“Which one are you?
"all employees in a company fall on a spectrum.
On one side, there is the employee who thinks of the company like a job. They come in, they work hard, and they do their job. Some excel at doing their job. But ultimately, it’s a job. They want to make sure they’re fairly compensated for their work, and have interesting projects to pursue. As long as they believe those things are in balance and the arbitrage they can get by going to another company is within a certain bound, they’re stable and stay. In summary, they are rational actors, and the value they add to the company, while valuable, scales linearly.
The other side of the spectrum has a different DNA — they act more like founders than employees. They pour their passion into the company because they believe in its mission and it is how they are wired. They ask and do what is best for the company, not just what is in their job description. They work hard and late, because for them, the company isn’t a job, it is part of their identity. Most of all, they best embody the company’s values, and because they do, their value is not linear: they energize and power startup teams through good times and bad. I think of this class of people as the mitochondria in hypergrowth startups.")
The second one.
It's not enough for me to be part of something, it also needs to be part of me.