On Marketing
As I see more high-performing environments, the idea of marketing has become more apparent. In this blog post, I want to detail my reflections on the subject, how I see it reflected in the real world, and how to limit its impact.
Reflections:
My first interaction with the subject goes back to listening to Diary of an Oxygen Thief. The main character used his marketing skills to lie, avoid repercussions for alcoholism, slack through work, and pick up girls.
His reliance on marketing to deceive and compensate for his shortcomings deeply troubled me. Reflecting on myself, I realized that adopting such an approach would undermine my relationships and hinder my personal growth. With this understanding, I rejected the mindset set out within the book.
In college, I quickly realized not everyone shared the same values. Stories of competitive scammers manipulating research results, friends betraying each other to enter clubs, and individuals self-aggrandizing for higher research paper authorship revealed the cultural norms of aggressive academic environments.
This form of “marketing” was especially true when spots, timing, or mental resources are constrained; people relied on rhetoric and force to get ahead. People who rely on this deception (marketers for lack of a better word) lead to tensions and damage to the social contract and mutual benefit clause that it typically entails.
On the surface, these individuals do not pose much of a threat; however, engaging in large-scale projects with them is where issues start to bubble up as they fail to meet expectations. Derooting these marketers from group or large-scale projects is a hard problem to tackle. This is because it’s in their best interest not to be caught out. Many of them, at least within Hopkins, have made it through competitive high or middle schools working on large-scale group projects and these traits are ingrained into their base functioning and fully self-rationalized.
This is even more complex to observe during group projects because many times that this demeanor becomes apparent are during time-pressured moments, which mitigates the ability to recognize this social pattern. It is equally important, then to take time to assess the actions of yourself and others to see if the people you work with support healthy cooperation.
The two criteria I outline below are:
- Willingness to finish the task
- Proactive management of deadlines
1. Willingness to complete the task.
C(x) = x can complete the task F(x) = x finished the task W(x) = x is willing to complete the task B(x) = subjective measure of x’s task performance
(C(x) => F(x)) => W(x)
If someone can complete the task, it shouldn’t be assigned to others. A person should finish it unless they’re actively working on another task for the person they want to assign it to.
I’d highlight the logical fallacy of the statement: “If person A is better at the task than person B, they should do it as they’re faster.” This is only the case in a group situation if person B is providing some additional form of service to person A.
As such, this conclusion isn’t valid:
((C(x) ∧ B(y) > B(x)) => F(x)) => W(x)
2. Proactive deadline management
This issue is overlooked. Many following this high-level “marketing” narrative struggle with deadlines. Pushing the project to a deadline places loss-aversion over everyone’s head and causes disregard of a critical analysis of others’ performance. This allows the invalid conclusion at the end of 1. to become valid as time is constrained.
Proactive deadline mitigation is essential to maintain a fair working group environment.
Conclusion:
It’s my subjective belief that part of the reason that the above narratives aren’t commonly discussed is because, from a primitive, short-term perspective, it’s best or logical to exploit others’ labor, as many people do not have an outsized impact on your life. However, for long-term cooperation, the above ideas are critical, and assessing willingness to complete the task and proactive deadline management are crucial for finding good co-workers.