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James Ledbetter and Katharine Mieszkowski

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Plucky Code Jockeys and Workplace Rage

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 10, 1999, at 1:21 PM ET

Hi Jim:

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The Wall Street Journal's Mayor Pothole profile really was one great zinger after another.

But Mother Jones beats the Journal to the punch in its August issue, making very similar points, but with a somewhat more forgiving tone, in "Jerry Brown Gets Real." One highlight: When peace activists took over Mayor Brown's office to object to the Navy and the U.S. Marines' conducting three and a half days of urban warfare training in Oakland, Jerry expressed bafflement: "There seems to be serious problems on the left with finding ways to express themselves." Oh, those goofy wackos on the left. Why don't they find some constructive way to express themselves? Meditation, perhaps?

But enough about real news, because it's Tuesday, which means it's time to play another round of workplace trend-watch with the Wall Street Journal.

First, on Page 1 in the "Work Week" column, the Journal deadpans that humor is both mandated and frowned upon in the workplace: A survey found that of 275 employers, 8 percent discourage humor, 8 percent include it in their mission or values statements, and 4 percent have hired humor consultants to yuck it up. Note to self: Check mission statement before fowarding jokes around.

Another classic of the career trend-watch genre: this week's installment of "Managing Your Career" with Hal Lancaster, which introduces us to an 18-year-old who makes $5,000 a month plus stock options as a code jockey in, where else, Silicon Valley. I'm all for extracting lessons from the savvy career moves of young guns to teach us old dogs a thing or two. But while this article tells us that our talented tyke's precocious success is "partly due to his talents and partly due to the abundance of opportunities in high tech fields today," we then learn: 1) He's the son of a venture capitalist; 2) he had trouble getting a job, until some of the partners at the VC firm dad founded hooked him up with Hotmail, one of their portfolio companies; and 3) at Hotmail, he struggled to do the job, but by the end of the summer had written some code they could actually use.

Only the Journal could find in the above events an uplifting story about a plucky kid's "first lesson in the power of connections."

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Finally, the San Jose Mercury News gets into the workplace trend game as well, with an AP story on "workplace rage." Yes, you've heard of "road rage" (anger while driving) and "air rage" (anger while flying). But based on a dusty 1996 Gallup Poll, we learn that one in four Americans feels "generally at least somewhat angry at work." The story advises us to add "workplace rage" to the culprits (read: Internet, Internet, Internet) that made Mark Barton pull the trigger in Atlanta.

I, for one, am livid that we're now saddled with yet another pop-psyche rage syndrome.

Furiously yours,
Katharine