8 ms·

One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "be

One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at the time. I was once asked by a client (bank) to take a call with one of _their_ clients (a pretty important hedge fund). I did this as a courtesy even though I thought our product wasn't appropriate for the hedge fund. Anyhow I get on the call and it's the COO, the Chief Investment Officer, the CTO and a couple of other _very_ important people at this big fund. (ie a much more senior call than I really expected). Anyway, because I give a shit, I told them our product wouldn't really be right for them and explained why. They thanked me and I heard nothing more of it. Until a couple of years later where I offered a job out of the blue because one of the people on the call had been impressed by how I had dealt with it, and by pure coincidence his partner was a recruiter who was tasked with headhunting for a CTO role and he said "hey you should check this guy out".

xdfgh1112 4y ago
You were lucky in this instance, but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort?
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  If this was the only time in their life they'd be implicitly taking this gamble, sure, that's a reasonable question. But if you behave "impressively" in a consistent fashion, things like this are more likely to happen.
- _tom_ 4y ago
  Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    >> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times. I have never been one to deliberately "build my network" and even I have had several beneficial things come about via my network.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I find a lot of people conflate building and maintaining relationships with people with going to "networking" events and other artificial faux network building. I've also never thought of myself as deliberately building a network but the (few) jobs I've landed over the past 25 years have been directly through people I knew.
- mooreds 4y ago
  He didn't invest much time, just the time on the call and the time to determine it wasn't a fit. So I wouldn't call it optimizing for lottery. Instead, I'd call it optimizing for reputation. And you can't know what doors your reputation will open for you. You just can't. What's the alternative? If he'd fibbed and tried to make it work, and then wasted everyone's time during the sales process. Or worse had an unhappy team at the end of the POC or a contract that the company wouldn't renew? I guess he could have not taken the call, but I think if a client asks you to do that and it isn't invasive in terms of effort, most consulting folks would do it.
  - jerf 4y ago
    There's other low-but-non-zero probability outcomes with a high payoff out of such a call, too. For instance, it may turn out that you are a good fit, because the requirements got mangled during the inevitable game of telephone. There's enough such possibilities that it's worth taking the call, but also not wasting anyone's time once the situation has become clear.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      Another one I encounter frequently ... it isn't a good fit for this team, but seems like it might be for $PeerDepartment. And now you have a warm introduction from someone they trust.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Also some high-probability relatively low payoff events. The OP could probably expect the hedge fund that took the meeting would feed back to the bank that referred them that they appreciated the introduction and thought the team had integrity and good sector-specific knowledge. That might help cement relations with the existing client and win more referrals for the company. And hedge fund employees impressed by a presentation are likely to talk to and occasionally move to work at banks. The headhunting relative with the ideal job vacancy certainly wasn't the most likely of the many potential positive outcomes!
- ssully 4y ago
  I wouldn't call it winning the lottery; it's just that people remember people they admire for whatever reason. I am early in my career, but I definitely have a short list of people I've worked with that I admire for a number of reasons (integrity, empathy, getting shit done, etc). I have pushed to work with them for those reasons, and I feel like I've gotten work people admiring me for whatever reason.
- bena 4y ago
  It's honestly up there. Success is a combination of luck and effort; where opportunity meets preparation. You can control preparation. You can't control opportunity, you can only put yourself in places where opportunity hangs out.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort? The difference is that you're not optimizing for a single lottery. If you build a habit of caring about things and doing a good job, people will notice. You'll meet thousands or tens of thousands of people across your career. The more of those people who walk away with a positive idea of your reputation, the more "lotteries" you've entered. The more positive your reputation, the more entries you get. This really shows up in the second decade of a career, when many of the people you've worked with in the past have moved up into management positions and are looking for good candidates to recruit. Having established a reputation as a person who cares and who does the right thing will fast-track you through interview processes and move you to the top of recruiting lists (and rightly so, because you've already proven yourself).
- munificent 4y ago
  Is an optimizing your life around best use of time and effort the meta-optimal path for a satisfying life? One argument is that the parts of our life that make it our particular life are the things that are, by design not optimal. Any optimal choice we make is an optimal choice any rational actor in our shoes would make, so says nothing about us or our particular place in the universe. You are what you're willing to squandor time and attention on.
  - NateEag 4y ago
    I really like the way you've put this. Thanks for sharing!
- bsuvc 4y ago
  People who don't "optimize for this lottery" are the ones who luck always seems to pass them by. They just don't know why, and they guess they're just unlucky. It's just not fair! What they don't see is how the "lucky" people put extra effort in over an extended period of time, without immediate personal gain. It's not worth it... Until it is.
  - xdfgh1112 4y ago
    I don't optimise for this lottery and I know exactly why my career is the way it is. I just don't care.
- vsareto 4y ago
  Calling these lotteries is actually a big misrepresentation. Lotteries are for astronomical odds. Plus you can do things to change your odds. Instead of waiting to be picked, you could have been proactive and reached out to them for a job. The odds massively improve in your favor compared to a lottery in terms of winning (winning = getting a job in this case). And to belabor the obvious, no matter how cool I am with the gas station clerk, it's not going to improve my odds of winning the lottery. That leads us to part 2, which is "why do anything at all for your career when you already have skills" and it's because doing things like signalling that you give a shit alerts other folks with decision-making powers that can benefit you.
- zo1 4y ago
  There are companies out there that prey on this kind of good will, unfortunately.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  Yes, absolutely. This is one of the factors that contributes to people having a general aura of getting repeatedly lucky.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
