Self aggrandizing is a way many people try to make themselves look impressive, but it generally does not work out how people imagine it will.
Self Aggrandizing
*Paywall
The Pain of Possibility
Social Issues
Lost During Migration
The odd places Selection Bias crops up…
Startup Life
Judging Motivation
People are motivated by different things.
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I’ve witnessed people use self aggrandizing with varying degrees of success. There was one who left a trail of fire and burned every bridge like Eli described. A second case was a toxic manager who scapegoated his team for issues. The toxic manager got a lot of praise publicly when things succeeded along with some promotions, but not nearly at the same rate of those managers who took responsibility to build up a team.
There’s definitely better ways to spend social capital than self aggrandizing.
You must have worked with a few Unix guys, Eli. It’s almost funny when you realize that the aggrandizing pros don’t know the difference between a subnet and a submarine sandwich. It may not work in the long-term but big enough environments can offer that toxic stew where it does work well enough to axe great engineers and people from gigs.