The Zero-Sum Pyramid and The Prince

When Larry Ellison visited Japan while working at Amdahl, a Japanese executive told him that Americans lacked the stomach for competition. The Japanese executive explained, “In Japan, we believe our competitors are stealing the rice out of the mouths of our children,” describing a philosophy of pursuing 100% market share. The Japanese executive then quoted Genghis Khan: “It is not sufficient that I succeed; everyone else must fail.”

Companies often compete ruthlessly in the marketplace. It is frequently a zero-sum game or a three-player game in an oligopoly. Markets tend towards either a concentration of profits among a few dominant players or fragmentation that leaves everyone with negligible profits. These are the inexorable laws of the market. Corporate survival requires not just innovation, but also cunning, diplomacy, tact, and the sheer strength to dominate.

Bill Gates is my go-to example. You would not want to compete against Bill in his prime. In the 1980s and 1990s, Microsoft fought aggressively to dominate personal computing, making Windows and Office industry standards. When Netscape threatened Microsoft's control over the PC, Gates pushed Internet Explorer as a free browser bundled with Windows. Microsoft’s tactics ultimately led to a landmark antitrust case in which a federal court found that the company had unlawfully maintained its monopoly. But guess who survives today. It sure is not Netscape.

Gates’s competitiveness extended inside Microsoft, too. In his memoir, co-founder Paul Allen recounted that, while Allen was battling cancer in 1982, he overheard Gates and Steve Ballmer discussing plans to dilute his ownership stake by issuing stock options to themselves and others. Allen confronted them, and they apologized. This episode revealed a ruthless side to Gates’s ambition: even the ownership stake of the partner who helped build Microsoft was not beyond the reach of his competitive instincts.

The key argument here is this: the top of a company works the same way as the market it competes in. For most of your career, doing good work is what gets you ahead. But the higher you go, the fewer seats there are, and every promotion means someone else didn't get one. A company that must be brutal by design will not be led by people who are benign, no matter how brilliant the culture is. A company is the sum of its talent, and at the top, that talent is playing the same game the company plays. You can't have one without the other.

While the idea here is not to go Yakuza on your colleagues, I want you to move beyond the notion of an organization as a benign place where rewards are duly given to those who earn them, or where the organization will somehow find a way to restore balance and help you rise to the top. You are not at work to make friends, though you may find some along the way. You didn't spend 10 to 15 years getting where you are only to stop competing hard now, when the returns ahead are exponential.

In my last five years in tech, I have repeatedly said that once you make Director, that is when the Game of Thrones begins. Heads roll all the time. New leadership moves in, some people win favor, and others lose it. Those who truly understand the game win by forming alliances, securing sponsorship from the most powerful people, and defending their turf at every turn. Partnerships with other teams or leaders are pursued only when they advance the company's interests alongside those of the incumbent leader, or sometimes the incumbent leader's interests alone.

What matters is power, securing more and more of it and advancing yourself in the ranks and not the file. The collateral damage that comes with it doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t violate the laws of the federation or the laws of the company. Everything else is fair game, a slow-cooked broth, which I call long-term combat. And once the winners reach the top, they often become nice and lay down the sword. But if you didn't see their journey to that point, don't assume they got there by being nice.

To be clear, I am not asking you to be evil or do any wrong. I am asking for situational awareness at all times as well as an understanding of what is in your interest. No one will come to protect you until it suits their ambitions or desires; no one will come to help you grow. Your empire is yours to build, almost as if you were Machiavelli's Prince. Find your sponsors and build alliances today. Be careful who you trust and return back acts of loyalty.