What My First Job Taught Me About Ego

Adversity is a funny thing. It teaches you a lot about yourself. I experienced a bit of adversity when I got my first job out of the university. Here I was — an economics major — with all the pride of the recent graduate. I felt like a master of the universe. I’m sure you can relate. All my life I’ve been told I could do and be anything. My parents have always supported me the best way they knew how, and telling me that I could be and do anything seemed like a good idea at the time. The only problem is, that at one point, this illusion is bound to meet with reality, and that’s when the bubble bursts.

When I looked for jobs right out of school I had a hard time finding a job. It took me six months of searching and going to interviews and getting rejected before I finally found someone who would take me on.

Why did it take me so long?

Was I not qualified? Did I not have the level of experience that the employers were looking for?

I was qualified. And I did have what employers were looking for. I got called to many interviews, so the problem wasn’t with my applications or my resume. The problem was somewhere else.

The problem was, that I was arrogant. I knew that I had everything figured out, and that I was on the way to the big leagues. This shines through in interviews, and arrogance is not a skill that is high on the list of employers’ preferred abilities. It implied that I would have a hard time learning what they wanted to teach me, and to get their philosophy and values under my skin. They were right.

How arrogant I was!

In order to illustrate how arrogant I was at the time, let me tell you the story of my first job. I started looking for jobs in November 2015, because I wanted to get a head start. It wasn’t until May 2016 that I found someone desperate enough to take me on. I found employment in a company that did consulting in the shipping industry. Something I figured would be right up my alley. How long did I last in this job? All of two days. Two!

I quit on the second day, because I did not feel like the job lived up to the job description, I thought the boss/owner of the company was a dick, and I hated every minute of it there. But the reason I hated it, is because it was so far from my expectation. The bubble burst. My dream of being a star in the workplace from day 1 was shattered. So I quit.

Not long after I managed to find another employer who would take me on. I started working as a business analyst, where analysis was a main part of my job. This sounded right up my alley. I was really excited to get started, and I was sure that this time, I’d hit it out of the park.

Within a week I was bored out of my mind.

This job didn’t live up to my expectation either. Thankfully, my wonderful fiancee told me to suck it up and stick with it. And so I did. And the job got better. But this didn’t mean I was done being arrogant. Far from it. In order to illustrate the size of my ego and arrogance I want to tell you a story.

A Mentor Story

Every new person who started where I started, was assigned a mentor. A person who could show you the ropes and how things were done around the company. Great idea. Unless you don’t get along with your mentor. Which I didn’t. Because she saw me as an arrogant prick who disregarded her experience, and took her for an idiot, because she didn’t have a degree from a university. Which I did. Which is sad. On the flip side I took her for a moron who had gotten to where she’d gotten to by luck, politics and favoritism, rather than by talent and hard work. I have no idea how much of this is true of course, but that was the impression I had at the time.

In addition I also thought little of the work my colleagues were doing, because I couldn’t see the value in it, and it borderline ridiculous to me to spend so many resources on something that seemed to truly inconsequential. Another proof of my idiocy and arrogance at the time. I’ve later been able to put the work that we were doing into a larger context, and as it turns out it was pretty consequential stuff.

As you can probably imagine, this arrogant and low opinion of my colleagues did nothing for me in terms of making friends at work. My arrogance and ego made sure that the situation at work soured quickly, and as a consequence I was ostracized by my team. This took all of three months. Naturally this made me deeply unhappy, because I wanted to contribute. I wanted to be able to show off my skills, and I wanted to add value in my job instead of just feeling as a useless sack of flesh and bones occupying a chair. But the truth is, that is exactly what you are for the first 3 months you’re in a new job straight out of school. If you manage to add just a little value, consider yourself lucky.

After this less than stellar start to my career — which was entirely caused by arrogance and inflated ego — I managed to get transferred to a new project. A project, where I could actually add some value. A project where the skills I had — math, reasoning and analytical skills — was in high demand. This obviously increased how good I felt at work. Another interesting chain of events happened at the same time.

When I transferred to the new project, I was determined to learn from my mistakes, and I decided to table my ego, and start learning with an open mind. I decided that I would learn as much as possible, and get to know people on their terms. You won’t believe the difference this made. It literally made all the difference in the world. I got to know my co-workers on a totally different plane, and we got to a place of mutual respect. It even went so far as actual friendship with two of my colleagues — one of whom is going to be a groomsman at my wedding.

So tabling my ego, turning down my arrogance and learning with an open mind made a huge difference for me. I went from hating my work to enjoying my work. I went from hating my colleagues to enjoying a mutual respect and making a few of them my friends. I went from having a terrible overall experience to having a very good experience. I went from feeling like a caged dog with no future in the company, to using the job as a springboard to the next step in my career.

What I learned

In summary, I learned that approaching my job with humility and an open mind is favorable. It makes every interaction easier. It makes work more enjoyable. It makes getting along with your colleagues easier. No matter who they are. It makes it easier on myself, because it alleviates some of the intense pressure I put on myself to perform. Instead of focusing on the output and what I had to do at work every day to succeed as quickly as possible I went to a mindset of learning. A good day at work is a day where I learn a lot. The more I learn the better I get. The better I get the more valuable I become. The more valuable I become, the more I earn.

Instead of thinking that certain parts of a job is beneath me, and scoff at doing them, I looked for opportunities to learn. Where was the lesson in this? What could I get out of that experience that I could benefit from in the long run?

With this mindset I was able to turn a terrible experience on its head, and get tremendous output from something that I initially disliked. There is no overstating the value in this.

The key take-away is this:

Don’t let your ego get in the way of being the best you can be. Look for the learning experience in every situation. Look for ways to add value no matter the task. Know your worth, and know that you will to show it in time. Before you become a Karate master, you must first wax on wax off. Most of us have been told that we can do anything. And I’m sure that we can. But first we must do everything we can to learn as much as possible. We must improve ourselves so that when our time comes to shine, we can.

We can’t do this if we let our egos get in the way.