For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or anything. And I don’t wanna overstate what a good friend I am or whatever, I just do this a decent amount. But some part of me does wish I had someone celebrating my wins.
This:
“No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”
really, really hit me for some reason. I’m pretty averse to praise/congratulations — even if I feel it’s deserved! — so I don’t really share my wins with people. How can I expect to have people hype me up if I don’t let them in a little? It’s obvious when I write it all out but I kinda can’t believe how long I’ve been operating this way.
> "Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet"
At the end of one of her interviews on youtbue, Kelly McGonigal explains that -- paraphrased -- being praised to the face creates an intimate context around the praiser and the praisee, in which it's the praiser that sets the tone and initiates the dynamics. In a way, they find themselves in a position where they evaluate you. This is why taking praise gracefully is not trivial; people being praised usually show bodily signs of stress. It takes a real effort for the praisee not to dismiss or belittle their own achievement, just to get out of those dynamics as soon as possible.
At the end of said interview, the host praised Ms. McGonigal to her face. In response, she drew his attention to the fact that while he was talking, speaking those words of appreciation, she swallowed. The act of her swallowing was a kind of stress-relief (IIRC). (I'm sure we can all relate to choking up slightly when praised to the face.) She highlighted the dynamics of being praised to the face live, mid-interview, through her own reaction.
You may be avoiding sharing your wins with others because you instinctively might want to avoid the situation where others qualify you. In that situation, you experience being the subject of an evaluation, and that -- i.e., being talked about -- might feel like a subordinate position to be in, even if the judging is 100% positive. My remedy is to just yield, lean back, give in, permit the other person to be in control, allow them to have all power in that context, and just bask in the glorious warmth they're sending your way. It can be an experience that you remember for decades after, and you're going to start to crave it. (Peer recognition can be a huge motivator, i.e., doing things for recognition. Whether that's good or bad, is a separate topic :))
> For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me.
For the longest time I was this and unfortunately I got bitter over time. But then a couple of years ago I got back into the mindset again. A few bad years later I realized that the more happy you are for your friends, the more happy you are. Do it for yourself and nobody else.
I’m so glad that line helped. It was a last minute addition, and I was thinking about how so many of my friends just don’t share the awesome stuff they do with the world. Share more!!
> Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.
There's nothing wrong with being humble. It only takes one small display of pride to make most people quietly hate you. For example, I opened this blog post and within 20 seconds I loathed the person who wrote it. I find your approach to be much more decent.
Damn, why not just be happy for people? We're all different, and I might be an outlier here but I think very few people actually "hate" people, unless they've wronged them in some very particular way, at least for me personally someone has to have gone very far in wronging me or my friends for me to "hate" anyone!
I have borrowed some "wisdom" in how particles interact. They exchange particles back and forth which strengthen their interaction. That's what I do generally in real life. I sort of share happenings in my life as a sort of nano-influencer within my group of friends. I would say the advice in the blogpost works, sort of. Even if my "contributions" go into a blackhole, I think atleast the ephemeral Universe is watching what I do.
Well, I'm glad you had this realization, and I'm excited for how this will turn out for you. Sometimes you have to show your friends you're excited about something for them to be excited in turn.
Someone I'm "friends" with, recently confessed to me that they very much enjoy watching me fail. I was genuinely surprised because I love watching people win, but I dug into it a bit and apparently it's very common, people really do love to see other people have setbacks, but the research I read seemed to indicate it was more prevalent in friendships, people seem fine with other people getting a head if they don't know them personally. Apparently it's also considerably more common than not for friends to want their friends to fail, or at least take pleasure in their failures. This was all news to me till about a week or so ago, and I'm old. That research actually lead me to this, that I learned is apparently also news to me[1] - "The researchers found that boredom's effects on sadism were mediated by people's desire for excitement and novelty-seeking - essentially, sadistic behavior served as a way to escape the aversive state of boredom." - I sense somehow these two things are somewhat linked.
