On mentors

17/08/2019: Few thoughts on people I have encountered in the professional environment. Because regardless of how pleasant they are, most shaped me to be better than what I do. Not necessarily to be a better employee, though.

Costa Coffee post this time, fueled by the great arabica-robusta blend of Mocha Italia poured into a well steamed soy milk.

I signed a full-time contract with my so-far amazing employer, securing my existential needs for a while, especially through the surgery ahead of me. And I don't say amazing just for the sake of PR.

I've got to meet many new colleagues, engaging in a dynamic IT-based business that reacts to all the newest opportunities and looks at selling and generating market share through its signature user-friendliness, rather than exerting all force available on cost-reduction and maintenance of what already exists. Although a medium and increasing employee count is also a treat, we are all being directed away from conservativism to being critical of existing principles and innovative with or on top of them.

Moreover, is not a single one person causing the stream. And although my Management Drives results imply purple workspace attitude, which signifies respect for what is established and prolonging its impacts, I am beginning to adopt this value as my own. Especially owing to my great respect for experience some of our masterminds possess.

I used to be overly protective of my work and its achievements. Not that I wouldn't appreciate suggestions for improvement, but I always felt awful about backward steps, feeling that significant fraction of my effort came for naught. Still, there had always been people, wherever I worked at the time, this all turned out less rough from. I'm especially talking about those I have a great degree of professional respect for.

On the contrary, the time a departmental assistant in Ahold, with a bachelor from a de facto degree mill, commenced to argue over the roots and sole definition of inflation, my indignation and loathing of her attitude towards me spun off into my quitting, as the boss took very pacifist and business-like approach to solving the problem. Regardless, I admit that it was not the sole reason for me taking a break, and fully embrace the pile of knowledge and experience I brought out of the company. There even were people who made similar impression as the individual I am going to talk about next.

This guy had worked in IT for years, created his own open-source project, made contributions to WinSCP, and even made an impression as a consultant to Mozilla, where the interpretation, safety, and privacy of web browsing comes from. He made number of points about flaws in my work and given me critical feedback. Two years ago, I would argue with him about how right I was in the first place. Not now, though. He was being constructive and focused on driving business forward. And thanks to him, I will be able to say that I created the tool advising the Marketing department on where to spend and giving the support technicians suggestions on whom of our clients to call first.

Although a MSc dropout, I am learning how to improve application of my fairly solid hard skills to facilitation of success. And that is essentially what business analysts exist for.

And so, if I am to give an advice coming from this article, give up on your stubbornness with any kind of coming feedback. Think before you tell someone to fuck off. You're not doing it wrong, you could just do it better. Move on over the course of the asymptotic course to perfection, no matter how close to the limit you already are. And remember that the limit is the same for everyone and by moving toward it, you make shift to the right segment of the gamma distribution of skill-specific ability.

And while you can never achieve perfection, you can be sure that gamma distribution has no asymptote, hence you actually can be the best. And remember that before you reach 100 percentile, there is always somebody to learn from.