And then there's the 99% between those two extremes, who have ambitious long-term goals but feel the best way to reach them is through patient perseverance, as opposed to getting frustrated right away and quitting in disgust at the first sign of a setback.
> Why does the second group of people put up with not being in the prestigious X teams?
In my case, it's because there are plenty of impactful, prestigious, and fulfilling positions elsewhere in the company, and many of them are a better match for my skill set.
BTW, I decided to pick someone at random who had helped millions of people, and see what their career was like. The first name to come to mind was Jonas Salk. Here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia page:
By 1947, Salk decided to find an institution where he could direct his own laboratory. After three institutions turned him down, he received from William McEllroy, the dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, an offer which included a promise that he would run his own lab. He accepted, and in the fall of that year, left Michigan and relocated to Pennsylvania. But the promise was not quite what he expected. After Salk arrived at Pittsburgh, "he discovered that he had been relegated to cramped, unequipped quarters in the basement of the old Municipal Hospital," writes Bookchin. As time went on, however, Salk began securing grants from the Mellon family and was able to build a working virology laboratory, where he continued his research on flu vaccines.
And it was a result of that long period of hard work that he got the invitation to work on a polio vaccine. It's a good thing he didn't quit in a huff when the going got tough.
> Why does the second group of people put up with not being in the prestigious X teams?
In my case, it's because there are plenty of impactful, prestigious, and fulfilling positions elsewhere in the company, and many of them are a better match for my skill set.
BTW, I decided to pick someone at random who had helped millions of people, and see what their career was like. The first name to come to mind was Jonas Salk. Here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia page:
By 1947, Salk decided to find an institution where he could direct his own laboratory. After three institutions turned him down, he received from William McEllroy, the dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, an offer which included a promise that he would run his own lab. He accepted, and in the fall of that year, left Michigan and relocated to Pennsylvania. But the promise was not quite what he expected. After Salk arrived at Pittsburgh, "he discovered that he had been relegated to cramped, unequipped quarters in the basement of the old Municipal Hospital," writes Bookchin. As time went on, however, Salk began securing grants from the Mellon family and was able to build a working virology laboratory, where he continued his research on flu vaccines.
And it was a result of that long period of hard work that he got the invitation to work on a polio vaccine. It's a good thing he didn't quit in a huff when the going got tough.