Am I being arrogant? Or right?
I feel like I’m surrounded by a few smart people, many dumb people, and all of them are made exponentially more ineffective by the Peter principle, organizational design, incentives misalignment and having to handle too much of old organizational baggage. Some of this, I need to learn to handle. But most of it, I don’t see a purpose in learning how to navigate. 80% of the time, I just shake my head and get on with my job. And day-dream about how this would not happen at my own company. But every time I do this, I am getting more and more demotivated. And losing confidence in myself. I used to be confident and humble. Now I’m neither confident, and not sure whether I’m humble anymore. Am I being arrogant? How do I judge whether I need more humility or more assertiveness? (I’m looking for jobs, but am hampered by visa regulations. I’m also advising startups. This post is not about finding a new job or starting up, but about self-awareness.)
I vote arrogant. The more time passes the more I realise how I underestimated people in the past.
Thanks for your response! Can you please elaborate on what you meant by underestimating? Maybe examples?
The best way to find out is to collect more information. All companies have political and organizational overhead, and the amount of that scales with company size. Maybe the company you're at has more nonsense than the average, or maybe you think you could do better because you've never been in the position to direct a company's structure and culture, and are underestimating the difficulty of that task. The only way to know for sure is to experience lots of different corporate structures, and see for yourself where autodesk falls in terms of organizational efficiency. Also, startups, corporate, and consulting all have different challenges, and, depending on your personality, you may be more suited to one of these than the other two. IMO it's good that you're thinking about this kind of stuff, a passion for creating companies that work well at every level is one trait of a good executive. The next step is to feed that question with experience
Thanks for your response! I’m trying to figure out which culture I’m best suited to (startups, corporate and consulting) and I’m forming my opinions. I guess your point about data collection is spot on - I do have a lot more data with different experiences. But is there a proxy to this data, that I can use instead of spending years on getting more data about how I should NOT be doing something? E.g. I’ve now understood how critical it is to have he right decision making structures / culture in place, but also I only have a reference to what NOT to do. I can only think of two ways to get that knowledge of what I should be doing: either join a company with better quality management, or go for an MBA. Or are there other sources of this knowledge (e.g. a management quality index?)
There are signals of well managed companies, like financial performance and glassdoor, but no, there's no really accurate proxy (figuring this kind of stuff out about companies is what VCs and traders spend their careers doing). You could use your network to figure out which companies have good culture, then get referrals to interview there. But when it comes down to it, there's no substitute for experience when it comes to figuring this stuff out
A poll recently conducted asking if you considered yourself a good driver and if you considered others bad. A majority chose they were good drivers and everyone else was a bad driver. Likely the same issue here. You’re likely average to less than average intelligence along with the majority of those around you. It’s not arrogance so much as human nature.
That’s not a recent poll, it’s well documented as the Dunning Kruger effect. And I’m aware of that, which is why I’m asking this question in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
In that case you’re likely both arrogant and have lower than average intelligence relative to your peers.
Come to Uber, and these Uber boy will show you their true color
Facebook and Uber seems like a great place if you’re blinded by your arrogance and enjoy the smell of your own farts.
You control the responses you give to the situations u are in. Observe, learn, don’t judge and accept.
Mom, is that you on blind????? Damn, now blind jumped the shark.
You can thank me for not spending 5+ hours a week on Blind😀
What's the Peter principle?
Rising to levels of incompetence
Shit floats to the level at which it is incompetent enough to be promoted further.