Very early in my working life I had the misfortune of doing data entry and cashier work where I significantly outperformed my coworkers. I was _hated_ in these

Very early in my working life I had the misfortune of doing data entry and cashier work where I significantly outperformed my coworkers. I was _hated_ in these jobs. What I didn't realize was that the team's performance was dictated by the top performers and that _everyone_ was intentionally slowing down their work so that they could have a relaxed, easy job. By doing my best work, management set the expectation for everyone to work 10% better than that. What I didn't understand at the time was that several of the folks in that job were lifers and they'd realized quickly that the compounding interest of always having to perform 10% better every month would break them. My eagerness to do good work was quite literally ruining their lives. My take away lesson from this was to always try to work someone with people who are more skilled and more ambitious than you are or with people who want you to help pull them forward.