Ask HN: How do you deal with professional envy?
I think everyone feels envious of a high-flying peer once in a while. Or at least, I definitely do.
When someone younger than me, in my field, is making more money / getting more acclaim / winning praise from people I respect, it makes me seethe. Sometimes I even waste my time looking for a way to invalidate them, to put an asterisk* on their success, so I can feel better about myself.
Does this happen to anyone else? What do you do about it?
291 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 396 ms ] threadThis happens to pretty much everyone.
> What do you do about it?
Your options are:
Motivation: "If I learn to do the things s/he does, I can be more successful too."
Rationalization: "Well, if I had had the same opportunities s/he did, I'd have been just as successful. I did the best I could with what I had. And at least I'm still doing better than X, Y, and Z."
Indifference: "X is doing well? That's nice. Wonder what I should have for lunch today?"
I find I gravitate more towards the bottom of the list as I get older.
The more confident, self assured, and happy I became with my own life, the more the envy went away. The more I became happy for that person's success. Also I've found that there more I know and like a person, the less envy I felt.
At least for me, getting married helped with this big-time.
Material possessions and success are fun, but ultimately only generate fleeting happiness.
I have run my company for almost 20 years now and have seen many of my friends/acquaintances make 10 million+ in a much shorter time. Not that I dont wish I could have more money for less effort (in the same way that I wish I could play the guitar or speak multiple foreign languages). Yet Im very happy with my life as I understand clearly what makes me happy and dont let my happiness be defined by what someone else has done or has.
I'd say the key thing is that you've noticed the envy, which means that it can't control you -- not all the time.
Keep paying attention.
0) Remember that social media and the press shows the best parts of people's lives and rarely the crappy parts that everyone has.
1) You can't have it all. Often people sacrifice other parts of their lives to achieve in one area. My old boss that got promoted to a very high position never found a partner or children. Other tech friends who have earned a lot have worked thier whole lives and never went backpacking around the world like I did.
2) Some people have advantages. Eg Bill Gates was a millionaire before he even started college, many famous people had privileged upbringings.
3) Some people are just lucky. Maybe they were in the right place in the right time. I had a very wealthy friend who I never figured out why they spent so much or how they could afford such a big house and expensive vacations. Later I found out their father literally won the lottery, $50Mil - at the same time her sister has severe deformities from birth. Which brings to
4) Money and "Success" doesn't equal happiness. My wealthy friend would easily give it up to have a healthy happy sister. Taleb talks a lot about how suburbs filled with huge multi-million dollar houses are filled with bored lonely people.
5) You're probably much wealthier and have a better life than most people already. Remember >2Billion people don't have clean tap water they can drink. People are risking their lives so they can come to the US or Europe to work in construction or cook your meals in a restaurant.
This might work on a surface level, but you're just plastering over the problem, not rising above it.
If that's true, then examining what it is that you think someone else is getting is worthwhile, as is examining what you actually already have. Comparisons are appropriate to make sure your expectations are calibrated to something more realistic than feelings.
Bill Gates was a billioniare multiple times over before he finished college, considering that he never received a degree.
Harvard did grant him an honorary law degree in 2007, but not before he acquired his wealth.
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.
It's sort of off-topic, but reading his books in my early 20s was a huge revelation for me; something like "Oh, it actually doesn't get much 'easier' when you grow up. You still deal with things as they arise, and continue to sort of meander your way between the present moment and nostalgia, between joy and pain."
In a way, it was rather calming to know that "Adults" with "Kids" are just Us with 5-10 more years of good and bad decisions. Relaxing to know that we wouldn't suddenly be expected to miraculously do everything correctly. :)
It had made me more aware of the fakeness you describe, but it also compels me to marvel at those older people I meet who have consistently invested in their life’s garden: pruning and fertilizing, sowing and reaping, apparently against our natural inclinations to let it all grow wild.
I'm a parent and I think you raise a good point but I think most parents see right through that. :)
Most photos and even YouTube videos are completely fake and doctored. The filters amplify this even more. Although my pics with my children were not filled with happiness the entire time, they are the happiest and proudest moments of my life (some of them, not all).
I've played the entrepreneurial game for a long time. I found success and won awards along the way. The time spent with my children is more important than all of that. It's a fine balance though. Nobody wants to be a loser, so we're forced to work harder than the next guy/girl.
Both being jealous and mentally knocking people down are pretty normal human things to do. If you listen, you’ll notice lots of people say things out loud that have the undertone of here’s why you’re not that great or here’s why I’m better than you. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s not.
