Envy can't be eliminated, it just grows back somewhere else
You erase one source of envy, and people immediately invent another — because envy is rooted in hierarchy, and hierarchy is animal and cannot be erased. A good organization doesn't eliminate envy; it redirects the energy of pulling others down into pulling yourself up.
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Erase one bias and people will invent the next
The medium of envy can be eliminated; envy itself cannot. Once cars, houses and luxury goods are all the same, people look at cubicle size, whether the office has a window, how close you sit to the chairman. Level those too, and they look at how much hair you have, whether it's black or white, whether your skin glows. Wang Yajun's explanation: behind envy is hierarchy, and hierarchy determines the ability to acquire resources. That comes from the animal part of the human mind, so people will always create new things that separate themselves from others. The implication for managers: don't expect to cure envy by flattening one difference. You can only decide what the next invented difference will be.
— Wang YajunThe bigger the gap, the less envy; the more alike, the more envy
The intensity of envy is inversely proportional to distance. Two people far apart generally won't envy each other. Close together, or even formerly peers, one year-end review separates them, and next year a new position opens and one becomes the other's superior — that is the most awkward way to work together. So some companies require that when several people compete for CEO, once one wins, the other two or three must leave. GE did exactly that, on the logic that "I don't quite believe people can still work together calmly after something like that happens." Wang Yajun distinguishes this from McKinsey's up-or-out: the latter is more a matter of ability, the former a matter of human nature.
— Wang YajunEnvy itself is vitality; the question is where it goes
Wang Yajun doesn't treat envy as purely negative: at bottom it's about securing a higher probability for one's own survival and the transmission of one's DNA — a manifestation of vitality. Imagine a world without envy, where everyone feels it's all the same whether others are better or worse than them, and no one wants to change the current situation. That world wouldn't move forward; it would become static. So the key isn't whether envy exists, but which path it takes once it does — pull others down, or lift yourself up. The six-pack example: one option is to make sure he doesn't have one; the other is for me to go train. The starting point is about the same; the action and the result are completely different.
— Wang YajunLuxury goods sell not function but stratification
Wang Yajun says he used to find it hard to understand why one Hermès bag costs so much more than another bag that's unknown, or even somewhat known — a bit more expensive makes sense, but that much more is unreasonable. Then he figured it out: what you're ultimately buying isn't its function of holding things, but its function of stratification — telling others I have the money to buy this. Same with luxury cars. School uniforms are the reverse operation: make everyone dress alike, so kids from very wealthy families and ordinary families wear the same thing and don't generate pointless envy. But even then, some kid will find a small way to be different. Same in companies: everything else is about the same, but the watch has to be very expensive.
— Wang YajunIf your rating is low, don't fight it within one cycle
Performance evaluation is an abstract standard; the higher up you go, the more it resembles an ideal — perhaps no one exactly matches the A or A+ profile. Those being rated feel it's unfair, which is essentially a form of envy, just usually called unfairness. Wang Yajun's advice is to look at procedural fairness: if you believe the company has rationality and fairness in how it handles such matters, stay another cycle and see what happens next time. The reason is that information can never be perfectly symmetric; there will always be error, but a good system, given two or three tries, will most likely regress to the mean — this time it pulled you down, next time it may be better; this time it pushed you up, next time it will pull you down. Conversely, if every time you feel you deserve an A but every time you get a B+, you need to figure out whether it's systematic targeting or a bias in your self-perception. Ask several people; don't keep it bottled up.
— Wang YajunAn office near the chairman is a scarce resource
Wang Ziru said he wanted an office relatively close to the chairman. Wang Yajun interprets this through envy: that spot is a scarce resource — if you have it, I don't. If you're close to him, I still have to go through you. Colleagues' envy under normal circumstances is predictable. His judgment: this kind of thing is inspiring for the individual but not good for the organization as a whole. Longfor's approach is that executive offices can only be in the middle of the floor with no windows, and window seats are left for employees, because executives already have a lot of power; if they take all the perks, others naturally feel resentful. He also mentions a company that gave executives a dedicated elevator, saving maybe thirty seconds, but the negative spillover effect was very strong — a very poor trade.
