Cover story

The Professional Paradox is written anonymously, from a desk somewhere in a land of glass towers, where the coffee is bottomless and the patience is not. Every morning, thousands of the finest minds in the land put on their best armour, travel great distances, and gather in the tallest building to send each other calendar invitations.

This is a record of the theatre performed daily. The meetings about meetings. The diversity panels with nobody diverse on them. The restructures announced with the word “exciting”. The awards for collaboration won by men who have never replied to an email in their lives. The desks you book but never get, the meetings you attend just to watch a recording of yourself, the spicy margaritas that are not spicy, and the lemon wafers that never survive the train home.

So what actually is the professional paradox? It’s this: the more professional a place insists it is, the more ridiculous it becomes. The taller the building, the harder it is to find an adult inside it. The bigger the salary, the smaller the behaviour. That’s the paradox. This blog just holds up the mirror, politely.

It is written with sarcasm, a little bitterness, and more gratitude than it will ever admit. Names are changed. Details are changed. The biscuits are real, and they are all gone.

If you think you know who writes this: you don’t.