Work with incredible people
A Love Letter of Sorts
If you're anything like me, you will spend more than a third of your adult life working. What follows is not a discussion on the appropriate time to work. It's a love letter to the joy I get from my work and the incredible people I’ve had the honor of working with- but I'm taking for granted that what comes next to resonate is that you're a bit like me. We need to have a serious conversation about the most important thing most people don't talk about regarding your work.
You see, a couple of years ago, a friend contacted me about working at a company where I had done some consulting work. I was pretty candid with him: It was a cool company with an amazing trajectory and growth, but it was not a place I would want to work. He was confused. I had just sung all of their praises. He asked, "If it's a rocket ship, do I need to care what seat I'm on? Don't I just want to be on it?"
"No," I replied, "I care about who I'm sitting next to."
Work
The thing about realizing that you're going to spend more than a third of your adult life working is realizing that that means you're going to spend more than a third of your adult life with the people you're working with. Sure, I don't brush elbows with my coworkers every day, but they are the ones with whom I exchange gifs, memes, and Hacker News links. We swap stories about Netflix shows. We've shared our favorite YouTube recipe videos, and in humility, share our Murph times and how we scaled.
I just love working. I get tired, I get busy, but I also find working to be incredibly fulfilling. Arthur Brooks once wrote, "Work is where we build character. Work is where we create value with our lives and lift up our own souls. Work, properly understood, is the sacred practice of offering up our talents for the service of others." Your and my definition of "others" doesn't have to be the same for this to be true. I am primarily referring to the kind of work I do since that's what I'm familiar with; I do recognize that there are many kinds of work, done for and not-for-pay, with various interaction models.
In a different way, Former Senator Ben Sasse shares, "We're made to connect to others, we're created to solve problems, and we can achieve these ends in part through our occupations, our work." At work, I stretch, grow, and push myself to new levels. I do that in other places, too. Whether it's through forcing myself to hit a faster 5K time (I'm not too fond of running, but for some reason, I keep pushing this goal) or to clean and jerk a new PR, there are many places where I have relationships and hit new milestones.
But they take up less of my waking time than work... so I want to talk about how you might not be considering a significant part of your compensation.
Compensation is more than just dollars and cents.
When people think about their comp package, inevitably, they talk about the same things: salary, equity, health insurance, 401K, parental leave, and other benefits. A crucial part of your compensation is whether or not you're getting the challenge and sense of accomplishment from work, and that's directly tied to who you get the pleasure of working with every day.
I've had great coworkers over the years. Those coworkers are the difference between the project getting done barely enough and a brand new strategy changing the company. Someone once told me that A Players hire A Players and that the key to a job search is making sure that everyone you meet is an A player. I agree. I think the reason so many people that I've worked with before continue to work with each other in their current roles even 6+ years later is because they have found not just a bunch of A-Players who are great at their jobs, but, more importantly, they have found people that they enjoy working with.
Nobody enjoys working with assholes. I don't care if she's a 100x or 1000000x engineer; if there's no bias for action, it's a non-starter. I don't want to work with someone who isn't going to do great work and be pleasurable while they're doing it.
Think of it this way: Remember your best work experience from last year. It probably is about something other than the coolest spreadsheet formula you ever made or a B2B SaaS demo you implemented. It's about when you laugh with your colleagues and accomplish something together. The best work is done with great people. When we think about our work lives, almost inevitably, we're talking about the pleasure we get from the people we work with.
There was this one particular person that I was working with in a previous role, and working with them was driving me so crazy that I didn't want to come to work every day. I was constantly bummed. I was dragging my feet. It was really hard. And it wasn't what I was working on that was hard; the circumstances were no longer conducive to me doing great work. I won't go into details, but when we no longer had to work together, I was reinvigorated at my work.
If you're going to spend the bulk of your waking time working, you should do it with great people who are working towards accomplishing great things with you.
It's a team, not a family.
Your workplace is not your family. Your coworkers and you work on a team. A team is a good analogy because, like a team, you hire the best, they perform like the best, and when they are no longer performing to your need, the team moves on; if the team isn't holding up their end of the bargain, you can move on. You wouldn't expect the [sports position] for the [your favorite sports team] to have their job forever because the job was theirs, right? No! That pitcher won't be a pitcher forever, that quarterback won't have an arm of steel forever, and that striker won't be a speed demon forever. Being a team means that both you and the team have needs. And you don't need to spend Christmas together- save that for your family.
I often think that when adults identify as an "athlete," what they're making a statement on is not whether or not they are athletic but whether or not they were part of a team- whether or not they have this group of people they work with that pushes them to do the best work they've ever done, will not tolerate anything but, and whose company they get to enjoy along the way. That is the best part of being on a team; that pleasure is worth a lot.
So, whether your name is Stella, Taylor, Florian, Claire, Chris, Tim, Caitlin, Pedram, Sarah, Jason, Jess, April, Glen, Lucile, Thomas, Chase, Shana, Sid, Fran, Tom, Paige, Gabby, Adam, Dalia, Shana, Renee, Kevin, or Adriana, know you were the best part of going to work every day. I'm grateful for the honor of having learned from and with you. I look forward to the chance again.