I have been ’corporate’ for about 8 years now. (Trust me! I told myself, “You are never gonna make it here more than a year”, when I started. But here I am, still on the wagon).  Life here is definitely a bed of roses. Oh! Let me clarify, “bed of roses with thorny stem”, just like any other profession I suppose.

I do not regret my decision of becoming a software engineer. I may not loathe it (but occasionally you might hear me say, “Enough is enough! I’m going to quit today”). It has paid me (really) well. It has taught me skills I thought I could never possess. 8 years is not too short a time to not fall in love with someone (‘something’ in this case). I sort of love it too much sometimes that people closest to me call me a workaholic (And of course, I argue against it tooth and nail after a 3-hour overtime).

Over the years I have been in the industry, I have picked up a few unspoken (or not too loudly spoken) principles – a code that people are “expected” to live by. The more you stay on this assembly line as a software professional, you are bound to realize that these ‘principles’ soon transform into ‘norms’. And if you want to cross the valley of “met-expectations” to “exceeds-expectations”, you will realize these become the validation criteria and you cannot escape them (generally speaking).

Let me ease your curiosity and jump straight into the principles I am talking about. Just one quick note – from my limited and on-going research into the Word of God (The Bible) I have come to a conclusion that God’s principles for living is quite the opposite of what the corporates expect in this regard. Hence the topic – “5 Unspoken Corporate Principles and their inverses (from the Bible)”

1. You have to FIGHT your way up to the top of the ladder (Even if it means intentionally pushing off someone out of their rightful place)

This goes along the lines of “the survival of the fittest”. Days are to be spent either in a defensive or offensive stance. On an ‘Offensive-day’, you spend your time saying things like “I told you so…”, “You should have done this…”, “Ah! You don’t know even this?” or gossiping behind the back of someone whom you feel threatened by. The defensive-day is the worst – you would imagine every possible person who can stab you in the back (which usually means the whole team) and come up with combative strategies to shield yourself from their flaming arrows (if it comes to it). What you might have missed in this fight is that the root of the issue is INSECURITY. When you decide to fight your way to the top, you would inadvertently fall into this trap. Net result – you lose your peace and health eventually. (How do I know this for sure? Experience xD)   

Inverse –

And God will exalt you in due time, if you humble yourselves under his mighty hand by casting all your cares on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6,7

“No weapon that is formed against you will prosper; And every tongue that accuses you in judgment you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their vindication is from Me,” declares the Lord. Isaiah 54:17

Translation –

If you can trust God to exalt you, you can live your life not fighting but in peace, because he will step you up the ladder at the right time (not an early or late promotion, but just when you are ready).  

You don’t have to worry about those who are fighting their way up by putting you down, because God will vindicate you.

2. You have to be the better than everyone else in the team, to get ‘A+’ score. The ones who work with you are not just your team but your competitors. (or arch-enemies in your mind)

In other words, skill up on things that doesn’t even concern you (just because you have to be better than someone else who is good at that particular skill in your team) or chose to be part of a team that is dummier than you (so that you are the best). This needs no explanation – you can clearly see how bad both the approaches are.

Inverse –

And whoever wants to be first among you must be the servant of everyone else. Mark 10:44

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:10

Translation –

You can get the real A+ score not by participating in the so called ‘healthy’ competition, but by serving others through your own skills. In no-time you will become an SME if you just focused on your path and use that to help someone else.  When there is a power struggle in the team, choose to serve than to lead. Your team will become your BFFs you can depend your life on and not some backstabbing competitors.

This also means you will need the attitude of honoring others above yourselves. Otherwise, you will put a servant face externally, but fumigate inside and explode uncontrollably one day.

Prof. Richard Feynman seems to agree,

3. You have to exalt yourself constantly and consistently for visibility. The world has to know your name.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at your work; you need visibility for it to matter. Meaning, you have to copy the whole world when you are appreciated; in a team meeting you should ask smart questions (which is paraphrasing the sentence the presenter just said with a tad bit of intonation pertaining to a question); you should over-power a discussion by cutting-in while the speaker is talking (to show your importance); keep doing some activity; join a club (even if you are not interested in subject) and/or be out-spoken (being quiet is akin to being a coward, in other words, ‘below-expectation’).

Inverse –

“Be careful not to perform your righteous acts before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So, when you give to the needy, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:1-4

For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Matthew 23:12

Translation –

You don’t have to blow your own trumpet. The code you wrote to help someone else in their work, the extra-mile you walked with a client/ a non-technical user over a call/ chat for a technical support, the late hours you put in just to support your team-mate, the cool tech feature you figured and shared with the team in the way you knew to, the off-record hours you put to up-skill yourself – if you thought no one noticed or appreciated, know that God watched what you did in secret and has it in His records. People may not award you, but God will exalt you in a God-size manner if you chose you stay humble and not toot your own horn.

4. Lousiness or Laziness at work can be compensated by exemplary communication skills.

You need not work on yourself enough, you need not work hard enough, you need not give back enough, if you know to talk yourself out of it. Have you seen those whose words speak louder than actions? And you might also notice their visibility helps them move up quicker without enough credits. Don’t let that put you down. Shallowness is never a replacement for depth. Just one storm will prove this to the world.

Inverse –

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23

Translation –

A great communicator who compensates working hard with his talks, may have short wins but will be a failure at the end.

5. You need a sponsor.

This is a beautiful lesson shared by Carla Harris from Morgan Stanley. You could do everything right, but still not grow if you don’t have a sponsor. Who is a sponsor? Someone who speaks on your behalf, who fights for you, when and where you cannot – Ex. in the hiring panel or promotion discussion panel you need someone who advocates for you. The extreme side of this wonderful principle is people trying to buy their sponsor – maybe not through money but by buttering. End result? They lose their own purpose and end up becoming a slave to someone else.

Inverse (for the extreme case) –

Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend. Job 16:21

Translation –

Don’t depend on man to advocate for you. Man will fail but God will not. Are you worried who will speak up for you for your promotion or some issue you are going through? Remember God is your advocate. Who can win any case better than Him?

Wrapping up…

Not sure if you needed this reminder. But I do on a regular basis. One can follow the principles of the corporates meticulously and may or may not achieve their success in life. Some even reach the top of the ladder only to find out it was against a wrong building.

On the other hand, there is an option to live a Hakuna-Matata life if one chose to live by the principles God has laid for man. End result is always success with regards to fulfilling the purpose you were created for!