I sometimes feel like being paid to blog about . . . whatever for an extremely prestigious magazine is an impossible-to-beat job. Then along comes Chris Hayes who points out that I could be a professional gadget reviewer basking in the glory of a free iPhone, comparing it to a Helio Ocean, etc., etc., etc. Now the question becomes: Is there any way to convince the world's consumer electronics firms that getting reviewed by The Atlantic's bloggers is vital to their financial future?
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Jobs I Wish I Had
27 Jun 2007 10:16 am
Comments (12)
doesn't Fallows have the Atlantic writer/tech-guru/ gadget-guy market cornered?
maybe you could move to Harpers or something...
Wow. Being a gadget reviewer sounds like my vision of hell on earth. What job could possibly be worse? Maybe working in a tannery, or a Tyson poultry assembly line. But its close.
A few months ago, one of the reviewers for one of the big gadget sites left and published a rant about how much he hated the job sometimes, with people getting so worked up about trivialities, so I dunno...
wait, one of my friends is actually a gadget reviewer. he calls it "usability analysis", so, i sort of forgot.
doesn't sound great - he gets together big focus groups and asks people about a zillion questions, some really trivial about some new product or software.
i remember as he got really irritated about the Xth focus group he was asked to convene about the ergonomic shape of a computer mouse, the company that hired him (one of the big computer manufacturers, can't remember which one) reminded him "we're making about 5 million of these, so, we'd like to get it right..."
in his office, he often has piles of, say, 15 laptops or something sitting around.
he makes a lot of money, tho, so, the irritation seems to be worth it.
Or you could be a Professor at Harvard, teaching one course a semester, so even with the low end of Ivy League salaries, making $600 per hour of real work.
I know a guy who writes about technology, and passed on getting an iPhone because his magazine's policy is that once he's written about something HE HAS TO GIVE IT BACK.
That said, I'd bet that you could get almost anything you want for free if you get the right publicist on the phone.
Mr. Yglesias,
I was charmed and amused at your post. I find your proposal to be worth the investment. Please have Andy send me an email.
S. Jobs
I knew a guy who did gadget review. The gadgets were not all that impressive, and had cyrilic lettering all over them.
Maybe Matthew could exploit his Philosophy major by moving to PC World and doing a "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" schtick.
Drag the Sophists into the column.
Show how all you need to know about computer systems analysis was laid out by Socrates about 2400 years ago.
Discuss the "neo-Platonian" vs "Aristotlian" approach to software development.
Or maybe Popular Mechanics would be a better fit.
The right model for Mr. Yglesias would be Paul Giamatti Sr., who parlayed his outlandish literary musings on Baseball into the Presidency as well as Baseball commissionership.
Now the question becomes: Is there any way to convince the world's consumer electronics firms that getting reviewed by The Atlantic's bloggers is vital to their financial future?
Does seem like a sweet gig, yours, I mean. On the other hand, you've earned it, unlike lots of similarly-positioned folks.
Now if you were a gadget reviewer, i would read nothing of yours. I can't say that would make you any worse off, but it would certainly make me worse off. So I hope the answer to the above question is No.
Comments closed July 11, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
This is a rather precious post, Yglesias.
Posted by Ben Cronin | June 27, 2007 10:30 AM