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6 The corpo hyena

You think people have good hearts and they help each other? How nice … how naïve … and now … WAKE UP! Kindergarten is over, and it is time to start a real life in the corpo jungle.

People in corporations are not your friends! You come to the corporation to get rich and successful, so don’t expect others to let you get to the treasure first. Everyone there devoted his or her time and life and wants to see the results as soon as possible. For many competitive people, these elements are much more important that being nice or friendly or playing fair. Think about it.

The corporation is a place where people earn money and expose their power to others, and this is all that matters there. People who want to be nice and friendly don’t get senior vice president positions, believe me. They also don’t apply to the Big 4 [1] or similar companies.

Hyenas are employees who are not on a significant position in the corporation and usually don’t provide a good quality of work. As a result, they are afraid to get fired and therefore developed a weird survival strategy which is based on gossiping. The hyena is walking from desk to desk, kitchen to kitchen, and trying to get as much information as possible. It is not a friendly person. The purpose of this is to collect as much information that could bring the advantage. Hyenas will reveal your secrets to others as soon as they think this could make them look more interesting, respected, or popular. Hyenas don’t care about anybody, just themselves.

Imagine an alien around hyenas. What would you recommend to this alien? To trust hyenas? To rely on hyenas? Think about it every time you have a business meeting or a business lunch with hyenas.

You think I am exaggerating? Wait and you will see …. The corpo is a hard bread, believe me.

Tip: Hyenas are not strong enough to defeat you, so they play unfair and want to trick you. Keep it in your mind.

The faster you understand your surroundings, the faster you will be able to develop a survival strategy and protect yourself. The longer you are left in the fog and have no idea what is going on, the more mistakes you will make and the more upcoming opportunities (promotions, interesting projects, etc.) you will lose.

Sounds terrible? Well … that’s life, and life is a bitch.

On the other hand, hyenas look for attention and possess a lot of internal knowledge. As they are gossiping 80% of their working time, it would not be smart to get in fight with them, don’t you think?

Note/Tip: The most common strategies for hyenas would include avoiding them at all (if you are afraid that you could tell them too much), or trying to get some information from them without giving them too much back. As people working for corpo are not generally idiots, I would not recommend the second strategy. It will work only for a limited time and then the hyena will realize what is going on and can get really upset with you. Try to limit the contact with hyena, and remember: hyenas look for information. If they come to you few times and don’t get anything, they will focus on other people who provide more interesting news. Be polite, but present yourself as the person who is too busy to talk to people and therefore not having any particular news.

[1] - The term „Big 4“represents four biggest advisory companies in the world (PwC, which stands for PriceWaterhouseCoopers; EY, which means Ernst & Young; Deloitte; and KPMG).