Is Staying at the Wrong Company the Most Selfish Thing You Can Do?

There is a person in almost every organization who has already decided to leave. They just have not left yet. They disagree with the direction. They undermine the culture. They drain the people around them and then blame the organization for being the problem. Jason Schroeder has a direct message for that person: fire yourself before someone has to do it for you.

The Concept That Started This Conversation

Jason was reading Keith Cunningham’s book “The Road Less Stupid” when this episode came together. The book introduced the term apostate, defined as a person who renounces a belief or principle they once held. Jason applied it directly to the workplace. If someone inside your organization publicly advocates against the culture, the direction, and the principles you have built, that person is an apostate. And an apostate who leaves with integrity deserves respect. An apostate who digs in and stays is a different problem entirely.

The tick analogy Jason used here is worth sitting with. Some people embed themselves in organizations the way a tick embeds in skin. They are painful to remove. They resist every effort to dislodge them. And just like a tick, they can transmit something damaging to the organism they are attached to. The longer they stay, the more costly the extraction becomes.

Why People Stay When They Should Go

The honest answer is usually security. Staying feels safer than leaving. The paycheck keeps coming. The routine holds. And the discomfort of staying, while real, is at least familiar. But Jason made this point directly: staying in a culture you do not believe in is not self-preservation. It is selfishness. You are consuming resources, occupying a seat, and corroding a culture that other people are trying to build, all in service of your own comfort.

He shared a personal story to ground this. Earlier in his career, Jason found himself inside an organization that consistently prioritized client demands over employee safety and wellbeing. He raised the issue. He named the direction he believed they should be heading. When it became clear the organization was not going to move, he did not dig in and fight. He left. He fired himself. Not in anger. Not with a crusade. He simply recognized that two things were true: his values were not going to change, and neither were theirs. Staying would have cost both parties more than leaving did.

The Fixed Mindset Problem

Jason introduced a second group in this episode that deserves equal attention. Not just the apostates, but the people who stay in organizations because they have confused their personal worth with their professional value. This is where the fixed mindset enters the conversation.

He connected this to Carol Dweck’s work on mindset and to a concept he encountered in the book “Smart Love” while raising his own children. There are two kinds of happiness. Primary happiness is the unconditional sense of worth that comes from within, from family, from faith, from identity. Secondary happiness is what you earn in the marketplace through contribution, mastery, and results. The problem Jason sees in the current workforce is that people have merged these two things. They have taken the love their parents gave them and the confidence it produced and applied it to professional settings where it does not yet apply.

He was careful to separate the two. Every person has inherent worth. That is not in question. But inherent worth is not the same as earned value. A person can be deeply loved, genuinely important to the people in their life, and still be providing very little value in the workplace. These two things can coexist. Pretending they cannot is where the fixed mindset takes hold.

Here are the fixed mindset patterns Jason described as warning signs:

• Avoiding challenges rather than running toward them
• Treating criticism as a personal attack rather than useful data
• Believing that intelligence and talent are fixed rather than developed over time 
• Seeking approval before acting rather than acting and learning from outcome
• Viewing the success of others as a threat rather than evidence of what is possible

The growth mindset is the inverse of every one of those patterns. It treats challenges as training. It welcomes feedback. It understands that mastery takes years and that the work of becoming good at something is never finished.

Culture Is the System

Jason pulled a line from Cunningham’s book that reframes the entire conversation. Culture is not a value statement. It is a never-ending conversation about the rules of the game. The rules define how people act, how they communicate, and how they treat each other. If you know those rules and cannot commit to them, staying is a choice that costs everyone.

The above the line principles Jason cited are worth naming directly. See it, own it, solve it, do it. Become part of the solution. Respect others and their feelings. Act now. Ask what else you can do. Ask for coaching. Take personal ownership. Reject the average. Show people that you care. These are not aspirational values posted on a breakroom wall. They are behavioral commitments. Either you are living them or you are not. And if you are not, the honest move is to say so rather than silently corrode the culture around you.

There is no magic software or process that replaces this. Jason said it in this episode without hesitation: the only real magic bullet in construction is Takt planning for the schedule. Everything else comes down to grit, discipline, fundamentals, and training. If an organization is committed to that level of performance and you are not, both of you deserve to know it sooner rather than later.

Building people who build things requires that those people actually want to be built. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

The Challenge

This episode carries a challenge for two different people. If you are the apostate or the fixed mindset employee, the honest question is whether staying is serving anyone, including you. If you are the leader, the question is whether you are having the clear and direct conversations that give people the chance to get on board or make a different choice. Both require courage. Neither is optional if you are serious about building something worth building.

“Culture is not a value statement. It is the never-ending conversation about the rules of the game.” Keith Cunningham

On we go.

FAQ

What is an apostate in a workplace context?

Jason borrowed the term from its original religious definition and applied it to organizations. In the workplace, an apostate is someone who no longer believes in the direction, values, or principles of the organization they work for but stays anyway and actively advocates against them. Jason’s position is that this person is causing damage every day they remain and would be better served, and would better serve others, by leaving and finding a place that genuinely fits who they are.

What is the difference between primary and secondary happiness?

Primary happiness is the unconditional sense of worth that comes from identity, faith, family, or a sense of self. It does not need to be earned. Secondary happiness is what you build in the marketplace through contribution, skill, and results. Jason’s point is that newer generations have sometimes confused the two, assuming that their innate worth as a person automatically translates to value in the workplace. It does not. Both matter. They just operate in different categories, and collapsing them together creates the fixed mindset.

How do you handle apostates as a leader?

Jason’s answer is direct: do not ignore them and do not tolerate indefinitely. Have the conversation clearly. Give people the chance to get on board or choose a different path. Companies like Zappos have even offered financial incentives for employees to leave if they are not a cultural fit, precisely because keeping a misaligned person is more expensive in the long run than the cost of helping them exit well. You get what you tolerate, and tolerating dissent without addressing it is a leadership choice with consequences.

Is this approach too harsh for the younger workforce?

Jason anticipated this question and answered it with nuance. He is not advocating for a return to shame-based leadership or the “not good enough” culture that damaged previous generations. He is saying that honesty about where someone stands is more respectful than pretending the fit is better than it is. Telling someone clearly what is expected, giving them the framework to meet it, and being direct when they cannot is not harsh. Letting someone sit in the wrong seat for years while everyone around them suffers is what is actually unkind.