{"id":633,"date":"2005-08-10T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-10T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=633"},"modified":"2005-12-11T11:31:53","modified_gmt":"2005-12-11T16:31:53","slug":"the-very-model-of-modern-major-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-very-model-of-modern-major-general","title":{"rendered":"The very model of modern major general"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good post<\/a> by Megan “Jane Galt<\/a>” McCardle, who’s filling in at Instapundit this week. It’s about how mind-numbingly boring high-paying jobs can be, and how severe the winnowing-out process can be.<\/p>\n

I have a pretty unromantic job, editing a pharmaceutical trade magazine<\/a>. It’s not what my teachers and professors had in mind when they told me I’d “be a writer,” but I do it well, have learned a ton about this industry and business overall, get paid nicely, and have been to a lot of places I’d never have seen if I wasn’t working in this sort of job (next up: Madrid and Nashville!).<\/p>\n

When I went back to my old college<\/a> a few years ago to speak on a panel about “independent publishing,” I tried to explain to the undergrads the importance of flexibility, and learning how to do something in a field you never thought you’d be in, “mainly because you’re almost guaranteed to end up hating whatever it is that you’re specializing in here at college.”<\/p>\n

They thought I was joking.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Megan’s post<\/a> is a pretty good, so give it a read:<\/p>\n

There is a tendency among liberal arts types to think that it is grossly unfair that investment bankers make so much money, when said artsy type’s clearly more socially valuable work is so pitifully renumerated. Having spent a summer doing it, I personally think that anyone who is willing to spend his Saturday night going over the fine print in an SEC prospectus until 2 am is welcome to all the filthy lucre they will pay him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good post by Megan “Jane Galt” McCardle, who’s filling in at Instapundit this week. It’s about how mind-numbingly boring high-paying jobs can be, and how severe the winnowing-out process can be. I have a pretty unromantic job, editing a pharmaceutical trade magazine. It’s not what my teachers and professors had in mind when they told … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The very model of modern major general”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-ad","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3677,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/my-next-job-title","url_meta":{"origin":633,"position":0},"title":"My next job title","author":"Gil","date":"March 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We get a lot of fun\/strange product-new press releases and conference announcements by mail at our magazines. I find it funny that people spend money on print mail for this stuff, rather than using e-mail, but I guess they think that editors prefer retyping press releases and manually scanning images.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7696,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-better-time","url_meta":{"origin":633,"position":1},"title":"No better time","author":"Gil","date":"February 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's the 11th anniversary of the first post of Virtual Memories. I usually forget my blogiversary, because my life's gotten way too hectic. In recent years, it's been a matter of work, reading, podcasting, and being a good husband and dogfather. 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I guess I've changed over the years, because I never thought I'd say, \"I really agree with Rehnquist, Scalia and Clarence Thomas on this one.\"Between this and the retards in the House bringing up that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8728,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-i-do","url_meta":{"origin":633,"position":3},"title":"What I do","author":"Gil","date":"May 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't talk too much about my day job, in the podcast or on this site. I'm the president of the PBOA, a pharmaceutical industry trade association, but that doesn't provide much of a clue as to what I actually do. If you're interested, you can watch me get interviewed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7734,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/in-a-perfect-world","url_meta":{"origin":633,"position":4},"title":"In a Perfect World","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Last Friday was my final day at my job. I quit it to launch a new business (sorta; it's complicated). The last time I was unemployed was 1995. I was 24, finished grad school in May, moved back to NJ, and started looking for a gig. 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See, I've never been a cards or dice guy, but I do allege to know something about pro sports.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}