Jumping into a high paying bullshit job, being on advisory boards, networking yourself into circles where your Rolodex becomes valuable that intro's from you can get you 70% into raising VC...

I've seen quite a few of these people in my area and they disgust me every time, coming from a "work is only valuable if it's hard" work-ethic family.

It's an epidemic in my industry (marketing) so much so that I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I'm not out there building a personal brand.

I just feel that the work I do should be all the "brand" I need to build. Yet everything around me points to the contrary.

You feel that actual value should be all that someone or something should need to be successful and that focusing on building a brand should be no substitute? And you work on what again?

I meant I see no point in building a personal brand.

My corporate brand is doing fine

They should disgust everyone...but in our current culture of instagram model worship it's all about how you sell yourself with little or not much to back it up.

There is no "cashing out", prestige seeking is just the result of a primitive drive. It's like asking how I'm going to "cash out" all the french fries I'm eating. I don't have any plan to, it just feels good to eat them.

Having an excellent and large network is extremely valuable. Epstein is the ultimate example of charisma+network being a career choice.

It's sort of too bad, because these people don't provide the type of value that we respect. But they do ultimately provide value by connecting people, and for that they are rewarded.

Incidentally, a Forbes writer was exposed a few months ago for publishing a puff piece from Epstein's PR team under his own name:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/business/media/jeffrey-ep...

> The article on the Forbes website was attributed to Drew Hendricks, a contributing writer. As The Times revealed in an article last week, he was not the author of the piece. Instead, it was delivered to him by a public relations firm, and he said he was paid $600 to attach his byline and post it at Forbes.com.

> Mr. Hendricks said he had not been aware of Mr. Epstein’s history. “All I knew was, this is a guy doing a science thing,” he said. “If I had known otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it.”

It only costs $600 to plant a piece in the NYT?!?!

Forbes, not NYT

And a reminder that the vast majority of articles on "Forbes" are written by an army of contributors, who until recently weren't even guaranteed to be paid. Forbes online is basically the Huffington Post, but riding the coattails of its supposedly prestigious namesake magazine. https://guestpost.com/blog/2018/08/how-much-paid-forbes/

Oh, whoops, the article describing the bribe was in the NYT. Sorry about that.

> Epstein is the ultimate example of charisma+network being a career choice

pretty sure a good bit of his 'brand' was in profits from his 'side business' here as well..

Something needs to keep the network together.

Selling stuff, doing deals. Some people gravitate to the award-winning trope.

If you need to get something difficult done, awards (other than academic) in my experience are a warning signal. People who are thinking about awards are always a problem.

One great thing about globalization is that there will never be a shortage of suckers who aren't wise to your con

1) Getting funding easily from VC's (and sneaking in a clause that says you will cash out $1M so you can focus on the "long term")

2) Having access to highly coveted angel deals like Uber, or Twitter when they were just startups.

3) Getting paid for giving high-level fluffy advice in conferences.

4) Book deals.

That's easy - train other people how to build their personal brands. Think about it like a pyramid.

Talent acquisition.