Do you learn more about people when they talk about others?

It's not you, it's them.

I realized something a few years ago that I recounted to someone today that he thought was life-changing, so I thought I’d write this up.

You want to work with great people that treat you well. I find emotional intelligence and humility are often traits - along with ability - that these people have.

I’ve often been in social situations where I was meeting people I used to work with and some new people, and we were all introducing ourselves to each other.

I realized that some really very senior people were often introducing me as “Satyajeet and I used to work together on <insert thing we worked on> many years ago”. For a couple of these people, this would be the equivalent of Steph Curry saying to someone “I played basketball with Person X”, where Person X may have just passed the ball to him a few times during a practice.

It showed how gracious these people were. It may have also showed how they thought of people on their team.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even think it was that unusual until in another context a few years ago someone I also used to work with that was just one level senior to me, and barely so, in a similar situation chose to go with “Satyajeet worked for me many years ago when I ran <insert team> where I did <2 min monologue>”. I had to stop myself laughing when the person did that. It showed both insecurity of sorts and gave you a sense of how they thought of my role then. Perhaps relatedly, I didn’t think this person was that great at their job. :-)

If you are considering going to work for someone, just watch how they introduce people on their team to you or others - it’ll give you a sense of the person they are and how they might treat you.