Question of the Day

What's the best piece of career advice you've ever gotten?

Many years ago, while working in a corporate office not long after graduating college, I was complaining bitterly to my dad about my boss, whom I liked, but often made very foolish management decisions, especially with regard to employee morale. Like, monumentally foolish decisions, which would result in a wave of resignations or some other stafftastrophe, grim inevitabilities that were glaringly evident to everyone else from ten miles away.

I finished my rant about the latest terrible example, and how my boss had failed to listen to my warning about the inexorable dire outcome—I was so frustrated; why didn't my boss ever see the obvious?!—and my dad very calmly said to me, "Listen, you're probably going to be smarter than everyone you work for your whole life. You might as well reconcile yourself to that fact now so you don't spend your entire career constantly annoyed by it."

He just said it matter-of-factly, between bites of his dinner, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, but it a revelation to me. I might be smarter than the person who employs me. Shit.

That advice seriously lowered my stress level for many years, for all the years until I became my own boss.