If he was sipping margarita on a beach, your words would be right. But he is putting in 17 hr days on another project, so I dont see why he cant ask his partner/employees for greater commitment.
Because his other employees are working other jobs or, as "Sebastian" points out, in classes. That's why. He's not willing to sacrifice his other project, but he's asking them to sacrifice theirs. If you're asking people you're leading to make sacrifices you're not willing to make, you're a bad leader. Period.
Ok, that's the context you picked up on. I did not. What I got was that he set a timeline for project A. But that timeline did not work out. Now Sebastian is busy with project B. To empower the team on project A, he gives them a cc and the decision-making authority to get the project going. He also throws in some hannibal and "joker" stuff to rally the troops and make a point about sticking to commitments, forging thru obstacles. This does not make for a bad leader.
Do they get paid more if the company does better? Yes, this is the only reason to do more than asked from your job description. Otherwise you are putting money and decision making power into the hands of people who did not earn it. Only bad things come from uncompensated work; A bitter employee, angry co-workers, and a misunderstanding of where profit is coming from by the business analysts can ultimately hurt business. If someone is making the company more successful pay them more otherwise tell them to slow down. If you are of the later mindset then YOU are not benefiting the company.
You know who's a joker? The guy who "got a top creative designer in there working for a fraction of his normal cost by being very fucking cool with him, and also working out a deal where we refer him business". That's who.
You're missing the point of the email. He's asking his team to stop sweating the small stuff and just get it done. He's pointing out that others are busting their ass (the designer) while the team is trying to figure out something basic like email providers.
> He's asking his team to stop sweating the small stuff and just get it done. He's pointing out that others are busting their ass (the designer) while the team is trying to figure out something basic like email providers.
If that's all he was asking, he could have written a far less self absorbed paragraph and most of us would have said "duh". Instead, I don't know what the hell I just read, or why I read it for as long as I did.
But it is a stupid statement. There are good reasons why things can't get done sometimes, and no amount of shouting or motivational posters is going to change that. Eventually when you are running towards a goal and not planning, you realize you can't just continue, you have made a mistake and are heading in the wrong direction. This get it done attitude ignores this face.
Except it doesn't. The post clearly and repeatedly says "if you can get a goal done, do so. If you can get a good enough substitute, you don't need to ask me, I trust your judgment. If you could do it but you need money, here are my card details, I trust you to spend money carefully. And if you are doing the above and get stuck tell me and we'll fix it together.
I can't help feeling that that was written by a cross between a motivational speaker and a mafia don.
The letter had an interesting voice and was well written; however, it immediately set off unconscious alarms in my mind. It was trying to influence the reader too coarsely on too emotional a level; I do not like that sort of thing very much.
I agree, some people are shy, unsure, etc, and will get defensive when presented with an angry person barking orders. It's not the military. They may find these people won't even talk about their work because they don't want to offend the barker.
That said, it really depends on the culture of the employees on which motivational techniques to use.
For me it didn't feel like something from the army as much as a car salesman trying much too hard.
Also, as a college student, I would be really suspicious of somebody telling me not to go to class--I'm perfectly happy to do that of my own violation, but anybody suggesting it immediately comes out as against my best interests.
It's more of an analogy like this: You're a group leader for a group assignment due Tuesday morning. You think it's great, they're the top 1% in the class. They promise to do their sections of the topic by Monday meeting so you can work together to compile it. Monday comes around, they said they tried and didn't finish their sections. Now you're stuck all night fixing their sections and compiling it together.
That's simplified analogy, and the author would angrily call them "jokers".
Except for the bit where you're doing other schoolwork instead, I presume? Besides, I wasn't talking as much about the content of the letter as the tone--that's what I found off-putting.
I certainly don't understand the context of the email or the people involved, but that seems extraordinarily douchey. Perhaps I'm the exception, but when your primary focus is on being a multi-millionare, you are missing something from your life.
I don't think that's the main focus of the post - its more about sticking to commitments and making stuff happen in spite of obstacles. Obviously money is a financial reward but that's not what I picked from the post.
