"But anyway, how do people get away with it? If you are found out you lose people’s trust and it won’t get you the promotion or you may even get fired. And how can you not get found out when everyone you work with knows? Can you really get ahead by lying?"I think this is where the skill in lying would have to come in. You would have to pick things that aren't easily verifiable to lie about, and come up with a convincing story. Plus, you would have to count on dupes like me, who care more about getting the work done, than playing the whole political game. Plus, in a fairly large organisation, like the one that I work in, you can generally count on the segregated nature of the teams. The person that I mentioned is pretty much a laughing stock in my old team. Whenever his name is mentioned, people groan and ask what stupid thing he has done now. Some people have gone so far as to block him on our internal IM system. In his new team, which rarely interacts with my old team, it sounds like he is well-loved. The thing he took credit for, was something for my old team. When he moved teams, he told them about his wonderful work, and they didn't bother to fact-check it - and why would they? People trust each other.
" If you change your personality, you will naturally learn to lie. Would you change your personality to get ahead? Are you willing to sacrifice your integrity?"Back in vanilla WoW, discipline priests were generally rubbish compared to holy, but I was so determined to play a discipline priest, even though it wasn't the best. Raids were 40 people back then, so it really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. I did the same thing in Cataclysm, despite how hard it was to do heroic dungeons. I was even kicked from a dungeon once, because I just couldn't sustain healing for long enough to kill the boss.
After that happened, I was too afraid to do another heroic. I queued for some of the easier ones, but avoided the one that I was kicked from and all the ones after it, like the plague. I read some forum posts on how to improve, and the general consensus was switch to holy. Even Meshu told me the same thing. But I refused. I had hit a brick wall. On one hand, I was proud of myself, for sticking to my guns and staying discipline despite how hard it was. On the other hand, I had limited myself from a majority of the end game. I couldn't bring myself to queue knowing that I'd be letting 4 other people down. But I kept thinking, this is so unfair - why can't I play the spec that I want and do things that everyone else can do?
It was actually DotA, or rather HoN which is what I was playing at the time, which made me realise that in a group, each person has a specific role. To do the best that you can do as a group, you need to fulfill the role that you agreed to play by choosing your hero. I remember when I used to get angry at the carry heroes who would yell at me to buy wards or upgrade the courier when I had no gold. I felt that if they wanted the wards, they could buy them themselves. (While I still think that if your support is doing so poorly that they can't afford wards, you should buy them, instead of getting ganked constantly and blaming the lack of vision, but that is another story.)
In short, I wasn't playing optimally. By choosing to do what I wanted, despite the huge amount of evidence showing that it wasn't the best, I was also letting 4 other people down. Sure, if I had the skill to make up for the sub-optimal spec, then it would have been fine, but I didn't, and I knew that, which is why I was so afraid to queue for the more difficult heroics. I do sometimes play silly builds in DotA, but for me, that's more of a training exercise than a conscious decision to prove a point. I wasn't gaining anything.
To answer the question, whether I would change my personality to get ahead, I honestly don't know. I do know that I'm not the person that I was last year - I go to the gym, I do yoga, I actually feel confident enough in my skills to argue with J about Java related stuff. I'm not even sure that I'm the same person I was two months ago. Personality theory is a bit undecided on whether people have a permanent personality anyway. And adaptation is always good. I know that I am dodging the question, and the fundamental question is, do I really want to go back on something that I value so highly? I don't, I really don't - which is probably why I am struggling with the whole thing. But I like to think that I am pretty rational, and it's hard to deny the evidence in support of lying to get ahead.
I seem to have picked up yet another mentor, and her advice is that I need to sell myself more. That doesn't necessarily entail lying about things in a manipulative way, but it does mean framing my achievements in a more positive light. She has worked with some very senior people, and she said that those that get ahead are those that put themselves out there. So maybe it's not about becoming a good liar, but becoming a good salesperson. I guess I will put the lying thing aside for now, and focus more on selling myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment