How to weaponize your experience
How to use your previous, superior, experience to accidentally bully everyone
You used to work at Google. Or Meta. Or Stripe. Or NASA. Or maybe you went to school at MIT or Stanford. Or just a university or company with a stellar reputation in your local market. This is a large part of your personality, of your identity, that you worked at The Company or went to The School.
At The Place you think that you learned The Right Way.
But you are working at a regular place now. This place doesn’t do things the way that they should be done. What does this mean? It means that they don’t have the engineering maturity of Google , are solving a different problem than The Place, or are earlier in their maturity than The Place.
And it feels beneath you, somehow. Everywhere you look, it feels like where you work is inferior to where you used to be. And this bothers you, because you feel you are better than this, but here you are, right here, in this non-famous place.
So shave that feeling down into a weapon that you can use to guard your identity.
Make sure to mention The Place in your suggestions, using phrases that make you feel good and everyone else have to concentrate on not rolling their eyes unconsciously.
“Well at Google we did….”
“Sorry, I’m just used to a real engineering group…”
“It seems like we should just do it like the best do, which I’ve seen and its simply…..”
“I can’t believe that there isn’t a process for this, its like we are in the wild wild west….“
Talking this way also reminds everyone that you know best, because you have seen the best, been the best. Your opinion should be valued over others.
If you are the boss
If you are the boss, then you can use The Place to poke people into doing things differently. This is especially effective since nobody feels like they can challenge you because of your experience. Eventually someone will say “they work here, just like me” and start to dismiss your thoughts, since you won’t go into any detail. But until then, make sure to enforce your superiority at every chance.
If you are an employee
This is a great move if you never want to become the boss. By constantly criticizing everything the company does without understanding the proper context of the problem, you will eventually have all your ideas dismissed out of hand. Instead of building prototypes, you build a reputation, and not the good kind.
If you are reading this and thinking, “well it depends,” or “this is a gross oversimplification,” or “what an idiot,” then you might be interested in Additional Commentary for this post.