Can't help but wonder if this is going to start all the pro vs cons for swearing in posts again. It would be great if everyone did everything they said they would to the deadline but in reality the unexpected happens and if you get this draconian people just will not commit to anything
Reminds me of the story of steve jobs, when he dropped the original ipod prototype into a fishtank to force the engineers to make it smaller:
'See? Bubbles? That means there's air in there. Make it smaller.'
So let me get this straight. This guy is fronting the money on his credit cards, can't do any of the work, and gets people to do things for him by "Being very fucking cool with" them?
Yeah. Keep your money. Fuck your business cards. You sound like sales guys scum trying to leverage the real makers in this project.
Spend whatever you need to get it done, but I'm not willing to pay a top designer his normal rates even though I'm having him do a rush job at 2am. But that's okay, I'm being very cool with him and I promised him I'd recommend him to other big shots.
Well, the "top designer" is an adult, we assume, and can make his/her own decisions, but I stopped falling for that kind of bull shit 25 years ago. A good designer is worth paying good rates. Despite lavish praise as they walked out the door with "my miracle", I never once had any of those "big shots" ever show up again, much less provide me with any kind of value in return.
(Now on a side note, I've done spec work and/or above the call of duty rush jobs for customers who've done well by me _in the past_. Or on very rare occasions, I've pulled rabbits out of hat for new customers who were _refered_ to me by very good customers. Maybe that's what's inexpertly being alluded to here. But I doubt it.)
I can sympathize and understand with what he's writing.
I know it seems douchey and shallow to a lot of you, but when you work remote with a team of friends, things tend to get far too casual and eventually everything falls apart altogether. Suddenly everyone has an opinion on design decisions, or a meeting needs to be held on whether we should use Mongo or MySQL, and we should just think about it on our own time and get back together next week for more discussion.
Complacency is really the biggest enemy of the side project / remote team. And so making excuses becomes easier and easier as time progresses.
Someone has to step up and lead, so maybe a motivational speech is just what the team needs. The points about partying and making money might matter to his team, maybe its why they're working on the project in the first place. (And none of us can say that the excitement of making money doesn't motivate us).
So the man makes it clear where he stands; step up and get shit done, or leave and be a joker. Do you want to sell sugared-water for the rest of your life? Or do you want a chance to change the world?
Someone has to step up and lead, so maybe a motivational speech is just what the team needs. The points about partying and making money might matter to his team, maybe its why they're working on the project in the first place. (And none of us can say that the excitement of making money doesn't motivate us).
Maybe, but if this was intended as a motivational speech (and motivational speeches work a lot better than motivational emails) then it's a terrible one.
This post represents subpop-management nonsense. People are complicated but there are, in fact, things we can do to work with each other. "Commitments" can be considered real things and we can hold each other to them. You either fulfill on a commitment or you don't. If you don't, then fuck you and you're RIFed. If you do, then you're part of the team. (An aside: why is fulfilling on commitments part of being excellent?! Shouldn't it be a criterion?!)
If you don't consider "commitments" to be real things, then you run round and round the what-are-we-doing-and-why-didn't-you-do-it circle... And then you write a blog post.
Update: freeloaders/non-fulfillers are a real thing. I'm one of them. Generally, I perform at a very high level, but I'll dial it back if I'm under the gun and a client unintentionally indicates that they're not one to assess slippages accurately. Unlike most freeloaders, I wake up at 3AM and think about how to fulfill against a late commitment.
I can identify with what sebastian is experiencing here. Its easy to work with friends, or be friendly with your employees. Its easy for things to get casual. Its easy for people to start running everything by you.
Its VERY easy for the sense of urgency to just go away. Its very hard to get people highly motivated about time. It's easy to kill an entire day with BS, and let things just stretch out. Especially when you're an employee, and you're working for options. Options are so intangible. You're theoretically motivated, but on a day to day basis, do stock options get you doing 6 things in an hour instead of 3 or 4? Especially if your boss isn't there? (And if your boss is there then you're likely to be inhibited.) It's really easy to kill time by running everything thru your boss too... it lets you cover your butt, and you can read HN while you wait for him to make a decision.
I don't know how you teach initiative... but this is a good attempt.
Find a way or make one. Good advice.
