Yahoo! Finance Expert Penelope Trunk's Advice Riles Some Readers

For the second week in row, Yahoo! Finance Expert Penelope Trunk wrote a career advice column prompting low ratings and many negative comments.

This week's column, titled "The New Girls' Guide to Workplace Success," discussed five rules for "succeeding" in the workplace, which include: "date coworkers, show some flesh - but just enough, expect harassment and stay cool, and tone down your work ethic." Specific
Yahoo! Finance Expert Penelope Trunk's Advice Riles Some Readers
career advice Trunk provided includes "if you want to have children, you need to make getting married a higher priority than your career" (which means that you should think about dating coworkers) and "stop being the overachiever who does each assignment perfectly."

Readers who commented on the piece firmly disagreed with the advice, particularly regarding not reporting harassment and on Trunk's point regarding appropriate attire at work, as she advises women that "women are received better when they hit that magic point between dressing like a guy and dressing like a harlot."

Last week, Yahoo! Finance posted Trunk's article "Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace," which advised workers to leave work whenever they wanted and to call coworkers on the weekend. The article received 1.5 stars (out of a possible 5) and received over 2700 comments, the bulk of which were negative. Scathing feedback included "This is brazenly stupid and shouldn't be on Yahoo" and "Please tell me this article is satire."

Trunk is billed by Yahoo! Finance as as the "Brazen Careerist," which happens to also be the title of her book. While her articles tend to receive more negative feedback than other Yahoo! Finance experts such as Suze Orman and Laura Rowley, Trunk's articles also tend to be rated by more readers, with many more comments written, thus garnering a substantial amount of traffic for Yahoo! Finance.

In addition to her recent Yahoo! Finance columns, Trunk recently wrote a controversial column for the Huffington Post which stated that journalists tell "their own story" and often "misquote" their subjects.

 
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She is a moron, and if Yahoo! is just keeping her around to direct traffic to Yahoo! Finance, then I feel bad for the other experts that PT has been categorized with. She makes the whole group look bad. The ability to rate and comment on her article has conveniently been disabled this week. It's too bad, because the comments are always far more useful than the article itself.

Posted on 09/06/2007 at 1:09:00 PM

She's brazen alright - brazen in thinking that her articles are more than fluff and are actually useful. It's sad that Yahoo! looks to her for page impressions rather than advice

Posted on 08/23/2007 at 5:08:00 AM

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