And the minor superpower demonstrated here by one of the executives was giving a shit about people enough to remember this, like really remember.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  Biiiig part of the equation people don’t consider when they ask us to “go the extra mile” repeatedly. It’s ok for us to ask, “well…what have you done for me lately or can commit to now?” once in a while.
- at-fates-hands 4y ago
  From what I know, executives appreciate people being honest with them and not constantly trying to sell them on something. OP was honest and didn't try to sell them something they didn't need - something people in executives positions really appreciate and remember. Case in point: I remember working on a project that was taking a long time to get stuff done. One day, I took lunch in our project room and was there with another junior dev as we were both trying to finish a few things up and working and eating lunch. Suddenly in walks three older gentlemen in suits. They start looking at all the stuff (charts, metrics, designs, etc) we have posted up around the room and start talking and pointing to some charts. I kindly ask them if there's something I can help them with. They walk over and introduce themselves. Two are executive VP's of the department we're building the app for. The other is a senior VP who is showing them what we do. I start explaining how the progress is going, "Well, Bob, its really all rainbows and unicorns right now. If we can get server A talking to server B, it will be even better." Exec A puts his hand and I stop talking. Looks at me and says, "Atfateshands, tell me honestly how the project is going. I didn't come down here for a sales presentation, tell me honestly what your thoughts are." That evolved into a 30 min talk about what I thought was holding the project back and possibly transitioning out of some the tech that was kind of forced on the project to a better framework that would speed up building this app. I stood at a whiteboard and quickly ran the numbers for them showed them it wasn't too late to pivot. They thanked me for my time and left. I figured nothing would come of it. Then a few days later, the project manager comes to me and says, "You know how you wanted to pivot to that new JS Framework? You got the green light. Let's get started ASAP, ok?" The same three guys showed up about a month later, and pulled me outside the room to thank me for my honesty and not just telling them what they wanted to hear and believed that pivoting to the tech I recommended essentially saved the entire project from getting scrapped. Because of all the delays we were having, they were discussing the possibilities of just shutting the project down in the next few weeks when they visited our room that day. The most senior VP also told me in the future not to wait around before speaking up. It was a pretty eye opening experience, but gave me a really valuable lesson.
mooreds 4y ago
I believe this is also called "playing the long game". It's a tough game to play when you are trying to hit quarterly numbers, but it is a fun game to play over a career.
Forgeties79 4y ago
It’s refreshing to see these stories. As someone from the commercial film world, these stories often end in “long term relationships that are incredibly mutually beneficial and profitable for all” or “someone got something for free off me knowing full well they had no intention of ever talking to me again.” It’s tough knowing the difference. A lot of people baulk when I say I won’t “go the extra mile” sometimes, but frankly I just have to make my own calculations and sometimes you (royal you) are just being greedy. If I “go the extra” mile as a video producer for every person who asks me, not only am I potentially setting steeper expectations for next time (because it is NEVER just once with most people and they may tell others), but I am also taking on more work for less pay. That’s other work I could be doing, that’s being with my kids, that’s all sorts of valuable time for potentially nothing. I don’t know. I hope this little rant has something useful in it haha
- skinnymuch 4y ago
  It definitely does. Going the extra mile in a 5 minute way is not the hardest thing to do most of the time because of the minor consequence. The bigger the sacrifice gets, the harder it is to go the extra mile. It’s still best to do it as much as possible, but within calculated reason.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at the time. The feedback loop on these actions is so long that it's hard to understand the value of a positive reputation. It can take years of consistent positive actions before the long-term, indirect benefits of building a good reputation become apparent. This is a constant sticking point when I mentor young people: It's easy to enter the business world and assume every interaction with other people is purely transactional. What's in it for me right now? Why should I help you? It's also easy for junior people to think that changing jobs is a perfect reset button for their reputation or that the consequences of their actions will be neatly contained to the people around them. It can be a shock to discover just how much backchannel reference checking happens when evaluating candidates as well as how often they'll end up working with former coworkers again at other companies down the road. Reputations are very asymmetric: They take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed very quickly. It can take years to see the benefits of having built a positive reputation, but it's an incredibly powerful asset once you've built it.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  There's also a compounding factor. There's some relatively low-risk, high-reward career progression to be had by staying in something niche. I don't mean a JS packaging system, something more like A/B testing. People who stick it out advance, and niches are (by definition) small. So you're either bouncing around fields all the time (which can work) or the people you've worked with over the last 10 years are going to make up a surprising portion of the most influential people in your field.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  > They take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed very quickly. I agree with the vast majority of what you've shared, but this one is a bit trickier. Reputations can be destroyed quickly, but it isn't normal or easy for them to be destroyed quickly. Someone can end up in the press for something flagrant, sure, but usually what happens is that the people that have seen your work first hand may hear of a lapse of judgement or a flub with technology, raise their eyebrows a bit, and think to themselves "that's not the person I know, but I'll keep an eye out for next time." A certain degree of humble appreciation for our shared fallibility is a marker of maturity. I've had the opportunity to be both gracious and the receiver of grace in situations like this, and I don't think the message we should be sharing with younger software developers is one that would inspire paranoia. Treat others as you would want to be treated, even when it hurts, and the rest will work itself out even if you mess up here or there is a better orientation to adopt in my opinion.
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
congratulations on working for a hedge fund
- seanhunter 4y ago
  I don’t. The job was with a fintech.

