On being a Good Person (at work)

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Yeah, theres plenty of literature on this - heck, most (all?) religions eventually devolve to some variations on the theme of Being Good. But that, really isn't my point here - its more about the impact of Doing The Right Thing in your professional life.

In any job, there is always the inevitable urge to game the system, viz., figuring out how to not just do your job, but do it in a way that diminishes the others that you work with.  Cutthroat Capitalism seems to have become almost a mantra these days - with the implicit assumption being that the only way you can win is by having others lose.

The thing is, gaming the system takes brain-power.
Early on in your career, the type of tasks you get are ones that you can take care of pretty easily, while still having brain-power left over to game the system.
However, as your career progresses, you'll increasingly find yourself in situations where it takes all your available brain-power to take care of your tasks - the more you scheme, the more strategery you deploy, the worse you are at doing your actual job!

What this basically translates to is that early on in their careers, system-gamers tend to rise somewhat meteorically.  However, they will, eventually and inevitably, stall, if not flame out entirely (*)
OTOH, people that do the right thing, are trustworthy - i.e., Good People - may get overlooked early on, but will keep rising up the food chain. (**)
Over time, you will develop a reputation as not just a person who can be trusted to get things done, but also as someone who isn't scheming! Which, almost counter-intuitively, means that even the schemers start trusting you! (**)

The bottom line is that being a Good Person in your professional life is actually a smart move career-wise...



(*) Yes you will find system-gamers at the peak of any profession.  That is just a matter of probabilities.  Somebody gets to win the lottery...
(**) Even system-gamers need someone to actually do stuff y'know?  They eventually get so busy gaming the system that they have no time to actually do stuff :-)

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