“Turn your shit in".
That was what my former boss told me in the welcome-on-board message.
It happened during my first experience of working far from home. I had the lucky intuition to accept a job from a software factory I never met before. I was from a consulting company, and the new company hired me to start a new consulting business unit.
I was young.
It was my first time as “head of something”.
I accepted without hesitation.
That was my first-hand experience where I started learning how is fucking essential to don’t follow the gut of being influenced by the first impression: working as a “managing consultant” in the wild world of coding genius is like being a super expert of Math in a group of super athletic people. Finding a common interest topic during everyday short talks was quite embarrassing.
I will never forget that first message, also because it became a way of working for the upcoming years.
He graduated from a professional high school of Computer Science and later became a lab teacher. He came from a working-class family, and his main priority was to become a successful manager. He founded his own company and developed code to help enterprises manage HR processes more efficiently. As a teacher, he attracted the most talented students before they decided to attend university.
Trying to recall the exact words is hard, but the meaning is like this.
“You think to come here and feeling better than the majority of them because you are a PhD and they are only high-school coders. So you’ll get here and start shooting shit about management, business, requirements, and not doing shit like the others here do. Just to be clear: if you’ll do that, turn your shit in! So, instead of saying, “Do that - don’t do that”, move your ass. Remember, as an entrepreneur, your only priority is to write down a row at the end of each month. If the revenue is greater than the costs, you are doing great if not, you are just shooting the shit”.
A slap in the face.
Well, I loved it.
After 15 years, the phrase "write down the row at the end of the month" still sticks with me.