It's interesting - had they acted this schadenfreude out at all? Or did this confession come completely out of the blue. From what you said, it is the latter - and if so, should this person be judged for this unappealing inner thought, if they take pains not to let that thought influence their behaviour or actions?
I have thought about this a lot over the past few weeks. And I think I should stop thinking about it because it's becoming unhealthy, because I've analyzed our whole relationship back years and gotten into too much speculation in my head.
I'm going through a really really difficult time right now, 3 major areas of my life have broken down simultaneously over the past five months. I was ranting to this guy I've known for years about it (who is very successful but was once jr to me at work) - I would have called him a "good friend" - he was drunk and giggled out something along the lines of "makes me feel strong" - I reacted as you would expect "uh.. really?". We got into a bit, and talked it out (he basically explained it was normal, hence I then went to research if that is true or not), I can see where it sits in his personality now, and I don't think he and I will be friends anymore.
I wonder how this applies to the army. In the army, the people around you in the same situation as you become your mates, and seeing them suffer or die has a big effect on soldiers.
I'd say spending time together forms / ends up in bonding, and those friends aren't friends (although the English-American definition is more like 'peers' anyway); they're former friends. People you used to spend time with. If it comes to school and work, there's competition. Lots of it. In the army, not so much.
For example, in board games, there are several types:
- Competitive games: every person for themselves; there’s one winner, everyone else loses
- Co-op games: every human vs. “the game”, often in the form of AI opponents, or environmental conditions; everyone wins or everyone loses
- Team games: X vs. Y players (and sometimes more than two teams); one team wins, everyone else loses
I feel like work is meant to be a co-op game, but just like co-op games, even though you’re supposed to be on the same team, you often still want to feel like “the best”. Not to the point of bringing the whole team down, but to the point you can secretly feel like you carried the team.
In some hostile work environments, it can actually turn into a team game (inter-departmental competition), or even a competitive game (intra-departmental competition). I’ve been in all of these types of companies, and the co-op ones are obviously the best, especially the ones that care more about the elevation of the team over individual success.
In the military, it’s very much a team game. You are clearly on the same team, and if you don’t cooperate with your team, you will (likely) lose. Obviously, with military — particularly in war — there can be actual life and death at stake, which elevates this to an extreme level.
I never experienced competition like this in the Army, however I have outside of it.
The Army was competitive in a fun way. Where it’s fun to beat your friends in PT or to laugh as they trip over. But when it came down to it, we were on the same team and you would help out a friend.
Inversely, not being a team player would get you bullied.
I wouldn’t say that there is no competition in the army, in fact some selection processes (special forces, who gets up the ladder and earns a seat on the general staff or a star) are probably more competitive than in civilian life. It’s probably more about the general mindset: those extreme situation (and I am not necessarily talking about the competitive ones) create that positive feedback loop though shared hardships and closeness, and probably outweigh that competitiveness.
In the army, competitions are not as much of an issue because the goal is not to make more money or mere promotion, but to serve the country. "Dying in the act of war" is not frowned upon but celebrated as a badge.
Opposite to contrary belief, higher rank individuals (except the topmost levels) are at the front line leading the pack. Army personnel have families, but they kill others who also have families — this is not normal for most people. They get desensitised after practice and war in difficult terrains.
I was told by an army lad, his father had instructions to always move forward. If you turn, your own men can shoot you, mistaking you for an enemy.
One of the best things I've ever done for my own career is being mindful of celebrating the wins of my coworkers. Call out a good refactor that would have gone unnoticed. Email someone's manager or skip level in the lead up to performance reviews and tell them how they made things better. Publicly thank the person that took notes or groomed the backlog or had a noisy on-call rotation.
Everybody appreciates getting celebrated. Managers love hearing that their reports are being appreciated. Leadership loves to hear about wins that are normally invisible to them. You're directly benefiting the people around you, and it reflects well on you as someone who cares, pays attention, has empathy, and has a focus on career growth. Maybe it's just because it's normally a behavior associated with senior ICs, but people hear this stuff and start to look to you as an authority and example.
