Nobody Cares About Your Career

Why Failure Is Good, the Great Ones Play Hurt, and Other Hard Truths

By: Erika Ayers Badan

Narrated by: Erika Ayers Badan

Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

This program is read by the author.

The ultimate playbook for crushing it at work, from the former CEO of Barstool Sports.

She worked hand-in-hand with a founder who was a lightning rod for controversy—OK, for stepping in it. She grew a chaotic company (Vanity Fair called it a “pirate ship”) housed over a dentist’s office outside of Boston that published giveaway papers into a juggernaut with more than 5 billion monthly video views and 225 million followers valued at 550 million dollars. Erika Ayers Badan calls herself a “token CEO”, the rare female employee in the highest rank of a bro-roar sports and new media culture.

She’s also a massive student of work: how to do it, how to be effective at it, how to get noticed, how to crush it, how to figure out what you love and do it as a job. She’s figured it out, after big marketing jobs in large traditional corporations like Microsoft and AOL, for herself; she’s figured it out for friends; she figured it out for the thousands of people who listened to her Barstool podcast, “Token CEO” every week. And in this book, she’s figuring it out for everybody else.

With the verve and motivation of books like YOU ARE A BADASS and the smart, specific ideas of titles like ATOMIC HABITS, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR CAREER is a real playbook. It’s about how work really works and how you can get work to work for you. It’s about thank you notes and thankless tasks, the energy in meetings and energy vampires, how to pick a boss and how to get a boss to pick you. It’s about being all in (but not bringing your whole self to work—some of you is better left at home) and becoming valuable to your workplace. It’s about participating—with your brain, your skills, your experience, and your willingness to pitch in and offer yourself up for something you may not even know how to do yet. It’s about making your own luck at work.

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR CAREER is for first-time job seekers who think no company will ever want them, people stuck in second or third jobs who don’t know how to move on to the next thing, people who have the job they thought was their brass ring but who discovered it’s not all that.

Her chapter titles include:

- Do Whatever Makes You Happy and F*ck Anyone Who Says Otherwise

- Know What Your Company is Paying You to Do

- Don’t Be an Asshole at Work

- The Messy Stuff: Being Human, Getting Drunk, Sex, and Other Disaster Scenarios at Work

- Feedback is a Gift. Feedforward is for wimps

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Erika Ayers Badan (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"A salty, bracing welcome to the world of work for the aspirationally minded. A refreshingly foul-mouthed, smart guide to making it in the business world."—Kirkus

"Erika personifies transparency and getting Shxt done! A down to earth BOSS who brings winning energy to the boardroom as well as life. Trust me you want her on your side! Nobody Cares About Your Career is packed with game that will help you figure shxt out to get to that next level. She helped me level up now let her help you."—Wallo267

Life changing advice!

I have been really struggling with feeling stuck in my current job, despite having all the markings of success. This book helped me sort out my priorities, shift my mindset, and appreciate the learning experience. Thank you, Erika for publishing something so honest and real. And, thank you for being a woman leader who inspires and is very relatable.

My Sneakers Are On

@Erika relating burnout to the as if regarding running out of gas was not only a fantastic analogy, but in regards to the stressful occasion “entertaining visions of someone either helping you or murdering you”, I have to tell you I’ve never felt more seen than when you wrote that…ha!

Now, back to this book review: Erika’s ‘ultimate playbook for work’ made me laugh more times than I can count (ie: “Walkmans <Google it>”), feel encouraged in the season that I am in professionally, as well as gave me deeper insight “on work from someone in the thick of it”, as she wrote in the Epilogue. Notice that sentence is current; it doesn’t say “who was in the thick of it”.

I like that Erika is (still) a working mother who talks about the grind (🙋‍♀️), the difficulties, the actual work, the joys, and the capacities (or lack thereof) of oneself and others within the framework of a professional setting as well as outside of work with coworkers.

I knew I liked her from years following @Erika on IG, but when I read her “I wanted to build and create something, not rationalize the existence of something that is no longer relevant” as early as (p.13), it confirmed what I have thought about her for a long time: that Erika is a leader worth emulating.
I actually felt proud of the author (weird because I don’t know her personally) when I read p.75 for implementing her vision and surpassing her goals.

This book is worth the very fast read: insightful, hysterical, challenging, yet supportive.
Highly recommend. Of course, five stars.


PS @Erika Although I am in my mid-thirties, no, I have not seen the breakfast club (reference p. 43) and I embarrassingly admit I had to google “OTSS” “WOAT” & yes even “GTFO” 😩🤦‍♀️, but no, not “STFU” 😏, I absolutely know what that acronym is.

Anyway, thank you for Nobody Cares About Your Career.
Don’t stop writing.

Love her perspective

As a manager, of both men and women, Erika’s words resonate and will be useful in conversations with them, as well as with myself.

Sharing this with my team

I really enjoyed Erika’s story but what I most enjoyed was her advice and experience relating to being a valuable team member. Not just to the company but to the individual as well.

Just a bunch of marketing without actionable advice for those who need money to live

This book lacked any practical advice for those who are mid or late career looking for ways to pivot while under significant financial pressure. The advice to “pursue what makes a person happy” sounds good on paper, but is a the reality of struggling with a very poor financial plan while raising a family is traumatic for all. The book advises impulsivity over pragmatism, which is just more of the “follow your dreams or go bust” nonsense that spreads like wide fire in young minds entering college. I had hoped to understand more about how market forces shape the job landscape and how to navigate a rapidly changing workplace, but instead I heard a lot of marketing baloney laced with needless profanity. I suppose the author’s quest for self improvement does not include refining her choice of vocabulary. This book is not a reliable source of information for anyone looking to have a stable financial future, and so would like my money back.

Nobody will care about this book.

Just awful. Zero substance. Marketing waffle that drones on painfully. Save your time and money!