Be nice.

Be nice. Or not. Be yourself.
In 2016, when Prisma was basically nosediving, I met with Tony Fadell. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Fadell)
The lead designer of the iPod and almost the lead iPhone guy under Steve, plus he later sold Nest to Google for like 3 bil or something. So yeah, a respected dude in the industry. I was 25 and very “toxic,” like, either a person knows their shit or they don’t. And during the meeting I applied that rule hard. The guy didn’t really get apps, AI, and so on, and his advice wasn’t relevant. So I took his advice like a bayonet, didn’t listen, even corrected him. He got offended. And after the meeting he wrote to a bunch of respected people of the same rank, like I’m an “asshole, don’t meet Alexey.” And at that moment every acquaintance of mine in the Valley was kind of lecturing me like “you can’t do that with people like that, you should always nod and listen,” aka American style of respect. But at some point this super simple thought hit me. Why respect people who go around telling industry folks about a 25-year-old guy like “the dude’s a moron.” Why should I respect them? I’d rather tell him what I think. And I’m not gonna kiss ass. And all that pomposity is for people who’ve got nothing behind them. If nothing worked out for you and you’ve got nothing to show. When you have resources and opportunities, there’s no point nodding at everything, you can just say “no, you’re wrong” and just exit the conversation, and it doesn’t matter who was sitting across from you. So yeah, anything’s possible if you understand what you’re doing and with whom you can do it. Everyone falls for results: when your metrics are flying up, people talk to you, and when you don’t have them, they don’t talk to you. In short, screw the rules and all that, use your own head.