I just found the website of journalist Andy Raskin who chronicled (often in a humorous fashion) the rise and fall of the dotcom era through a number of publications. In fact, two of the stories he has highlighted side by side are, “What’s a Nice Systems Engineer Like You Doing in a Place Like This?”:http://www.inc.com/magazine/20020501/24172.html Speed dating meets job hunting in the land of the laid off Inc., May 2002 and “Take My Job Offer, Please. Pretty Please?”:http://www.inc.com/magazine/20000301/17273.html Begging and other strategies for hiring during the dot-com boom. Inc., Mar 2000.
But for my money the real gems on his site are two lightweight stories from Japan he did for NPR – “Ramen Jiro”:http://www.andyraskin.com/RamenJiro.ram about a rite of passage at a noodle restaurant and “Tokyo All Aboard Melodies”:http://www.andyraskin.com/TokyoTrainMelodies.ram [both in RealAudio format].