The main thing I tend to think about is how I’m not in competition with anyone but myself. I can improve, or not improve, and I can affect my own situation. But either way, it doesn’t affect anyone else, and their lot doesn’t affect me. It won’t help me make more money or get more attention if I bring someone else down, nor will it prevent them from getting attention or money.
Another way to approach this is acknowledging that some people are actually very talented, some people are very focused and work incredibly hard. You have the option to drop the jealousy and join others in respecting someone’s achievements. You can also study them, find out what they’re doing and how they work in order to emulate the behaviors that got them where they are.
Another way to deal with this is meditation. If you study a little meditation, one of the first things you learn is how to identify your talkative and often negative inner voice, and then after you learn how to recognize it, you learn to acknowledge it and let it go, in favor of a more peaceful and positive inner monologue.
It's also worth remembering that these talented, hard working, people didn't author their talents or tendencies for working hard. Their talents and temperaments derive completely from their genes, upbringing and to varying degrees luck. I.e. they can't really - in the ultimate sense - take credit for their success. Nor can I.
>Another way to deal with this is meditation.
I've found meditation a great way to more deeply instill the disposition above. It has helped me celebrate - rather than seethe - with people when they 'achieve' any kind of success.
And then you can celebrate 'your' successes, commiserate failures, lament failings, while freeing the other you to improve.
More difficult if 'they're' arrogant and sneering perhaps, but that's a only a challenge, to be faced head-on.
But you have to realize there are so many things are going on you might not be aware of eg. relations, background, even luck!
Instead, try to exploit your recognition of their success and ask/learn about their story. That will help you a lot too.
When you think that way: they went through a path instead of you so you can now explore their story and get their experience much faster.
And don't forget: when there are 10 competitors with virtually the same skills and performance its still only one who wins the contest with the prize and goes away with all the chicks. The others seem to be unsuccessful from a bird view, but in reality there might be not much difference in value.
Realizing this made calm, I am totally ok with lottery. Everything is a lottery a bit, except you really nail it: but that requires so much work I won't ever be envy.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-11-02
When you're in your early 20s everyone has similar goals - you're going to be a goddamn giant success, no matter what your field is. As the years go on you realise that's not going to happen and you have to re-evaluate. It's not always easy.
For me personally, I know I do good work. I know my coworkers can rely on me to deliver. Maybe I could be out there giving more conference talks and raising my profile, but I've learned to accept that isn't my forte, and that's ok. As engineers most of us are extremely lucky that even with very little public recognition we still earn the kind of money most people can only dream of.
When I'm at work, I do the best I can do. Then I get out of the door at a good time, go home to my family and have a blast with them. I'm happy, though my 21 year old self might recoil in horror to see it.
But Pippen had the most rebounds and Rodman the most assists during that time. That’s what made the team win, you want to win as a team and there is no I in team. Then you retire from engineering, never making the next Facebook or revolutionary Operating System, instead going onto lead the next generation stars to the promised land even though you were never an individual superstar during your career (see Steve Kerr for reference).
Update: also Rodman talked Kim Il down from nuclear disaster, so there is plenty of opportunity to stay relevant as your career progresses
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.
They change their goals "I didn't want that anyway" "It wasn't my destiny to do that" "I'm much happier with this than if I had done that" etc...
At the end of the day you either realize your goal, or you change it. You can either pretend like it was the plan all along, admit defeat and try something new, or wallow in defeat.
Only one of those is sustainable.
Think about any life goal that requires significant work, such as "I'd like to be a superstar engineer" or "I've got no savings, but I want to save up and buy a house" or "I'd like to become a black-belt martial artist" or "I'd like to publish a successful novel."
How long does it take to achieve something like that?
There are a lot of goals in life that take five, ten, or even more years to achieve.
Now here's the thing...
If you're doing this life thing correctly, you will gain a significant amount of wisdom and perspective in any five- or ten-year span.
And with that wisdom and perspective comes the realization that some of your old goals weren't worth achieving. Or perhaps you will simply find other goals you like better. Or a different path to the same goal. That's not cognitive dissonance. That's learning and growing.
This is committing the straw-man fallacy. The poster that this is responding to did not elaborate on what cognitive-dissonance they are referring to.
In this case "learning and growing" is an optimistic, ego-stroking spin on "admitting defeat". I believe that AndrewKemendo has chosen his words carefully because being able to lose and fail graciously is more virtuous than trying to preserve the ego and pretend that it was a win.
