If you think the hardest worker wins in the workplace, you’re already dead before you’ve fired a single shot.
The uncomfortable truth
What nobody tells you is that you’re not paid for what you do — you’re paid for how what you do is perceived, for what people said about you (good or bad 😈) at some VIP drinks you weren’t invited to, for how much people fear you (and God help you if they don’t). Do I need to go on?
In the workplace you don’t sell products — you sell narratives
- To your boss you sell clarity: so they can sleep at night believing everything is under control
- To your team you sell support: so they feel reassured enough to follow you somewhere anyone else would have had the good sense to avoid
- To management you sell spectacular results, even when it’s yesterday’s leftovers reheated
- To stakeholders you sell calm, even when you’re in the middle of a perfect storm
- To the company you sell growth, even when you’re creatively massaging slide decks to hide the fact that you’re just keeping the lights on
- To yourself you sell consistency — spinning a web of comfortable lies in a desperate attempt to self-hypnotise, to numb yourself, to keep going, because in this world built exclusively for born winners, whoever stops is lost
The price of invisibility
It’s always the same game, regardless of role, industry, or salary.
If you don’t get this, you’ll stay exactly what I was for far too long: the capable one, the tireless worker (drop ’tire’ from that, ed.) — and essentially invisible.
If you do get it, maybe — just maybe — you have a shot at a career. That is, if the people who got there before you don’t strangle your ambitions in the cradle.
The Italian puddle
It happens, you know. The Italian job market is a puddle. A few well-placed, well-coordinated negative whispers and you’ll never understand why you’re never called for interviews despite your skills and your spotless CV.
Tough luck — but there are people out there protecting their own interests, and they will always make sure the last stay last, rigging the market so the first remain permanently out of reach.
The final question
Am I being brutal? Yes. Particularly today.