This is going to sound a little touchy-feely, but I'm going to write it anyway.
There are a lot of games in the world, and what the author describes here is one of them. And you can play this game if you want to, and you might even win at it. But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it. You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
More and more these days I think that people who are unhappy in the modern world live in prisons of their own making. Yes, a lot of people think this way and work this way. I think it's good to know the game is out there, and that you'll encounter people with this mindset. But you do not have to play the same game. Yes, you probably need a job. Yes, your material rewards might be lesser if you don't engage in this kind of stuff. But you can still live a perfectly good life—perhaps even a better life—by building it around other principles.
I don't mean this to be a lecture, or condescending, or anything other than a reminder that just because you have to work, it doesn't mean you're stuck playing the games other people are playing.
The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.
I have struggled with depression and anxiety from an early age, so, when I start attaching to an overly-cynical view of how the world operates, I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run.
I've come to realize you have to be a bit of a pessimist when understanding how things "really work", but going about your life as an optimist and working around the structures is just as important if not more so for people like myself who were born with a broken operating system.
"I ask myself "Do I need to believe this is how the world operates? How does this serve me? Would I want my children to embody this world view?". If the answer is no, then I try to have my world view serve me and end up much happier and actually much more effective in the long run."
It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term. Sure you might convince yourself for a few months that things are like X, ignoring the evidence that they are Y. That's your prerogative, you can operate in whatever reality you wish. Eventually reality catches up to you and you have to pay the piper.
It works the other way too. You can bullshit and operate politics without the skill, until one day reality catches up to you and people see your ”work” for what it really is.
I've seen this happen to people. They couldn't get another job -- ever. They happily lived in their massive homes and retired early. One sails boats. Doesn't seem like a cautionary tale, as long you can stomach being a fake.
> It's a nice thought, but proves to be difficult to implement long term ...
It's actually the only long term approach -- literally. It's not ignoring reality, rather, it's choosing not to lose hope that we can create a better future.
Because, as we've seen, the world is what we make it, for better, and for worse.
Sure, you can choose to filter out certain things from your reality. Eventually you'll get railroaded because you failed to factor in certain things which someone whose able to adopt a realistic frame of mind would've captured.
If we look at WW2, you see Neville Chamberlain, the optimist, pursuing a policy of appeasement giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt and proclaiming "peace for our time" after signing of the Munich agreement. Meanwhile, Churchill, a realist, realizes that Hitler is not going to stop until he's dominated all of Europe.
So who do you prefer to be in this story, the naive optimist Chamberlain, assuming everything will be okay? Or the realist Churchill who recognizes the threat, and takes the necessary evasive action.
One method to distinguish between the things we think are real, but are not, is to see what you can change by pretending things are actually like X. Whatever doesn't change - that's evidence that's "real".
To paraphrase, "reality is that which, when you pretend otherwise, continues to be the way it is."
> The company I'm currently CTO at I had founded when I was 23. It's now a multi-hundred million dollar company, growing very quickly, and about to cross 100 employees. I've learned a lot along the way, but I've especially learned from managing parents. As I started managing parents and realizing how much they base their own values on how their children would think of them and their life principles, it became apparent to me that this is how I want to live my life too.
I feel like I'm now a father to my hypothetical children.
You bring up a fascinating subject. The tricky part about pessimal realism is that too much of it becomes a self-fulfilling and agency yielding prophecy. And so the challenge becomes this: how does one pragmatically engage with optimal realism?
I guess another way to say this is path dependence is a real problem. Finding the solution is not trivial. Perhaps the most painful place this reality becomes evident is in the interpersonal and societal sense. It's a trope that as we get older we realize "we can't save everyone" or "we can't fix everything." And so the question becomes how do we determine a) what's in our control b) what really matters and c) how we orient ourselves for the future?
I don't have a great answer, but I think part of the practice is learning to become whole with your pain, your emotions, your hopes and your intuitions in a balanced manner. And I think another part of the practice is figuring out how to build your own tribe along the way to make it practical for you to find support in a trustworthy community.
