Deleting the 'Zero-Sum' Code from Tech Culture
Disabling the scarcity protocol in an infinite market
I’ve spent the better part of twenty-five years in the technology sector (infrastructure, product, leadership.) It’s a career long enough to see the first great Internet land rush, the subsequent dot-com implosion, and now the dizzying, hyper-accelerated cycle of the modern startup. If there is one emotional pathogen that has persisted through every single phase, it’s the quiet, toxic whisper of professional jealousy.
This is the central paradox of working in a field built entirely on creating abundance: our culture is defined by a scarcity mindset. We see another founder’s successful exit, a colleague’s faster promotion, or a competitor’s massive funding round, and the brain, that magnificent but antiquated piece of biological hardware, immediately registers a physical threat.
Jealousy is a primal emotional spike, and like any spike, it doesn’t care about reality. It is a failure of emotional intelligence (EQ) because it misclassifies a stimulus. When your co-founder wins an industry award, your amygdala isn’t processing a celebratory event. It’s screaming that your share of limited resources (prestige, equity, future career trajectory) has just been reduced to zero. Jealousy means inventing a threat to your safety.
The Ghost of Proprietary Hardware
To understand this deep-seated fear of scarcity, we can look back at the history of computing. The early days were remarkably open and collaborative, defined by a spirit of tinkering. When the original Apple II hit the market, its success was driven largely by its open architecture. The manuals told you how to build peripherals (a concept now known as developer relations), and the entire community benefited. The communication protocols of the nascent Internet (like IRC (Internet Relay Chat)) were built by people sharing freely, focused purely on function and community.
Then came the shift toward proprietary systems. The belief that the code inside the plastic box must be hidden, copyrighted, and fiercely defended. Safety was defined by locking everyone else out. This ideological model (that value exists only when controlled by a select few) is the conceptual ancestor of startup jealousy today.
Many founders are still operating on the proprietary assumption: If they have success, there is less success left for me. This is a false choice, yet it drives insidious behaviors in the office: quiet sabotage, withholding information, and a pathological inability to celebrate another team’s win. These actions aren’t defensive; they are irrational, preemptive strikes against an invented threat.
The Antidote: Disruptive Empathy as a Protocol
As we look toward the future of work (which is increasingly distributed, cross-functional, and dependent on complex, global supply chains) this proprietary mindset will become fatal to innovation.
The path out of this invented danger is Disruptive Empathy (the core thesis of this work). It requires a conscious cognitive shift from Comparison Mode to Collaboration Mode.
How do we recode the jealousy protocol?
Acknowledge the Amygdala’s Bug: Imagine you’ve just received an email announcing someone else’s great success (or maybe you just logged on to LinkedIn for the first time in the morning.) When that tightness hits your chest? Label the feeling. Say: “This is a fear of scarcity, but the market is infinite.”
Inspect the “Source Code”: Ask what that person achieved. Is it sales growth? A stellar product launch? Instead of viewing their success as a wound to your ego, treat it like an open-source contribution. How can you learn from their methodology (their “code”) and integrate it into your own project?
Choose Openness: This is the most powerful choice. The entire Open Source Initiative was founded on the pragmatic, business-case argument that open development is simply superior to closed development. It leads to stability, ingenuity, and a built-in community.
Applying this to your career means treating every person in your field (even your closest competitor) as part of the same vast, complex ecosystem. Their win does not diminish your potential; it validates the market you are both building, thereby increasing your potential.
Your true safety in the tech sector isn’t in locking down your ideas; it’s in the robust, collaborative network you build around yourself. Stop inventing predators where collaborators should stand. When you choose to see abundance, the threat to your safety disappears entirely. Your job, then, becomes building something truly great, not simply defending the small thing you already have.