Does your office have a library?
Several of these questions are hinting at whether your company culture is overly stratified or not: e.g., do seniors ever ask juniors for help. I can sense the author has worked in places where he wished he asked those questions sooner, and I think they&#x27;re good questions to be asking of a company.<p>A couple of them highlighted, at least for me, how lonely it is to be one of the very few competent software developers in an enormous (non-software) company. I literally <i>can&#x27;t</i> ever find someone who has actually done anything I&#x27;m working on, outside of my small team.<p>But most of them are <i>utterly bizarre</i>.<p>&gt; If someone is really really good would you hire their wife? How about their friends?<p><i>What</i>!? Why on Earth would you ever even entertain the possibility of institutionalized nepotism? Not only is there absolutely no reason to believe their performance in your job would be related to your star employee&#x27;s, but other employees in the company will see this happening and either become completely disillusioned toward the idea that your company is a meritocracy (because it&#x27;s <i>obviously not</i>), or they&#x27;ll get pissed when you don&#x27;t hire their spouses and friends too. No, I&#x27;ve never thought of this, because it&#x27;s a <i>horrible</i> idea. (Note that this is not the same as considering a husband&#x2F;wife pair that want to be hired together; in that case you&#x27;d evaluate each on their own merits and do it only if they&#x27;re <i>both</i> good.) Have <i>you</i> ever thought of showing appreciation for your star employee by shitting on her desk? No? Well then you&#x27;re not a DEEP THINKER like this author is!!<p>&gt; If someone is really really good why are or aren&#x27;t they working with their friends?<p>Is &quot;their friends&quot; a static set of people? Why can&#x27;t they make friends at work? Why do friendship and professional life have to overlap at all? Is this like handing out Nerf guns to all new employees to make your office seem more fun?<p>&gt; Do you have any enemies? Why doesn&#x27;t someone out there dislike your strongest beliefs? What do you value about your enemies?<p>&quot;Don&#x27;t be a pussy, stand up and have some beliefs. If nobody is disagreeing with you, that means you&#x27;re not taking a stand!&quot; says the shitty high-school debate teacher sick of seeing his students check out in his class. This is a childish, black-and-white, lazy take, and it has no place in the professional world. You should not have &quot;enemies&quot; at work.<p>On the other hand, there are people literally advocating for genocide in the world. So from that point of view, this should also be a tautology. I thought we were talking about work?<p>&gt; How often do you turn around and ask your self what aren&#x27;t you asking yourself?<p>&quot;Dude, nobody ever just <i>stops and thinks</i> anymore. I&#x27;m the only one who gazes out of a bus window and actually <i>thinks</i> about the world, man. Everyone is just sheep, man. Sheep people, man. Sheeple, man. But not me, man. Man. No, man. Dude. Man. <i>I&#x27;m</i> the only deep thinker in the world, dude.&quot;<p>- This author<p>&gt; What would you take a pay cut for? What would you work on for free that makes money for someone else?<p>If you&#x27;re making money for someone else, you&#x27;re either getting paid or getting taken advantage of. This sounds like some half-baked inspirational poster: &quot;what are you so passionate about that you&#x27;d do it even while I was hitting you with a rusty chain?&quot; What? Why the fuck are you hitting me with a rusty chain!?<p>Utterly bizarre.