You are right, but there is a sober middle ground.
There is a famous quote by Hungarian writer Mikszáth saying "It is not enough to be honorable, one also has to appear so".
You don't have to go all-in in "the game", it's enough to strategically adjust even minor things to make sure your work doesn't go unnoticed, that you aren't spending effort and emotional energy on things that will ultimately not lead to anything. If you're doing it for your own enjoyment, to feel good about accomplishments or just scratch your problem-solving itch, great. But if you're naive and want to be a "good boy" who helps others because and who just naturally takes on work that is unrewarding in itself, but you feel you need to play nice etc, then perhaps this view can help. People will step over you and you will not understand why things are happening. You will feel betrayed when it's not really betrayal, just "the game" being played.
Be aware of it and make a conscious choice of when to play it and when not to play it. But when you don't play it, be aware of the trade-offs.
With all due respect to Mikszáth, you don’t have full control over how you “appear” to others. Sure, we can influence our appearance with our actions but it’s also impacted by things outside our control. People will always view our actions through their unique lens biased by their own experiences, thoughts, mental models etc.
I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
People are simpler and more predictable than you'd think. There are techniques (as outlined in the article) that can predictably improve how other people see you.
> I think the Stoics would argue it’s better to just focus on what’s the right thing to do regardless of how it “appears” externally
That quote is often referenced in political corruption cases, where the politician argues he's innocent but acknowledges they might appear suspicious because they weren't careful enough to be sure to also "appear honest", not just "be honest". It's also how you have to collect paper trails and documentation if you expect that some case of yours may go to court, even if you're innocent.
Anyway, I see that people are misunderstanding what I was pointing at.
Yes the right thing is important, but it's important because it's the right thing, not because it will lead to promotions and money and fame. Don't confuse it. My qualms are with people who declare that they will stick to their principles, out of principle and not at all because they expect anything in return. And then they get upset when they get nothing in return. My problem is with this second part, not with the first.
> My qualms are with people who declare that they will stick to their principles, out of principle and not at all because they expect anything in return. And then they get upset when they get nothing in return.
If one were a touch cynical though, loudly complaining about not getting credit with a pretended naivety is also one way of playing ‘the game’ , as you put it (even if it’s not to your taste).
Now that's a classic! I mean the way you argue, not the quote. Very nice, very classic moral relativism and postmodernism. People should never trust themselves and their understanding of the world.
What I'm saying is that understanding the game that others play is necessary, whether you want to play it or not. If you don't play it because you're ignorant and don't even see that this is going on then you allow yourself to be exploited, you will expect things to happen to you that won't happen, then you become bitter and envious. On the other hand, if you consciously recognize that this game exists, you can navigate it better and still live the way you want, without being surprised by the consequences. For example, you can spend a lot of invisible effort on a project, because you hold the principle that you will not produce bad work even if nobody is looking. That's fine. But then don't go expecting that someone will reward you and don't be upset when promotions don't come. If you consciously understand this, you will know ahead of time that that "manipulative jerk" office mate will get promoted, so when it happens, you don't get angry and disappointed. You can stay calm and concentrated on your own journey.
By realizing that you do that invisible hard work (that leads to other people's promotions and enriches others) for your own spiritual sake or for a higher cause or for the order of the universe or whatever other reason, you can live in a balanced way, because you're consciously going in with this trade-off. You live up to some principles that you won't play games, you will play straight up, with high quality work without boasting and playing it up or telling anyone about it, but you also don't desire the riches and the status, that's okay.
My issue is with people who do wishful thinking. They set some principles first and declare that this is how the world operates. When it doesn't operate that way, they don't update their model of the world, but shut their eyes and deny the dark side of getting ahead, but then still complain that the world doesn't conform to their ideal.
