> At first, when you start working at a rapidly growing company, what you see is smart, idealistic, driven people working together to accomplish a goal greater than themselves. When you leave, unless you are willfully blind or exceptionally naive, what you see is a ruthless political arena— a modern day Game of Thrones, where machinations take place over email, and battles are won and lost over cups of light roast coffee.
I grew with a rapidly growing company. While I don’t disagree with the author that these sorts of environments exist in our industry (or most industries), or even pockets inside of a company, I don’t think this experience describes mine. Maybe I’m willfully blind or naive (or maybe I was too low level to experience this), but I’d caution someone of taking this strategy wholesale and start assassinating the careers of your colleagues.
Keep in mind, a major goal of a company is to make money. The leader of the company is generally aligned with that goal. Those are their incentives. They hire people to make them more money. If you play a different game according to this quotation:
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics.
Then, if the leader is competent and they determine you’re doing this, you’re probably going to get fired. They might also be bad, and you might get promoted if you fool them. But you’re also probably fooling yourself if you also have the goal to grow your own skills.
Instead, I’d suggest this mindset: When you’re joining a company, you’re joining a group of humans who created a system to help them to work together. Each system is a bit different, tailored to the company and the people who compose them. Some are passable. Some are terrible. But there is variance, and you should probably think about the strategy you employ when you join a new company (or re-evaluate how you operate in your current one).
You don’t need to trust the system, but you do need to learn to see and work the system. I guess if the environment is truly toxic and your only goal is to get promoted, exploiting as the author suggests might be working the system. However, there are systems you can work in a more productive way that might end up making you feel more fulfilled.
I grew with a rapidly growing company. While I don’t disagree with the author that these sorts of environments exist in our industry (or most industries), or even pockets inside of a company, I don’t think this experience describes mine. Maybe I’m willfully blind or naive (or maybe I was too low level to experience this), but I’d caution someone of taking this strategy wholesale and start assassinating the careers of your colleagues.
Keep in mind, a major goal of a company is to make money. The leader of the company is generally aligned with that goal. Those are their incentives. They hire people to make them more money. If you play a different game according to this quotation:
> So your job isn't to make good decisions to improve company metrics.
Then, if the leader is competent and they determine you’re doing this, you’re probably going to get fired. They might also be bad, and you might get promoted if you fool them. But you’re also probably fooling yourself if you also have the goal to grow your own skills.
Instead, I’d suggest this mindset: When you’re joining a company, you’re joining a group of humans who created a system to help them to work together. Each system is a bit different, tailored to the company and the people who compose them. Some are passable. Some are terrible. But there is variance, and you should probably think about the strategy you employ when you join a new company (or re-evaluate how you operate in your current one).
You don’t need to trust the system, but you do need to learn to see and work the system. I guess if the environment is truly toxic and your only goal is to get promoted, exploiting as the author suggests might be working the system. However, there are systems you can work in a more productive way that might end up making you feel more fulfilled.