career principles - kill ego early

Ego is so ubuquitous in a professional's career. You either find it in someone else (your boss, colleague, or even a junior!), or you're wearing one yourself unknowingly.

TLDR, kill it early or perpetually work hard to justify it.

Background

I must admit, I had an ego problem growing up in my teens. If I were to describe it, it is the deceptive feeling of being on top of the game. It is when one instinctively puts oneself a cut above the rest, by default. It happens in my studies, in the sports I played, basically anywhere where I think I have some level of expertise.

The keyword here is some level, I wasn't even the best haha. I'm sure everyone has heard the saying,

There will always be someone better than you!

But to me back then, this does not exist in my book. This proved detrimental to my growth, as things get tougher. Academics became harder, and your peers began to outpace you. Sports became more challenging, as you meet better athletes. It is a never ending race of self-justifying your position in the field of expertise, even when it no longer interests you!

It's funny af now that I think about it 😂

As a result, not being able to keep up will hurt the little ego inside, and we slowly get depressed. But if we can keep up, congratulations, we just moved the goal post further, and set ourselves up to go through the cycle again in the future.

Acknowledge ego as a problem

The first step is to acknowledge that everyone has an ego, no matter how big or small, including ourself. Second, treat ego as a problem, a disease, if you will.

In western culture, ego is something the society celebrates. It is very apparent in their entertainment, sports, politics, you name it. Everyone is letting their ego loose, and people get drunk from it. While in asian culture, we suppress it. So many Malay pepatah are dedicated to the aftermath of ego self-destructing, and we can find many wisdoms behind them.

This is a binary choice, really. And the wisest thing to do, is to suppress it. No doubt.

Dealing with ego

Even though I presented 2 choices:

1. Kill it early
2. Work hard to justify it

But there is only 1 choice really...

How killing the ego helped me

If brandishing your ego is described as putting oneself above the rest, killing it is the opposite. Always mentally position yourself as lesser. Some may conflate the killing of ego with killing the desire to get better, hence not progressing. This is a fallacious argument, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Killing the ego allows one to listen more and be in a state of learning from others. I know this, because this has helped me early in my career.

Coming from an engineering degree into getting a tech job, I know full-well I am at the bottom of rung, among tech employers. And this was during the COVID days (2021), when layoffs are rampant and WFH is the norm. The market looked grim, but Alhamdulillah, it didn't take long finding an employer who is willing to give me the chance. So, I took and ran with it!

The pay initially did not meet my expectation, and it was below average if I were to compare it to the market. But guess what, that's what my ego told me. So I killed it. Sure it was tough in the first few months, but I always believe I got the better end of the deal. I learned the ins-and-outs of a global SaaS business, build my technical skills, learned valuable knowledge from seniors, and the code they written. At the end of the day, my pay was readjusted twice, 1-year in! I guess the employer just need some convincing that I can do the job 😂

Fast forward to today, I wouldn't be where I am now, had I not killed my ego early. This is probably the no. 1 lesson I've learned, and I thank Allah for putting me in this path. The challenge now is to stay grounded and insyaAllah, we can 🚀

Hope you learn something from here, ciao!