More solid business writing from Amy Hoy, with a excellent quote from General Sherman that neatly summed up the whole piece for me.
I’ve always felt guilty for not swallowing the bullshit at places I work. Even where I am now, if it wasn’t a genuinely rewarding place to work I’d want to vomit every time I go in, like I did at my last job.
Death & Glory is a curious metaphor for startups, though it’s apt. I’m not yet 30 but I’ve already have regrets for spending too much effort on work, and not enough on cultivating the relationships I have in my life, because of the guilt I’ve felt at “not doing enough”. That’s changing, and has been over many, many months.
The truth is that work is but a small subset of what matters in life. It’s essential in the sense that you have to eat somehow, but it’s small in that the mechanical repetition of incremental efforts doesn’t reciprocate directly. I write code, the code works, I get paid. Wait, what? The code didn’t pay me. My boss didn’t even pay me. The people who bought the thing I built pay me, though even they do so indirectly. In business, relationships can become diluted through a plinko-like chain of people and machinations until finally, I get a lump sum automatically deposited into my account. It’s hollow, at best, unless I work hard to have a relationship with as many people along that chain as possible.
I’m fine with the arrangement because I’ve been under the boot heel of the alternative, poverty, and it’s a different sort of soul crushing than even the worst jobs I’ve had. It also turns out to be deeply rewarding helping those relationships mature.
However, working purely for money, for glory, for ego, is insane.
