Learnings Part 4

9) Business decisions should not be taken personally.

Getting fired always hurts one way or another. It hurts you - you wont be getting paid for that job any more. It hurts your boss - It isn’t pleasant knowing you are putting someone in that position and it hurts your colleagues.

However, do not to take it personally. The decision should have been made for the good of the company and the company is more important than just a single person (if it isn’t then you have other issues, but we wont dive into that here). Being able to maintain a healthy working environment, with work getting completed and money brought in is the primary need and anything that affects that balance needs to be dealt with even if it does put you in a bad position.

Perhaps it isn’t getting fired, perhaps a change in hours or on call pattern, but whatever they ask you can always say no - you don’t need to suffer in a job.

We live in a world of increased job mobility and it isn’t likely to improve any time soon.

10) Never shit on your peers.

Out of all the start-ups I have worked with/for, the most successful ones were the start-ups with founders/management that weren’t trying to play games to squeeze every little bit of work out of their staff. Get some good will and the staff will do miracles when needed; screw them and they will just do their hours and leave it at that.

The same goes for colleagues. Screw them around too much and they will only do things for you that doesn’t disadvantage them at all.