Pedestals

One of the easiest ways to make yourself feel bad is to put other people on a pedestal. This happens all the time in tech. We look at this firm or that and assume everyone there must be extraordinary. Maybe that’s true somewhere, but I’ve never seen it. There are outliers but, by definition, they’re rare. Mostly it’s just hard-working people doing their job the best they can, making mistakes along the way. The respectable but ordinary path. We should admire and respect people. Admiration is one of the best ways to learn. Find someone doing great work and you should pay close attention. But admiring someone is not the same as putting them on a pedestal. If they’re up there and you’re down here, you’ve already counted yourself out. They become the kind of person who does impressive things, and you become the kind of person who looks up at them. And it’s much easier to put someone you’ve never met on a pedestal than someone you see every day. From afar, you only see the highlight reel.…