Healthy Paranoia

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Don't expect to hear that kind of advice from the touchy-feely organizational psychologist crowd. Would you believe a CEO who told you his company had a no-layoff policy? If you did, I'd urge you to get yourself some first-rate psychiatric help. You'll thank me when you're well again.

Why all this paranoia stuff? A few fast historical detours will explain.

First, Jerry Rubin (1938-1994), an activist and a spokesman of the 1960s counterculture and author of Growing Up at 37 said "Don't trust anybody over 30." Rubin's assertion captured the energy of the decade. What Rubin was really saying to a young, disenchanted and impressionable generation was to question convention and think for yourself.

Keep on reading and you'll discover there are many insightful career lessons that can be extracted from forgotten historical anecdotes. This is just one of them. And, I'm not dating myself either.

I'm not putting Rubin on a pedestal. I didn't know him and often questioned his motives. But four decades ago he deservingly commandeered a great deal of attention. If nothing else, he made us think about the world and our responsibility to ourselves and others. It would be nice to think Rubin stuck to his idealistic guns till the end. But he too sold out and joined the capitalistic establishment as a stockbroker and masterful networker.

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