A-Players: Who are they?

And how to be one.

I meant to write about A-Players for a long time, and an opportune moment has come – so here we go!

The gist of this post can be summarized in three points:

1. Work-life synergy.

2. Decide to succeed.

3. Develop intuition and trust it.

Work-life Synergy

There is no such thing as work-life balance. There. I said it.

That is, there is no such thing as work-life balance if you want to be an A-player.

First and foremost, I will be the last person on Earth to tell you that you have to be an A-player. Hell no. Being an A-player is a choice. This choice is far more of a journey than a destination, and that journey is neither short nor pleasant. It is definitely not for everyone.

In fact, ask yourself: if you can have a perfectly good life, better than most of your peers, by just working a bit harder and a bit smarter than expected – would you be satisfied? And if the answer is positive, to any degree, then you probably would do yourself a disservice by striving to be an A-player.

To be an A-player is a calling. It’s something you want to accomplish for yourself.

And yes, to make it there, there’s no way to “work on the clock.” Sometimes you’d have to pull 18-hour business days and all-nighters. Sometimes you’d have to run pivotal presentations under a major jet lag.

Don’t get this the wrong way though. First of all, it is extremely rewarding to be an A-player. In fact, it’s extremely rewarding to internalize the very idea that you are on the right track; this particular benefit comes early along the journey as long as your inner calling aligns with it.

Furthermore, once you’ve found your path and your balance, working to become, and ultimately being, an A-player is not as much of a sacrifice as people may portray it. Humans need rest. Humans need recharging. Many A-players I was privileged to work with are very particular about spending a lot of time with their friends and family, as well as alone.

The pieces of the puzzle do fit well together if the circumstances are right. Your co-workers, also aspiring or established A-players, become close friends. And your family supports you since they understand full well that you can and will spend quality time with them, but oftentimes The Calling is stronger.

In fact, at a certain point, making the decision to pursue the calling of being an A-player stops feeling like a compromise, but rather becomes the way of life. Not wasting time on low-value activities is just a habit, very similar to not eating junk food if you are anyhow serious about your health.

I can personally attest that it all comes from the sense of mission and purpose. If you want to become “better at work,” and you are consciously making an effort to do it against your will over and over again, then eventually you will break. Because you will be comparing yourself to some imaginary better you; or, even worse, to some more fortunate, more hard-working, more connected, and, possibly, just more talented peer.

This never works. Depending on willpower for long-term success is about as lousy a strategy as there can be.

Instead, use the oldest trick in the book: leverage your identity.

You are not working harder to hit a deadline. And you are not working harder to impress your boss. And you are certainly not working harder to hit your own “goal” of working 60 hours every week.

You are working harder because you are the person who gets things done and is eager to get better at it.

That’s it. The rest can wait. So it’s only you and your hunger to become better at the craft.

Ego is an instrument. When used effectively, it can help you become who you want to be. The trick is to want it badly enough so that your inner self cuts out other options as infeasible. Have you ever seen a person who “chose” not to use a bathroom they urgently needed a minute ago? 😉

But work/life balance doesn’t exist if being an A-player is your calling.

And there’s no shame in telling your family and friends that, in order to be an A-player, you are deciding to get a few things done over the weekend, since it’s hard to focus on them in the office. Much like there’s no shame in saying you need a bathroom.

On the flip side, there’s no shame in telling your team you worked hard last week and need to recharge. Even the best engines need maintenance. If your team has A-players on it who support you, they will understand.

Also, never forget that your career, much like your entire life, is a process. And the process is to be embraced before it can be improved. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, none of us works 24/7. We all get tired and need breaks. The healthiest thing possible is to position yourself such that the entire team, including your management, appreciates your breaks – because they are well aware that you will be more productive in your long game if you take one.

Personal Story

Fun fact: I used to work from Hawaii a lot while working in an SF company. This was ~2015, far before remote work was a thing. Still, the engineering team loved it when I took off.

