You are far more dangerous to your startup than competitors are. A hundred times more startups die from poor execution by their founders than are killed by competitors.
Managers are really great and important because without them there would be nobody to ask if we could go faster. On anything. Every project. Have you considered going faster? Classic manager value add.
It was a bad call to force people to use AI without restrictions. Companies lost so much capital and have nothing to show for it.
Instead it should have been measured impact and value.
Charlie Sheen reveals the time he spent $7,000 on 2,200 seats to catch a Cecil Fielder home run
“That was April 1996. I did it for Cecil Fielder. In Anaheim at the Big A”
“I called because I wanted to sit in that section. They said, ‘Well, that section’s closed. It’s an underattended game.’ I said, ‘Okay, what about this? How many seats are in that section?’”
“They were like, ‘Uh, 2,200.’ And I said, ‘What if I wanted to buy all of them? What kind of break could you cut me? What kind of deal could you swing?’ I think it came out to something like $7,000”
“It was left field. I wanted to force the hand of the baseball gods and not just catch a foul ball, but catch a home run ball. I figured if I’ve got the entire left-field stands with a couple buddies of mine, I’ve stacked the deck”
“We were hammered. We barely made it to the game. There’s also a great shot in Sports Illustrated of me standing like this with a glove and the empty stands behind me”
“We didn’t catch anything that night. And the next night, not just in that section, but in our seats, four home runs were hit. You can’t force the hand of the baseball gods”
Companies are like "we are spending all this money on AI but we don't know what the devs are even doing with it." Let me answer that for you: They're working on their personal side projects.
You can’t outwork the whole world. There’s always going to be someone somewhere willing to work as hard as you. Someone just as hungry. Or hungrier.
Assuming you can work harder and longer than someone else is giving yourself too much credit for your effort and not enough for theirs. Putting in 1,001 hours to someone else’s 1,000 isn’t going to tip the scale in your favor.
What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.
A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.
So how do people get ahead if it’s not about outworking everyone else?
People make it because they’re talented, they’re lucky, they’re in the right place at the right time, they know how to work with other people, they know how to sell an idea, they know what moves people, they can tell a story, they know which details matter and which don’t, they can see the big and small pictures in every situation, and they know how to do something with an opportunity. And for so many other reasons.
So get the outwork myth out of your head. Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.
[The Outwork Myth — It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work, 2018]