“Who are your enemies?”

I have been asked that interview question for my whole life as I was growing my career.

I am recalling being in my twenties, sitting across the table from a grizzly and embittered executive who would ask me, “Who are your enemies?”

When I would fail to produce a list of enemies, the interviewer would look at me with disdain, like I was the most irrelevant person on the planet, implying, “How can you claim to be competent if you haven’t made powerful enemies?”

That scene seems so ridiculous to me now. Read More