I just did not care about anything but the result, and I was fortunate and privileged enough to insert myself in the company in just the right way to have such freedom.

As my tech lead back in Google Zurich in ~2008 used to say when we went downstairs for a game: Pool is a game of luck, but the more you play the more luck you have.

In retrospect, to a certain degree, a lot of my potential was unlocked around that time. But then again, two out of two projects before this SF gig were also remote-friendly, as we would call them today. And before that, while moving from Europe to the US, I took a sabbatical of three months that became almost half a year due to visa processing delays. During part of this time, I was volunteering to coach ACM teams of the German University in Cairo (GUC) in Egypt. So yes, being privileged enough to have an edge to grab cool opportunities is half of the job.

But then again, the uniting principle is exactly this: work-life synergy, not balance. After all, I was building all those 3D engines in high school "just for fun" (c), and it paid back greatly. Although, of course, I acknowledge my privilege in that I was both capable of doing that and had the opportunity when I was younger.

So take my story with a grain of salt. There is no magic bullet, and luck sure does play a role. But keep in mind that the more right moves one makes the more luck they tend to have.

Decide to Succeed

I am borrowing this phrase from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. He observed that the best predictor of whether he will get something done is whether in his mind “I want to do X” got upgraded to “I decided to do X.”

Many people, not only aspiring A-players, often find themselves in situations where the goals communicated from above do not seem realistic. Perhaps something is just not possible. Or perhaps the timeline is too narrow. Or maybe the budget is far too tight.

The natural response of far too many qualified people in this situation often is along the lines of:

• “Okay, let’s face it, it will not get done.”

• “I just need to demonstrate I worked hard enough.”

• “The sooner I help the management understand this is impossible the better off we all are.”

• “They will yell at me/us regardless, so might as well check out and go with the flow.”

• “These people are incompetent, and it’s definitely time for me to look elsewhere.”

All these thoughts can be justified. Moreover, all of them are perfectly rational.

Except assuming that the management that is setting unrealistic expectations is stupid.

Okay, I’ll grant you this. In a huge fraction of cases, the management that keeps setting unrealistic expectations is indeed acting improvidently. Because the team will keep “under-delivering.” And morale will suffer. And the team will lose the best people, who are most motivated to work hard, but have convinced themselves they will never get credit or recognition.

And yes, if you are finding yourself in such a team – run like hell.

But. Some unrealistically-demanding managers are, in fact, quite wise. Because they are not only setting extremely high standards to show you that the sky's the limit. They also want to see you own up to the problem at hand.

And owning up to the problem end-to-end is the first path to success through determination.

Never in my life have I been in a situation where constructively and deliberately arguing why something is impossible has dealt me and my team more harm than good. This, as long as I have demonstrated both my capacity and my commitment to not just “do my best work,” but to get the damn thing done.

Okay, exceptions do exist. For instance, the manager may (correctly!) want some unrealistic expectation to register with the slackers in the room. Or this manager needs to assert their dominance, in which case fighting back in public is clearly not the best strategy.

But I can tell you what never works. What never works is rationally arguing “from first principles” why the problem cannot be solved, to then blindly declare that your boss is an idiot.

When you are arguing why the task at hand cannot be completed without providing a path forward, you are setting yourself up for a mediocre outcome. Surely, sometimes, such as with sales quotas, an above-average mediocre result may well be what is needed this week or month or quarter. But when the stakes are high, mentally accepting a mediocre outcome is literally the worst thing that you can do to yourself.

Because not only are you sabotaging yourself and your team. What is even more important, in my book, is that you are wasting a perfectly well-set-up opportunity to step up as an A-player!

And A-players make no excuses.

If you're thinking, "I’ll check out on this meeting; it's useless anyway," – you've failed, at least on the quest of becoming an A-player. Make it clear that you'd rather not join that damn meeting or watch its recording on your next morning run.

Or try to do useful work during that meeting, and be open about it if asked. "Sorry, come again, I was thinking of this [work problem] instead and lost context."

