4 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 "

> 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.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
>Reputation is for slaves, Honor, Courage, & Integrity is for the Self-Owned -Nassim Taleb
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  What does that actually mean though?
  - gnat 4y ago
    It's inspirational self-help rhetoric, it may not actually MEAN anything. But you could parse it as: "reputation" is your standing in the eyes of others, and if you define success as a good reputation then you cede control of your success to others. "Honour", "courage", and "integrity" are self-assessed, so if you define success as "acting with honour" then it's your definition of honour that matters. It's framed as an either-or, but you have a reputation whether you want one or not. It's what other people say about you when you're not in the room. If you want others to choose to work with/buy from/hang out with you, then you care about your reputation for that is what will determine whether they engage with you. Reputation doesn't automatically follow from the values you live (consistently good people can have weak reputations, consistently awful people can duplicitously craft good reputations). Two people can act with honour, courage, and integrity, yet have different reputations. I think Taleb's rhetoric clouds the point.
  - alasdair_ 4y ago
    >What does that actually mean though? It means that Taleb got stupidly, ridiculously lucky with an option trade one time (in a way that he didn't expect or intend) and, as a result, he is rich and therefore people now pay attention to him on all kinds of subjects outside of his expertise.
    - YeBanKo 4y ago
      I read his Black swan and Skin in the game and he had some good ideas there, that stuck with me, so definitely recommend these books. But your summary is very accurate, so his books should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jamiek88 4y ago
I had a brain tumor that made me make seriously poor decisions over a period of 4 years. I destroyed my reputation of 20 years that got me requested by a fortune 10 to the USA and green card sorted. I am one of the few actually good recruiters that exist and am now capable of doing the good work that got me where I was but absolutely no one wants to hear it or give me a chance. One of the main issues is I was very senior (but still actively worked on search assignments for niche technical and or c suite) and there are few senior roles and most junior people don’t want to manage me at 45 or even consider me for less senior positions. 45 is oooooooold in recruitment where you are up or out in a sink or swim environment and 90% are just glorified telemarketers. None of this is anyones fault but man I got emotional writing this. I hear so much about how terrible the recruitment ‘industry’ is, much of it true, I’m desperate to work and to help but how the hell do I break this loop? How do I get past the ‘he took his pants off in the office once’ reputation? put CAT scans on my CV? Look ma no tumor!
- cschep 4y ago
  If you present yourself as well in person as you do in your writing it seems like you could tell the story well and people would be endeared to you. What is keeping you from these roles?
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Honestly, it's because I struggle to get to the stage where I can tell the story because people see my name and back channel it. Within my chosen specialty I was pretty well known and my issues were very public. It's getting a bit better as the counter story gets out but its exhausting sometimes and hard to talk about in a 30 minute phone screen, the entire conversation becomes about that.
- forgingahead 4y ago
  Sorry to hear that. I read a story in the papers recently where one chap had a brain tumour that he wasn't aware of, and it was making him act in a way that had him lash out at his family always and divorce his wife. Once they discovered it, he managed to get it removed, survive, and actually start to patch things up with his family. I guess there isn't really a point to this comment other than to say you definitely have my sympathies, that stuff can be brutal. I hope you can get past this professionally.
mongrol-smush 4y ago
As Admiral Cunningham said, when urged to call off his evacuation of British troops from Crete in 1941 due to the large number of ships being lost: “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take 300 years to build a new tradition.” The evacuation went ahead.
ryloric 4y ago
Decades at times I recently finished Warren Buffett's biography Snowball, and this is a recurring theme in his life. His integrity is one of the most important factors in his success; he got a great deal or gotten out of a sticky situation with regulators simply because people trusted him to do the right thing. This took decades though, he'd been operating in this manner since he was a child, but it wasn't until he was in his 50s that all that goodwill began to work for him on an unimaginable scale.

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.

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

>Reputation is for slaves, Honor, Courage, & Integrity is for the Self-Owned -Nassim Taleb

AussieWog93 4y ago
What does that actually mean though?
- gnat 4y ago
  It's inspirational self-help rhetoric, it may not actually MEAN anything. But you could parse it as: "reputation" is your standing in the eyes of others, and if you define success as a good reputation then you cede control of your success to others. "Honour", "courage", and "integrity" are self-assessed, so if you define success as "acting with honour" then it's your definition of honour that matters. It's framed as an either-or, but you have a reputation whether you want one or not. It's what other people say about you when you're not in the room. If you want others to choose to work with/buy from/hang out with you, then you care about your reputation for that is what will determine whether they engage with you. Reputation doesn't automatically follow from the values you live (consistently good people can have weak reputations, consistently awful people can duplicitously craft good reputations). Two people can act with honour, courage, and integrity, yet have different reputations. I think Taleb's rhetoric clouds the point.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  >What does that actually mean though? It means that Taleb got stupidly, ridiculously lucky with an option trade one time (in a way that he didn't expect or intend) and, as a result, he is rich and therefore people now pay attention to him on all kinds of subjects outside of his expertise.
  - YeBanKo 4y ago
    I read his Black swan and Skin in the game and he had some good ideas there, that stuck with me, so definitely recommend these books. But your summary is very accurate, so his books should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jamiek88 4y ago

I had a brain tumor that made me make seriously poor decisions over a period of 4 years. I destroyed my reputation of 20 years that got me requested by a fortune 10 to the USA and green card sorted. I am one of the few actually good recruiters that exist and am now capable of doing the good work that got me where I was but absolutely no one wants to hear it or give me a chance. One of the main issues is I was very senior (but still actively worked on search assignments for niche technical and or c suite) and there are few senior roles and most junior people don’t want to manage me at 45 or even consider me for less senior positions. 45 is oooooooold in recruitment where you are up or out in a sink or swim environment and 90% are just glorified telemarketers. None of this is anyones fault but man I got emotional writing this. I hear so much about how terrible the recruitment ‘industry’ is, much of it true, I’m desperate to work and to help but how the hell do I break this loop? How do I get past the ‘he took his pants off in the office once’ reputation? put CAT scans on my CV? Look ma no tumor!

cschep 4y ago
If you present yourself as well in person as you do in your writing it seems like you could tell the story well and people would be endeared to you. What is keeping you from these roles?
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Honestly, it's because I struggle to get to the stage where I can tell the story because people see my name and back channel it. Within my chosen specialty I was pretty well known and my issues were very public. It's getting a bit better as the counter story gets out but its exhausting sometimes and hard to talk about in a 30 minute phone screen, the entire conversation becomes about that.
forgingahead 4y ago
Sorry to hear that. I read a story in the papers recently where one chap had a brain tumour that he wasn't aware of, and it was making him act in a way that had him lash out at his family always and divorce his wife. Once they discovered it, he managed to get it removed, survive, and actually start to patch things up with his family. I guess there isn't really a point to this comment other than to say you definitely have my sympathies, that stuff can be brutal. I hope you can get past this professionally.

mongrol-smush 4y ago

As Admiral Cunningham said, when urged to call off his evacuation of British troops from Crete in 1941 due to the large number of ships being lost: “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take 300 years to build a new tradition.” The evacuation went ahead.

ryloric 4y ago

Decades at times I recently finished Warren Buffett's biography Snowball, and this is a recurring theme in his life. His integrity is one of the most important factors in his success; he got a great deal or gotten out of a sticky situation with regulators simply because people trusted him to do the right thing. This took decades though, he'd been operating in this manner since he was a child, but it wasn't until he was in his 50s that all that goodwill began to work for him on an unimaginable scale.