I never met Steve Jobs and I probably wouldn’t notice Zuckerberg if he was killing a goat next to me, but word on the street is they were/are total fucking pricks. Musk is openly an asshole. Bezos is calculated to earn over $300 a second, 24 hours a day – but wouldn’t give his warehouse workers healthcare and adequate bathroom breaks.
So what if I just got out of school and wanted to make a name for myself? Would these not be the titans of industry to model my behavior after?
Let’s take a step back. I doubt there is a Pro alive who hasn’t seen a bunch of assholes get ahead. I’m sure many tried being an asshole as a strategy. But unless you dedicate yourself to your career above all other things in life, sooner or later, you are going to want to stop being a dick. In fact, it will probably lead to more regrets than anything else.
For everyone but the truly ruthless, being an asshole runs contrary to how we want to live our lives. Especially with the people we spend most of our waking lives with – our co-workers.
The Pro’s directive is quite the opposite:
The Pro’s Directive:
The people you work with are more important than the project you are working on.
To build a career, you must first build trusting relationships. This doesn’t mean you don’t fire people, or hate people, or never hurt people’s feelings. Pros aren’t hippy buddhists living in communes. This is a practical rule. If you want people to listen to you and follow you, you have to listen and follow them too. You need to treat everyone with the respect (until they prove they don’t deserve it).
I find the best course of action is to speak to everyone like you are talking to your boss’s boss. This will help you figure out where the quality people are. It might be at the top, it might be at the bottom, it might be in the middle. Usually, quality can be found at every level, but never with everyone.
The same holds true for idiocy. Your boss’s boss may be an idiot. His title doesn’t make his bad opinion better and shouldn’t net him any more respect. A “yes man” who follows poor executive directions thinking that will protect them will just get the blame when everything fails.
Corollary:
A Pro who finds themself thinking “Everyone is an idiot” or “Everyone is a dick” needs to take a moment to consider if they are an idiot and a dick.