If you're in a meeting just to be sure you're there and can "pass the quiz" if someone asks for your input, you have not decided to succeed. If you ask routine questions or say something just to be noticed, you are not there to succeed. Such behavior may help you climb the corporate ladder, for sure, but speedrunning that corporate game only gets you so far. Ultimately, the capacity to execute will prevail, and the only way to build this execution muscle is to keep executing, in the "crawl then walk then run" way.

If meetings eat up a lot of your time, learn to block slots for deep work on your calendar. Don’t ask anyone, just do it, and start declining meetings, politely justifying that “I’ve blocked Thursday for deep work since it was the easiest day to free up.” Push aggressively for no meeting $WEEKDAY-s. Trade weekend days for weekdays if your family situation allows for it – mine thankfully does, and I use this leverage quite a bit.

So use your hard and soft skills to their best. Talk to the boss privately or in smaller groups as needed. Help them reframe the problem so that it can be attacked. Highlight what the obstacles truly are, and help the team find ways around them. If more resources are needed, make a clear case that once you get these resources, the solution will not wait to come – and do have this solution materialize when you do get those resources!

It’s the mental model that matters most.

In fact, I have had very high-level managers confess to me privately that they are setting overly ambitious goals only to figure out what the other team members are passionate about. So that whoever speaks up first with enough enthusiasm gets to work on exactly what they are enthusiastic about, as long as it can be shaped and steered in business-promoting terms.

The above is not a corporate trick; it’s merely an effective, broadly applicable technique, one of many. But to master it, you need to be able to show genuine enthusiasm. If you are truly good at faking enthusiasm, it’s very unlikely that you are reading this post. And if your goal is to become an A-player, finding this enthusiasm within yourself and channeling it effectively is a powerful muscle to develop.

The best A-players I know often confess that they do not really know the limits of what they are “allowed” to do—“because every time I have an outrageous idea, it turns out I am not punished for testing the waters.” If this is what you aspire to, you might as well start experimenting today. The wise words of Yoda one must keep in mind though: there is no “try.” To bend reality, your message must be powerful and determined. In practice, though, it’s not that hard to pick the small battles first, to then develop determination incrementally. Once mastered, though, the determination to succeed is an amazingly powerful, reality-bending force.

Personal Story

A very similar approach applies surprisingly well to negotiating with smaller companies.

This will likely not work as well with corporations unless you're in a super senior/leadership position. I have not tried this myself, so I can't comment on its effectiveness at this level. For small companies, the approach sure does miracles.

The approach is similar to playing the game of whoever looks away first loses. But instead of looking away, you lose by showing less commitment and dedication than your negotiation partner.

The person you are negotiating with will likely be a founder, and if you truly want to work with them—and if you truly want to make their—soon to also be your!—product succeed, you need to show this dedication.

Many people make the mistake of defending their territory first. But the best strategy is, in fact, to attack! Not the person, of course, but the problem. Both you and the person you are speaking with clearly want to succeed; they would not be speaking with you if they did not want to succeed with you.

What would it take for you two to succeed?

There's no boss above the founder. If you think you can improve some process, and you believe it is worthy of your time—talk about it upfront. If you believe something is broken and should be fixed—make yourself heard. Best-case scenario: you're hired on the spot with the mandate to set things straight. Second-best-case scenario: you see clearly that you two don't "click," so you say thank you and walk away smiling. In the case of no red flags, though, both of you should want to go all in.

At this point, how you balance your work with your life, as well as how much money you need to feed your family and how much you want to take in stock, is no longer a zero-sum game. It's just a problem that you have to collectively work out—first of many—together with this person.

See where I’m going with this? It’s not you vs. your negotiation partner. It’s you and them together against what stands between today and the desired long-term goal. Material things, such as the money matters, are just nuisances to quickly leave behind and go full speed ahead.