In my first few years on the job, I would fill out peer evaluations honestly. We have peer evaluations where you rate people out of 5 on various performance elements like "innovative" and "leader" or whatever. Then I survived a couple of rounds of awful layoffs where really good people lost their livelihoods.
Since then, I put 5 out of 5 on everyone for everything always, and say something nice in all the boxes.
Goodness, yes. The last time I put (genuinely constructive) criticism in a peer evaluation, it turned out to be the only non-positive thing that was said about that coworker. So it became a focus of his yearly review.
He later told me about how his review went (casually at a conference; he had no idea I was the source), and I fessed up and clarified what I actually meant. The HR process had twisted it to a much more extreme version of what I was getting at, completely undermining the utility of the feedback.
Nowadays, I'm just gonna give perfect scores and if I have feedback that needs to be given, I'll just tell the coworker directly. (And if I'm not comfortable doing that, then the feedback probably isn't important enough.)
I think a big factor of that is that usually most people just do the positive feedback and don't say anything negative or constructive. So when someone does do so, it's seen as "wow, this must be so bad that they just had to say something, no matter how delicately or toned-down it is being phrased as". These days I just mention the problems and concerns to the people making the decisions because yearly review time is the wrong time to do it. At best they've only been doing this "bad" thing for a month or so, and at worst almost a whole year and no one did anything.
For real. I have bought a car and the same day discovered a minor issue, I had to get it fixed next day. I rated the service 8/10, it was excellent otherwise. Next day I get a very apologetic call, begging me to change my rating, because anything less than 9/10 triggers some kind of investigation process. I said screw it and took the survey again, I'm not going to ruin someone else's work because of this.
I bought a mouse on Amazon that didn't fit my hand and was uncomfortable to use. I gave it a 3-star review. The company immediately refunded me and told me I didn't need to return the product. I was shocked. I get "the customer is king" but I think it's gone too far. A review system where everything is expected to have a perfect rating is not a useful system!
I do the same. Doing HR’s job is not my job. And yet, some how I do.
If I rated any satisfaction metric below 80% my manager’s manager would have him talk to me; there would be flogging until morale improves.
It seems all a game of Emperor’s New Clothes.
Just had a friend leave their company. They had formed a really strong network of people within that company who were in constant contact. This helped them succeed in a lot of ways.
Sounds good? It was, except...most of that bonding was based on lowkey negativity by a set of people who felt powerless, complaining about how others were terrible. Some in this network went down a rabbithole of resentment and are still there. The reality is that yes, there was lots of stuff to be grumpy about.
Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that. I personally try to avoid that mindset.
> Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that.
Yeah this is way too common. And it’s not just trauma which does it. I think it’s its own psychological trap. I think the trap is a self reinforcing cycle of a few thoughts:
1. Other people are bad at things. Look at all the things others do which have flaws! You must be better than all those dolts.
2. You tell yourself you could do something better - but if you try, maybe it’ll have flaws too. Then you’ll be just as bad as anyone else. Uh oh.
3. So you don’t do anything creative, or take responsibility for anything. But you need a reason to tell yourself as to why you’re not doing anything.
4. It must be because other, idiot people stop you. Change is too hard. Doing anything would be “fighting against the system” or something. See point 1.
And the trap is closed. The only way to escape it is to do stuff that you’re bad at. And if you do that, you’ll find all the faults in your own work and feel terrible about yourself.
I think the bottom level of almost any company is packed with people who have this mindset. It’s a disaster on every level - personal and professional. And it’s quite resilient and contagious. People like that are always a little afraid that somebody will call them on it. So they need others to agree with them that staying small is the smart move.
