Doing Your Best Work, Information Dissemination, and Positivity
Satya Nadella, Patrick Collison, and Mark Cuban
Microsoft Chairman & CEO: AI, chip shortage, empathy, and poetry | In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
Never wait for your next job to do your best work
Satya shared invaluable advice towards the end of this interview, paraphrased below:
I'd say the best advice for anyone starting out is never wait for your next job to do your best work. I don't remember ever at Microsoft feeling like “Oh I have to get a promotion in order to feel more satisfied or more fulfilled,” because I somehow felt I had gotten the lottery, and I was in the best job I could ever be in.
And I'm not saying you shouldn't have ambition, that you shouldn't strive for your next promotion, that you shouldn't advocate for yourself or others… you absolutely should do all that. But at the same time really my advice would be also to take the job you have at hand, and go at it with all of your vigor and energy…
And also define it as broadly as possible…I never defined my job narrowly, and that I think was both very satisfying in the moment, and it helped land me the next job.
Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) - Craft, Beauty, & The Future of Payments | Dwarkesh Podcast
The power of information dissemination
Near the beginning of this episode, Patrick Collison complements the podcast host, Dwarkesh, for his success as at podcast at such a young age. Dwarkesh deflects the praise, and says, “But a podcast isn't...I'm not imagining recombinant DNA or anything.” To which Patrick replies:
Look, I think information dissemination is a really valuable thing in the world...The guy who last I heard was in the lead for Nat's Scroll Prize, Nat told me learned about the Scroll Prize listening to your podcast. So I think increasing the catalytic surface area of certain kinds of information is a valuable thing in the world. So I'm very glad you're doing the podcast.
Patrick is referring to Nat Friedman (former CEO of GitHub ) and his scroll prize project, in which he challenged people to help “resurrect an ancient library from the ashes of a volcano,” using machine learning to decipher ancient texts.
“Information dissemination” is very powerful, and perhaps somewhat overlooked because it is difficult to track the impact. There’s not really a quantitative way to know how many podcast listeners took action because of what they heard on some episode. But the act of interviewing people and putting interesting ideas out into the world is clearly valuable, and in ways that we often may not even realize.
Mark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs | Lex Fridman Podcast
Embracing a positive attitude
At one point in this episode Lex asks Mark Cuban how he defines success, to which Mark replies:
Waking up every day with a smile, excited about the day. People always say when you get that kind of money, does it make you happy? My answer always is if you are happy when you are broke, you’re going to be really, really, really happy when you’re rich…If you were miserable in your job before, there’s a good chance you’re still going to be miserable if that’s just who you are.
Of course, not having money can make life very challenging. But to what extent is happiness dependent on money? Cuban seems like he’s always had a positive attitude, whether selling door-to-door as a kid or managing multi-million dollar businesses. In that sense, he has always maintained a mindset of success.