As a kid I wanted to make video games and (like many) this lead me to pursue software development as a career.
By the time I made it through college in the 90s I'd learned more and more about the games industry and learned that it's generally not a very happy place to work. Certainly not a place for me. So I chose a different path.
With several decades of following the game industry under my belt I feel I can very, very conclusively decide that this was the right call for me. Look at all the articles about game devs working insane crunch time and then being laid off as soon as the game ships, etc. I'm sure some enjoy it but it's very close to my idea of hell.
Simply avoiding that fate is something I count as a minor victory, and I've gone on to do other things.
It's madness for the parent poster to dismiss this sort of thing as either "failure" or "cognitive dissonance." I simply decided my original goal was not worth pursuing.
I guess you have chosen a path that is not mentioned, "give up and try something new, but then pretend that isn't what you did"? "I don't call it giving up... I call it learning."
Most wouldn't say that you "failed" at making a sandwich unless you truly attempted to assemble a sandwich and were unable to do so.
Most would not consider me to have "failed" to become a game developer unless I'd made a true attempt at doing so: applying for jobs and failing to obtain one, or perhaps obtaining jobs and failing at those. Just as very few would consider me to have failed at becoming an astronaut or a professional hockey player, two other things I wanted to be as a child.
Strict definitions of "failure" aside, though, what I found really bizarre and bleak was the parent poster's claim that enjoying one's newly chosen goal+outcome to require an act of willful cognitive dissonance.
If we're pointing out actual logical fallacies...
In a universe where those are the only two possibilities? Sure.You and OP are presenting a false dichotomy. Parent poster claimed that unachieved goals can have only two outcomes: (1) cognitive dissonance where the subject "pretends" to be satisfied with the outcome (2) the subject admits failure.
It's absolutely bizarre to deny that a person could, for example, actually shift their goals over a period of time, and conclude that they are engaging in cognitive dissonance if they decided on a different path.
That is of course a way to look at your life that is perfectly okay, but it certainly wouldn't be my preference.
And even odder for somebody to accuse me of "cognitive dissonance" to be happy with my pants instead of admitting "defeat."
It sure is possible to rebrand every failure we make as success in some thing else. "I failed to win the tennis match, but I succeeded in hitting the ball into the net!".
There is a reason "fail fast" is a mantra: it's through looking at our errors we have chances to do better.
Let's go back to the original parent poster, untog's, claim.
To which AndrewKemendo replied, Working reasonable hours and enjoying one's family is certainly not the life equivalent of hitting the tennis ball into the net, and it's awfully bleak to think that somebody's engaging in cognitive dissonance because their goals changed and they found happiness in a different way than they originally intended to.My statement was meant to say that a common way people cope with this, in my experience, is to convince themselves to satisfice [1] instead of continuing to pursue their original goal.
It could be claimed that for certain things, this could be considered "growing up" or "maturing", which in many cases might be true. The child who gives up their dream to be a superhero is truly maturing because superhero was never really an option.
However falling into a stable local minima because you didn't become the CEO of a F500 company or become a championship tennis player etc...and convincing yourself that being a regional VP or a high school tennis coach is just as good because [reasons] seems to be how people cope with this dissonance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
Finding happiness in a "stable local minima" does not require a delusional belief that this situation is equivalent to some other, grander achievement. I'm sure it happens, but frankly I've never known anybody to really hold that particular delusion.
I doubt it was anybody's grand ambition to be a high school tennis coach, but it's actually a pretty cool job if you like that kind of thing, and it's awfully dark to think that all ~25,000 high school tennis coaches in America engage in conscious acts of delusional thinking in order to fool themselves into making it through their day. I know a few, and they just... enjoy tennis, teaching, and children? Plus tennis isn't the only thing in their lives?
I also know folks who've briefly played pro sports, and while they didn't achieve all they hoped, they're proud of what they did accomplish. No self-deception required.
Things I have seen a lot of, though not from athletes or coaches:
- Folks who get somewhat close to some goal and decide it's not for them once they have a more realistic picture of the day-to-day reality of that goal. Example: a rising executive who realizes that CEO life for company XYZ requires being on the road 300 days a year and not being around for her kids while they grow up.
- Folks who are delusional about the reasons why they didn't achieve some goal
Ultimately, people choose goals like "become a CEO of a F500 company" or "become a championship tennis player" because they imagine those things will make them happy. That is the true goal. And many times, people simply find different ways to be happy. No cognitive dissonance required.
