The professional world is made up of grasshoppers and ants. Grasshoppers spend their time strutting around, showing off their latest outfit, gesticulating and spewing their stream of ideas without head or tail all day long. They arrive in the morning, all frisky, sing about their exploits of the day before over a coffee before showing off all their knowledge, jumping from one session to another. Silence and quiet scare them so much that they prefer to criticize and destroy what works well rather than abstain. Always on the lookout for an opportunity to make themselves important, the grasshoppers impose their ideas, without listening to those of others and without taking into account the mistakes of the past. This is how the same concepts reappear cyclically in companies, at the whim of the leading grasshoppers, undoing what has already been done by their predecessors, but without more success.
If the cicadas talk a lot and have opinions on everything, they never work. They say "You have to" or "You just have to", but if you ask them "How?", they will tell you that it is your problem, when in fact it is theirs. At the end of the day the cicadas leave the office with a free mind, satisfied to have been able to pour out their load of nonsense on others. When night falls they sleep peacefully, recharging their batteries before tackling another day of steamrolling.
The ants, for their part, get up early to enjoy working before having to endure the sterile song of the cicadas. They try as best they can to make society work, plugging the gaps opened by the cicadas. They work in the shadows, trying to keep the building going, despite the headwinds that the cicadas blow over time. While the latter parade at the head of companies, bringing and leaving with their crazy ideas, the ants faithfully do the job by managing the company and bringing in the money to pay the cicadas.
At the end of the day, the ants return home, exhausted from having to endure the fickle theories of the cicadas and especially from having to clean up the mess behind them. When night falls, they ruminate and worry about the new day to come. Even if it is the ants who make society work, the latter only rewards with dignity those who sing the loudest.
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So true… I totally agree. When we look at the impact (in terms of value destruction) that decisions taken at the highest level can have (company mergers, random acquisitions, risky financial operations), we are wrong: the goal for the “tie-wearers” with their nice suits is to build a good CV to go from board of directors to board of directors. And there, the goal is generally totally successful.
Under these conditions, becoming a rentier is not about taking it easy or "taking advantage" of the system, it is just a way of saying "f*** it" to the system.
PS: You have a real talent for writing :)
As you say, becoming a rentier is not about taking it easy or taking advantage of the system. It is only a fair return of the crank, namely that one's work no longer serves others, but oneself. And ultimately saying "f…" to the system effectively.
Thanks for the compliment 😉