You're Too Smart for This: Beating the 100 Big Lies About Your First Job [Paperback]

Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2006

Your first job isn't all it's cracked up to be . . . You just spent $100,000 on a college degree to make photocopies. And your manager probably isn’t even happy with them.

Life at the entry level isn't about what school you graduated from, or even who you know. It’s actually about paying dues and brownnosing and keeping your foot out of your mouth during meetings.

You're Too Smart For This explains everything your college professors didn't:

· Understand how college has no application to reality, or anybody living in it.
· Come to terms with doing gruntwork and smiling while being yelled at.
· Get straight with operating on a team - putting personal interests second, for once.
· Negotiate office politics, and recognize when to keep quiet (e.g., "the daytime").
· Earn the right promotion or transfer, instead of quitting and being poor again.
· Locate a balanced work life, not based on social sacrifice and being hostile.

You're Too Smart For This will help you get the hang of the working life soon enough. And even have some fun with it. Especially at happy hour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ball's guide to the world after "four years of all-night keggers, random hook-ups, and drone-on professors" aspires to be a career guide for all recent college grads, but the author's narrow focus on "grunt" white-collar jobs and his pedestrian contrarian worldview together conspire to muffle the few rewarding tidbits Ball sneaked into this collection of pedantic conjecture. Ball's 100 lies range from the adroit ("Good Ideas Sell Themselves") to the irrelevant ("You'll find 'the One' in a Bar"), and his discourse on each is distinctive only in stereotypes, as in, "Most guys have their priorities dictated to them by their penis and their wallet," while women, the reader learns later in the same paragraph, are interested in "finding a husband and finding a shoe sale." A slick design encased in a small, portable sized book works in lots of quotations from ancient and modern sages, but even here, Ball can't contain his gauche gushing: "We do not remember days; we remember moments," for example, is followed by Ball's rejoinder, "For men, the hope is that the moment isn't too fast." The clever design may attract some readers, but the allegedly bubble-bursting content is as groundbreaking as a yellowed Dilbert clipping.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Michael Ball holds a degree in psychology and business from UCLA (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and serves as CEO of Career Freshman Co.—a counseling organization for twenty-and thirty something professionals. He is also the author of @ the Entry Level: On Survival, Success, & Your Calling as a Young Professional published under the auspices of his own imprint, Pure Play Press. Mr. Ball lives in Sun Valley, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc. (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402205988
• ISBN-13: 978-1402205989
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Ball is the founder and CEO of Career Freshman Co., the entry level training authority to the Fortune 1000. A former Big Four consultant and Silicon Valley dot-comer, Ball saw too many smart college recruits doing dumb things--besides their jobs--and devoted his own career to making gruntwork hurt less. Michael holds a degree in psychology and business from UCLA, and lives in Los Angeles. He's also widely regarded as an above-average dancer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The raw truth about the real world, April 13, 2006

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You're Too Smart for This: Beating the 100 Big Lies About Your First Job (Paperback)

Michael Ball's book is a brutally candid manual for the new college graduate starting out in the corporate world. Written in a witty, often bawdy style, it parses out specific advice and general wisdom, distinguishing between the expectations the new employee may hold and the realities of entry-level work. Ball's straight talk is dressed up with pertinent quotes from a broad range of sources, including philosophers and novelists, management books, business case studies and popular culture. Some of his advice is common sense, like admonitions against romancing your co-workers or being too vocal in meetings. Some of it exposes nuances of the corporate environment, including office politics and how organizations form and operate. We recommend this book to the novice job holder, who will benefit from being forewarned. We also recommend it to human resources executives, managers who deal with recent college graduates and senior managers who want insights about what is going on at the ground level. The book's structural gimmick - its refutation of so-called "lies" about the corporate world - can seem like shtick. Although the lies are entertaining, the book actually communicates a number of useful truths. Those who learned life's lessons the hard way will find confirmation in Ball's maxims; they may be the first to suggest that those who are starting their careers should start reading this first.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So funny, so true!, April 23, 2006

By 

Christina Amato (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You're Too Smart for This: Beating the 100 Big Lies About Your First Job (Paperback)

The big difference between You're Too Smart for This and other first-job books--believe me, I've read them ALL--is how TRUE and FUNNY this one is! Instead of being so serious and preachy, Michael Ball communicates the big work and life lessons with humor and wit. And not that "oh yeah, ha-ha" kind of humor; I mean, you really laugh out loud with this stuff! (Although some of it is kind of edgy, so be aware if you're easily offended...).

Plus the book is broken up into nice, bite-sized sections. In fact, I don't think that any "lie" is more than 4 or 5 pages long. This makes the book very "flippable"--you can get in and out fast, and come back to it whenever you want.

On top of all this, it's unflinchingly honest: no punches pulled. It's the straight dope, whether you want to hear it or not. The author doesn't apologize to the reader, or try to make you feel like you're above the gruntwork. Instead, he tells you how to deal with it and move on to the bigger stuff ASAP.

I can't recommend this book enough. You'll be informed, entertained, and infinitely better prepared for your career!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Levels with You!, April 22, 2006

By 

Jason Thomas Gordon (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You're Too Smart for This: Beating the 100 Big Lies About Your First Job (Paperback)

This is probably the only book on the market that actually tells you what's what in Corporate America from a new worker's standpoint. Michael Ball covers everything from bosses to office politics to getting promoted to building a personal brand. And all the quotes and little sidebars are freakin' hilarious! If you're a new grad, you've got to get this one!