Its a shame most of the comments on this seem to be reddit quality. Almost as if the people making them have never been in this situation. (and this was the situation I found myself in at my very first startup-- when we all felt we had no clue what we were doing, and tended to wait for direction, rather than take initiative.)
I was a huge fan of the thesis, but as I kept reading the situation seemed very familiar. Very familiar to the multiple times I have worked for a non technical guy that really just doesn't have a clue.
I was really not a fan of the part where he told his guys not to make excuses, but then made a very large excuse for himself.
If I would have read only the first few paragraphs I would have been a huge fan of this article.
According to Car and Driver, the Corvette ZR1 can beat the Ferrari for a 3rd of the price. As for the GTR, too boxy. I want to drive a fast car and impress the ladies, not look like some chinzy wannabe extra from Tokyo Drift.
I'm more of an older Vette fan. If I were to get a new sports car today I'd go for a Porsche 911 (991). I just really like the design and look, and always have.
If you read Sebastian's blog, he wants to have the power to change the world, essentially, when the world needs changing. He believes his path is the most pragmatic way to do so. I think I agree.
* If you are always running your business with a sense of urgency, you are going to burn out. You are going to burn out your employees. You've might have bitten more than you can chew. Some things are not possible and you need to have realistic expectations. It is fine to have stretches of busy time, but that can't last forever.
* > Its very hard to get people highly motivated about time. -- Ok so it is crunch time. Try communication & openness. Put up a whiteboard, show how many days left, how much money is left, the list of unfixed bugs, and whose name is next to it. Update frequently. Detect problems and slips early and try to fix. Don't yell at them or talk about fucking Hannibal, because you know what? You look like a Joker then.
The difference with Hannibal is that if he and his forces didn't keep advancing, they would literally starve to death. On the other hand, the author here is trying to create senses of urgency with very nebulous justification.
"If you are always running your business with a sense of urgency, you are going to burn out. You are going to burn out your employees."
That's not really true. If you're always running your life with a sense of urgency, you're going to burn out. But your life doesn't have to be your business.
I'm a big fan of the "give me six good hours a day" school of thought. You're not at work your whole life (or maybe you are, but you're not doing urgent stuff your whole day). You don't expect your employees to be at work their whole lives. But when you are at work, you focus on the tasks that need to get done, and you finish them. If problems come up, you figure out a way around them, redo your plans, and adjust your schedule accordingly.
totally agree with you..some of us(maybe just me!) should really take a look at ourselves for being the jokers that we are!....I will come back and read this post whenever I am slacking!
Its a shame most of the comments on this seem to be reddit quality. Almost as if the people making them have never been in this situation.
I think the problem is, anyone that's worked in the startup world for a while has been in this situation. But most of them have seen it from the other side.
Where you've got maybe 2% equity in a company if you're lucky, and a salary that's about half what you'd be making flipping Java-burgers at a bank. Where you, the sysadmin-at-large (amongst other hats that you wear) see first-hand that traffic levels are a couple orders of magnitude less than you were supposed to set up the system to scale to. Where you're asked to put in 55 hours this week instead of the usual "lazy" 50 because the killer hail-mary-feature that's going to save the company (and is suspiciously similar re: customer visibility to the killer hail-mary-feature of last week) has to be pushed out by Monday or else, ...what, all 20 of the people that bothered to sign up to the mailing list will be disappointed at the missed deadline...? Blech.
Sure, sometimes the situation is different, sometimes it really is a matter of a few people with equal stakes in the outcome not equally pulling weight, and that can be a real problem worth worrying about. But I'm always skeptical when I see CEOs complaining about lazy drones, quite often these complaints are more indicative of top-down scope-creep, bad time estimates, or a failing business model than any actual problem with the workers.
We like to think that having money fixes things and we can just throw cash wildly into the air while making definitive exhortations and all will be well. We will be Gods or something! But unfortunately, it doesn't, not usually. What's pretty broke without cash doesn't typically get fixed when you shove its gullet full of coinage. Every once in awhile, throwing money into a whirlpool works, and when it does, you should totally record that shit. Put it on YouTube. But not what preceded it, no way.
