My new employment strategy is a chilling adaptation to the modern work environment. Let me exprain.

First, hard work or expertise rarely pays off. It's rare for people to get fired. Even rarer are promotions. In my observation, they come from friendships, not ability.

Progression in status and income are gained by moving company, not usually by staying.

When moving up a level of seniority/ability bear in mind the entry gate is NOT ability in the job, it is ability to succeed in interview. Subsequent success/failure in the workplace has little to no long term consequences.

Thus, I now devote 100% of my efforts to one thing: acquiring and passing interviews for jobs one level of status/ability/income above my current.

Once in a job, I focus more on making friends, allies and toadying than I do on performance. Proximity, time-spent-talking-to senior managers is they single most valuable metric in the office.

Even under-performers are not fired if they are liked and have senior allies. Being recognized by the CEO, even better regularly talking to them and subtly toadying, can bulletproof you and lead to that rare win: promotion. However, use it more as a self-defense mechanism.

Aim to repeat this cycle of bluff>enter>empire build>exit every 1 to 1.5 years until achieving satisfaction.

I now spend time studying industry buzzwords and learning the bugman lexicon of the Tedx watcher, the keywords that sociopaths and bugpeople use to recognize their kind. I do not study to become better, but to *appear* better.

IMPORTANT: every bug-person interview panel has a hyper-reality, a fictionalised idea of the candidate and what they will say. This has nothing to do with the reality of the job, but the reality of the interview. When you study to appear better, you must....

.. NEVER make the mistake of stepping from they hyper-reality with answers too pragmatic and reality-based. Most bug-people interviewers have no understanding of what traits and skills it takes to actually do a certain job well, as they are incompetent and of no use.

They therefore fall on their hyper-reality: their second hand ideas and concepts gleaned from banal group-think Agile books and Ted talks. These are the gatekeepers to your next gravy train, my friend.

I learn their bug-people language. I learn the phrases they use to identify each other and be assured that person is not a threat, but a group-drone. I learn to subtly project that I am not a threat. It is essential to remove all traditional masculinity and values.

No bugperson truly wants "someone that will challenge them". They want an ally. Someone that will forever be subordinate to them if they 'give' them the job. You must somehow let them know this. Integrity, fortitude, confrontation, no-nonsense aggression - all these have no place

no place in the modern, feminized workplace. BE the woman. Be the mimic, the chilling learned-sociopath, the chameleon, and use these lessons to refocus your career effort into what matters: getting and passing interviews, and making allies at work. Good luck.