People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

People who self-define as "rational" are harder to sell to upfront, but once you're past the defenses and hooked into their identity they'll actively defend what you've marketed to them.

I grew up an only child in as single parent household where I was taught that it's better to quietly build a stable secure foundation for your life, rather than to put yourself "out there" and hope for the best. My mothers attitude was that it is better to have a boring stable job that provides enough for you and your family than to be rich or famous. For example she implored me to study for a fall-back manual trade in case the computing degree thing didn't work out.

Recently, I decided to go self-employed and do my own thing in my own time. This was driven by the fact that having worked for a few startups I couldn't deal with the success at all costs approach of some of the founders and managers. For example being forced to push out new features before they are ready, knowing that the technical debt is mounting and that it will come back to bite me one day. Trying to explain why stuff like this was a bad idea would be met with a response implying I didn't care for the company and didn't value success. I also got frequently reprimanded for refusing to do overtime on a regular basis, preferring instead to be with my family. Plus all this was usually coupled with some horrific "Fake it till you make it" promotional activities that we'd get roped in to.

One of the founders went out and got himself a Porsche 911 and put an email around the office showing it off and telling us if we worked hard to make the company a success we too could afford a similar car. Lord knows how he paid for it as the company was losing €3million a year at that point.

All the while I would be acutely aware of the fact that the founders had already churned through four or five failed startups. They were trying out ideas in the hope that one was succeed and make them rich and famous. If another failed they wouldn't care for the people being let go as they would just move on to their next idea.

Having ambitions is good, but I think we as a society are pressured in to setting those ambitions far too high. I am worried by the rising suicide rates in many places, are we pressuring people to chase unattainable life goals until they crack? I think that is part of it.

Yay for me.

Nice observation, though in rare cases not necessarily true.

The thing is, as you point out, status does actually bring potentially huge benefits; People start to come to you with proposals, rather than the other way. Success/Status attracts opportunity. So to some extent we're hardwired to strive for it.