Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?

I recently was working with a quantum startup where the founder was so jealous of me he came up with a new lie about his history and accomplishments multiple times a day. It was endless, and nearly nothing he said had any basis in reality.

I totally gave up on him when his lies became so audacious he got mad at me twice for casually dismissing his claims of being the real Satoshi and that Rigetti totally stole his ideas, forcing him to play catch up. He managed to get in a story about strangling a person to death and the Canadian Armed Forces covering it up because it was a "ptsd-related blackout," and that the RCMP would put out a kill order if anyone without top secret clearance entered his commercial "lab".

Why he couldn't figure out why I was so disinterested in these stories is beyond me... I think he was just looking for a buddy with similar professional interests that he could brag to, and couldn't figure out how to keep me interested in his otherwise woefully lacking / plagiarized code base that didn't do nearly half of what he claimed it did.

Originally I was trying to help him get his head on straight, but within a day of his total meltdown at my expense, I was over that, and have zero sympathy for what his investors are soon to learn.

Ironically, in all his fantasy wisdom and military-strength security, even after supposedly having his ideas stolen from him, he never got me to sign a non-disclosure agreement, even when I brought it up multiple times with both him and his primary investor.

It really looks like self-sabotage to me. Baffling.

> 0) Remember that social media and the press shows the best parts of people's lives and rarely the crappy parts that everyone has.

When I take a picture on camera, I sometimes realize that a person looking at the picture will probably imagine something much better than reality.

For example, an entire day spent with my kids who try to be as annoying as possible; then for five minutes they act cute, and I make a nice photo. A person looking at the photo will probably imagine that the whole day was fun. Or we take a trip somewhere, take a nice photo in front of a local historical building, then the kids get really annoying and we have to cancel the trip and go home. Again, a person looking at the photo will probably be impressed by what kind of trips we can make with the kids.

So when I look at someone else's photo, I can do the reverse reasoning. The smiling guy on the photo? Maybe the whole day was actually quite bad, and he only had 5 minutes of fun. A photo taken on a ship? Seems nice, but maybe the trip was slow and boring, and the weather mostly bad. An attractive girl next to him? Maybe he spent five minutes talking with her, and the rest of the day traveling or siting at various meetings. Or maybe not; the point is that the nicest possible scenario is only one of the possibilities.

I try to not set goals that are about me personally, but more about what I want to create. How can I make myself as useful as possible, shape the future as much as possible, connect with as many people as possible, etc.

I still get just as envious as anyone else, especially when times are tough, but thinking outwardly helps get me re-aligned. I've already got everything I need, having more money would just mean living a more comfortable life which is something you get used to and stop appreciating pretty quick.

Being envy is natural, but don't transform that into enmity/hatred towards that person, as that can ruin you. As you get older, you also become 'wiser' in dealing such situations. In younger days, you can compete with any one, since you have years ahead to train yourself. As you get older, you won't have much time, just maintain a cordial relationship as long as your younger colleague is not harming you to the extent that it can lead to PIP, etc.

"There may be no 'i' in team but there is definitely one in 'Win'", Michael Jordan is said to have told Phil Jackson, when criticized. "If the team is not doing it then it is up to me to score 55 points", he added! (more than the rest of the team combined).

As for Rodman, he had become irrelevant and unmarketable and all he did was suck up to Kim Jong Un. There was a WSJ article about this. He was not in a position to talk him out of anything.