The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
In every company, one sees a lot of BSers at every level. One sees more of them as you progress up the ranks. The ranks of senior leadership and CEOs brim with “magicians” who can promise the earth.
Imagine an interview where one candidate says that she can improve the revenues by 100% in another two years, and another candidate says that he can improve the revenues by 1000% in another two years. The deluded interviewers would assume that the second person is worth taking a bet on. Their thinking goes this way – even if the second candidate does not hit the targets by 1000% and falls short, say by 50%, still the goal met would have been 500%. This is still much better than the 200% promised by the diligent first candidate. So, the second candidate is in, and the first candidate is kicked out for not being ambitious enough. Nobody thinks of integrity, track record or credulity in promises.
This phenomenon is very common in the Venture Capital space, where anybody who can promise the moon, gets backing from everyone. If anybody does not want to blitzscale or conquer the universe, and instead is comfortable with making a sensible but targeted impact, no VC will touch such a person. It is greed that runs that VC business, and the more extraordinary the greed, the better it is. The amount of funding companies like Byjus or WeWork received, how the founders and VCs played bizarre games with each other make for interesting reading. None of the founders had any track record of workplace success, it was allglitz, glamour, unbelievable promises and BS all the way. The investors loved it.
If the current job market is so bad, it is because we are entering a world where pomposity and grandiloquence is worshipped. Gone are the days when Alfred Sloan, Jamshedji Tata and Henry Ford not only created businesses, but also built cities and economies. NASA which at one time claimed to put people on the moon, now struggles to put astronauts in space and bring them back. The current lot of business czars are obsessed with maximizing presence in social media and finding ways to automate workplaces to remove all human labor. There is just no conversation on positive impact and meaningful societal reform. It is each human to himself. In a BS focused workplace, this was bound to emerge.
When Yahoo was searching for a new CEO or when Elon Musk was considering buying Twitter, there were a bunch of conversations from executive leaders going to and fro, which are all now in the public domain. The obsequiousness of the great business titans, the cliquish behavior and ivory tower mentality reveals how shallow everyone is. Part of the reasons why CEOs get away with anything is that the board has no spine to ask any questions. The CEO mentioned earlier wanted more than 50 billion dollars as compensation, and the boards were ready to approve any outlandish claim with zero pushback. They either have no spine or are paid to be silent. There really are no checks or balances in the modern capitalistic model. Every employee is out for themselves and will do anything to safeguard themselves even if it means setting everything around them on fire.
One of the reasons why women are underrepresented in senior positions is that they tend to be more honest and concerned about societal impact. Rightfully, nature has given them a better sense and conscience to save the world from people who have gone amuck. Governments forcing quotas and minority agendas on companies does not address the root problem of female representation in leadership. Women are judged by an unfair standard. Similar to the example mentioned earlier, even if there were 9 female candidates and 1 male candidate in an interview, a male candidate by virtue of higher BS value may stand a higher chance of final selection. Companies want BSers. Unless corporates are reformed and BS discouraged, true gender parity will always remain a dream.
Many women (and many men for that matter) are penalized by the workforce for not demonstrating enough BS cred. There is research that the percentage of CEOs who are psychopaths is higher than even the number of psychopaths in a prison population. Imagine the plight of people working under such leaders. No wonder, many women do not want to be in such a position. All sane people suffer when the standard of success means that the sane behave like the insane.
It is tough to be in the workplace and do the right thing. One will always be slammed, ridiculed and even fired. This is why everyone should have a strong moral compass which is not impacted by how others hail or damn you. One’s self-worth should have little connection to external perception. This is the true measure of competence and being an adult. Unfortunately, most leaders and tycoons we see as role models are people who have never grown up.
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