I know it sounds dismissive, but I get the strong impression these other posters are young.
I've met quite a few wealthy people during my career and the only ones who seemed happy had a stoical detachment from their winnings. For the rest I would say their drive was verging on a mental illness.
That sounds very American. Of course there are also people like that in European countries, but it's far from being the usual thing. Most people grow out of wanting to become a superstar or huge success during their teens.
I and many other people do not ever seethe about the successes of others. I don’t say that to self-aggrandize, but rather to counter some of the other people here saying it’s normal or universal. It’s not.
I didn't grow up very competitive, never played any sports, but I started working very early so that's where I got most of my positive affirmation, so that's one reason why I always put so much focus on the importance of my professional success.
Another is that I grew up relatively poor and tell myself I've fought to attain wealth and happiness at the same time for myself and my family, so seeing someone else achieving these goals before me triggers me to see myself as a failure, doubting and regretting decisions in my past, which is obviously self-destructive and not a good way to live your life.
So far I've managed to use the emotions of envy to focus myself in times of distress or immense pressure, but it's only a stopgap solution until I manage to find contentment with my situation, however the outcome, the road to stoicism can be quite long though.
I acknowledge I’m not as good as I could be. And I try to use it as fuel to improve my own life.
I crucify myself with all that I lack in the hopes of a “transformation.”
In practice, that means setting some time aside in the day to read more, workout more, practice more.
But I have to be careful. Sometimes envy can be deceitful. It’s easy to fall for things I don’t actually want.
So I use envy as a guide, an approximate one, to reflect on what I lack and what I can do to change it, if anything at all.
It’s my Elysian mirror.
If you can transition yourself to an abundance mindset, I think you'll find the success of your peers as a collective asset: as your field or group becomes more credible/successful, more opportunities will open up for you. If you can figure out how to use their success to your benefit, you maybe find yourself thankful for them.
The thing is, it doesn't matter. There are sports players in the world who make more money in a week than most of those SV developers make in a year, too. Maybe I could move to the US and make enough to pay off my entire mortgage in a year or two. But I don't want to live and work in the US, so for me personally, that opportunity isn't interesting or relevant.
What matters to me in terms of my professional career is making the most of opportunities when I do want what they offer, and being content that my professional development is OK and I'm doing good work that I enjoy. Obviously better compensation is always welcome, but the reasons I'm glad I went freelance and ultimately started my own businesses are mostly about increased flexibility, diversity, and making my/our own decisions instead of being subordinate to The Boss. You can't put a price on the improvements in quality of life that come from a better work environment and better work/life balance.
The next step is to realize and accept that you can only impact things that are within your sphere of influence. Focus 100% on those things, especially the things that make you happy.
Note that you rarely know the full story behind someone else’s success. It may have been luck, it may have been privilege, it may have been that they are simply able to perform at a level that you are not capable of (at least not yet). All of those things are OK — just focus on what you have influence over.
It all depends on one's state of mind. I've had times when it was difficult for me to face such a fact, and times when I looked at it in a quite positive way.
Two of us were hired as actuaries at the same time fresh out of college to work in the same department. Immediately, it was clear that he was much more competent, smarter, and and overall better employee than I was. The bosses would consistently praise him, call him smart, etc etc while I got average performance reviews. As someone coming out of college with a degree in mathematics, where I was constantly called 'the smart one' in my friend group, it was brutal. I was not mentally prepared to fall behind a peer like this in such an obvious manner. When I wasn't sulking, I was angry. I was the smart one, or so I had been told.
It took a change in perspective to get myself to a better place. I deleted social media and stopped comparing myself to other people. I started congratulating my coworker when he did well, because honestly, he deserves it. His success does not have to be my failure, working at a company does not have to be a zero-sum game.
Getting to this better place has helped me tremendously in my professional and personal life. I am a very high performer now, have a great girlfriend, great friends, a great job, everything I could ask for. I learned that it does not pay to stress about being the best, because you will never be the best, and if you are, you need to find a different company, friends, whatever.
I hosted a person from poor country in my San Francisco apartment. They had traveled here on a paid trip for a tech conference. They asked where they could buy food for less than one dollar per meal. It turned out they only had $6 to pay for their entire stay in San Francisco, including public transit fair for a return to the airport (which costs almost $10). I don't stress about finding money to pay for food or public transit, and occasionally being the one who has more helps me balance out feelings envy when I see people who have more than I do.
Keep some old shoes or take your restaurant leftovers with you to give to that next homeless guy at the intersection