When I was younger, adults asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up, and I, an obsessive Dan Brown reader, said confidently, 'a cryptographer!' Symbolism, logical reasoning, and the hunt for missing links fascinated me. I liked the idea that the world was layered and only a few trained themselves to see beyond the surface.
I grew up and became a designer. The job is eerily similar. I decode patterns for a living. Tone, silence, behaviour. Over time, you realise that there are patterns everywhere for people who notice. The clearest one: People with high talent and low ego always win. Not immediately, not as a spectacle, but quietly and consistently.
I've been working since I was seventeen. My family, my faculty, and my friends all taught me that respect is earned, not demanded. This is not about arrogance. It is about behaviour. No one is above or below you. Age, caste, or creed cannot define you. Only one thing can: how you treat people.
I’ve worked with many leaders. Yet I would still pick up the phone for only two of them. They never demanded respect. They simply embodied it. Trust does not come easily to me. I instinctively scan for gaps, inconsistencies, flaws. It’s an occupational hazard. Respect and trust can only be earned slowly; that's the only way they last. In both of these teams, I noticed the same pattern: high talent, zero ego, small team.
It's hard to hide in small teams. There is no shield like process, structure, or hierarchies. You learn ownership in these small rooms. If something breaks, everyone knows where it broke, who made it, who is responsible. It teaches you accountibility. It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel like you matter. Everything you say is taken seriously. Everything you do has consquences. It makes you a fast thinker. It gives you a bias to action. Ownership is intoxicating.
High performers own everything, especially their mistakes. They’re less obsessed with outcomes and more disciplined about effort. Even if they have a single word in a script, they rehearse it. Precision matters to them. They treat their craft with respect. They treat time like it’s finite, because it is. And they have very little tolerance for anyone who treats either casually. That’s the difference. Most people are comfortable doing what is required; some are uncomfortable stopping there.
“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If I were building a team from scratch, I would look for talent. But I would look harder for ego. A high performer who gatekeeps is not protecting quality; they’re protecting insecurity. They’re threatened by the idea that someone else might possess similar skills. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of human psychology. People are different. Two people with identical technical ability will approach the same problem differently.
You want specialists who can go deep. You want at least one or two generalists who can connect the dots. Then there is the invisible role, the person who sets the standard. The person who stabilises the room. You.
When you're just starting out in your career, feedback is direct. You're corrected, you're shaped, you're forgiven. It's safe. Once you've had enough years in your career, something shifts. Feedback becomes subtle. The tone, the pauses, the delayed responses, the micro-expressions, no one spells it out anymore. You're expected to know. Congratulations, you are now a cryptographer!
No one announces this transition. Your emotional stability sets the ceiling. Your behaviour sets the tone. Your discipline sets the pace. You may not even have the clarity if you want to continue carrying the weight, but you answer anyway, "We'll figure it out." You swallow your doubt. You regulate yourself. You find your own gaps because no one else will do that for you anymore.
Ownership. You feel its cost; it stops feeling noble. You realise, it is simply discipline that keeps you going. You realise that the real cost of ownership is, in fact, your doctorine, your grit, your emotional regulation and your ability to ship even on days when it's hard to get out of bed. You set the standard.
And once you realise that, the only question left is: what kind of standard do you want to be?