This is far from postmodernism. I say look at the objective cold facts: who gets ahead and how, understand the rules, then consciously play it or don't play it, but know each trade-off involved and don't be surprised when your choice leads to the predicted result. And that predicted result could be perfectly fine! You don't have to get promoted out of technical work. Many people explicitly hate managing people and budgets and playing politics and love working with concrete technical things, and will happily trade those promotions and high-class life for an honest, principled, simple life working on interesting problems for decades without climbing a career ladder or keeping up with the Joneses. Nothing wrong with that! But then know that this is the deal you're subscribing to.
In my experience, a lot of people play the game so they can go play other games outside of work.
Most of us are stuck working in some form of organization-pays-for-our-labor employment. As long as you're there, you might as well learn and play by the rules as they actually are, not as you wish them to be. For the 8 hours when your butt is in the chair at work, make them effective 8 hours, such that you can maximize your remuneration according to whatever system the company has set up to evaluate performance. Then you can go take that money and buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time - or even opt out entirely for a few years.
I know a few people for whom work is their calling. The crucial thing to remember there is that they're still playing in somebody else's game, who oftentimes can pay them less because it's not a game to them. There's perhaps less psychic stress in this, but also less financial remuneration, which can foreclose on some other things in life that you may care about.
>This is only relevant if you need a lot of money to play other games outside of work. Most people don't.
I didn't downvote you but you misinterpreted what he wrote. The end of the 2nd paragraph explained that "other games" means the other more desirable non-work activities people would rather do:
"play other games outside of work" == "buy freedom to do other stuff in the rest of your time"
Maybe I'm still misinterpreting it, but to me it seems like he was talking about activities after work, not instead of work. So if you want to, say, regularly dine at the finest restaurants, buy expensive toys, and live in a big mansion, then sure you need to know how to play the game, but if you're an average Joe, and just want to go to a bar to hang out with friends, or watch a movie, and maybe have a hobby like restoring vintage cars in your garage, then you probably don't need to make that much money.
Also important to remember that winning this game results in a massive difference in income and purchasing power.
Two promotions at a FAANG can be the difference between 200k and 600k in pre-tax compensation. That might translate into a difference in retirement age from 70 to 35, depending on your life goals and rate of spending.
The tremendous amount of ink spilled over FIRE leads me to believe few who play the game well enough to snag those two promotions will manage to escape their golden handcuffs.
The more the press talks about it, the more unusual it is. See shark attacks vs automobile fatalities.
That's the thing about FIRE. It is always a guy in his late 30s with 2 kids and a big house in a metro city trying to sell FIRE to new grads.
IMO, fire becomes impossible the second you have kids. Because all parents I know have some kind of super natural urge to provide better for their children. A house in a better school district, university education and the knowledge that they can have more if they work more, will inevitably stop people from making that early exit they so yearn for.
This becomes even more evident once you get used to roaming in 'high achieving' circles, because the second you RE, you and your children get pushed to the bottom of that social structure (in terms of material possessions)
FIRE also has a wierd hypocrisy to it. It advocates for avoiding life style creep. But, if you avoid lifestyle creep then you can pursue any of the things you would have after retirement as a primary source of income anyways. Especially if you don't expect to take on fresh debt. (new house, new car etc)
That being said, I live a FIRE esque lifestyle too. Because the core tenents make sense even without wanting to FIRE. But, every tech guy in their 20s seems to want to Fire, but I haven't met a single person in their 40s that actually has.
I know a few people in their 50s who managed to FIRE. I think a lot of people want to do it earlier but then life gets in the way. The ones that I know who actually retired early did so when their company got acquired or ipoed (most were director level, one of the people was a very high level IC/eng fellow @ unicorn). Basically there was a push and instead of staying in re-org or finding yet another opportunity they said "retirement!" and had the money to make it reality. The guy who was IC actually still codes/commits to OSS; I guess he just doesn't code for money anymore.
Note sure if you read the article the same way I did -- but I saw it as something that people do -- not something the author was necessarily recommending. He's saying that is how people get ahead.
I agree with you that it is a game. It isnt a game that I play, but it is a popular game. Denying that many people do this seems like wishful thinking or denial of reality.
