“ I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental cla…
It's almost like you could create a 2 x 2 matrix of Useful Vs Valued - Not Useful, Not Valued: Get good or change jobs/industries. - Not Useful, Valued: talks a good game (or is doing useful stuff that is not apparent) -Useful, Not Valued: Could be useful at non-strategic stuff, or does good work without self-marketing, or has bad management and needs to leave. - Useful, Valued: Ideal situation.
I kinda feel called out. My work should speak for itself. It often does, but I will always forget it when it comes time to speak of myself nicely.
I simply do not care to self-promote. It feels vain and vanity is one of the most useless things possible to me. Donald Trump is about 98% vanity, if you want to see what vanity is.
Not being able to actually cite the things I’ve done to someone who already knows what those things are has cost me several promotions, though. I can do the work, I can forecast needs, be ready for them, and solve them before they arrive, but because I don’t self-promote, people who can’t shut up about themselves get promoted beyond me.
Now that I’ve typed all that out, I am remembering just how many times this has happened, and now twenty minutes into the week and I am 100% misanthropic. People suck.