I converged to this model many years ago, and it does not fail to deliver. Sometimes people tell me later on that I was a bit too pushy, but every single person always adds that "it's also a good thing." And the cases where this approach has cost me an opportunity were the cases where I would not have been genuinely motivated to give it my all in the first place.

With the proper mindset, everyone around is on your side because they want to succeed with you more than they want to be proven right without you. This works all the time as long as you have the track record and the aura of the person who is here to get things done.

Develop Intuition and Trust It

Your subconscious brain has evolved for far longer than logic and reason.

The tools are for you, and so are the processes. Not vice versa. If you are using the tool or the process "because you have to," you may be slashing your success. Not convinced yet? Here’s a thought experiment.

Imagine you have all the resources, a perfect team, you live forever, and this project is what humanity—and, by extension, you!—depend upon.

So it’s on you to deliver.

You would still use some tools for knowledge sharing and to track progress, right? Which ones though?

That's the way you need to use the tools today: to succeed, not to follow some process.

For example, yours truly has literally opened JIRA or its alternatives a single-digit number of times in my entire life. Instead, I choose to work with product owners and managers face-to-face.

What do I use for myself? Wikis as markdowns, often on GitHub. Google Docs, sometimes Google Spreadsheets. Sometimes Miro, although it bugs me that there’s no standard interchangeable format to download my boards in. Sometimes Trello, when I really need to move some cards around. See the pattern? Basic stuff only.

If it requires nontrivial data dependencies, then I write code and run it with GitHub Actions. Code is my automation and dependency tracking engine. Alas—that's my personal work style. I used to be embarrassed by this side of mine. For many years now, though, I don’t really care.

Important side note. In the past several years, I have been hearing good reviews about Notion and Airtable. Also, had I been forced to run a large project myself, I would most definitely try Fibery.io, a “headless CRM,” as my most tech-savvy friends call it. My belief would be that Fibery is a strict superset of what I can do with GitHub Actions, with the UX/UI close to that of Notion and Airtable. But I do not have firsthand experience to recommend it yet.

Going back to the roots, your brain is the superpower. The tools are just the tools. Along with your team and your interpersonal dynamics with the folks, the tools are only here to help you and them use 100% of your brain.

The end goal is never the tools or the processes. The end goal is for you to be “smart together” (© Aline Lerner from interviewing.io). Together with your team, over an extended period of time.

With this being said, never underestimate the power of the process. Just don’t think of it as a chore. The process is just a playbook from your coach. A quote I read a long time ago goes along the lines of [paraphrasing]: “You first need to learn to play by the rules so that later on you can write your own.” If I am not mistaken, it is attributed to Mozart. An even better one is: “Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.” I will not ruin the fun of guessing who said this.

Another, simpler and lighter way to run the thought experiment from the beginning of this section is to pretend you are a mini-founder of a certain, however small, task force. The job of the founder is to prove feasibility first of all and then iterate until success. In Silicon Valley, most founders know this visual:

The sad irony is that executives understand this pyramid instinctively, while most other people tend to think, “this is not about my work.” Well, it is about any aspect of any work, most definitely including yours. You either own the domain end-to-end, or you are not an A-player. The domain can be small and narrow—we all have to start somewhere. But solving every problem holistically begins from understanding how this pyramid for the deliverable looks—and from understanding what it would mean to own it top to bottom.

If your work fits squarely into one of the layers of this pyramid, then you are not effective except when put to operate under very specific work conditions. Some people prefer this approach to work and life, and I have the utmost respect for them. They are not the A-players, though, and they will likely never become A-players.

Or, to phrase it nicer: If you find yourself focusing mostly on one of the layers of the MVP chart above, and you want to become an A-player at the same time, then the single most impactful change in perspective for you may well be to begin thinking of the whole pyramid.

Personal Story

Personally, I am well aware that I gain a lot more insight by talking to people, by asking hard (and often dumb) questions, and then by presenting the work of the team(s) to other people, including these very team(s), to get feedback.

