Psychology for Silicon Valley: Mimetic Theory (Part 3)

I was laid off from my very first job! And that too, right after the ‘new hire’ bootcamp.

This is the first time I'm sharing it publicly and also adding my thoughts from the lens of mimetic theory.

Table of Contents

• Loving what you do for a living

• Choose your ‘models’ wisely

• The mimetic traps of Silicon Valley

  • Words of wisdom from Steve Jobs

  • Thiel’s warning to entrepreneurs

  • Endowment effect + Path Dependency

  • Munger dog and bureaucratic infighting!

• Appendix: Book Recommendations

Loving what you do for a living

I was hired as part of a college recruitment drive by a small cybersecurity company in Chennai, India. It was one of the first companies to kick off the campus recruitment that year (2001).

While my engineering degree was focused on electronics and telecommunication, I was tinkering with computers, Linux and hacking on the side.

I got selected after multiple rounds of written and verbal interviews and was super-excited to start my career as a cybersecurity professional.

There was a strict clause for the campus recruitment drive - once you are selected by a company, you can’t interview with any other companies that follow.

Many other medium to large Indian IT services companies followed and many of my college mates got selected. Their pay package was MUCH higher than what the local company offered me.

While this comparison could have stolen my joy, I didn’t feel bad at that moment. Hacking and cybersecurity were my passions, and having a job that I loved doing was just exciting to me.

Fast forward to the last day of the bootcamp, we were informed that our positions were eliminated. This was 2001 and the ‘dotcom’ bubble popped and wreaked havoc with ripple effects across the globe. A large project that we were originally hired for was cancelled by the potential client and so we were let go.

This was a big shocker to me as a young college graduate. It was a Friday, and I went home, updated my resume, and began applying to other companies.

Choose your ‘models’ wisely

Fortunately, the company needed a few new employees for other projects, and I was one of the top performers in the bootcamp training. So, I got a call from HR over the weekend and was informed that I can come back to the office on Monday - it was as if I was never laid off. But, that didn’t mean that no financial hardships followed…

I did go back on Monday and the experiences and learning that ensued over the next few years was life changing. Given that it was a small company, I was not doing just programming. I wore multiple hats - system/network administration, marketing, sales support, customer support, penetration testing, etc. I presented at conferences, wrote newspaper articles and even did an TV interview with a local news channel plugging the company’s products.

But, things were not rosy on the financial side of the house. The company was still struggling to make payroll. There were a few months when I didn’t get any salary while my peers from school and college were making 2x-3x my salary.

I stayed with my parents and packed lunch to work like a school kid, not able to afford to eat out on a daily basis. Meanwhile, my friends began buying motorcycles, cars, and making down payments on new homes.

The mimetic desire to seek what they desired was definitely there. I would be lying if I didn’t feel the pressure when I met them to hang out.

But, I didn’t fall for the temptation to switch jobs to make more money because something weird happened to me. I found a new ‘model’ in the CEO of the company.

We discussed how mimetic desire is triangular in Part 1, involving the subject, model, and object. The subject mimics the model and they both desire the object. One thing to note here is that the object doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical thing per se.

The CEO was originally a government employee in India. He quit his pension-paying job and started a company that initially focussed on helping tax law professionals. He was an autodidact and learned about information security out of his own interest. He then started building a small portfolio of security products on the side while the income from the tax product kept the company afloat.

(Even though I didn’t have a name for it back then, this is were I first saw how to implement an ‘exploit vs explore’ approach in a business. More on that in a future newsletter.)

He became my primary mimetic model at that time. I noticed how he was always tinkering on the side - not only in his personal life transitioning from a government employee to an entrepreneur, but also how he kept exploring new product ideas even as an entrepreneur.

I was fascinated with the huge bookshelf and the extensive variety of books in his office. He let me borrow his books (some of which I couldn’t afford to buy at that time) and exposed me to authors that expanded my horizon. I curiously started to observe how he ran the company working very closely with small teams building different security products.

The company’s financials slowly improved and many employees including me ended up getting pay raises and promotions. When a new opportunity came knocking, I moved on as well.

Fast forward to today, the company is not a multi-billion dollar company. But, it is still viable and adding value to its customer base. The point of the game is to stay in the game. Small is beautiful and also less fragile.

I didn’t escape my mimetic desires, but just changed who my model was. I kept reading and learning from many different disciplines over the past 23 years.

I now have a large bookshelf too, albeit digital. As it turns out, this very newsletter I started as an entrepreneur is also focussed on promoting the adoption of multidisciplinary thinking.

The first step of any transformation is the transformation of the individual. If you are not self-aware as an individual, it will certainly impact your success as an entrepreneur or a leader/executive at a corporation.

Entrepreneurs and leaders are humans too and they have their own models and mimetic desires. Let’s explore some of the implications of mimetic theory on those two personas now…

The mimetic traps of Silicon Valley

After spending 15 years in Silicon Valley, I've witnessed firsthand the competitive nature that emerges as new millionaires are minted from IPOs and acquisitions.

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