Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Smart People and Stupid People

I really don’t have the time to do this but I’m going to do it anyway. Once this gets posted, I’m going to receive angry emails from at least five people demanding to know why I don’t have time for their stuff but I have time for this. Honestly, sometimes I just need to write, and that’s what I’m going to do.

I hang around Digital Webbing still. I have nothing against the place, occasionally I find an artist with potential there and, sometimes, I’ll find a writer that deserves a boost. But that’s honestly not the only reason I hang around there. The other reason I hang around there comes from one of the two pieces of advice my first boss gave me the day I left my job at TAO.

I worked at TAO for about four years. I was getting bored with the technical life, I wanted to do more marketing and managing (plus I honestly thought TAO was trying to sell themselves), so I signed on with a headhunter and I let him find me a new place. Within a week he sets me up with an interview with a very, very large government contractor, we’ll call them BFC as in “Big Fucking Company”.

BFC had some good people working there and they saw me in a bit more of a leadership role, sort of the think-tank guy that dispatches ideas and orders to the entry level guys (which is pretty amazing considering I was only 25 at the time and, technically, still entry level). It wasn't exactly what I wanted but it came with a 20k pay raise and, well, money makes decisions a lot easier sometimes.

I put in my resignation with TAO. They asked me how much BFC offered me and I told them, they flat-out told me that they couldn’t match that and wished me luck. I filled out my exit interview with TAO and wrote how I think they’re looking to be bought out. The HR woman told me that wasn’t true – I’m only saying this because 8 months later they were bought out (and my stock in the employee-owned company, which I decided to hold on to, doubled).

Anyway, it was my last day there. Everyone takes me out to lunch – I have a prime rib smothered in horseradish, one of my favorite meals. It was a good last day, no hard feelings – I liked most of the people I worked there with, after all. After lunch was when I went into my bosses office, the VP of TAO, and he tried to impart some of his wisdom onto me. I follow his advice like the bible, in my current job and in comics.

1) Always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. It sounds like you’re shooting yourself in the foot, right? When he first told me this I sort of smiled, thinking it was a joke. But then he explained it – if your group does well, you do well, and they’re your group and people will recognize that. And, if someone from your group gets promoted above you, that’s someone that you helped out along his or her way to the top. That person deserves to be there, they would have gotten there anyway, and now you now have a friend in a powerful position.

You apply it to comics and you see why I still hang around Digital Webbing looking for the occasional diamond in the rough, why I latched onto Josh Fialkov, and why half of Postcards is filled with writers and artists that I believe in and why I’m pumping those guys up, trying to make them stars. It’s because I surround myself with people who are more talented than I am. And, if I invest in them early, not only will I potentially make a good friend out of it and help comics and all that jazz, I’ll also have someone thanking me down the road and, hopefully, helping me get gigs if I need them.

2) You get great ideas from two sources: Brainstorming with smart people and arguing with stupid people. Brainstorming with smart people is an obvious one, but why arguing with stupid people? Because stupid people have stupid solutions and they can’t understand why they’re stupid. If you argue with them, you usually have to counter every stupid argument they make with a well thought-out, intelligent response. Oftentimes, these responses are better than the position you held earlier. In other words: stupid people make you think better.

There are smart people to brainstorm with on Digital Webbing as well as The Engine. But there are plenty of stupid people to argue with on Digital Webbing as well. Just don’t let them get to you; keep countering their stupid arguments and you’ll keep coming up with better ideas.

I follow that advice in the real-world as well, obviously. After six months at BFC (which I like to refer to as my “Comic Making Internship”, I saw the writing on the wall the day I started working there and decided I won't actually do any work) I left (along with two of my coworkers) for a large, employee owned company that I’ll call GFC, Great Fucking Company. Same salary I had at BFC, more creative work, marketing, proposal writing, and management. And I constantly surround myself with people who are smarter than me and my bonuses are thick because my group does good work. I brainstorm with these smarter people and I seek out the stupid people in the company to argue with them.

And our little group is rapidly growing.

Anyway, I realize that I came here to write a story but ended up laying down the foundation for a future “Making Lemonade” column. I’ll go now. Sorry if I haven’t been responding to your emails/finishing the work I said I’ll finish.

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Smart People and Stupid People

Friday, November 17, 2006

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