Member-only story
I’ll keep this one short — no need to belabor it. I was just thinking yesterday, in part through a discussion with a friend, that I’ve literally never had a job — like, ever — where initiative was seen as a good thing. In fact, in most jobs I’ve had, initiative gets you slapped (“That’s my responsibility, Tony” “Um, my name is Ted”) and relentless adherence to tasks is the only thing that matters. If you do the tasks well for about 30 months, you might get an Atta-Boy or a few extra dollars every two weeks. If you show initiative and try to take charge of projects and project autonomy, you’re usually fired within those 30 months. And yet paradoxically, the initiative and autonomy and go-getterness are what everyone claims to want during hiring.
I am but one meager man, and this is thus a very small sample size. I’ve probably just worked at the wrong places, and maybe there is some tech nirvana somewhere where a beanbag chair, a nap pod, and some dreams can get you into the stratosphere. Perhaps that does exist and I just haven’t found it. I’m 41 (gasp!) on Sunday, so I’ve aged out of that world for the most part, and may never locate it.
But it is crazy to me some days how much of work is ONLY about control, which we’re drastically seeing play out right now in the “back to work” discussions. Execs are chasing it like dogs in heat — “You cannot build a culture from…
