When I was in my mid to late 20s I was at a consulting firm and later in government directly. I wasn’t assigned to anything particularly objectionable or anythi

When I was in my mid to late 20s I was at a consulting firm and later in government directly. I wasn’t assigned to anything particularly objectionable or anything, but I’ve looked back on it a lot and it’s heavily influenced how I operate in the tech industry now, 20 years later. In government and in consulting I saw a lot of misaligned incentives that led to empire building, duplicative efforts, and treatment of individuals that I didn’t really find to be effective. And today, I’m really good at spotting that and stopping it quickly, because I think much of that was not the best way to operate. But I didn’t immediately get into it and realize it wasn’t how I would run things - and experiencing being part of the machine for a bit first taught me lessons that I would not have learned as an outside observer. If you made the same assumptions about me based on what I did in my 20s, you’d actually be assuming the direct opposite of what I believe in and how I work today. We’re all shaped by our experiences, but that shaping doesn’t always mean we grow into the behaviors that we experienced during our formative early career. Maybe this guy looks on that experience and knows exactly what he doesn’t want to see happen.