Ambition | Ep. 256

[JP] (0:00 - 0:27)

It made me think about the other side of age bias, because whenever I hear age bias, I'm always like, oh, oh, gosh, that's so awful. Why are you judging people by age? Right.

Yeah. I was always thinking about it more of like, are you technically able to do certain things? Not necessarily like your appetite for ambition, you know, your tolerance for change.

[Dillon] (0:36 - 1:03)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to the Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

It's not as satisfying when it's just you and me, because I fully expect it. I really want to see the response from a guest, so I feel like you wasted a very good one.

[JP] (1:04 - 1:06)

Yeah. Because it's just you and me.

[Dillon] (1:06 - 1:20)

I know. I know. And I'm your host.

My name is Dillon Young. JP, before we started recording, you said you really like something I said, and I'm not just saying that, guys. JP really did say that.

[JP] (1:20 - 2:58)

I really did like it. I really, really did like it. To you.

Okay. Okay. So when we talk about sort of like our goals with work, we always talk sort of about work-life balance or, you know, maybe these things sort of like just taking work as sort of like face value, I guess, wanting to get a bit deeper into, I think, more of purposeful work, but in a different sense.

Purposeful work being, can I be a person who works at one level, not necessarily looking to be promoted, but somebody who wants to come in to do good work, and like, that's it. I'm not looking for, again, to be promoted. I'm not saying that I'm not a team player or, you know, I can't work well with others, but, you know, maybe I don't want to be at all the events.

I think some of us are very intrinsically just motivated. And I just don't think that everything has to be on an escalator. Like, everything does not have to automatically escalate.

Like, you're making, and I say this with all seriousness, if you make fries at McDonald's and you're able to live and you enjoy making the fries at McDonald's, but you do not want to be a manager, like, is this okay or are we going to, like, chide this person for their lack of ambition?

[Dillon] (2:58 - 4:32)

I'm glad you brought it back because that's where I was going to start is your initial question was, is this okay? Can I be that? And that's what I was talking about and what you said you wanted to discuss here.

I believe the answer is yes. But with caveats, it depends on the company, right? I think, you know, I grew up in the startup world where ambition was in many ways more important than your aptitude.

Any body of work you had done previously, it was how hard are you willing to work this time? And what I said to you before we started recording is, like, I don't know how valuable that is anymore or whether, maybe not, I think there is probably a ton of value in that. You know, I was just talking with somebody today.

He's like, I'm putting in 15, 16 hour days trying to stand this thing up. He's a leader of CS at a series A organization. But he's also 45.

And I was like, how does that feel? Because I'm not even 40 yet and I wouldn't do that. And he's like, yeah, I'm wondering whether it was the right choice.

And so I think, look, does that attitude work better in a GE, in a public company? Probably. But I think that there are pockets of that also in the small technology companies.

I just think it's not as prevalent.

[JP] (4:32 - 5:38)

You know, as you said that, it made me think about the other side of age bias, because whenever I hear age bias, I'm always like, oh, oh, gosh, that's so awful. Why are you judging people by age, right? Yet, I was always thinking about it more of like, are you technically able to do certain things?

Not necessarily like your appetite for ambition, you know, your tolerance for change. And, you know, like you said, if it's a growing company or like a startup, there's a lot of change, volatility. And so perhaps they feel like somebody who's younger, maybe doesn't need to be paid as much.

You know, there's some things I'm starting to think about in terms of like age bias, where even though that's a really bad word and, you know, like illegal in a lot of places, it is illegal. You can you can you can still hear like the other side where that may be coming from. You know what I mean?

[Dillon] (5:38 - 7:04)

Like, yeah, yeah. I mean, exactly. The ambition is probably the PC way of or at least one facet of being PC about age bias.

I think, you know, this is the conversation women have all the time. I see this all the time of women talking about I had to take a step back from my career because I was helping to build my family. And that's that's a big one.

I think that's another facet of this. I think, you know, it's a much larger topic. But I mean, I remember I'm sure I've told this story on the podcast.

I had a job interview years ago where they wanted me to come in and lead their CS team, I think, or maybe it was a strategic role. And but they would only schedule interviews on the weekend because they were so busy. And I said, hey, no, thanks.

That's not going to work for me, because that to me was a sign of what they were going to expect. I got a family. I got a young son like I'm not going to spend my weekends interviewing future CSMs. I'm not going to spend my weekends having meetings because you couldn't fit it into your regular work week. And I guess what I'll say is that there's value in companies recognizing that that's what they're looking for. But it's also I don't agree with it.

[JP] (7:06 - 8:19)

Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is obviously like just the tip of the iceberg with this topic of ambition and, you know, how how things sort of play out, because, you know, we we're not we're talking about ambition, which is sort of more of the the internal feeling or motivation. But the other side of this is like promotion, right? Like is promotion always a good thing?

You know, is promotion always in your best interest? I mean, there's definitely some some layers to that. But yeah, I'll just say I think, you know, you're really I think you hit it on the head when you to the type of company or maybe also like the kind of industry, you know, some people like maybe if you're I don't even know if bellhop's the right word, but let's say you're working in like hospitality.

Yeah, bleep that out. Bellhop's a derogatory term. But if you're like hospitality management and like maybe they want someone who's stable, wow, that guy's been here for 10 years, you know, always like, I don't know.

I think that it's definitely more of an asset in some places than others. But I struggle with this.

[Dillon] (8:19 - 9:32)

I struggle with this because while I there are parts of it that I think are untouchable, like asking somebody to work really long hours on a regular basis, to me is tacky. It's kind of goes against what we're trying to build, particularly if there's no ownership in it. If I'm going to get paid or I've got an opportunity to get paid down the line.

Cool. But if I'm just a guy or you give me some shares, but it's sort of like it's not life changing. Like, what's the point?

So, OK, so I think that's like a third rail can't touch it. But I think, on the other hand, when I see people who, you know, work in retail their entire life, I'm like, dude, you could get into tech sales and make a ton more money and use a lot of the same skills you already have. So like I even have this sort of like conundrum or paradox in my head of like, I still get caught judging people for that.

Anyway, that is our time, JP. This is a fun little one, just a little one for people to to noodle on. Maybe we'll continue it at another time.

But for now, we got to say goodbye.

-: 10:15

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