He never mentions how much money he's will to pay to 'get stuff done.' In fact it sounds like he's not willing to pay anything other than satisfaction. I don't have these mommy and daddy issues anymore.
Sincerely,
The guy who's work ethic is directly proportional to how much money you throw at me.
Au contraire, he makes the incentives quite clear: in the short term, parties at beach houses in Asia; in the long term, being rich and "RISE IN THE WORLD FAST".
This guy kind of seems not necessary to the whole project, aside from small amounts of funding. If he's spending 12-17 hours a day on something else entirely, what is he personally doing to advance the project?
Did he just have an "idea" and hire a bunch of engineers "find a way or make one?"
At first I thought this was posted by one of the email's recipients as a form of revenge on its douchebag author. Then, I realized it was posted by the author on his own blog... how embarrassing.
The whole letter/blog simultaneously reeks of desperation, egotism, conceit and condescension. He clearly craves validation and doesn't hesitate to dole it out to himself. "I picked you guys because you're the best! Now quit sucking and start being awesome like me! Money money money!"
Contrary to popular belief, (certain) psychological deficiencies can be absolutely beneficial or enabling for being successful in business and other area.
I find it hard to take someone seriously about not being a joker when they keep reverting to capitals to emphasise things. If someone was telling me that my social skills were the top 1% while frequently using 'capital emphasis', I would not hold that evaluation in high regard.
I think, this is in part a consequence of the deification of Steve Jobs, who might have adopted a similar stance towards his partners/employees. Such behavior is now automatically assumed to be acceptable by some subset of people. The No Asshole principle is passé. The author may have written such an email irrespective of Steve Jobs influence. But the audacity to post it on his own blog for everyone to "admire" certainly has to do with the publicity around the Jobs' supposed douchiness.
I think that's probably ascribing Jobs too much credit. He certainly wasn't the first businessperson with a superinflated sense of self-importance and a serious disregard for the well-being of those "in his way", even when those people are his employees.
But he was the first one to use that self-importance to build the richest company in the world. Most of the stories about people like that end "and then all the good engineers quit so they didn't have to put up with him, the products started sucking and the business went down in flames". Steve Jobs avoided that somehow (probable by having really, really good judgment), but imitators don't see that part, they just see "self-importance works".
Even more sad is that this post only exhibits a mild level of douchebaggery relative to some of his others that have made it onto the front page of HN.
"A joker is someone who does not complete something, and has excuses. Don't be a fucking joker."
and later
...Hannibal is his greatest hero, the guy who ALMOST conquered rome, but had a great excuse for not doing so.
and
"Now, here’s the score. I had a very fast, but totally possible timetable. At first, we were on it, and killing it. Then, one of us slipped. I don’t know who slipped first, it’s irrelevant. Now, we’re all slipping. "
Right, so the timetable doesn't include any latitude for delays.
and
"I can do marketing campaigns, but I need product and tech set up first. I mean, it’s not optional, it’s a core dependency. All of this shit was supposed to be done weeks ago."
Sounds like an excuse, sounds like he should stop being a joker and just GET IT DONE. No excuses.
This guy is deluded, lives in a separate version of reality where he has excuses but no one else can. Excuses can also be reasons why something is not going to work.
"Whenever I compared myself to people similar to me, it wasn’t even close. I worked more, accomplished more, produced more, did more meaningful things, was traveling the world. I read more books, did more writing, was generally healthier and more disciplined, spent my time well. I was the top 1% for my age, and even better than that if you measured me against people from similar backgrounds."
This is very far fetched armchair psychology but people driven _THAT_ incredibly much are usually not fueled by positive energy (alone). Together with the almost compulsive comparing to other people, sounds a lot like coping mechanisms for an inferiority complex or worse. OP should consider some therapy to learn about why he is so focused on comparing to others and why he is so hell-bent on work.
This is an interesting question... I would say yes it is possible, there can surely be other motivators why you might work very hard.
In this case, I just got the feeling from reading his posts that OP has a very VERY strong bias towards comparing and measuring up to other people; and he is extremely focused on success and achievements in what feels to me like an unnaturally extreme way. Quite a few of his posts focus on nothing but that and all together just feels unhealthy and un-natural to me. That's the distinction I see to "just" being VERY motivated vs. being "driven". Being a work-a-holic by definition is an unhealthy behavior and there could be a whole bunch of reasons why people slip into that.
