How Startups Differ: Dreams of an Employee

The other day I was thinking about what separates us humans from animals. I won't go through the whole discussion that happened inside my head, but only the result: dreams. Animals have needs: eat, sleep, reproduce. Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until you die. We are a bit more complex in this respect. We have dreams and thereby goals which are ends in themselves. Someone might claim that all the wants and goals we have eventually collapse into the previously mentioned biological goals. I'm not so sure - I can't see somebody looking for a career in formal logic reduced to his biology. At face value it makes more sense to accept his want to understand logic as an end, not as a means to impress the ladies.

As the previous anecdote shows, dreams can play an important part in our careers. It’s not just the normal professions of a doctor, firefighter or a police officer that have dreams as their fuel. I’m very confident that any profession or job can have the same quality. This does not necessarily mean that the sales clerk has a dream of being a sales clerk, but he or she may dream of being a respected, trustworthy individual who eventually progresses at the workplace and then ending up as a sales manager in another company. Who you want to be is everything to who you are today.

If I think about the stereotypical large company or organization, dreams don’t seem to be of exactly very high importance there. You have a job, and your development goals are to be linked to your proficiency in that task. What, you want to improve, only to leave your post here? Not going to happen! Now, companies have training programs. Some of them even ask about your career goals. But this is not enough. A person is not just a career. Career goals cannot operate in isolation of all your other goals. I say it’s time to move from a paradigm, in which the employee is a repository of skills and knowledge, to a paradigm, in which he is a holistic person with dreams outside his career, too.

This is something at which startups excel. Everybody has heard the standard comments about the dynamic nature of startups and how they penetrate even the tiniest niches in the market. Well, sure, the Titanic hardly maneuvers in the same way as a speedboat – they are very unlike in size. But it still doesn’t mean you can’t feel good and whole in both.

What I’ve gathered from the startup experiences of my friends is that the startup culture is very multifaceted and you’re generally approached with interest. People are keen about stories or narratives, which explain who you are, what you want and why. In a large corporation gatherings can at worst be at the “I’m Jack, an accountant” –level. I mean, defining yourself by your position or profession is hardly the best way. I’d guess this has a lot to do with the fact startups rarely have very strongly identified or differentiated employees- everybody does everything. There’s no chance to identify with a role you don’t have. But still, even though we have roles in larger organizations, we don’t have to identify ourselves primarily through those. It would make sense to define ourselves through ourselves. And to do that, we need to make room for dreams.

Tolerance is not binary

Following these discussions between social conservatives and liberals has made me think. Ever since the True Finns stomped to a landslide victory at the election, talk of immigration, culture issues and tolerance have been plentiful. That’s a good thing.

However, there has been a thing that regularly drives me to the boundaries of approvable behavior. The thing is the current concept of tolerance (or permissiveness, if you will). The current discussion has mainly revolved around trying to distinguish the tolerant from the intolerant. The idea seems to be that you are either tolerant, or you are intolerant. Liberals and conservatives have joined the fray from both sides eagerly. If it weren’t for our modern legal system, I’m quite sure advocates from both sides would have been burnt at the stake. The liberals are claiming to be tolerant for being more positive about immigration, gay marriage, or whatever the issue at hand. Painting their side as the tolerant essentially implies that conservatives are the intolerant. That, of course, is often an euphemism for ‘a bunch of crazy skinhead thugs’, as most of you probably have realized. Just don’t think conservatives get off the hook, either. A common argument is that since liberals don’t tolerate the intolerance of conservatives, they are intolerant themselves. This plays into the conservatives’ hands by implying that since the liberals are the intolerant, the conservatives must be the tolerant. If we stick to a definition that labels tolerance as “allowing any opinion one doesn’t like” we get exactly this kind of paradox hassle. 

Both above strategies rest on the assumption of binary tolerance: you are either tolerant or you’re not. Since the parties disagree about some things, and don’t agree on what is tolerable, it must follow that one of them (i.e. the others) are the intolerant. From the liberal’s perspective the conservatives are socially intolerant – and from the conservative point vice versa. Tolerance functions as a useful weapon to bash your opponent with – after all, nobody in the audience wants to be intolerant, do they?

Now, this whole mess started because of a bad variable class: tolerance as a binary variable. In retrospect it should be obvious it is not such, rather tolerance ought be cast as a continuum. There are very few binary variables in our personalities, and I can’t see a reason why tolerance would be an exception. To give an example, consider kindness, for example. Is that person nice or not? I’m sure people would agree that some of us are kinder than others. But still, it’s not as if there are only two classes of people: kind and unkind. Oh no, there’s everything in between, too. The same should go for tolerance, too. Most of the people I’ve met are rather tolerant of others, yet most of us wouldn’t be ok with everything. For some, the limit is gay marriage, for others it’s something else. But for most of us, such a limit exists. A tolerance of anything and everything is hardly a sound basis for a society.

A good reason to throw away this stupid binary tolerance definition would be the hope of having actual discussions. Instead of going around shouting intolerant! – essentially the equal of heretic 500 years ago – we could be having proper talks about who can tolerate what, and why there are differences. The realization that we all are more or less tolerant would hinder the division into two camps. There are very few problems that can actually be solved with a us-vs-them rhetoric.

It’s time to stop using the 0/1 scale. Even turning it into just a 0-5 scale would help.

First impressions at EGOS conference

Going to my first scientific conference is one major step towards my dream of being a researcher. Naturally I jumped at the chance of coming here, especially with accommodation and flights paid by the university. Never mind that I’m just in a mere assisting role, observing how to organise the event and thereby making our organising next year easier. It’s still a scientific conference and an important milestone.

Everyone must have heard that you can make a first impression only once. This trip is going to me my first impression of the scientific conferences. Are they exciting or boring? Relaxed or formal? Useful or useless? Drunken feasts or groups of introverts staring at their computers all day long? Something in between the extremes?

With the first 24 hours behind me, I won’t try to make a mountain out of a molehill and claim anything too drastic. Nevertheless, there are some things I’ve noticed while being here:

Scientists are normal people.

Well, duh. You’re entitled to say that in reply, really. But I’ve always had, to some extent, and idea of a successful researcher being a cool, level-headed character capable of observation and not too interested in social games. Someone, whose passion is in a sense the abolition of passions. Someone, who makes the most effort to get out of their own way to ensure objectivity.

That, of course, is a stereotype with hardly any relevance to reality. Even if they are objective in their work, the researchers I’ve met seem to resemble normal people so much I wouldn’t notice their difference without knowing beforehand. They dislike some people, take revenge and form cliques just like everybody else. They drink and have parties not suitable for children. They can even talk about soccer as soccer, not as a social game of behaviour-execution to ensure genetic fitness in a Marxist society.

Scientists bitch about people they don’t like.

If you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Whereas in normal working life, you might get angry about someone hoarding unnecessary cash in their department, being slow to react to your proposals or just failing to do their job the way you wanted them to, in research it’s all the above problems - plus the theoretical fights. If a table loses a leg, and the resulting three-legged abomination fails to stand upright, is it still a table? Neither camp would balk at any sacrifice to gain the final upper hand. The race is still on, after several hundreds of years.

Despite the realisation of scientists being as vicious as the next guy in the street, I’m having a blast. To be in an atmosphere, where the fact you’re sitting with a brick-shaped Foucault in your hand results in a fierce debate rather than a look of “I think you ought to be locked up”, is a fantastic experience. I hope there's more to follow.