How to Get a Raise/Promotion in a Tough Job Market

Corporate America hates me for this one simple trick.

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There is something bleakly inspiring about the fact that despite the total saturation of LinkedIn posts mixing the brand and business, there appears to be in no way to make professional advice feel like anything but poisonously bad vibes. People are still dishing it out in formulaic listicles, or in what now appears to be the LinkedIn version of TikToks, and white-collar strivers are sucking that shit down, and they are wrecking corporate culture in the process. The advice that saturates the newsfeeds is propping up LinkedIn engagement with its non-stop content expenditures, and bending the algorithms toward their own cheesy ends, which is to conceal their all-devouring imperative of ascending to the apex of the corporate totem pole. An HR culture that only grudgingly restrains predatory white-collar behavior, under the best circumstances, is not remotely under the best of circumstances. None of this appears to be going anywhere, but it is also not getting any less repellent. Sounds like fodder for This is a Newsletter!

I have tried to figure out what is wrong with the job markets, in the near-term sense and in a more cosmic one, and then I was forced to consider what sure looks like the end of the Sam Colt Experience in the field of advertising. I wonder if there is actually such a thing as a normal job, and what would or could make a company normal. In running down the various freak tendencies of networking advice, interviewing advice, conflict management advice, salary negotiating advice, and setting boundaries advice, I somehow wound up implementing one simple trick that has had downstream effects on my entire life. Before I integrated this simple but effective technique into my everyday life, I was earning a pittance only fit for peasants and senior managers. Since then, I have earned a promotion and tripled that measly salary, and now I’m on a management fast track to earn $500,000 within two years.

I acquired the One Ring and it has given me unlimited power, persuasion, and influence over everyone in my life. All you have to do is walk into the caverns of the Misty Mountains and barter with Gollum, using the tactics outlined in How to Win Friends and Influence People to lower his defenses before snatching it from his withered hands.

After a few months, I have obtained unlimited power and riches, just like Gollum promised, so that part lives up to the hype.

Unfortunately, there are a few downsides:

• I can no longer feel happiness or sadness.

• I can sleep but I never feel rested.

• I’m suspicious of all my loved ones.

• When I close my eyes, all I see are scenes of betrayal.

• My dog no longer recognizes my scent.

Overall, the One Ring has been a net positive in my life. In work meetings, every account manager tries to speak to me and trembles in tears. My girlfriend cowers when she asks me to do the dishes. All of my friends have transformed into complete sycophants.

The One Ring has also gotten me a pretty good mortgage rate for a downtown condo, so its versatility alone has made it worth my mortality. Plus, if enough of us pledge ourselves, we can summon Sauron to finally conquer all of Middle Earth and usher in an era of prosperity for us all.

Hope this helps. Now get the raise and promotion you deserve!

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