Like I said, it is nothing but armchair psychology - but the possibility that certain psychological issues could actually end up benefitting your career or success (or even success with women) is pretty much undisputed. Not all flight mechanisms or addictions have to be to very obvious substances. Work and success and being praised can be very powerful and toxic.
The key thing is that his ambition is not to achieve something, it's to "be the top 1%".
His ambition is all about being better than others.
Healthy ambition is an ambition to create something beautiful, to help people, to deliver the total solution, to live up to your own standards and values.
Unhealthy ambition is to dominate other, to be superior, to make the most money, to look the best, to constantly compare yourself to others.
People who constantly compare themselves to others usually do have inferiority complexes.
If your job involves regularly receiving emails like this, you need to run, not walk, away from that relationship. This guy seems like one of those poisonous people who will inevitably screw things up (through some combination of ego and ignorance of the way the world works) and then blame you for it.
Stop. Think about what you're saying for 20 minutes before you reply. No web browsing, just think. This reminds me of an old koan about an unhappy guy...long story short, he was middle class and never fucking got stuff done...
You know, Sebastian is a really smart, driven, creative individual and his blog has managed to occupy a spot in my RSS reader for some time because I've always felt his perspective lied outside the echo chamber of the tech media I tend to consume.
However, between this post and the one he posted today: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and... I kind of wonder if he isn't experiencing some kind of extreme bi-polar swing or side effects from the nootropics he uses and advocates.
The article posted today is so rambling, incoherent and rabid and so far removed from the realm of "professionalism" that I believe he has not only burned his bridge with his publisher, he has done so with all publishers everywhere.
This doesn't seem to be characteristic of him and if it is, he's certainly a less admirable individual than I had surmised.
300 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadAlso, I can't do it, because I'm otherwise engaged.
When it got to him and a designer in a print shop at 2:30am, I was expecting the punchline to involve crystal meth or something.
Just pick something and go with it.
If that's all he was asking, he could have written a far less self absorbed paragraph and most of us would have said "duh". Instead, I don't know what the hell I just read, or why I read it for as long as I did.
Except it doesn't. The post clearly and repeatedly says "if you can get a goal done, do so. If you can get a good enough substitute, you don't need to ask me, I trust your judgment. If you could do it but you need money, here are my card details, I trust you to spend money carefully. And if you are doing the above and get stuck tell me and we'll fix it together.
The letter had an interesting voice and was well written; however, it immediately set off unconscious alarms in my mind. It was trying to influence the reader too coarsely on too emotional a level; I do not like that sort of thing very much.
That said, it really depends on the culture of the employees on which motivational techniques to use.
Also, as a college student, I would be really suspicious of somebody telling me not to go to class--I'm perfectly happy to do that of my own violation, but anybody suggesting it immediately comes out as against my best interests.
That's simplified analogy, and the author would angrily call them "jokers".
Well written indeed, but Hannibal crossing the Alps to manage his AWS setup was a bit too silly a juxtaposition.
don't ask...
Yeah. Keep your money. Fuck your business cards. You sound like sales guys scum trying to leverage the real makers in this project.
Well, the "top designer" is an adult, we assume, and can make his/her own decisions, but I stopped falling for that kind of bull shit 25 years ago. A good designer is worth paying good rates. Despite lavish praise as they walked out the door with "my miracle", I never once had any of those "big shots" ever show up again, much less provide me with any kind of value in return.
(Now on a side note, I've done spec work and/or above the call of duty rush jobs for customers who've done well by me _in the past_. Or on very rare occasions, I've pulled rabbits out of hat for new customers who were _refered_ to me by very good customers. Maybe that's what's inexpertly being alluded to here. But I doubt it.)
I know it seems douchey and shallow to a lot of you, but when you work remote with a team of friends, things tend to get far too casual and eventually everything falls apart altogether. Suddenly everyone has an opinion on design decisions, or a meeting needs to be held on whether we should use Mongo or MySQL, and we should just think about it on our own time and get back together next week for more discussion.
