'll freakin' blow it for me, and I don't want her anywhere near it.

There's one other outfit over in Bellevue that I just put on my spam list. They weren't *quite* that incompetent, but they were persistent and annoying... I don't see email from anybody at that domain, ever.

Usedtawas, you could find a good headhunter reasonably easily. I can name you maybe two in all of Pugetopolis that are worth a tinker's damn these days. (One is right fine... the other so-so and mostly MSFT-specific but still approaches competency...)

*sigh*

So it's wankers like this we have to blame, eh? I agree. Or actually, I disagree. I hope he never gets to first base again. EVER. I hope somebody slips him an OD of p-pills and it bloody falls *off*, and his resulting embarrassment leaves both genders thinking he bats for the other team. In short, UN-fuck him VERY MUCH.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Ah, ChopShops. I keep a list of them … so I can tell others who they should keep as far away from as possible.

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

I didn't read all of The Four Hour Work Week, but it struck me from what I did read that another part of his trick was to be antisocial, to be optimizing for himself without regard to the legal-but-unpleasant impact on other people. Like winning the martial arts tournament by finding a loophole in the rules. I mean, WTF? How did that improve the world?

Similarly, most cold calling is antisocial, a net loss to society in aggregate.

[radven.livejournal.com]

"Like winning the martial arts tournament by finding a loophole in the rules. I mean, WTF? How did that improve the world?"

To play devil's advocate.... It improved the world by pointing out how easy it was to game the system, and thus closing the loophole to prevent future abuse.