Ego is down to crumbs.
At Google, the environment was pretty open — most of the time I could treat everyone as a peer. I thought I was doing well. Polite with juniors, gave them space. But in recent self-reflection, I found a residue of ego hiding behind that politeness. A quiet assumption: "I have years of experience and insight — you should at least respect that."
An unspoken deal: I give you space, you give me face.
But now, I don't want that last bit of face either.
Not because of any setback — I just figured it out. The version of me that relied on experience for credibility and seniority for certainty was consuming bandwidth that neither I nor my environment could spare. It was blocking self-iteration. I stopped identifying with that part of myself, and the implicit rules attached to it dissolved too.
Feels good.
This death of ego is a natural byproduct of the self-iteration process. When you stop maintaining that senior shell, the freed-up bandwidth can process real information.
In the AI era, individual leverage has been pulled to an almost absurd level. When you see a genuinely talented young person (yes, I'm the old one here) rapidly iterating with AI, the focus should be on the exploration itself. Asking questions without shame — the "shame" based on identity or seniority is just drag.
Who is this person? Where does their unique perspective lead? Judging someone by their present capability matters far more than their resume.
Stay humble, stay hungry. Good sleep and stay healthy.