xdfgh1112 4y ago

You were lucky in this instance, but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort?

TulliusCicero 4y ago
If this was the only time in their life they'd be implicitly taking this gamble, sure, that's a reasonable question. But if you behave "impressively" in a consistent fashion, things like this are more likely to happen.
_tom_ 4y ago
Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.
- phkahler 4y ago
  >> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times. I have never been one to deliberately "build my network" and even I have had several beneficial things come about via my network.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I find a lot of people conflate building and maintaining relationships with people with going to "networking" events and other artificial faux network building. I've also never thought of myself as deliberately building a network but the (few) jobs I've landed over the past 25 years have been directly through people I knew.
mooreds 4y ago
He didn't invest much time, just the time on the call and the time to determine it wasn't a fit. So I wouldn't call it optimizing for lottery. Instead, I'd call it optimizing for reputation. And you can't know what doors your reputation will open for you. You just can't. What's the alternative? If he'd fibbed and tried to make it work, and then wasted everyone's time during the sales process. Or worse had an unhappy team at the end of the POC or a contract that the company wouldn't renew? I guess he could have not taken the call, but I think if a client asks you to do that and it isn't invasive in terms of effort, most consulting folks would do it.
- jerf 4y ago
  There's other low-but-non-zero probability outcomes with a high payoff out of such a call, too. For instance, it may turn out that you are a good fit, because the requirements got mangled during the inevitable game of telephone. There's enough such possibilities that it's worth taking the call, but also not wasting anyone's time once the situation has become clear.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    Another one I encounter frequently ... it isn't a good fit for this team, but seems like it might be for $PeerDepartment. And now you have a warm introduction from someone they trust.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    Also some high-probability relatively low payoff events. The OP could probably expect the hedge fund that took the meeting would feed back to the bank that referred them that they appreciated the introduction and thought the team had integrity and good sector-specific knowledge. That might help cement relations with the existing client and win more referrals for the company. And hedge fund employees impressed by a presentation are likely to talk to and occasionally move to work at banks. The headhunting relative with the ideal job vacancy certainly wasn't the most likely of the many potential positive outcomes!
ssully 4y ago
I wouldn't call it winning the lottery; it's just that people remember people they admire for whatever reason. I am early in my career, but I definitely have a short list of people I've worked with that I admire for a number of reasons (integrity, empathy, getting shit done, etc). I have pushed to work with them for those reasons, and I feel like I've gotten work people admiring me for whatever reason.
bena 4y ago
It's honestly up there. Success is a combination of luck and effort; where opportunity meets preparation. You can control preparation. You can't control opportunity, you can only put yourself in places where opportunity hangs out.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> but is optimising for this lottery the best use of time and effort? The difference is that you're not optimizing for a single lottery. If you build a habit of caring about things and doing a good job, people will notice. You'll meet thousands or tens of thousands of people across your career. The more of those people who walk away with a positive idea of your reputation, the more "lotteries" you've entered. The more positive your reputation, the more entries you get. This really shows up in the second decade of a career, when many of the people you've worked with in the past have moved up into management positions and are looking for good candidates to recruit. Having established a reputation as a person who cares and who does the right thing will fast-track you through interview processes and move you to the top of recruiting lists (and rightly so, because you've already proven yourself).
munificent 4y ago