Avoiding them is definitely a smart move. I’ve taken to sometimes needling people like that, just to rattle the cage and see what happens. “You’re so right about those flaws! We’d love your help fixing some of them?” / “I think your idea is wonderful! So what you’re saying is if we got Bob on side, you think we could do it? Let me help - I’ll set up a meeting. With the two of us, I’m sure he’ll come around!”
I generally hate being too positive. But I make an exception for this kind of subtle supportive bullying. This awful mindset can’t survive in the sunlight. It’s fun to see what happens!
I've met a few people that I like to describe as "walking Reddit". Chat with them and they'll always have a story or gossip that's engaging and somewhat infuriating or rage-inducing. One was a colleague who would telling me all the questionable and unkind things the managers in other teams were doing.
I eventually realised that these interactions weren't joyful... they were easy conversations, but they were also demoralising and lowered my energy. These days I try to "manage" my conversations with people like this by steering the topics and (gently) setting boundaries on what I don't want to talk about.
I’ve found my way into a small group of incredibly supportive dads. And one of the ways in which we exercise rooting for our friends is to basically commandeer “jealousy” into a positive thing. “Ah man I’m so jealous that your kids sleep so well!”
“Jealousy” in a non-toxic manner feels kind of right for the task of describing wins that we all know are largely just up to random chance.
Being jealous of someone’s hard work doesn’t really feel the same.
This sounds beautiful. Thank you for sharing. I think Jealousy is a useful and important emotional state in society, and to wish it away and suppress it only makes it show up in violent ways. Like all emotions, if we allow and appreciate (and share!), it flows through us and does not fester.
The nominal subject of the article is "friends", but it appears that the article is best understood as about work friends. Perhaps "allies" would be a more appropriate term? I hope that the author has some work/life balance and can feel the difference between these two categories.
I would define a friend as someone with whom you enjoy spending time. There doesn't need to be a goal except to "hang out". Do you really need a friend to "give meaningful feedback on your projects"? The author's conception of a friend, in the article, feels starkly utilitarian, where friendship is a tool for achieving your other ends rather than an end in itself.
If we interpret friends here as work friends, then I think a little jealousy and zero-sumness is natural. The very first benefit mentioned by the author of rooting for your friends is that it "can improve your career". If your work friend's career improves, but yours doesn't, then doesn't that defeat the (author's) purpose?
> It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.
I deeply believe that this is utterly naive.
It's not inherently false—we could make it true, if we really wanted—but it's empirically false, for the obvious reason that those who are lifted tend to be greedy and want to keep all the gains for themselves. Whether that's because power corrupts, because power attracts the corrupt, or some combination of the two, the problem is that those at the top come to feel that they deserve to be at top, that they're better than those who are not at the top and have been rewarded for their superiority, and thus from their perspective it would almost be immoral to "reward" those below who aren't as "good".
Agree. The article treats friendship as a career tool rather than a meaningful connection. Real friends aren’t just hype men or professional assets — they’re people who stick around through ups and downs.
> > It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.
> I deeply believe that this is utterly naive.
While I don't fully disagree, I have often seen younger employees fall into the trap of overly chasing individual advantage over collective benefit. In other words, trying to be an all-star rather than a team player. Perhaps this is from schooling, where all that matters is getting an "A", but in the workplace it often results in being disliked and less likely to be promoted.
Relationships are of various kinds that extend in various dimensions. What the Author has talked about definitely sounds more like a "work-friend" relationship, but is not entirely separate from a "friend-friend" that you define.
> It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.
This is true, but with context. "Growth" and "Comfort" are two different elements of a good friendship. We can replace "rising" with "happy", and the same quote works for comfort.
Are both necessary? Depends on how you define "friendship". If comfort is the only thing, you dog can be a comfortable companion. But for a human friendship to last longer, both must enjoy each other company for longer time horizon, and that needs growth in both. This growth needs not be only in career, but mental too.
With such growth, envy can't come in and corrode the bond.
> With such growth, envy can't come in and corrode the bond.