Complacency is really the biggest enemy of the side project / remote team. And so making excuses becomes easier and easier as time progresses.
Someone has to step up and lead, so maybe a motivational speech is just what the team needs. The points about partying and making money might matter to his team, maybe its why they're working on the project in the first place. (And none of us can say that the excitement of making money doesn't motivate us).
So the man makes it clear where he stands; step up and get shit done, or leave and be a joker. Do you want to sell sugared-water for the rest of your life? Or do you want a chance to change the world?
Maybe, but if this was intended as a motivational speech (and motivational speeches work a lot better than motivational emails) then it's a terrible one.
If you don't consider "commitments" to be real things, then you run round and round the what-are-we-doing-and-why-didn't-you-do-it circle... And then you write a blog post.
Update: freeloaders/non-fulfillers are a real thing. I'm one of them. Generally, I perform at a very high level, but I'll dial it back if I'm under the gun and a client unintentionally indicates that they're not one to assess slippages accurately. Unlike most freeloaders, I wake up at 3AM and think about how to fulfill against a late commitment.
V
"I’d do it myself, but I can’t, because I’m doing something else that takes all my time."
On the other hand: Maybe this posting is his understanding of making a way. Could that be possible?
Its VERY easy for the sense of urgency to just go away. Its very hard to get people highly motivated about time. It's easy to kill an entire day with BS, and let things just stretch out. Especially when you're an employee, and you're working for options. Options are so intangible. You're theoretically motivated, but on a day to day basis, do stock options get you doing 6 things in an hour instead of 3 or 4? Especially if your boss isn't there? (And if your boss is there then you're likely to be inhibited.) It's really easy to kill time by running everything thru your boss too... it lets you cover your butt, and you can read HN while you wait for him to make a decision.
I don't know how you teach initiative... but this is a good attempt.
Find a way or make one. Good advice.
Its a shame most of the comments on this seem to be reddit quality. Almost as if the people making them have never been in this situation. (and this was the situation I found myself in at my very first startup-- when we all felt we had no clue what we were doing, and tended to wait for direction, rather than take initiative.)
I was really not a fan of the part where he told his guys not to make excuses, but then made a very large excuse for himself.
If I would have read only the first few paragraphs I would have been a huge fan of this article.
EDIT: The answer to your question is sentiment of my above sentence. I don't really want a Ferrari personally. I'd prefer a Nissan GTR R35.
* If you are always running your business with a sense of urgency, you are going to burn out. You are going to burn out your employees. You've might have bitten more than you can chew. Some things are not possible and you need to have realistic expectations. It is fine to have stretches of busy time, but that can't last forever.
* > Its very hard to get people highly motivated about time. -- Ok so it is crunch time. Try communication & openness. Put up a whiteboard, show how many days left, how much money is left, the list of unfixed bugs, and whose name is next to it. Update frequently. Detect problems and slips early and try to fix. Don't yell at them or talk about fucking Hannibal, because you know what? You look like a Joker then.
That's not really true. If you're always running your life with a sense of urgency, you're going to burn out. But your life doesn't have to be your business.
I'm a big fan of the "give me six good hours a day" school of thought. You're not at work your whole life (or maybe you are, but you're not doing urgent stuff your whole day). You don't expect your employees to be at work their whole lives. But when you are at work, you focus on the tasks that need to get done, and you finish them. If problems come up, you figure out a way around them, redo your plans, and adjust your schedule accordingly.
I think the problem is, anyone that's worked in the startup world for a while has been in this situation. But most of them have seen it from the other side.
Where you've got maybe 2% equity in a company if you're lucky, and a salary that's about half what you'd be making flipping Java-burgers at a bank. Where you, the sysadmin-at-large (amongst other hats that you wear) see first-hand that traffic levels are a couple orders of magnitude less than you were supposed to set up the system to scale to. Where you're asked to put in 55 hours this week instead of the usual "lazy" 50 because the killer hail-mary-feature that's going to save the company (and is suspiciously similar re: customer visibility to the killer hail-mary-feature of last week) has to be pushed out by Monday or else, ...what, all 20 of the people that bothered to sign up to the mailing list will be disappointed at the missed deadline...? Blech.