Is an optimizing your life around best use of time and effort the meta-optimal path for a satisfying life? One argument is that the parts of our life that make it our particular life are the things that are, by design not optimal. Any optimal choice we make is an optimal choice any rational actor in our shoes would make, so says nothing about us or our particular place in the universe. You are what you're willing to squandor time and attention on.
- NateEag 4y ago
  I really like the way you've put this. Thanks for sharing!
bsuvc 4y ago
People who don't "optimize for this lottery" are the ones who luck always seems to pass them by. They just don't know why, and they guess they're just unlucky. It's just not fair! What they don't see is how the "lucky" people put extra effort in over an extended period of time, without immediate personal gain. It's not worth it... Until it is.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  I don't optimise for this lottery and I know exactly why my career is the way it is. I just don't care.
vsareto 4y ago
Calling these lotteries is actually a big misrepresentation. Lotteries are for astronomical odds. Plus you can do things to change your odds. Instead of waiting to be picked, you could have been proactive and reached out to them for a job. The odds massively improve in your favor compared to a lottery in terms of winning (winning = getting a job in this case). And to belabor the obvious, no matter how cool I am with the gas station clerk, it's not going to improve my odds of winning the lottery. That leads us to part 2, which is "why do anything at all for your career when you already have skills" and it's because doing things like signalling that you give a shit alerts other folks with decision-making powers that can benefit you.
zo1 4y ago
There are companies out there that prey on this kind of good will, unfortunately.
JoshTriplett 4y ago
Yes, absolutely. This is one of the factors that contributes to people having a general aura of getting repeatedly lucky.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

And the minor superpower demonstrated here by one of the executives was giving a shit about people enough to remember this, like really remember.

Forgeties79 4y ago
Biiiig part of the equation people don’t consider when they ask us to “go the extra mile” repeatedly. It’s ok for us to ask, “well…what have you done for me lately or can commit to now?” once in a while.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
From what I know, executives appreciate people being honest with them and not constantly trying to sell them on something. OP was honest and didn't try to sell them something they didn't need - something people in executives positions really appreciate and remember. Case in point: I remember working on a project that was taking a long time to get stuff done. One day, I took lunch in our project room and was there with another junior dev as we were both trying to finish a few things up and working and eating lunch. Suddenly in walks three older gentlemen in suits. They start looking at all the stuff (charts, metrics, designs, etc) we have posted up around the room and start talking and pointing to some charts. I kindly ask them if there's something I can help them with. They walk over and introduce themselves. Two are executive VP's of the department we're building the app for. The other is a senior VP who is showing them what we do. I start explaining how the progress is going, "Well, Bob, its really all rainbows and unicorns right now. If we can get server A talking to server B, it will be even better." Exec A puts his hand and I stop talking. Looks at me and says, "Atfateshands, tell me honestly how the project is going. I didn't come down here for a sales presentation, tell me honestly what your thoughts are." That evolved into a 30 min talk about what I thought was holding the project back and possibly transitioning out of some the tech that was kind of forced on the project to a better framework that would speed up building this app. I stood at a whiteboard and quickly ran the numbers for them showed them it wasn't too late to pivot. They thanked me for my time and left. I figured nothing would come of it. Then a few days later, the project manager comes to me and says, "You know how you wanted to pivot to that new JS Framework? You got the green light. Let's get started ASAP, ok?" The same three guys showed up about a month later, and pulled me outside the room to thank me for my honesty and not just telling them what they wanted to hear and believed that pivoting to the tech I recommended essentially saved the entire project from getting scrapped. Because of all the delays we were having, they were discussing the possibilities of just shutting the project down in the next few weeks when they visited our room that day. The most senior VP also told me in the future not to wait around before speaking up. It was a pretty eye opening experience, but gave me a really valuable lesson.