Well, if we're talking about work-friends, the classic conflict would be when one co-worker is promoted but the other isn't, and indeed the one becomes the other's boss. That's basically a zero-sum game, and it's difficult for a friendship to survive that scenario.
It feels like it’s probably most applicable to people who do similar work as you and who you talk shop with. I wouldn’t consider these work friends, which to me are people at the same place of work that you wouldn’t hang out with if not for work.
I think this post really shows cultural differences in the term 'friendship'. Where I grew up (in Germany) most people I know would not abandon friendship because they read a blog post. a real friendship is something special that you maintain also in difficult times and sometimes people are jealous, but that can change and I think the understanding of friendship as a kind of 'success accellerator' is something that sounds quite stange for me. From my definition friendship is exactly the kind of relationship that comes without such expectations
Personally, I wouldn’t normally think of a friendship as a “success accelerator” because that reduces a friendship to its material benefits. I think you can have strong and meaningful relationships without this aspect at all.
Still, I do want to acknowledge that if I’m in a position to help accelerate a friend’s success, I will. I don’t know whether I’d say I expect my friends to do the same for me since it’s so contextual. At the same time I would expect a certain level of reciprocity if they’re in the position to reciprocate, although I admit I’m struggling to articulate my expectations clearly, since they’re not simply one to one.
I think the contents of said blog post is material to the conversation at hand.
The opposite of a "success accelerator" hypeman
would be someone that's constantly tearing you down, talking bar about you behind your back, and constantly and actively trying to get you to fail. If it's the contents of blog post that helps someone recognize such a person isn't really their friend, why is it even relevant what bit if media helped them come to that realization?
Readit News
This:
“No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”
really, really hit me for some reason. I’m pretty averse to praise/congratulations — even if I feel it’s deserved! — so I don’t really share my wins with people. How can I expect to have people hype me up if I don’t let them in a little? It’s obvious when I write it all out but I kinda can’t believe how long I’ve been operating this way.
Anyway, great post!
At the end of one of her interviews on youtbue, Kelly McGonigal explains that -- paraphrased -- being praised to the face creates an intimate context around the praiser and the praisee, in which it's the praiser that sets the tone and initiates the dynamics. In a way, they find themselves in a position where they evaluate you. This is why taking praise gracefully is not trivial; people being praised usually show bodily signs of stress. It takes a real effort for the praisee not to dismiss or belittle their own achievement, just to get out of those dynamics as soon as possible.
At the end of said interview, the host praised Ms. McGonigal to her face. In response, she drew his attention to the fact that while he was talking, speaking those words of appreciation, she swallowed. The act of her swallowing was a kind of stress-relief (IIRC). (I'm sure we can all relate to choking up slightly when praised to the face.) She highlighted the dynamics of being praised to the face live, mid-interview, through her own reaction.
You may be avoiding sharing your wins with others because you instinctively might want to avoid the situation where others qualify you. In that situation, you experience being the subject of an evaluation, and that -- i.e., being talked about -- might feel like a subordinate position to be in, even if the judging is 100% positive. My remedy is to just yield, lean back, give in, permit the other person to be in control, allow them to have all power in that context, and just bask in the glorious warmth they're sending your way. It can be an experience that you remember for decades after, and you're going to start to crave it. (Peer recognition can be a huge motivator, i.e., doing things for recognition. Whether that's good or bad, is a separate topic :))
For the longest time I was this and unfortunately I got bitter over time. But then a couple of years ago I got back into the mindset again. A few bad years later I realized that the more happy you are for your friends, the more happy you are. Do it for yourself and nobody else.
What gets me is when I have a few times found the people I am hyping for are actually putting me down, or selling me out to management.
> Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.
Dead Comment
If particles interact by exchanging particles, how do they interact with the particles they exchange?
Good luck!
