The Illusion of Safe Choices
How the smartest people get trapped by consensus thinking
I almost joined Amazon.
I was in the middle of the interview process when I got my offer from Paradox. Everyone I respected told me the same thing: Focus on their process, instead of Paradox’s. It’s the smart move to work there. The safe move.
But something felt wrong.
Not about Amazon. About the unanimous chorus of validation. When everyone agrees, my alarm bells go off.
Everyone thinks following the crowd is safe. Smart. Prudent.
What if the opposite is true?
What if the "risky" move is actually playing it safe? What if the "safe" move is actually the most dangerous?
I kept thinking about Amazon's AWS bet in 2006. It looked insane to everyone. Build cloud infrastructure? When every "smart" company treated IT as a cost center?
Pure madness.
Except it wasn't.
Following the consensus that infrastructure couldn't be profitable would have been the actually risky choice.
