Why You Need a Nemesis
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.
But what if there's nobody to teach you to fish? What are you supposed to do then? You find your nemesis instead.
A lot of career advice given to newbies in any industry is to "find a mentor". A mentor can help you learn new skills and give you a leg up in unfamiliar territory. Mentorship is even required for a lot of professions, like plumbers or surgeons. In my profession (computer programming and web development), having a mentor is great but not required, though, a lot of senior level job listings now have "mentoring and coaching" as one of the enumerated responsibilities.
Of course, I never got that memo. I got dumped into the web dev industry cold with no one to hold my hand or point out my mistakes. While Google was a great assistant to an inexperienced young coder, it could only really teach me things I already knew to ask it. But despite not having a professional mentor of any kind, I still managed to grow and improve and be (relatively) successful in my career. I didn't get here alone, though. I credit it to my nemesis.
What is a Nemesis?
In Greek mythology, Nemesis was a goddess of divine retribution. More commonly, the word nemesis refers to "a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent". In the context of this post, a nemesis is that person or company or tool that just irks you and frustrates you so much that it forces you to improve yourself for no other reason than to do better. A nemesis is essentially an anti-mentor.
Where a mentor can give you the tools and training you need, a nemesis will give you a reason. More than that, a nemesis will cause enough friction and challenge you enough to make you rethink the values that make you who you are. It's your nemesis that sparks insight, self-reflection, and self-reliance. Your mentor might give you everything you need to be successful, but you're not going to grow as a person by doing it the way it's always been done.
Let's look at an example from pop culture (nerd alert): The X-Men.
Despite his flaws, Professor X is the classic, archetypal mentor. He raised and trained the X-men. He taught them to harness their powers and instilled in them an appreciation of life and harmony and the desire to live alongside humans.
In their quest to protect humans, the X-Men often clashed with their long time nemesis, Magneto. Magneto had a much more militant approach, with political views touching on Mutant superiority. It was in their battles with the Master of Magnetism that the X-Men pushed their skills further, forced to adapt and improvise in the moment. Magneto's anti-human rhetoric also pushed them to question and reflect on Xavier's teachings, offering an alternate viewpoint and allowing them to make up their own minds.
Cyclops vs. Wolverine: An Aside
A more nuanced relationship, and one that perhaps better exemplifies the type of nemesis I'm talking about here, is the one between Wolverine and Cyclops. While on the same team with the same goal, they were constantly at odds, yet this conflict had a profound impact on both of them.
Wolverine started out as the gruff anti-hero: An outsider with a contempt for authority and instincts built from years of self-reliance and survival. Cyclops, on the other hand, was Xavier's star student: by-the-book, disciplined, obedient, laser-focused on pursuing Xavier's dream to the letter. Two incredibly different characters, forced to work and live together, clashing at every turn over everything from tactics and girls to the very definition of what it means to be an X-man.
Over the many years and adventures, Cyclops and Wolverine learn to respect each other, and perhaps even become friends after a while. Wolverine's undeniable success, while perhaps unorthodox, pushes Cyclops to question his rigid adherence to the rules and, in turn, Professor X's hard-line pro-unity stance. At the same time, Cyclops' teamwork-focused leadership style forced Wolverine out of his loner, anti-authoritarian attitude and allowed him to accept that maybe having a family wouldn't be so bad.
All this came to a head in the Schism storyline from 2011 that saw the X-Men breaking into two factions, with one led by Wolverine and the other led by Cyclops. It was Wolverine (the man who is famously the best there is at doing what he does, which isn't very nice) who started the "Jean Grey School" with the mission of teaching young mutants to control their powers while still letting them be kids. Cyclops, on the other hand, formed the Extinction Team that operated outside the law, utilized young mutants as soldiers, and resorted to brutal tactics in the defense of mutant kind. Both of these developments would have been far from expected if you considered where the characters started from, but made perfect sense when you look at the character development pushed by their nemeses. (Spoiler Alert: Cyclops was actually so far gone that at one point he literally murdered his mentor, Professor X, in the name of protecting mutants. This was maybe more Magneto than Wolverine, though.)
My Nemesis
So, what does all this have to do with career advice and professional mentorship? To reiterate, I believe that having a nemesis can push you to challenge your beliefs and improve yourself in areas you didn't know you needed to improve in. Einstein said something like "Adversity introduces a man to himself". Your nemesis is that adversity.
To cement the point, I'll share my own professional nemesis experience. Since I was a kid in the mid-90s, all I wanted to be was a web developer (at the time, a "webmaster"). I spent all my free time building websites. I went to school for building websites. I've never had a job that wasn't building websites. Without tooting my own horn too much, I was a very good web programmer.
It wasn't until I started my job at the IU Network Science Institute that I came to understand that there was a lot more to software development than just being a good programmer. It was at IUNI that I discovered my soon-to-be-nemesis: My boss, Val.
Before going further, I want to be very clear: Val was a great guy. He was well respected, friendly, and would give you the shirt off his back. He fought tooth and nail for our team. I and everyone I worked with are better off for having known him.
As much as I loved Val, I hated how he ran the team. He was an idea man and great at making deals. A lot of times this got his team in trouble. We were routinely stretched thin, our time being oversold at 120%, 150%, or even 200%. There were a lot of technical mandates and questionable project management decisions. It was maddening and frustrating, but we persevered.
As an example, soon after I joined, Val decided we would start using Scrum. We were told to watch a couple of videos, start using Jira, and have daily stand-ups. Val knew as much about Scrum as we did. The result was a daily, hour-long scrum at a conference room table. We were wasting so much time with no benefits. There had to be a better way.
After a month or so, I studied and got my Professional Scrum Master certification. Armed with my new skills and certification, I immediately restructured our project management workflow (and nearly got fired in the process... but that's another story). My success with Scrum led me down a rabbit hole of productivity, agile, and project management that eventually eclipsed (or at least compared to) my efforts in coding.
Leading the Scrum rituals eventually gained me respect which turned into leading the team. Quite often, I found myself pushing back against some of Val's direction in the interest of keeping the team running smoothly. A couple of years later, my leadership abilities were recognized and formalized when Val promoted me from Web Developer to Lead Software Engineer where day-to-day operations and mentoring junior developers was added to my list of responsibilities. Ultimately, I found that I enjoyed the operations and mentoring more than the development itself, so now I pursue Engineering Management rather than Engineering.
Fast-forward a few years and at this point, I've been officially leading the team as IT and Engineering Director for almost 3 years. Management comes with a whole slew of problems unlike any I would have expected to encounter as Just a Web Developer TM. When I need to make a decision or come to an unexpected problem, I think "What Would Val Do?". Then I do the exact opposite.
From Fishing to Farming
I'm far happier now as a leader than I was as an individual contributor. I honestly think that I wouldn't be in the position I am if it weren't for Val. But it's not because he was my mentor. It was because I had found my nemesis who unknowingly pushed me out of my coding comfort zone and into leadership.
As I've said previously, I've never had a mentor, so I can't speak to whether or not seeking out a mentor is good career advice. What I can speak to, however, is that stumbling upon a nemesis was not bad for my career and completely changed its trajectory. Don't get me wrong; I still like coding. But right now, I find it far more fulfilling to lead teams who are better at it than I am.
Of course, my career isn't over yet, so I don't know whether it'll ultimately be successful or not. Regardless, I'm glad I ended up with a nemesis instead of a mentor. A mentor might teach you to fish, but a nemesis makes you realize you were meant to be a farmer all along.