Making a Difference
By: Helen Ma
Tags: Work Life Balance, Silicon Valley, Purpose, Work

“What you do is important, you are making a difference every day!” “Come make an impact at Random Startup #5645!”

If you work in Silicon Valley, chances are you’ve heard a version of the above before, usually from recruiters or a pep talk by management.

As someone who spent twenty years believing I was making a difference, it was a tough realization that took many years for me to finally accept the painful truth — it was all just a pleasant fiction.

The truth is, the vast majority of employees in large corporations make absolutely no difference whatsoever, regardless of how hard they work or how productive they are. The average plumber may not have stock options, but when it comes to making a difference in people’s lives, there is no contest.

Why? Because the difference you make as a rank and file employee is precisely your ability to say no to senior management — they are the ones who decide what kind of difference you get to make.

The fact that employees don’t make any difference has nothing to do with how talented or productive they are. It has everything to do with what their talents and productivity is channeled toward, and the simple truth is — they don’t have a say in that at all.

Saying “how high?” when your manager says “jump” is not making a difference. Completing your given tasks early and well is not making a difference. If there are hundreds of people lined up behind you who would say yes if you say no, you are not making a difference. Working 80 hour weeks, neglecting your health and your family to achieve the management’s objectives is not making a difference, either, except maybe to your own health and your family.

Sure, management would love to hear your ideas on how to increase productivity or cut costs, but try having a conversation with them about the business model or pay structure and see how far you get. It’s not your job to make a difference on your terms, your job is to make someone else’s difference while getting paid for it. Why would you need “compensation” for making a difference?

So why is it such a prevalent message, especially in Silicon Valley? Because it gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of ownership, and people with those work a lot harder than people who don’t. That’s the brutal truth of it. That’s the honest bottom line.

It took me twenty years to finally accept that nothing I did made any difference in the scheme of things, except maybe gave me opportunities to get better paying jobs that also makes no difference. Did I make a difference working on the iPhone or the iPad? The painful truth is none whatsoever. Those products would have shipped exactly the way they did, with or without me, because I was not in a position to define what they are, or how they are built. If I had said no to anything I was asked to build, there are literally hundreds of people who would say yes and probably do a better job of it.

So how does one make a difference? Well, I believe the reason the world is so messed up is because it’s full of shitty people. Sorry, let me be more precise. The world is messed up because people are behaving poorly, and they do so because they see everyone else around them behaving poorly.

The only way we can make the world a better place is by being a positive influence for those around us, because better people make better societies. We make the world a better place by making someone’s life better, starting with people in your lives. Starting with yourself, your family, your friends, your coworkers and even strangers you will never see again. Every interaction creates living reality for everyone involved, so make it as good as you can possibly make it.

That is really all the meaningful difference we can make, and that is how you really make the world a better place.