Some reading:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43119265_Envy_and_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-evaluation_maintenance_th...
https://www.scribd.com/document/796080571/Document-2
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44068463
I'd say spending time together forms / ends up in bonding, and those friends aren't friends (although the English-American definition is more like 'peers' anyway); they're former friends. People you used to spend time with. If it comes to school and work, there's competition. Lots of it. In the army, not so much.
For example, in board games, there are several types:
- Competitive games: every person for themselves; there’s one winner, everyone else loses
- Co-op games: every human vs. “the game”, often in the form of AI opponents, or environmental conditions; everyone wins or everyone loses
- Team games: X vs. Y players (and sometimes more than two teams); one team wins, everyone else loses
I feel like work is meant to be a co-op game, but just like co-op games, even though you’re supposed to be on the same team, you often still want to feel like “the best”. Not to the point of bringing the whole team down, but to the point you can secretly feel like you carried the team.
In some hostile work environments, it can actually turn into a team game (inter-departmental competition), or even a competitive game (intra-departmental competition). I’ve been in all of these types of companies, and the co-op ones are obviously the best, especially the ones that care more about the elevation of the team over individual success.
In the military, it’s very much a team game. You are clearly on the same team, and if you don’t cooperate with your team, you will (likely) lose. Obviously, with military — particularly in war — there can be actual life and death at stake, which elevates this to an extreme level.
The Army was competitive in a fun way. Where it’s fun to beat your friends in PT or to laugh as they trip over. But when it came down to it, we were on the same team and you would help out a friend.
Inversely, not being a team player would get you bullied.
Opposite to contrary belief, higher rank individuals (except the topmost levels) are at the front line leading the pack. Army personnel have families, but they kill others who also have families — this is not normal for most people. They get desensitised after practice and war in difficult terrains.
I was told by an army lad, his father had instructions to always move forward. If you turn, your own men can shoot you, mistaking you for an enemy.
Everybody appreciates getting celebrated. Managers love hearing that their reports are being appreciated. Leadership loves to hear about wins that are normally invisible to them. You're directly benefiting the people around you, and it reflects well on you as someone who cares, pays attention, has empathy, and has a focus on career growth. Maybe it's just because it's normally a behavior associated with senior ICs, but people hear this stuff and start to look to you as an authority and example.
Since then, I put 5 out of 5 on everyone for everything always, and say something nice in all the boxes.
He later told me about how his review went (casually at a conference; he had no idea I was the source), and I fessed up and clarified what I actually meant. The HR process had twisted it to a much more extreme version of what I was getting at, completely undermining the utility of the feedback.
Nowadays, I'm just gonna give perfect scores and if I have feedback that needs to be given, I'll just tell the coworker directly. (And if I'm not comfortable doing that, then the feedback probably isn't important enough.)
Deleted Comment
Sounds good? It was, except...most of that bonding was based on lowkey negativity by a set of people who felt powerless, complaining about how others were terrible. Some in this network went down a rabbithole of resentment and are still there. The reality is that yes, there was lots of stuff to be grumpy about.
Rooting for your friends is great. But people sometimes bond over wishing harm for their foes. Shared trauma does that. I personally try to avoid that mindset.
Yeah this is way too common. And it’s not just trauma which does it. I think it’s its own psychological trap. I think the trap is a self reinforcing cycle of a few thoughts:
1. Other people are bad at things. Look at all the things others do which have flaws! You must be better than all those dolts.
2. You tell yourself you could do something better - but if you try, maybe it’ll have flaws too. Then you’ll be just as bad as anyone else. Uh oh.
3. So you don’t do anything creative, or take responsibility for anything. But you need a reason to tell yourself as to why you’re not doing anything.
4. It must be because other, idiot people stop you. Change is too hard. Doing anything would be “fighting against the system” or something. See point 1.
And the trap is closed. The only way to escape it is to do stuff that you’re bad at. And if you do that, you’ll find all the faults in your own work and feel terrible about yourself.