The easiest way to see this is the typical corporate track -- you're told that if you work hard, every 2 or 3 yrs you get promoted. You do the math internally in your head and realize you'd get to -- say SVP at age 50. Then you look around and there are a bunch of 35yo SVPs. Once can see that and realize there are shortcuts/cheats in the game, or one can ignore it and hope for advancement (only to get to age 50 and realize it was all for nothing.)
I think what the author provides is of great value -- they are trying to show you a reality you may not see. The value is not to encourage you to do it, but perhaps
- to get you to step off some hamster wheel of death
- to get you to realize you need to be an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to weed out these types of players if you are already an entrepreneur and your own boss
- to get you to find companies where these things are not the case (hint: check out the executive team on Linked In -- are they under qualified? run away from this company. Are they hired from outside rather going up the ranks? be careful)
Also note: the author isn't actually advocating playing these games. Just describing how they work.
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"[These rituals] are macro-useful in a sense that they allow humans to generate billions of dollars of productive activity. But that doesn't mean that you should be spending your time on them."
"Assuming you're good, if you choose to work in a big company the right strategy is to work 9-5, not stress about anything, and collect your paycheck. Climbing the ladder seems extremely suboptimal to me."
Reminds me of the sound advice I am glad I got early in life (whilst still in college) from a book called "Work Less, Play More" by a petroleum geologist named Steven Catlin[1]. Play the games on your terms if at all possible. And save yo monnay!
1: http://www.swt.org/play.htm (brief and pithy overview there; should be all you need but I recommend reading the whole thing in a weekend)
Usually it’s good. It means short and to the point in most contexts. Maybe things can be too pithy, if they’re so short that they’re incomprehensible. But it’s much better than meandering and off topic.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily good. If you think of TV when a character says something as they're leaving a room and everyone goes "ooohhhh". That's a pithy comment. Something like:
"Hey baby, you looking for a real man for tonight?"
"Yeah, let me know if you see one!"
Good to be pithy when you're dealing with obnoxious drunks in a bar. Maybe not so much when talking with your boss.
This rings true. There's a YouTube channel where a man with a campervan goes out camping in the nature and cooks food, sips whiskey and looks into the horizon. So simple yet so attractive and there's many comments of older people saying they can no longer do that but live it through these videos. I'd rather be doing that on my weekends than busting my back to get that promo.
Well put. I completely agree. One thing I'd like to add though is that choosing to not play this game does not mean there's no path to large impact / success by conventional metrics. I came away from this article with the distinct feeling that it is focused on big corporate jobs. That certainly is where a large segment of workers are at, but it's not the only place you can be. In particular, I think that in the early stage startup world you don't get a lot of what the article is talking about. In early stage startups decisions made by rank-and-file employees can have very tangible and significant impact on the time scale of weeks to months, not quarters to years like this article seems focused on. Does this early stage startup world have its own set of issues? Of course. But there do exist good opportunities where culture is healthy and good work gets rewarded.
Is it really? In the startup world you don't "switch projects" every 18 months. Instead you pivot to a different business plan or start a new company. Grow headcount faster than baseline applies as well.
> You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
There's a bunch of ways this effect shows up all across life:
"How things start is generally how they continue"
(rails feels like rails in basically every part, from the stuff a rank beginner does to diving into the guts for advanced usage)
"A hippy in motion stays in motion, a hippy at rest stays at rest."
(the mindset with which you start a thing tends to persist)
And, I don't know if there's a name for it, but the game of Go is legendary for players being able to replay games exactly as long as they can remember the first few moves. If the conditions and players remain the same, why would the game go any differently?
> live in prisons of their own making
I have found nothing more painful or exhausting than fighting oneself; when we hold ourselves back - put ourselves in prisons of our own making - we're both the occupant fighting the bars and the bars fighting the occupant. IMO something like RSI also shows up if you do that long enough.
