work with people who give a shit
during high school I was the team captain for a VEX robotics team that won the world championship, we were 2x world finalists, and were one of the most decorated teams in VEX history [1].
I was a very extreme leader, and held some of my teammates to a very high bar. I picked up pretty early on that a lot of my teammates were doing robotics for their resume instead of for the love of the competition, so naturally, I started to do everything myself. I would build, program, and drive my own robots - leaving nothing up to chance for someone else to mess up.
I grew up a bit and started to work at startups with CEOs that were more extreme than I used to be, and I ended up being on the receiving end. micro-managers, perfectionists, no sense of social norms, and a whole host of other things. I thought it was ridiculous until I thought back to my time in robotics:
would I have been more liked if I wasn't so extreme? probably.
would I have won a world championship if I wasn't so extreme? probably not.
I started to question why the CEO was so extreme, why he wanted everything to be perfect, and I realized, it's just because he actually gave a shit. he cared a ton about shipping an amazing product, and wanted to hold everyone to the highest standards to build a killer company.
I know there's a whole anti-work movement & it's not cool to work really hard and not have a WLB - but I think that sam altman said it best; "extreme people get extreme results". it's not for everyone, and I don't expect a lot of people to relate or agree, but it's definitely a noble endeavour [2]
in the pursuit of great work, it's important to find and latch onto extreme people - especially if it's a mission that you care about, has lot's of potential upside, and you're up for the challenge [3].
[1] there were 12,000 teams in contention. our team also competed in FIRST, and we were world finalists there as well.
[2] I've also been on the other side of things, where everything is chill, too chill. it's not fulfilling, or at least, wasn't fulfilling for me at the place I was at in life.
[3] this should go without saying, but this doesn't mean to tolerate abuse - that's a different extreme.