A short first-person reflection by Chad Silverstein about interviewing an employee named Stassi. He recalls calling her "corporate," discusses difficulties some hires have transitioning from large corporate environments to fluid small private companies, and praises Stassi as a hardworking, personable, and edge-driven employee who ultimately performed exceptionally.
Chapters
I remember interviewing Stassi and I remember telling her that she's corporate. And I remember the look on her face. She wasn't very happy about that. And I just was so anti corporate everything. People who worked in those big systems with thousands of employees who had to tell everybody what they wanted to hear couldn't be themselves always kissing people's butts. And I just, I hated that whole culture. I hated everything about it. And I found early on that a lot of people had a hard time adapting to a small private company. They're looking for structure, they're looking for policies. And sometimes small private company is just fluid. And they're constantly evolving and changing and adding things to their, you know, their, their identity. And a lot of times these corporate places assume that just because, you know, you have supports and you have a lot of people doing a lot of different things, that when you change jobs, you're going to have that same type of support and you're not. And I just felt like at the time, I remember interviewing her and thinking, she's corporate. So I told her, and I didn't realize the impact that that made. I didn't realize how it made her feel, didn't realize the action that she took until she shared at this practice. And it was an eye opener. She was one of the best employees that I had over the decades of running the business. She was a go getter. She always had that smile. But she also had an edge. And I love the edge. And sometimes an edge can get you in trouble. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, when you know what's in someone's heart and then you see them live up to that, you can have a lot of respect and you can forgive them when the edge comes out, sometimes the wrong way. And thankful for me, it never did with Stassi. And I think the world of her. And she was an incredible, incredible person to sit next to at practice.
