By semi-popular demand, and as suggested by Kevin Heller and an anonymous commenter, I am offering bandwidth space in the comments to this post to either (a) guess the author of And What Thanks Do We Get? or (b) make your own confession of authorship.
The inspiration for this generous offer was this page. All of the background you need is in my last post, which contains more about the What Thanks controversy from Ernie the Attorney, Denise Howell, Kevin Heller, and others. (By the way, since I already decided not to "unmask" the author, I'm not going to agree or disagree with specific guesses. An anonymous author like that of What Thanks cannot really be unmasked anyway; there is too much deniability already built into the blog, especially if it's a hoax, as I think it is. This sort of attention will only help, not hurt, the author and his site).
Go crazy, folks . . . I'll start by adding the first comment.
It's not me. I'm a typepad fan. I gave up on blogger.com many years ago, even for my anonymous sites.
Posted by: Evan | March 23, 2004 at 02:59 PM
Confession of authorship? I confess to writing much of this blawg, if keeping Evan from making grievous errors counts. I don’t write What Thanks. My guess is that the authors are from New York, because they seem to be very rude.
Posted by: Andrea | March 23, 2004 at 04:17 PM
Hey, I already posted my guess over here.
Posted by: Kevin | March 23, 2004 at 09:57 PM
Now, now....as a native New Yorker, I can tell you that it probably isn't anyone from there. New York has evolved rudeness to an art form. It's probably some people from Jersey wishing they were New Yorkers.
Posted by: Justin | March 23, 2004 at 10:24 PM
Personally, I don't have a clue who writes that screed.
My friend Fossil has connections, though, and he says it's a parody by disgruntled Skadden associates to make the partners look like assholes. And he thinks he knows which partners are being mocked, but he won't name names.
Word on the street is that some of the associates were totally pissed off with the description of the firm's culture on a job search website.
"For a firm of Skadden's size and reputation," one senior attorney confesses, "the culture is very laid back." The "friendly, honest, busy" attorneys at Skadden are "very informal -- even Joe Flom is just 'Joe.'" Moreover, there's "lots of fun to be had when serious work isn't being done." One freshman associate says she's found "the right balance between laid back and professional," and although the culture in some offices "tends to be cliquish," associates generally find Skadden "lives up to its work hard/play hard reputation."
So, the associates thought they'd just play hard, and have some typical Skaddenesque fun.
Posted by: Nic | March 24, 2004 at 12:32 AM
talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
This is the snobbiest blawg I've yet seen...
and *I* am a New Yorker.
Posted by: Katherine | March 28, 2004 at 08:22 PM
Fixing a hole
Posted by: Kevin Heller | March 28, 2004 at 10:40 PM