Back in the nineties, recruiting was part of my job as a developer at Microsoft. The bar was high on purpose, and we were proud of it. A tough interview process is good for a lot of (mostly obvious) reasons, but for me the most important was that it created an assumption of competence at the company. If you were in the building, you probably weren’t an idiot.
As a person who collaborates best through, let’s say, “vigorous debate,” this was unbelievably liberating. If an idea was stupid, I could say that — and folks could say the same to me — and except in some very rare cases it didn’t get personal.
People are always surprised when I tell the (admittedly hilarious) story of Bill and the Gunshot Wound, but that was the path to success at Microsoft. Take a position and defend the hell out of it — if you win against all comers, you were probably right. I loved it, and it mostly worked.
And it’s exactly because it worked so well that it took me years to recognize that we (I) could do even better. Microsoft in the 80s and 90s conflated a particular personality type with intelligence and success. It just so happened to be my personality type, and I spent those early years blissfully working with a bunch of copies of myself. Building tools that worked the best for people like me.
Huh.
Now before we go too far here, let me be clear: I don’t abide stupid. Stupid kills and stupid loses. But it turns out that being stupid is mostly a personal choice. A half century of watching people has taught me that “everybody is good at something” is actually true — success comes down to taking ownership for figuring out what that is and working to become great at it. Stupid is just lazy.
Anyways, sitting here I can play back in my head dozens of real, brilliant individuals whose diversity and alternate perspectives made me and my products better — and sadly, a few (especially in my early years) that crashed out because I was unwilling to adjust my own behavior to optimize theirs.
I like to believe that I’ve gotten better at this year over year — but there is one person who probably doesn’t have a clue just how much she changed my life. She is extraordinarily smart, with a remarkable sense of personal responsibility and empathy. We built great things together for years, standing at whiteboards while I pushed and yelled and played every side of an argument to force her to defend her proposals.
Except one afternoon in the middle of a session, just a regular day, she sat down with actual tears in her eyes and asked me: “Why do you DO this?” She was exhausted and it was clear she had lost confidence in herself. I was honestly taken aback — none of this is personal, and if I didn’t believe she were the best person for this job, we wouldn’t have been there in the first place!
And yes, she “knew” this, but it didn’t matter. It turns out she was doing great work in spite of, not because of, my constant barrage of devil’s advocacy. Or more accurately, the way I was presenting my arguments. Some very small adjustments on my part led directly not just to a happier and more confident colleague, but to faster and better results. ***
And that’s the kicker — adjusting my own behavior and perceptions didn’t just help the other person, it got me more of what I wanted too, without costing me anything. You’d have to be crazy not to make that trade, right? Yet that is exactly what the “anti-woke” crowd pushes every day. Somehow we’ve created a ton of people that are so weak, so scared of anything that challenges themselves or their beliefs, they are actually pushing for the government to protect their fragile egos at their own expense. It’s insane.
The ”alpha male” narrative is not just super-weird, it’s also 100% upside down. What could possibly be weaker than crying “unfair” every time somebody challenges your position? Having a healthy ego by definition should mean you can listen and do a bit of introspection without being butt-hurt. I can be proud of my accomplishments and have a clear-eyed view of my unearned advantages at the same time.
This is true even if, in some incredibly rarified cases, the scales tip a little the other way. If DEI programs make it just a tiny bit harder for a white dude to get into a particular college or job, step up and work a little harder — isn’t that exactly what you’ve been saying to disadvantaged populations for years when the tilt is reversed? Don’t be such a chicken-sh*t.
I’m just really tired of the voice of “personal responsibility” and “strong men” being such a farce. Let’s create a world that works every day to be better and stronger and solve problems — not one that whines and cries and pretends it’s tough by buying a gun and hanging a flag on the truck. Wake up, white guys.
*** I suspect if my spouse reads this she’s going to laugh long and loud, because she taught me this lesson very early in our relationship — yelling in an argument was NOT going to end well. So why did it take so long to translate to work? Human psychology is weird, man.