I think the bottom level of almost any company is packed with people who have this mindset. It’s a disaster on every level - personal and professional. And it’s quite resilient and contagious. People like that are always a little afraid that somebody will call them on it. So they need others to agree with them that staying small is the smart move.
Avoiding them is definitely a smart move. I’ve taken to sometimes needling people like that, just to rattle the cage and see what happens. “You’re so right about those flaws! We’d love your help fixing some of them?” / “I think your idea is wonderful! So what you’re saying is if we got Bob on side, you think we could do it? Let me help - I’ll set up a meeting. With the two of us, I’m sure he’ll come around!”
I generally hate being too positive. But I make an exception for this kind of subtle supportive bullying. This awful mindset can’t survive in the sunlight. It’s fun to see what happens!
I eventually realised that these interactions weren't joyful... they were easy conversations, but they were also demoralising and lowered my energy. These days I try to "manage" my conversations with people like this by steering the topics and (gently) setting boundaries on what I don't want to talk about.
Deleted Comment
“Jealousy” in a non-toxic manner feels kind of right for the task of describing wins that we all know are largely just up to random chance.
Being jealous of someone’s hard work doesn’t really feel the same.
What I rly wanted to say is admitting jealousy vs showing signs of it are two diff things and you guys nailed it. Glad you have a good support group.
I would define a friend as someone with whom you enjoy spending time. There doesn't need to be a goal except to "hang out". Do you really need a friend to "give meaningful feedback on your projects"? The author's conception of a friend, in the article, feels starkly utilitarian, where friendship is a tool for achieving your other ends rather than an end in itself.
If we interpret friends here as work friends, then I think a little jealousy and zero-sumness is natural. The very first benefit mentioned by the author of rooting for your friends is that it "can improve your career". If your work friend's career improves, but yours doesn't, then doesn't that defeat the (author's) purpose?
> It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.
I deeply believe that this is utterly naive.
It's not inherently false—we could make it true, if we really wanted—but it's empirically false, for the obvious reason that those who are lifted tend to be greedy and want to keep all the gains for themselves. Whether that's because power corrupts, because power attracts the corrupt, or some combination of the two, the problem is that those at the top come to feel that they deserve to be at top, that they're better than those who are not at the top and have been rewarded for their superiority, and thus from their perspective it would almost be immoral to "reward" those below who aren't as "good".
> > It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats. > I deeply believe that this is utterly naive.
While I don't fully disagree, I have often seen younger employees fall into the trap of overly chasing individual advantage over collective benefit. In other words, trying to be an all-star rather than a team player. Perhaps this is from schooling, where all that matters is getting an "A", but in the workplace it often results in being disliked and less likely to be promoted.
> It’s deeply believing that a rising tide lifts all boats.
This is true, but with context. "Growth" and "Comfort" are two different elements of a good friendship. We can replace "rising" with "happy", and the same quote works for comfort.
Are both necessary? Depends on how you define "friendship". If comfort is the only thing, you dog can be a comfortable companion. But for a human friendship to last longer, both must enjoy each other company for longer time horizon, and that needs growth in both. This growth needs not be only in career, but mental too.
With such growth, envy can't come in and corrode the bond.
Well, if we're talking about work-friends, the classic conflict would be when one co-worker is promoted but the other isn't, and indeed the one becomes the other's boss. That's basically a zero-sum game, and it's difficult for a friendship to survive that scenario.
Still, I do want to acknowledge that if I’m in a position to help accelerate a friend’s success, I will. I don’t know whether I’d say I expect my friends to do the same for me since it’s so contextual. At the same time I would expect a certain level of reciprocity if they’re in the position to reciprocate, although I admit I’m struggling to articulate my expectations clearly, since they’re not simply one to one.
The opposite of a "success accelerator" hypeman would be someone that's constantly tearing you down, talking bar about you behind your back, and constantly and actively trying to get you to fail. If it's the contents of blog post that helps someone recognize such a person isn't really their friend, why is it even relevant what bit if media helped them come to that realization?