Ironically, the fewer notes I take while doing so, the better my brain grasps the subject matter. Perhaps some bullet points post-factum for myself. But definitely not a fully systematized model.

To avoid any and all doubt: I always make it clear that the work I present is not my work, and I always give all the credit to the respective team(s).

Anyhow, this is the mode in which my brain is engaged most. Perhaps I'm not good at operations; maybe I'm okay, but I really dislike the management process unless it's something I can keep in my mind 100%.

When it comes to seeing the big picture, though, I'm on top of the game. When it comes to deciding on how best to execute on the vision, I have both the breadth and the depth. When it comes to assessing our progress and de-risking what may be in trouble, I have the answers automatically as soon as the right question is asked—and I ask myself a lot of questions too, just to master this art of asking questions!

And it’s not just the big picture, since I drill down into tons of smaller problems along the way. Part of that is intellectual curiosity. But an even larger part is gaining the trust of the team. Nothing works better to have the people follow your big-picture vision than having each and every member of the team know full well you have familiarized yourself with their own domain well enough.

Last but not least: emotional intelligence and interpersonal dynamics.

Since I talk to people far more than others do, my brain captures not just how the project is doing but also how the people involved interact with each other.

Paraphrasing the famous quote: under pressure, you don't rise to the level of your understanding; you sink to the level of your instincts. The instincts are next to impossible to explain or read up on. But the sure way to not train them is to avoid inserting yourself into situations where beyond-rational awareness of the situation is where major clues hide.

That’s why we take meetings in person to watch the room. That’s why we interrupt each other to see how the team reacts. Heck, that’s why we fight—which I also believe is a healthy part of team dynamics, as long as the fights are respectful and clean.

Intuition, when trained as a muscle, is a superpower.

In fact, looking back, I must have subconsciously understood this a long time ago. Most of the work I was doing since leaving the corporate world in 2013 was tailored almost exclusively to maximizing one variable: my learning experience. I never truly pursued money or networking or a resume. It was pure "do what you believe will open more doors to your future self." In my defense, though, doing what is best for my learning experience has almost always coincided with what interested me most. So at the end of the day, luck and privilege have played a non-insignificant role.

Another great post to read is: Is it time for you to earn or to learn?

If you're less fortunate at where you are, maybe it would be a good heuristic to look for people with my approach and join forces with them. Facts are, I've “accidentally” made several people millionaires while doing what I was having fun doing. So, even if my experience does not necessarily scale, quite a few things are pointing in the direction that people like me are overall great to work next to.

PS

Part of me whispers that some readers may think I am a big fan of working hard.

Even worse, an argument can be made that with this post, I am attempting to please managers and recruiters by broadcasting the idea to extract the most of every single employee by feeding them stories that working excessively hard leads to salvation delivered straight from divine corporate gods.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me be very clear on this: I do not endorse hard work for the sake of hard work. And I do not endorse managers whose major trick is to push the team to work harder only to be dissatisfied with them later.

What I do endorse is meaningful hard work. The desire, or even the inevitability of which, stems from one’s inner calling. And the results of which are first and foremost visible to this very person putting in this hard work—visible in their changing self, oftentimes before the very result of the work can be seen from the outside.

And I do endorse managers capable of bringing out this trait in the people they work with. High five!

Let me also re-iterate, to avoid any and all ambiguity: not everybody has the calling to be the A-player. Filtering is at least as important as mentoring. Moreover, not everyone who has the capacity to be an A-player will excel at a random job given to them. Furthermore, motivating the wrong person to do A-player-level work on the wrong task can often deal them more harm than good.

All I am saying is that if you feel the potential to do great things, don’t be shy to look for the area and the team that will help you develop this potential to its fullest. It will be harsh and painful. But the results are worth it.

PPS

If this post resonates with you, you’ll love these two books:

• Mastery, by Robert Greene, and

• Talent, by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross.

Both books are pure gold, and I recommend them. To me personally, Mastery appeals in the expert in me, while Talent is something the achiever in me has truly enjoyed.