Be Steel, Not Iron

Welcome back to Thunder Dome. This week's post goes a bit broader, outside of the "transitioning service member" framework that I've been covering these past months. It's kind of like a farewell address mixed with a motivational speech (just call me Coach Taylor), as I find myself mostly exhausted of new topics and don't wish to belabor the points I've already made. I struggled a bit with the tone of this article, it might be too aggressive. If so, my apologies, I just got really excited. So hopefully my good intentions come across clearly enough. Enjoy!

A few weeks back, I was listening to Tim Ferriss' podcast. Tim was interviewing Chris Sacca, who is perhaps the most successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Sacca is an early investor in small companies you may have heard of like Twitter, Uber, KickStarter, and many others. So it might be safe to say that he's fairly competent at assessing the skills and talents of others, even if they aren't fully matured yet. He's got a great eye for spotting talent and potential, or the lack thereof.

In the interview, Chris bemoaned the current state of many the workers in Silicon Valley. These wanna be Zuckerbergs come rushing out of the best colleges in the world, with the finest educations possible and golden resumes. They are overwhelming some of the smartest, most educated, hardest working employees in the US. And yet they are horrifically unprepared for the workplace.

There is a fundamental flaw in the current pipeline that feeds Silicon Valley and the other employment hot spots in America, be it Wall St, DC, Chicago, etc. The fierce market competitiveness is driving the search for the "perfect" method to "make it". We start to equate the fact that if so many millionaires are coming from Stanford, so long as we just graduate from Stanford, we'll be set for the rest of our lives. This creates an arms race, with every parent trying to make sure little Johnny or Susie has the perfect resume, with classical piano lessons, debate club, and swim team captaincy. Everything box is checked, polished to a sheen, and the kids are never allowed to fail, because if they miss even one step, somebody else is ready to take their spot. This makes for some damn impressive college applications, but it also makes for some awful employees. Paper tigers - fearsome when viewed from afar, hollow when closely examined.

What's lost in this "perfect pipeline" is failure. Nobody loses at anything. Everyone gets a trophy and their parents are right behind them to make sure it's the biggest trophy possible. This arms race has prevented anyone from falling on their face, losing prestige, or starving. And that is downright awful. Why is Sacca so pessimistic towards many of the workers in Silicon Valley? Because so few of them know what the bottom of the ladder looks like, they cannot appreciate why it's so critical to climb up the ladder. They haven't worked crappy jobs in the fast food industry. They haven't gone to the poor parts of the world and seen how the other half lives. They haven't had to bleed in order to win. Their "cultural immersions" consist of a semester abroad in some Western Europe country and a few trips with the family to all-inclusive resorts. Maybe a one-week long mission with their church to Costa Rica that actually did more harm than good. Because they haven't been exposed to the bad, they have no idea why it is so important to be good. They just know that it's expected of them. Without the exposure to the harsh truths of the real world, these wunder kids don't have true, lasting motivation to win. And when the real world slaps them across the face, they have no idea what to do.

imagine Robin is a over-privileged tech employee. Nobody likes Robin. Nobody.

This critical gap is ripe for exploitation by the kind of people who HAVE bled for it. You know where I'm going with this. Veterans have seen the dark side, the bad, the ugly. We get it. We know why it's so important to climb the ladder, to make great things, to be the best. Because we have seen parts of the world where that hasn't happened. Where the privileged few took advantage of the many. Where so many are left destitute, with no real manner of escape. I've seen horrific catastrophes, sickening repression, and the anger and hopelessness they generate first hand. That's why I'm so fired up to win. Because I'll fight tooth and nail to make it doesn't happen here. All my fellow veterans know this because they've seen it too. So maybe your first job isn't the "perfect job" or isn't quite the salary you had hoped for. That's okay, because there should be no doubt in your mind that you're going to crush it. Look at the competition.They have glass jaws, where you've already taken a couple solid right hooks to the face and discovered that, yeah, it hurts, but the world doesn't end. They don't realize how good they've got it and don't know what to do with themselves when the first sign of danger appears. And you, my friend, are The Danger. You're the One Who Knocks.

seriously though, and I want to be 100% clear on this point, do NOT become a meth kingpin. This is not what I'm advocating. Not cool.

A quick aside on metallurgy. Iron and steel are very similar metals, as steel is derived from iron. Both are incredibly strong, with the ability to hold enormous amounts of weight. But steel is a highly refined version of iron, as it has been forged to the highest standards. The key difference in their attributes comes when faced with pressure. Under tremendous heat, steel bends, whereas iron shatters. Because steel was built in the hottest fires, it has been inoculated against stress to a level that iron hasn't. When iron chips and shatters, steel laughs and keeps on going. Be steel, my friends, not iron. We service members have been forged in crucibles that make most of our civilian peers shudder. Use it. When everyone starts losing their minds because the product launch is delayed a week or the critical path for the program is running out of slack, I want you to kick your legs up on the table, sip your coffee, and say in the calmest voice possible, "I got this", because you DO. Be steel, not iron.

Well, that about sums it up for my wise counsel regarding transitioning from the military. I'm moving into a new house and starting a new job in the next few weeks, so the blog will be going quiet. I plan on doing a "100 day review", where I'll do a review of what I've posted and see how much it has held up with my experiences in corporate America, as well as add some new content. Until then, my fellow freedom fighters...

P.S. - Yes, I know, there are always exceptions to the rule. I'm sure there is some employee in Silicon Valley who was born to two quadriplegic parents in the mountain of Bhutan, got into Stanford on a scholarship and graduated suma cum laude while working 4 jobs. I get it. Thank you for pointing out that I don't know everything and am kind of a jerk.