— Wang YajunDeliberately stoking envy among subordinates never works well
There are indeed managers who deliberately set two people in a group to compete, assuming the organization doesn't need much collaboration, only individual ability. Wang Yajun says the setups he's seen of this kind — for instance, leadership creating an AB team — never work particularly well: such checks and balances only lead the organization toward mediocrity, because they can't create a system everyone identifies with. Trust is scarce, and everyone feels unsafe — you can be replaced at any time, and the B team is just waiting for you to slip. When people dare not make mistakes, they do the safe, conservative thing, or they go for something big, skim a little off the top, and leave. He names real estate and insurance as industries with such companies, some of them not small, but none of them have produced any innovation, and they can't build systems for their traditional businesses either.
— Wang YajunBefore investing in a company, due-diligence its envy level
Wang Yajun treats envy as a usable decision variable: an employee considering whether to join a company can first look at how strong the atmosphere of envy is there; a fund considering investing in a company can look at this too. His reasoning: once you're in, your only choices are "play by their rules" or "I'm out." But before you're in, doing this due diligence from both the people and the money angles is a good lens. He also offers a distinction: if it's malignant envy, and it's pretty bad, there's probably a problem; but positive envy often isn't called envy — it's called healthy competition, keeping up with each other. For a sales team you want that; for R&D you probably don't, unless you set up two teams doing the same project.
— Wang YajunChanging your reference point works better than suppressing envy
The technique Wang Yajun gives to the envious isn't suppression, it's changing the reference point. First, you can choose to compare with different people, or compare across a person's different aspects, rather than fixating on one point and magnifying where he's better than you. Second, don't only compare with others — compare with your past self. Being better than before is also a good way to think; that's the logic of a growth mindset. Third, check whether the thing you envy is actually scarce — money is scarce, but the marginal cost of knowledge, learning and cognition is zero; you either have it or you don't. Now with ChatGPT, your breadth of knowledge seems about the same as another person's, so there's no need to envy him — and so people start inventing new objects of envy. His own way of making peace is "good thing I'm not classmates with Jack Ma": envy depends on how far the reference person you choose is from you. If you can almost reach it but don't, that's when it arises; if it's very far away, you don't care.
— Wang YajunIn their own words · checked verbatim
If the gap between superior and subordinate is relatively large — or even, more broadly, if many things between two people differ greatly — you generally won't be very envious.
如果上级和下级之间差的比较大 或者甚至推广 就是两个人之间 很多东西差的比较大 你大致不大会忌妒
Wang Yajun10:06
You realize that in the end you're not buying its function — not its function of holding things — but its function of stratification.
你发现最后买的不是它的功能 不是它装东西的功能 而是它分层的功能
Wang Yajun20:13
So if it's a good system, but there's error, give it two or three tries; most likely it will regress to the mean.
那么如果是一个好的系统 但误差你给他两三次 大概率他能够回归均值
Wang Yajun24:17
First, you don't believe it. The company has very little trust. Everyone feels unsafe.
首先你是不信 这公司的信任感是很少的 所有人都不安全
Wang Yajun54:45
There's also the category of a person's learning, knowledge, cognition — logically the marginal cost of knowledge is zero; it's just a question of whether you have it or not.
还有一类是说一个人的学识 知识 认知 这个东西按道理知识的边界成本是零的 只不过是你有和没有的这个问题
Wang Yajun1:09:51
It's actually about the distance between you and the person who triggers your envy — how far they are from you. If you feel you could reach it with a jump but you didn't, then you will feel it.
其实是你选择的产生嫉妒心的这个人和你的距离 离你有多远 如果你觉得跳跳就能够得到 但是你没够得到 这个你就会就会有
Wang Yajun1:16:56
Figures
| Business school EMBA tuition | Now 1.1 million or 1.3 million; previously 700,000 | 1:10:53 |
| Time saved by executive-only elevator | About 30 seconds faster | 43:33 |
| Annual growth rate during real estate's high-growth period | 100% growth per year was considered normal | 31:26 |
Glossary
- up or out
- A personnel rule at companies like GE and McKinsey: if you don't reach the next level, you leave.
- Four-element framework
- Wang Yajun's explanatory framework: sex, fear, love, belief — envy is assembled from sex and fear.
- Workplace Envy
- A paper using empirical data to study workplace envy; Wang Yajun says its conclusions don't differ much from intuition.
- break winner
- English term for the person who earns the family's bread; transcribed as such, usually written breadwinner.
How to listen
Founders, CEOs, HR heads, and professionals agonizing over year-end performance reviews or whether to join a particular company.
The wrap-up and music after 1:18:00, and the digression on sports cars and Fortress Besieged at 1:14:55.