Helping others succeed — a false premise

This is a non-technical post
Recently, I have been reading the soft skills book by John Somnez, listening to plural sight course by cory house. Both of them are openly claiming that

to be successful you have to help others succeed

Your primary goal: Provide value to others

Their rationale is that is that if you don’t add value to others, they will not care about you. This is a meme with roots kantfrom altruists and utilitarians. These two others are not alone in these notions, I have been observing this trend in a lot of enterprenaurs.

While I respect and applaud their productivity and career advice, this line of thinking has a flawed philosophy. Before I demonstrate why that is, first let me emphasize the importance of having a right philosophy. Ayn Rand elgoquently wrote

“Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt.”

First, let us observe few concepts both of these life coaches preach

• Your time is important — efficiently manage it
• Your career should not be controlled by others, you have to consciously manage it.
• Don’t let money be the only factor deciding your job — love what you do.
• Aggresively and ruthlessly prioritize and focus what is important to you. Remove distractions
• Excellent work is antidote to office politics.
• Communicate to management and others how good you are

and so on.. Do you see the pattern? You, your happiness and your work are tantamount. Others don’t really matter. But why do they go on proclaiming others success rule yours?

Second, lets try to decipher who they mean by others. Do they mean every human being on planet? What about poor farmers in India or what about oppressed comrades in China? Do you justify that by some sort of greater good argument. Well, then what about the degenarate scum that behead people for religious propoganda? You surely don’t want them to succeed. Am I twisting your words? Ok what about a divorce lawyer for ultra rich in US? Defining your goals in terms of neboulous others is not feasible.

Let’s assume they clearly define who these others are Intelligent, non-controversial, passionate, software developers in the exact same field that are devoted and dependent on your content/contributtions but even they should not be the one’s dictating your life choices and your work. Assume that you really want to break a vacation break for 3 months and doing that will hurt your readership. Do you forego your pleasures for others?

Now, lets turn our attention to the words succeed. Succeed in what and whose terms? Even assuming you got the perfect ‘others’ giving them what they need to succeed is not a simple task. Some of these others are not interested in career, some need money, some others have personal problems, some need religion, how can you target all of them? Some want you to help write their hello world program. Even worse for some of these others, their success is your failure (don’t tell me you haven’t encountered this lot). For argument sake, lets assume you are providing value to a subset of these people. But how much value? How do you know? Is it through your search rank? Measuring your success in relation to others success is again not possible and meaningless.

In conclusion, when they actually say ‘others’ they don’t mean it in a general sense, when they say success they don’t mean success as defined by others. These statements are result of permeation of the kantian philosophy in our culture. It is ok to do everything that you want to do but carefully craft your motives in a sort of altruistic generalizations.

There is nothing wrong with doing what you really want and love but there is no need to coax these ideals in a presentable manner. Self-interest is good, greed is good.

Note that I don’t oppose the idea of helping others or others finding value from your work. Their success could be a by-product of your excellent work. But it should not be your primary goal. Your primary goal is to find what you are passionate about and give your 100% to it. Your joy and meaning to life should come from the work itself, not from the by product.

I consider it a greatest tragedy that Bill gates who has revolutized our lives with PC revolution, caused so much economic prosperity for others while pursuing his dreams and productivity has chosen to redeem himself by philanthropic deeds.

These are highly successful, intelligent people with a lot of clout on this and coming generations of developers and I hope they will examine their premises for the sake of their audiences.