Sure, sometimes the situation is different, sometimes it really is a matter of a few people with equal stakes in the outcome not equally pulling weight, and that can be a real problem worth worrying about. But I'm always skeptical when I see CEOs complaining about lazy drones, quite often these complaints are more indicative of top-down scope-creep, bad time estimates, or a failing business model than any actual problem with the workers.
We like to think that having money fixes things and we can just throw cash wildly into the air while making definitive exhortations and all will be well. We will be Gods or something! But unfortunately, it doesn't, not usually. What's pretty broke without cash doesn't typically get fixed when you shove its gullet full of coinage. Every once in awhile, throwing money into a whirlpool works, and when it does, you should totally record that shit. Put it on YouTube. But not what preceded it, no way.
Sincerely, The guy who's work ethic is directly proportional to how much money you throw at me.
Did he just have an "idea" and hire a bunch of engineers "find a way or make one?"
The whole letter/blog simultaneously reeks of desperation, egotism, conceit and condescension. He clearly craves validation and doesn't hesitate to dole it out to himself. "I picked you guys because you're the best! Now quit sucking and start being awesome like me! Money money money!"
Sad.
I think this guy could be on his way to the Fortune 400!
"A joker is someone who does not complete something, and has excuses. Don't be a fucking joker."
and later
...Hannibal is his greatest hero, the guy who ALMOST conquered rome, but had a great excuse for not doing so.
and
"Now, here’s the score. I had a very fast, but totally possible timetable. At first, we were on it, and killing it. Then, one of us slipped. I don’t know who slipped first, it’s irrelevant. Now, we’re all slipping. "
Right, so the timetable doesn't include any latitude for delays.
and
"I can do marketing campaigns, but I need product and tech set up first. I mean, it’s not optional, it’s a core dependency. All of this shit was supposed to be done weeks ago."
Sounds like an excuse, sounds like he should stop being a joker and just GET IT DONE. No excuses.
This guy is deluded, lives in a separate version of reality where he has excuses but no one else can. Excuses can also be reasons why something is not going to work.
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and...
I'm at a complete loss for words.
Sounds like something a joker would say!
But as an email it just looks insane.
"Whenever I compared myself to people similar to me, it wasn’t even close. I worked more, accomplished more, produced more, did more meaningful things, was traveling the world. I read more books, did more writing, was generally healthier and more disciplined, spent my time well. I was the top 1% for my age, and even better than that if you measured me against people from similar backgrounds."
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-weakest-of-the-great-me...
In this case, I just got the feeling from reading his posts that OP has a very VERY strong bias towards comparing and measuring up to other people; and he is extremely focused on success and achievements in what feels to me like an unnaturally extreme way. Quite a few of his posts focus on nothing but that and all together just feels unhealthy and un-natural to me. That's the distinction I see to "just" being VERY motivated vs. being "driven". Being a work-a-holic by definition is an unhealthy behavior and there could be a whole bunch of reasons why people slip into that.
Like I said, it is nothing but armchair psychology - but the possibility that certain psychological issues could actually end up benefitting your career or success (or even success with women) is pretty much undisputed. Not all flight mechanisms or addictions have to be to very obvious substances. Work and success and being praised can be very powerful and toxic.
His ambition is all about being better than others.
Healthy ambition is an ambition to create something beautiful, to help people, to deliver the total solution, to live up to your own standards and values.
Unhealthy ambition is to dominate other, to be superior, to make the most money, to look the best, to constantly compare yourself to others.
People who constantly compare themselves to others usually do have inferiority complexes.
Wow, he's really on a roll with his Nov 17th post too: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and...
However, between this post and the one he posted today: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/an-open-letter-to-simon-and... I kind of wonder if he isn't experiencing some kind of extreme bi-polar swing or side effects from the nootropics he uses and advocates.
The article posted today is so rambling, incoherent and rabid and so far removed from the realm of "professionalism" that I believe he has not only burned his bridge with his publisher, he has done so with all publishers everywhere.
This doesn't seem to be characteristic of him and if it is, he's certainly a less admirable individual than I had surmised.