Money

When you work for a major American multinational and you’re inside the system, from the lowest role to the highest, your way of thinking starts from how you manage company resources, and you must be able to use — both technically and mentally — the word SAVING, the one that turns you into a company man.

The idea is simple: when you manage your own money, at most you answer to your wife, your mother, your lover, or your grandmother — always a woman. But when you manage a company’s money, you must not only be careful and respectful — you must never waste it, because that money will always be needed to cover the bullshit you’ll make later.

Even your relationship with colleagues is a cost you carry, because you never really know if what you’ve invested reaches just one person, or if it will travel across desks and minds — turning you, in the process, from a genius and a phenomenon into someone to be quietly removed.

And then there’s something people always forget: in multinationals — every single one of them, from the spiritual ones to the commercial and political ones — it’s always the same information protocol.

The boss knows everything about everyone. The last guy doesn’t know a damn thing.

It’s a bit like the figure of the cuckold in a family: he talks about everyone else’s horns, but has no idea he’s the first one wearing them.