Quotessence
Home / Authors / Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

American Political figure

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleJobsWorkIfsMenThinkingWarWellsWorldBusinessSeemsClassHumansKindAmericaCareersMayMiddle ClassMightNeeds

Famous Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

“I decide to ask a question that’s been on my mind for months: “Why, when job searching could be totally rationalized by the Internet through a simple matching of job seekers’ skills to company needs, does everything seem to depend on this old-fashioned, face-to-face networking? After all, there’s going to be an interview anyway, right?” “It’s about trust,” Ron answers opaquely, not to mention “likability.” “The higher up you get in the exec ranks, the more things depend on being likable. You’ve got to fit in.” I catch my right hand advancing toward Ron’s untouched French fries and quickly revise the gesture into a reach for the salt. It’s distracting to think that our major economic enterprises, on which the livelihoods and well-being of millions depend, rest so heavily on the thin goo of “likability.”

JobsWorkBusinessCareersTrustExecutivesNetworkingFitting InLikabilityJob Searching
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“I had pictured the corporate world that I seek to enter as a castle on a hill, outside of which the starving vagrants wander, beset upon by wolves and barbarian hordes, begging for entry into the safety of the fortified towers. But now I see there is another zone out here: a somewhat settled encampment, where people toil for uncertain rewards at minor tasks invented by the castle dwellers. There is an advantage to occupying this zone: you are free of the rigid conformity required of those who dwell inside; you can actually “Be Your Own Boss!” A few do very well, acquiring pink Cadillacs or fortunes from real estate deals. Many more are ruined or pour themselves into efforts that generate near-poverty-level earnings year after year. There is no safety out here; the wolves keep circling.”

JobsWorkBusinessCareersConsultantsJob SeekingCorporate WorldProfessionsJob HuntingMulti Level Marketing
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“Less mutable qualities, like age, may have worked against me too. My résumé revealed only that I was probably over forty. But even that relatively youthful status could have repulsed many potential employers. Business journalist Jill Andresky Fraser warned me that a forty-plus woman was unlikely to be hired except by someone seeking a “motherly secretary,” Katherine Newman, among others, has documented corporate age discrimination, quoting, for example, a Wall Street executive who told her, “Employers think that [if you’re over forty] you can’t think anymore. Over fifty and [they think] you’re burned out.”

JobsWorkCareersAgingEmploymentEmployersJob SeekingMiddle AgeAge DiscriminationJob Hunting
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“Suppose that the [career] transition zone encouraged free-ranging discussion. What might the topics of conversation be? For a start, people might want to address the question of what is happening in the corporate world today; in particular, why does experience seem to be so little valued and accomplishment so unreliably rewarded? Some may object that corporate world is a vague abstraction, concealing a rich diversity of environments, but it was in common use among my fellow job seekers, who often expressed hopes of escaping from it—into a small business, for example, or what they saw as a more meaningful form of work. In saying that I was searching for a corporate position, I seemed to be moving in the opposite direction from many of my fellow seekers, who often expressed a strong desire to get out.”

JobsWorkBusinessCareersEmploymentCorporate WorldJob SearchingCareer TransitionsJob SearchersJob Seekers
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“As the New York Times reported in June 2004: “The most common rejection letter nowadays seems to be silence. Job hunting is like dating, only worse, as you sit by the phone for the suitor who never calls.” The feeling is one of complete invisibility and futility: you pound on the door, you yell and scream, but the door remains sealed shut in your face.”

JobsBusinessSilenceCareersRejectionNew York TimesJob Hunting
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“What we want from a career narrative is some moral thrust, some meaningful story we can, as [Richard] Sennett suggests, tell our children. The old narrative was “I worked hard and therefore succeeded” or sometimes “I screwed up and therefore failed.” But a life of only intermittently rewarded effort—working hard only to be laid off, and then repeating the process until aging forecloses decent job offers—requires more strenuous forms of explanation. Either you look for the institutional forces shaping your life, or you attribute the unpredictable ups and downs of your career to an infinitely powerful, endlessly detail-oriented God.”

GodStoriesJobsCareersWorkingNarrativesCareer NarrativesInstitutional ForcesIntermittenceRichard Sennett
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“I get the impression that the whole executive life cycle has changed a lot in the last few decades,” I tell him, “and that a lot of people just aren’t prepared, emotionally or any other way.” Hoping to establish my hereditary membership in the executive class, I cite my father, who worked for Gillette for over twenty years and identified so deeply with the firm that no competing products were allowed in the house. Now, however, people seem to be churned out of their companies every three years or so. Ron confirms my impression; an executive today can count on having eight to nine jobs in a lifetime. “You always think the next job will be the last one, but it never is.”

JobsChangeBusinessCareersExecutivesLongevityWorkingCompanies
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Create image

“As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.”

IfsYearsFactsValuesWorkPayMoralCareersCenturyEthicsAverageFeministMotherhoodApplesSuspectsZeroPieWork EthicLaddersHierarchyMonetaryPedestalShrinkingAmerican ValuesApple PieBrashMonetary Value
Author:Barbara Ehrenreich
Create image