Ambition isn’t ego—it’s fuel.

In my Leadership Manual, I wrote that I lead with standards—not ego. I don’t want followers. I want people who can drive their own careers and manifest destiny. That means creating space for ambition—not punishing it.

In my follow-up critique of the HBR framework, I argued that emotional safety and surface-level empathy often fall short in engineering. What’s also missing—but rarely said out loud—is how ambition gets quietly demonized, while mediocrity is tolerated under the guise of “team harmony.”

Let’s call that what it is: cultural sabotage masquerading as humility.

1. Ambition Isn’t a Red Flag—It’s the Signal

Too often, ambitious people are seen as political, self-centered, or disruptive. In truth, they’re the ones:

  • Asking deeper questions
  • Pushing systems to scale
  • Taking ownership of painful problems
  • Trying to build something that lasts

If that makes them stand out—good. Because technical teams don’t need more passive executors. They need people who care enough to want more.

The problem isn’t too much ambition. It’s not enough people willing to do the hard things ambition demands.

2. Resume-Driven Development Is the Real Threat

If ambition is fuel, resume-driven development is the leak in the tank. It’s when people:

  • Choose tools based on Gartner hype, not fit
  • Lead projects for visibility, not value
  • Abandon ownership once the demo is over

These are the people who game systems, chase certifications, and prioritize narrative over substance. And they’re often rewarded because they speak the language of optics.

“Architecture theater” has replaced actual engineering in too many organizations.

It’s not ambition that’s rotting the org. It’s the failure to distinguish between people who want to grow and people who want to look good.

3. Don’t Conflate Politeness With Impact

The person who gets celebrated isn’t always the one who delivered real outcomes. Sometimes it’s the one who:

  • Attended all the meetings
  • Smiled through all the decisions
  • Never rocked the boat

Meanwhile, the builder—the one who refactored your brittle airflow DAGs, tuned your Snowflake costs, or stood up a functional CI/CD stack—gets told to work on their tone.

If your culture rewards passivity over progress, you’re designing a system where the loudest person wins—but not the right one.

4. Ambition Requires a System That Can Hold It

As I wrote in The Operating Manual, high standards aren’t ego—they’re empathy for the mission. If we’re building systems that matter, the people doing the building need space to:

  • Think big
  • Take risks
  • Learn fast
  • Challenge norms

But they also need structure. We don’t get to claim we want leaders if we punish those who act like one before the title shows up on a slide deck.

Want innovation? Don’t hire builders and treat them like functionaries.

5. What We Should Celebrate Instead

Let’s reward:

  • Systems thinking
  • Long-term architectural vision
  • Repeatable patterns that scale
  • Quiet technical leadership that unblocks others
  • The people who care more about what they’re building than what it says on their badge

And let’s stop apologizing for being ambitious. Let’s stop apologizing for caring more.

Final Thought

Ambition isn’t the enemy. It’s the signal that someone sees a bigger future—and is willing to fight for it. If that makes them unpopular, so be it. Culture should not be measured by how conflict-free it is. It should be measured by how many people are willing to own something they weren’t told to.

So no—I won’t ask my team to dial it back. I’ll ask them to raise the bar. And if that means challenging the status quo, I’ll back them every step of the way.

Because leadership doesn’t start with a title. It starts with a mindset.

P.S.

This piece builds on ideas explored across my prior work:

This isn’t just about architecture or tooling. It’s about survival.
You can’t build adaptive systems without adaptive people—and you can’t lead adaptive people with outdated thinking.