One way I've found out of it is - and this might sound a little weird - apply a bit of Flatland. A circle is only a wall while you're in 2d; add a dimension (a direction orthogonal to the current ones) and walk around it.
(another way is talk therapy; and meditation trains the "muscles" (and more) that you use for any of this)
What I think you're getting at here is that it's up to each person to choose whether they want to chase the promotion and higher pay or whether they want to focus on just doing meaningful work.
Perhaps not everyone will come to this cynical of a conclusion for themselves, but in my own experience this way of thinking is almost always a false dichotomy. There's no law that says pay vs meaningfulness of the work is a zero-sum trade-off, but a lot of people giving career advice take it as almost a given that this is true. There is exciting work to do and problems to solve in the higher paying, higher levels in a big company (by that I mean, senior or staff engineer, manager or sr manager. I don't have any hands-on experience at the higher executive levels, I'm still chasing those promotions myself). And there are endless things to be frustrated with at the smallest of startups even when there's no bureaucracy or perceivable "office politics" to worry about.
My own takeaway has been, at the end of the day this is still a job. In almost any job I can find positive ways to contribute, opportunities to learn, and make my own self fulfillment. So I might as well do that at the job that pays 3x more.
In tech that difference in pay between a couple of bands of promotions or between a startup and big co, can be absolutely massive. Don't feel bad about chasing the higher paying roles, that increase in income can buy you a lot of optionality. Maybe you can retire early, or take long years of sabbatical in the middle of your career, or devote a year or two to starting your own startup in the future without worrying about not taking a paycheck. This may ultimately be a lot more satisfying than shuffling through low-paying jobs searching for roles where you'll be perfectly happy in spite of that, because you may never find it anyway.
Similarly, for some of us the game that the author describes is way more appealing than a more straightforward 'work hard and earn your way up'. Not everybody in tech cares about software; I'm just in it for the money. Reading stuff like this makes career development actually sound exciting.
What looks like prison for you can be freedom for someone else
I don’t intend for this to sound judge-y but I’m curious if not being internally motivated for the work impacts your motivation, particularly with work that is essential for the goal but not particularly high status/visibility. Do you find motivation waning?
When X allows you to achieve goal Y, you can get a lot of X done even if you have no personal interest in X. If you're poor and have few options, most of the time you're gonna do whatever job you can get because you just don't have a choice (speaking from earlier life experience). For some people it's being a waiter, janitor, working at mcdonald's, etc. Very few people breaking their backs on construction or 16 hour catering gigs grew up fantasizing about being a laborer, but they still manage to pull off incredible feats of endurance and work. Why would software or other office jobs be any different?
In short, I work in software to get paid well to retire asap. I've never needed work to find fulfillment and growth in life, so I'm never short on motivation because I can't wait to stop having to work.
To extend your analogy, I’ve found a vast difference in quality between construction contractors who view their work as a profession/craft vs those who view it as a job/means to an end. The irony is those in the latter category have complained to me that they find it hard to find work, those in the former always seem to be in demand and making money. That’s to the heart of my question, I was wondering if that kind of motivation inadvertently can affect the ends you’re aiming at.
Regardless, I’m happy you don’t need work to be fulfilled and seem to be on a good path for what you’re after
My point was that to me, being able to do construction at all is remarkable, and an example of how you can do a lot without personal interest.
It's important to distinguish between excelling at X, and excelling at a career in X.
IMO to really excel at a career in X you need passion and career skills. But your passion doesn't have to be in X directly. You can have passion for early retirement, income, or even just competition, and still out-perform most people who do care about X. Per the article, all a contractor has to do is work enough to move up the ladder and I can easily imagine them having their own company and out-earning the passionate contractors within a decade, while I can also see someone passionate at a craft just stagnate because they're happy doing their thing, not realizing that the career side needs work too. And of course, to excel at X itself is its own story. But since we were talking about a career perspective, I just wanted to illustrate how excelling at X itself is irrelevant to someone who's just using X as a means to an end Y, beyond what's needed for career progression.
