> People generally don't do what they're told, but what they expect to be rewarded for.<p>This key assumption behind the whole article is actually a terrible mentality to take for true and self-evident, as the author has -- at least within the scope of one's relationship with a manager.<p>The people that most of us have been impressed by in our careers, and in our life, are often very hard to characterize this way. They aren't going around fitting themselves to the next nearest supervisor's desires (stated or unstated). Instead, they've generally developed a strong and characteristic signature to the way they approach their work and they've learned how to quickly impress that personal signature onto the people around them so that those people know what to expect. Here and there, that mean leaving some workplace for being a poor fit to its needs and capabilities, but the long term arc is towards settling into some role as a respected expert who <i>advises</i> and <i>informs</i> the management team that leverages them.<p>If you think everybody ("generally") will just strive do what their immediate boss wants, and so don't challenge yourself to <i>not</i> do that, you just trap yourself into thrashing around and being frustrated by trying to read people's minds, parse direction vs incentives, impress people who can't even pin down what you're about (because you yourself don't know), etc.<p>It's a dead end. Don't buy into it.<p>A defense of the initial assumption might be made by tossing the bit about the proximate manager who you're either obeying or anticipating and widening the scope to say that we're all pursuing reward over plain obedience. And that's a good defense, but only because the "reward" is something abstract and personal like fulfillment of our own career/lifestyle trajectory or our own vision of the craft.