mooreds 4y ago

I believe this is also called "playing the long game". It's a tough game to play when you are trying to hit quarterly numbers, but it is a fun game to play over a career.

Forgeties79 4y ago

It’s refreshing to see these stories. As someone from the commercial film world, these stories often end in “long term relationships that are incredibly mutually beneficial and profitable for all” or “someone got something for free off me knowing full well they had no intention of ever talking to me again.” It’s tough knowing the difference. A lot of people baulk when I say I won’t “go the extra mile” sometimes, but frankly I just have to make my own calculations and sometimes you (royal you) are just being greedy. If I “go the extra” mile as a video producer for every person who asks me, not only am I potentially setting steeper expectations for next time (because it is NEVER just once with most people and they may tell others), but I am also taking on more work for less pay. That’s other work I could be doing, that’s being with my kids, that’s all sorts of valuable time for potentially nothing. I don’t know. I hope this little rant has something useful in it haha

skinnymuch 4y ago
It definitely does. Going the extra mile in a 5 minute way is not the hardest thing to do most of the time because of the minor consequence. The bigger the sacrifice gets, the harder it is to go the extra mile. It’s still best to do it as much as possible, but within calculated reason.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> One of the interesting aspects of giving a shit is that it will lead sometimes to you doing things which are not in your short-term selfish narrowly-defined "best interest" but because you give a shit you'll do it anyway. Some of these lead to long-term value that is very significant but you can't know at the time. The feedback loop on these actions is so long that it's hard to understand the value of a positive reputation. It can take years of consistent positive actions before the long-term, indirect benefits of building a good reputation become apparent. This is a constant sticking point when I mentor young people: It's easy to enter the business world and assume every interaction with other people is purely transactional. What's in it for me right now? Why should I help you? It's also easy for junior people to think that changing jobs is a perfect reset button for their reputation or that the consequences of their actions will be neatly contained to the people around them. It can be a shock to discover just how much backchannel reference checking happens when evaluating candidates as well as how often they'll end up working with former coworkers again at other companies down the road. Reputations are very asymmetric: They take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed very quickly. It can take years to see the benefits of having built a positive reputation, but it's an incredibly powerful asset once you've built it.

travisjungroth 4y ago
There's also a compounding factor. There's some relatively low-risk, high-reward career progression to be had by staying in something niche. I don't mean a JS packaging system, something more like A/B testing. People who stick it out advance, and niches are (by definition) small. So you're either bouncing around fields all the time (which can work) or the people you've worked with over the last 10 years are going to make up a surprising portion of the most influential people in your field.
3pt14159 4y ago
> They take a long time to build, but they can be destroyed very quickly. I agree with the vast majority of what you've shared, but this one is a bit trickier. Reputations can be destroyed quickly, but it isn't normal or easy for them to be destroyed quickly. Someone can end up in the press for something flagrant, sure, but usually what happens is that the people that have seen your work first hand may hear of a lapse of judgement or a flub with technology, raise their eyebrows a bit, and think to themselves "that's not the person I know, but I'll keep an eye out for next time." A certain degree of humble appreciation for our shared fallibility is a marker of maturity. I've had the opportunity to be both gracious and the receiver of grace in situations like this, and I don't think the message we should be sharing with younger software developers is one that would inspire paranoia. Treat others as you would want to be treated, even when it hurts, and the rest will work itself out even if you mess up here or there is a better orientation to adopt in my opinion.

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

congratulations on working for a hedge fund

seanhunter 4y ago
I don’t. The job was with a fintech.