So I wouldn't agree that motivation for X is a problem for getting to Y. I would see that as a weakness with career skills and not knowing how to utilize motivation for Y itself. But I would say that motivation for X can actually be detrimental for pursuing X itself, for example by being so fixated on pursuing quality that you neglect skills like marketing and networking, which are almost always needed to do anything beyond whatever you can do at home. Being a passionate artist alone usually won't get you far. Being a passionate musician who knows people in the industry can get you gigs in movies, shows, musical events, etc.
And thank you, I also wish you luck in pursuing your goals
> being so fixated on pursuing quality that you neglect skills like marketing and networking
This is a really good point. I think people can be so target fixated on one area that they neglect other areas that could actually have a systemic effect of improving their main domain of expertise. You’ve given me some important things to think about
This comes from someone who threw away a decade of my life because I didn't want to play the academia game - there's a sweet middle spot, play the game as long as:
1. It's fun at least on some days
2. You don't win at the expense of someone else's undeserved loss
3. You can actually switch off from it
You have to play the game no matter where you are, even foraging in the forest. There's no concept of living life without rules, so might as well embrace the reality and keep it under your control instead of the other way around.
I want to second what you're saying here. I used to feel pretty down about my work because I felt like even though I was making good money and progressing career-wise, the things I was working on were not contributing anything positive to the world, and would also be scrapped for a new iteration using the tech-du-jour within a year or two, and nobody would ever see them again.
If I wanted to have a more lasting impact and more reach, I'd have to compete with thousands for a spot somewhere like Yahoo or Google, and again, whatever I was working on would still be scrapped within a year or two.
This is why I dropped out of working for money and started working on my own passion projects. I'm very lucky, because I remember what it was like working on passion projects before I entered the workforce, so I at least knew roughly what I was looking for.
> But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it.
One other perspective:
Yes, the ideologies we subscribe to will highly influence what we see and experience.
However!
You can choose to experiment / experience quite the many ways or living and being in the decades you're likely to he here.
Each day is a new opportunity to act differently if whatever you were doing yesterday doesn't serve you and those around you.
As a counterpoint, I believe that I essentially behave the way you are describing, frequently doing things like going to meetings and saying "this big project won't work, it will harm the end user" which doesn't make you well liked. While I may firmly believe what I am saying, I'm sitting there getting passed up by promotions. Eventually I'll be the lowest ranked engineer with 50 years of experience in the world.
I guarantee you, playing by the rules will not make you happy.
Saying something like that in a work meeting is a bad idea even if you don't want to play any games. That's just basic human psychology, and if you can't deal with it perhaps you shouldn't be promoted.
I would love to hear about other models of the world that are employed to think about it. My view is that there's about 5 mental models given how mundane human life is in general (I'm speaking in hyperbole of course).
“There are a million ways to make money.” I’m a highly skilled, highly experienced individual. I never have to do anything I don’t want to in order to keep a roof over my head, food on my table, and even a handful of expensive hobbies.
I once played a different game, for about five years. I became really good at it, and I made a lot of money playing it. Like you describe, I was in a modern prison of my own making.
There are a lot of games in the world, and what the author describes here is one of them. And you can play this game if you want to, and you might even win at it. But it's worth remembering that you have one existence, one set of time and energy to spend in this life. If you decide to look at the world this way, and operate with this mindset, then that's how you're choosing to spend it. You will not "make it" some day and suddenly reverse course.
More and more these days I think that people who are unhappy in the modern world live in prisons of their own making. Yes, a lot of people think this way and work this way. I think it's good to know the game is out there, and that you'll encounter people with this mindset. But you do not have to play the same game. Yes, you probably need a job. Yes, your material rewards might be lesser if you don't engage in this kind of stuff. But you can still live a perfectly good life—perhaps even a better life—by building it around other principles.
I don't mean this to be a lecture, or condescending, or anything other than a reminder that just because you have to work, it doesn't mean you're stuck playing the games other people are playing.