The best hack for being professional at work is to not take anything personally and give it your best.

When writing this I was consistently asking myself, should I even write it? Is it common sense that people should behave professionally in a work environment? Like startups, doing the obvious things right is not obvious sometimes. 

I feel people who haven’t done “real-world” work before aren’t good at this because the dynamics of school and the real-world market are utterly different.

In school, you pay for credits to be taught by professors and have colleagues in the same classroom, the money spent is YOURS.

In the business world, it’s investor’s money poured into an organization that you’re a part of. Will you be a positive force in growing that investment?

You need to build a reputation for yourself inside an organization, like a brand, which basically is a translation of the question “What would your peers think about you?”. 

Give it your best, even when companies sometimes don’t treat you fairly. Your manager and peers will definitely recognize your work, and great work will always pay off. Plus you want to train yourself to hold yourself to a high bar of engineering and craftmanship.

You can learn how to be professional via trial and error, it takes time and experience to learn these skills.

These are some of the main rules:

  1. Don’t gossip, it’s not worth it.
  2. Be supportive, and strategic.
  3. When asked to take on more work, never say no rather something like: “Here is the tradeoff” or “Not right now I’ll need more time”.
  4. Track everything, measure impact, and communicate frequently.
  5. Communicate the work you do in terms of impact on the business
  6. Spend time talking to your boss’s peers and building out your network 2-3 levels up.
  7. Never talk negatively about your peers or boss with anyone.
  8. Performance on a personal level, your image among your peers, and exposure by senior leadership working on projects that have an impact are noticed.
  9. Be honest about your work, and don’t oversell. 
  10. Learn to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives in life. Some teams have 20+ nationalities, you want to know how to respect people’s traditions and perspectives on the world.
  11. What you don’t want is offending people, saying things that put people in defense mode. People never forget these kinds of words, and you’ll likely develop enemies that you’re far better off without.
  12. Be proactive, and earn trust instead of expecting it.
  13. Be there for your colleagues, and always keep your cubicle open for others to reach out for help. 
  14. Worry less about competing with others for promotions, and more about doing exceptional work that is noticed by everyone.
  15. The corporate game rules are well-defined, abide by them and you will be fine.