đĄ Nugget
⌠Felix Dennis:
âTeam spirit is for losers, financially speaking. Itâs the glue that binds the losers together. Itâs the methodology employers use to shackle useful employees to their desk without having to pay them too much. While lives may depend on it in a few professions, like soldiering or fire-fighting, in commerce it acts as a subtle handicap and a brake to ambitious individuals. Which, in a way, is what itâs designed to doâŚ
When it comes right down to it, âteam spiritâ and not letting your colleagues down is a feeble reason for procrastination when opportunity comes knocking. Nearly always, it is an excuse to avoid the possibility of humiliating failure. If one of the team you work with inherited ten million quid tomorrow, do you really believe they would be checking in to keep up morale? Of course not. Neither would you, or anyone in their right mind.â
⨠Visual
đ Thoughts
These are just my general thoughts on working in teams (not directly related with the nugget above)
Another factor that I donât like about working in a team is that it makes me less accountable for the work output, and accountability is extremely important according to Naval Ravikant, as it is one of the 3 ingredients to get rich (the other two are leverage and specific knowledge). Besides, when I donât feel 100% responsible about something, I also donât work as hard and obsessively â and this is critical not only for making money, but also for finding meaning!
Itâs true that if oneâs mission is to build something big (next Google or Stripe) we definitely need partners and work in a team, but if oneâs mission is more of a lifestyle choice (with a not-so-big product) then is definitely viable to go alone and make a living!
Related to this, from my notes of David Senraâs episode on Paul Graham:
How much of a difference can a single developer or a small team make? Increasingly much! (2018 interview). How far can it go? Always further than people expect.And finally one quote I love from David Ogilvy (known as âThe Father of Advertisingâ and praised by Warren Buffet as a genius) on teamwork in the Advertising Industry:
âNowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on "teamwork" is bunkum - a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.â
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